REPO MAN — SHOCKTOBER!

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Alex Cox caught lightening in a bottle in 1984 with a snarly little L.A.-set independent movie that became a cult classic thanks to the success of its soundtrack (featuring Iggy Pop).

This kooky time-capsule political satire uses LA's hardcore punk scene for its churning dystopic social milieu that our 18-year-old Otto (Emilio Estevez) traverses while getting sucked into becoming a repo man. 

Reaganomics hangs in the smoggy air like a bad fart.

Harry Dean Stanton plays Bud, Otto's father-figure who schools Otto in the code of the repo man as they scout repos in the less glamorous neighborhoods of LA.

"A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations."
"Repo man is always intense."

Such dialogue seems written in stone, especially when the film's theme-carrier, Miller (Tracey Walter) busts out with philosophical gems like, "The more you drive, the less intelligent you are."

 What did he just say?

Now you've got me thinking.

Otto eats generic food at his parents house. His tweet tweet arf arf folks have given their life savings away to a televangelist. So much for college.

Otto's future looks bleak unless he can repo a certain 1964 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu with a $20,000 reward, and a Neutron bomb-related MacGuffin in the trunk, a nice hat-tip to the plot-driver in the 1955 Cold War thriller "Kiss Me Deadly."

Endlessly watchable, "Repo Man" stands up as an inspired artistic expression amid dark social and political repression.

Here's a great excuse to kick it.

Rated R. 92 mins.

WORKING GIRLS — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

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Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

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Lizzie Borden's third film, behind "Regrouping" (1979) and "Born In Flames" (1983), is a perfect chamber-piece of neo-realist social satire.

The film's feminist trappings of an '80s era Manhattan brothel provides the frame for a piercing commentary on the effects of American capitalism on women.

"Working Girls" could easily be adapted to be a modernday Broadway play.

It would be a sensation for its timeless qualities of social, sexual, and economic truth.

Molly (Louise Smith), a professional photographer, lives with her lesbian girlfriend when she isn't working as a sex worker in a Manhattan brothel run by a domineering madam.

"Have you ever heard of surplus value?"

That theme line shoots like a sharp political dart when a character speaks it.

“All workers create more value at work than they receive in wages. The extra surplus value goes into the boss’s pocket as profit.”

Surplus value is "the surplus produced over and above what is required to survive, which is translated into profit in capitalism. Since the capitalist pays a laborer for his/her labor, the capitalist claims to own the means of production, the worker's labor-power, and even the product that is thus produced."

Female hands hold cups of coffee, count money, and remove cum-filled condoms.

Everyone chisels; there is no place to hide.

Not Rated. 93 mins.

HOUSE — SHOCKTOBER!

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Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

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Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 surrealistic satire regarding the overwhelming aftermath of America’s atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is a virtuosic fantasy horror movie unlike any other.

Of the atomic bombs’ 200,000 causalities, all of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s childhood friends were among the deceased.

Nobuhiko Obayashi was just eight years old at the time of the attacks. Clearly, he never lost sight of his pals, or his loss. Here, Obayashi throws a cinematic extravaganza party to celebrate the lost potential of a generation.

Extreme teenage Japanese punk power pop! You bet.

We’re way beyond “Rocky Horror” baby.

“House” takes the cake, the dining room table, the piano, and most certainly the title’s house of horrors that devours seven teenage girls via a very hungry piano.

Chomp, chomp, chomp.

“House” shows Obayashi’s encyclopedic mastery of state-of-the-art filmmaking, from a deeply personal approach to meeting the sugary commercial demands of the film’s producers.

This insanely ambitious movie puts George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to shame with pure inventiveness.

Obayashi received story ideas from his eleven-year-old daughter, Chigumi. A blood-spewing white cat piles on the film’s cartoonish tone of outrageous evil consuming every body that steps in its path.

Nobuhiko Obayashi uses every filmic technique at his disposal, in order to transmogrify the grief, pain, and sense of incalculable loss that he and so many others experienced. What results is a cinematic phantasmagoria overflowing with humor, expressions of love, and deep-seeded fear of the unknown.

Visually and viscerally stunning from start to finish, “House” is much more than a mere masterpiece.

Not Rated. 88 mins.