This weekend I saw Metropolis, the 1927 version. Naive and over-the-top, and of course the standard silent-film overacting. But nonetheless, pretty neat. Now I’ll have to watch the 2002 anime version. You could pair Metropolis with urban dystopia pics like Blade Runner, or industrial-wasteland movies like Eraserhead or Modern Times, or of course union movies like Matewan. But for some reason I ended up watching it right after I’d seen L.I.E., which still forms neat parallels: suburban rather than urban wasteland, and the corruption of privilege, semi-innocent kids discovering parental malfeasance, male bonding, etc. etc.
Secretly Ironic 