#1 MOVIE – Herbert’s Hippopotamus – FVLV 1413-1
As it turns out, UCSD was actually cool back in the ’60s. Angela Davis was here and Herbert Marcuse, the radical philosophy professor whose methods brought on the wrath of former governor Ronald Reagan and the rest of the UC regents, ruled the campus. A low-budget documentary pieced together by a former UCSD student, this film has some awesome footage of protests in Revelle Plaza and sit-ins at the registrar’s office, among others. “Herbert’s Hippopotamus” is a must-see for any proud attendee of our university, not only for the retro afros and bell bottoms, but as a treasured anthropological document.
Best Movie to fill in the gaps your Spanish teacher missed
Y tu mamá también – Directed by Alfonso Cuarón – FVLDV 1807-1
TAs often skip over important phrases like “pop her cherry” and “please eat me out.” This erotic road trip movie, which follows two horny teens and a sexy Latina traveling through Mexico, will coach you though the terms over and over (and over and over) again. Guaranteed to be much more useful than phrases like “my brother plays tennis” if you ever study abroad. “Y tu mamá también” is a must-see if you are currently enrolled in a Spanish class.
Best Movie to watch after receiving yet another campus parking ticket
Weekend – Directed by Jean Luc Godard – FVLV 4303-1
This stylized 10-minute tracking shot of a traffic jam on the outskirts of Paris will instill in you a newfound hatred for cars, people and the whole damn capitalist system, elevating ticket fury to new heights. Godard’s burning poets, matricidal heroines and nihilistic renegades have in common with the UCSD parking enforcement a natural trend toward cannibalism.
Best Movie to watch after hooking up with your professor
Harold and Maude – Directed by Hal Ashby – FVLV 4303-1
Whether you ran into him randomly at Lestat’s or have been waging a seductive siege during office hours, there’s nothing like a love story between a death-obsessed teen and a kooky octogenarian (of 80+ years) to remind you that love has no bounds and sagging bodies are still totally tappable. Another plus: all the music in the film is by Cat Stevens (or Yusuf Islam, as airport security usually recognizes him).
Best Movie to recover from rush week pamphleteers
Crumb – Directed by Terry Zwigoff – FVLD 124-2
This documentary explores the eccentric genius of comic book creator Robert Crumb (Zap Comix, Fritz the Cat) and his artistic fetishes. Weird, hilarious and exceptionally moving, the film is a remedy for post-Price-Center-at-lunchtime trauma as it instantly spurs the dawning realization that you don’t have to fit in with the alpha alpha moondoggies clientele to have a good (or, in Crumb’s case, at least interesting) sex life.
Best Movie to watch if you miss the 7 p.m. Hillcrest shuttle
The Story of Qu Jiu – Directed by Zhang Yimou – FVLV 4572-1
There’s no sex or violence, and it has subtitles. Wait — don’t go! This hysterical Chinese film by Zhang Yimou (“House of Flying Daggers”), following a rural Chinese villagewoman’s journey to seek revenge on the man who kicked her husband in the balls, is a wonderful treat that you’ll only be able to make someone watch if they’re stranded on campus for two hours and Porter’s Pub is closed. With hardly a handful of real actors, its painstaking efforts at realism alone (one camera man hid on a wooden platform for 16 hours) are worth the watch.
Best Movie to watch with a date or when you’re horny after studying too long
Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens – Directed by Russ Meyer – FVLDV 1323-1
Better than any porn, this 1979 piece of psychedelic workmanship by brilliant but obscure Russ Meyer is enough to send you and your date (or just you) up to Geisel’s eighth-floor single-occupancy stall. Afterward, if your date has the sense of mind to look past Meyer’s larger-than-life boobage shots to point out that the coffin sex scene is rife with social satire, you’ll know he or she is a keeper.
Best Move to watch if the headphones don’t work (and you’re too shy to ask for new ones)
Charlie Chaplin Short Comedy Classics – Directed by Charlie Chaplin – FVLDV 1552-7
Charlie Chaplin was a comic genius whose slapstick humor has remained amusing decades after the silent/talkie overturn. Geisel reserves offer an opportunity to delve deeper than Chaplin’s widely known “Modern Times” and see some more obscure work, including indubitably wonderful shorts like “The Immigrant” or “Easy Street.”
