Vernon God Little

Nick Naylor is the chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby and a very good talker. He argues with a senator, a teenage son and a cancer-stricken former Marlboro Man, and never loses a debate, because he never has to be right, only to be unbeaten. It's a comedy about how persuasion works when the facts are against you.

Why it’s here: The film is a satire of spin, built on a charming villain. What's punk is that it punches up at lobbyists and the PR people who work for them. What's pedagogical is that Nick narrates his own rhetorical tricks, so a viewer can learn to name them. Pairs with Merchants of Doubt, which was suggested earlier this month, and Trust Me, I'm Lying in the catalog.

The film follows the Cambridge Analytica scandal through three people: David Carroll, a professor suing to get his own data back; Brittany Kaiser, a former company insider; and Carole Cadwalladr, the reporter who broke the story. It lays out how a political consultancy used Facebook data to build voter profiles and target them with tailored messages.

Why it’s here: The film makes data harvesting feel like something done to you personally, and shows how profiling was turned into political persuasion. What's punk is Carroll's lawsuit and Cadwalladr's reporting. What's pedagogical is the explanation of what data-brokering is. Note: it frames Kaiser as a conscience-stricken whistleblower, which is arguable, and the real impact of the targeting is still debated. Pairs with Your Face Belongs to Us, Data and Goliath and Citizenfour.