Captain Pantoja and the Special Service

At Carver High, overachiever Tracy Flick is running unopposed for student body president, and her teacher, Mr. McAllister, decides he cannot let that happen. What starts as a dry school comedy turns into a story of a rigged contest, small cruelties, and the quiet ways adults twist power. A black comedy that treats a high-school vote like a presidential one.

Why it’s here: It's a film about who gets to run and who gets stopped. What's punk is a satire that lets neither the system nor its self-righteous teacher off the hook. What's pedagogical is Tracy herself, a character viewers read very differently depending on their age, which is its own lesson in bias. Pairs with Idiocracy, Dr. Strangelove and How Democracies Die. Note: R-rated; sexual content between an adult and a student, played for discomfort; teens and adults. English.

A British minister says on the radio that war is unforeseeable. In Washington and London, spin doctors and generals turn that sentence into a march to war. It is a comedy about how a casual remark, an unread report and a lot of swearing push two governments into invading a country that nobody in the room has seen.

Why it’s here: The film is about how a war gets made by people trying to protect their jobs. What's punk is that no one in power is spared, and the funniest scenes are the ones where a decision is made by the person who has read the least. What's pedagogical is how clearly it exposes the pipeline from soundbite to policy. Close relatives: The Death of Stalin (same director, already in the catalog) and Dr. Strangelove. Note: very profane.