How tenuous is man’s hold on civilization when survival becomes an issue? When the lights go out and stay out for several days, suburbanites Matthew and Annie learn the hard way that man is “by nature” a predatory creature. Matthew’s long-time friend, Joe, happens by on the second day and a rivalry between the two friends simmers as Annie cares for her sick baby. . Is this what is meant by “man’s inhumanity to man?”

Marx Reloaded is a cultural documentary that examines the relevance of German socialist and philosopher Karl Marx’s ideas for understanding the global economic and financial crisis of 2008-09. The crisis triggered the deepest global recession in 70 years and prompted the US government to spend more than 1 trillion dollars in order to rescue its banking system from collapse. Today the full implications of the crisis in Europe and around the world still remain unclear. Nevertheless, should we accept the crisis as an unfortunate side-effect of the free market? Or is there another explanation as to why it happened and its likely effects on our society, our economy and our whole way of life?

Beneath the spectacular beauty of Yellowstone National Park lies a ticking time bomb…a supervolcano that’s overdue for its next eruption. When that day inevitably comes, it will trigger the end of civilization as we know it. See how recent earthquake swarms and other signals of activity have put scientists on high alert for a large-scale super volcanic eruption. Then, witness the worldwide effects of this cataclysmic eruption, which experts predict will produce energy equivalent to the detonation of 1,000 nuclear bombs.

“Laura Smiles” is an alarmingly effective portrait of a woman’s mental breakdown. We are introduced to “Laura” at her happiest time, in a warm, loving relationship with her fiancé (a very appealing Kip Pardue) in the city, literally the love of her life. In flashbacks, we then see the sweet development of this relationship out of order as these moments become brightly lit and colored memories that desperately intrude on her later in life, as she becomes consumed with guilt and remorse over his fate. These feelings start to overwhelm her current life as a wife and mother. As something inconsequential in what she calls her “suburban drudgery” triggers the past — in the supermarket, cooking, cleaning, at a school play– she acts out increasingly aberrantly to counteract the feelings they generate, especially when she can no longer distinguish past from present from dreams, recalling Blanche Du Bois.

Tragedy doesn’t come any more Dickensian in tone or Shakespearian in scope than this dark social drama of the disintegration of a little family of four. A series of small debts triggers the swift domino effect that unleashes chaos on a well-meaning working class dad who has the bad judgment to speak truth to power.