Reel Politik

An ad hoc cadre of militant cinemaniacs register their distaste for the consumer-capitalist status quo in this hilariously snarky collection of the Instagram webcomic by Gelgud (House in the Jungle). The slightly daft crew of an arthouse theater in an unnamed small town include a self-proclaimed witch, a humanoid duck, and the manager, who hasn’t been outside in seven years. The workers banter about Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and kvetch over customers and critics—until, led by Bertie, a firebrand who issues Marxist-Leninist diatribes like a late-1960s Jean-Luc Godard character, they storm the booth to “seize the means of projection!” (The pun neatly encapsulates the book’s goofy, knowing humor.) The thin strand of plot follows the chipper revolutionaries as they argue over how best to avoid “zombie consumerism” while staying “devoted to Brechtian principles,” but the narrative mostly bops between escapades—which is no bother because it’s all so funny. Film critic-turned-cartoonist Gelgud’s looping caricatures achieve an appropriate mix of ardent and self-satirizing. This one will be snapped up by cinephiles who might, in between Agnes Varda retrospectives and complaining about Letterboxd, wonder if they could hijack the Criterion Closet van. (Nov.)