SHADOWS Contactless Friday May 29 8.30 SBS on Demand and Messenger: 99 HOMES

"America doesn't bail out losers. America bails out winners!" Ok, a tough fable about the U.S. housing crash might not get you fired up against the cold at the end of the week but this tale of seduction and economic violence brings it.

The bank swallows Dennis Nash's home in one gulp and he and his mother move into a ratty motel peopled by others in the same predicament. One thing they all have in common is the efforts of real estate bucaneer Rick Carver who makes his living causing this. When I say living I mean fortune. Dennis is facing an increasingly tight corner until, offered a job by the force of darkness, gives in and chooses gain.

This might just be another angry tract by one of the dispossessed but for a writing hand equally at ease with a feather quill or a sledgehammer. And then there's the casting. Young Anglo-American actor Andrew Garfield brings an innocence begging for the flavours of corruption and the mighty Michael Shannon whose thunderous voice and monumental presence delivers hard truth and silky seduction to the ingenue. But mention must be made of Laura Dern as Dennis' mother, a buoy of pragmatism in this tempest of masculinity.

99 Homes is a story from our own front lines, a film that pleads against the lightless contempt of the possessors for the dispossessed. We're seeing it now because it never goes away. This is an opportunity to do some decent shouting at the screen.

Come, then, a cough drop for each of you and your best enraged bellow. This masterclass in modern bluster ends, as it must, with a silent exchange that will dig into you and stay there.

Your couch!

SHADOWS Contactless Friday 22 2020 8.30 SBS on Demand + Messenger: ALFIE (1966)

When I was running Shadows at the ABC Gallery one of the regulars, a much older man, often complained to me about the more obscure films I showed. He accepted that that was part of my brief but said that he would show titles from the great trove of cinema classics that were easily available. I replied that my purpose was provide a kind of stand-in for the recently deceased Melbourne arthouse scene and show a mix of old and new that were difficult to access. Some of those might well be classics but probably wouldn't include Breakfast at Tiffany's or Casablanca. Good films, of course, but if you only show classics you never get to statements that the classics overshadowed, the cries from the margins and the fog beyond the mainstream. So, why the bloody 'ell am I showin' Alfie?

Well, it does look like one of those auld cinema classics with a '60s birthdate and a cast that includes Michael Caine and a host of other great UK players. But I'm putting it on as the two times I've seen it I had different responses. As a young cinema student ripe with cultural snobbery and political righteousness (and a very small handful of life experiences) I found myself looking around what I diagnosed as Alfie's misogyny and nihilism. Decades later, I saw it again and recognised through the laddish fourth wall confessions a growing sadness beneath the cockiness.

If you don't have a similar history with this title you might simply enjoy the slightly hard edge given to swinging London that the pop group movies left out. It's from a time when working class people could realise plans careers and affluence. Keith Richards famously remarked that the better money and end of enforced military service gave rise to the greatness of British youth culture in the '60s. Into this success they carried the impetuousness of an extended adolescence and an exuberance that probably seemed endless at the time. Caine brings to Alfie a harder face than today's Mockneys and would today be depicted with a kind of knowing affectation. Here, at least, it feels real.

So , let's watch Alfie.

SHADOWS Contactless: May 15 8.30 Netflix Party: CAM

Have you ever had your credit card hacked? Ever been impersonated on Facebook? Bother have happened to me. Initially, the sense of panic freezes your thoughts and the first thing to cross your mind is that the thief is the one they'll believe, not you, the original. When that passes and you begin the reversal process, calling the bank, warning your social media friends, and your reason returns, you will still remember how little it took to throw you into chaos. Now imagine that happened at work.

Alice is a cam girl. She performs for an audience she never sees who comment in a chat sidebar and pay her to do things. Her audience is male, at the numberless nerve endings at the other end of the web cam. The greater the dollar count, the more extreme the act. Alice knows her job and is good at keeping things this side of bad. But then she hears about herself going much further. So far, this could be another doppelganger story. But we're dealing with bigger impacts, here. This doesn't have the intimacy of The Double or William Wilson, it's global and the stakes are rising as the ever hungry spectators, safe in their own bedrooms, grow in numbers and only want more.

Co-writer Isa Mazzei drew from her own time as a cam girl and was initially interested in making a documentary. But the more the writing team thought of it the more they knew they needed the realm of fiction and its devices to tell the tale. While this is only one aspect of the cam girl's lot pushed to extremes it confronts us with the value we put on her and her choice of profession and how our anonymity allows the illusion of limited involvement. The internet didn't create this it just allowed it to intensify. Owing as much to Klute as the more obvious call of Videodrome, Cam lets us in to where we protest we never tread.

SHADOWS Contactless: May 8, 8.30 SBS on Demand: THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE

After decades of struggle and massive setbacks, Terry Gilliam finally made his film about Don Quixote. The production troubles made for such a compelling tale that the documentary (made as a dvd extra) became a film in its own right. That film, Lost in La Mancha, is highly recommended and, if it were better available, I'd set it as homework. Gilliam didn't quite shrug but got back up and made what was easier to make but still within his preferred vision. And then finally this most recent resurrection of his lost project emerged, recast and reshot. And few seemed to notice.

That's a shame as it works perfectly well. Does it match the massive epic put in mind by all the legend about it? Nothing could. It does, however, present a lean and cleverly told tale of confounded hubris which some might well observe feels autobiographical. But all this is meta business. The film stands on its own without crutches of pity or worthiness. It's strong and it's fun.

Adam Driver is arguably a superior choice to the more famously cast Johnny Depp. Jonathan Pryce reunites with Gilliam from the days of Brazil and proved reliable. If you watch Lost in La Mancha you'll understand why that's important.

If this seems all a touch too convoluted and self-clever recall only how much of a struggle it was to get to the screen and how each peak and plummet might have affected its creator and forced him to reflect on where he has come from and why he still must fight for each new project. It's about past and present at every turn, how we are forgiving of ourselves in retrospect but disappointed at the way we have turned out now. This is a story of careers and so is the story of how we have lived. Gilliam went through windmills of disappointment bringing it us and has more than earned our attention.