The Pervert's Guide to Ideology

In this follow-up to 2006's The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, documentarian Sophie Fiennes reunites with Slovenia's celebrity philosopher (and onetime presidential candidate) Slavoj Zizek for an intellectual odyssey set off by movie clips. Along the way, cosplaying Zizek speaks from impeccable recreations of sets from popular Hollywood classics (West Side Story), propaganda pictures (Soviet and Nazi), and some well-remembered B-movies—such as John Carpenter's 1988 anti-consumerist allegory They Live. Topics covered include the meaning and uses of ideology, the brilliance and thematic versatility of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (employed meaningfully in A Clockwork Orange), and a literally amoral side to the Catholic Church as shown in The Sound of Music. Although the free-associative style sometimes seems a bit meandering, Zizek's lectures are consistently entertaining, even if he does spoil a few endings, especially for all three of you who haven't seen Titanic. Recommended. (C. Cassady)