It would be easy, motoring along the California coast, gasping aloud as the two-lane twists of Highway 1 reveal staggering scenes of mountains, ocean, sun and fog, to accelerate through the turn and drive right past the ramshackle collection of quaint buildings tucked into the towering redwoods of Castro Canyon like a miniature Wild West set overgrown with wisteria.
Those families begin to organise and protest, and one of the film's most staggering scenes is when they go up against NRA supporters in Chicago who argue to their faces that more guns would have saved their loved ones' lives.
What the gender-shift does is foreground the violence, machismo and paranoia, which feed into staggering battle scenes, particularly the dream-like siege sequence, silent except for the orchestral score.
Its artistry is only augmented by its archival interest, and it was all I could do not to stand up and try to walk forward into the screen, like Alice through a kind of looking glass, and enter a London not so very different from Dickens's – especially the staggering tenement scenes – or even Henry Fielding's.
The next was fleeing a nuclear holocaust, the next staggering from the scene of a murder.
Cartel Land (available 23 May) Full of staggering and troubling scenes of cartel violence, documentary-maker Matthew Heineman gets access to vigilantes on both sides of the US-Mexico border who are trying to stop the war on drugs.
The youthfulness of the audience at the Egg reflects the real wonder of the Chinese classical scene: the staggering number of people who are currently studying music, whether in schools or with private tutors.
The precision of the performers in each finely choreographed scene is staggering, and the lighting shifts mood with acute dexterity, creating an eerie stillness as bodies stutter midsentence, frozen in space.
(Memo to Giuliani: sic 'em!) It will not make you forget the staggering send-up of the scene in Buñuel's "Viridiana".
