This is a film about a girl being empowered to find herself. But it does so while admitting that life is messy. You have the standard plotline of restricted kid being held back by irrational parents, but it is also more than that. Bliss' mother isn't just a controlling mom shoving 1950's stereotypes of pageant queens down her daughter's thoughts. She loves her kids and wants them to have more opportunities than she ever had. Bliss' doesn't pursue roller derby to rebel, she does it because she has discovered a part of herself she never knew existed. Sure, there is conflict with her family, but the take-home message is that the individual always has to exist in community as a vital part of a family. Bliss realizes that she needs her family and her friends even as she comes into her own.

What she realizes she doesn't need is the boy. Like any in girl grows up movie, Bliss meets the guy, falls in love, and gets hurt. And doesn't get back together. She realizes that she doesn't want to be "that girl" who allows herself to be hurt by guys and who has to change who she is for them. She regrets giving everything to her boyfriend, but comes through the pain more aware of who she is and knowing that she doesn't need a boyfriend in order to be a whole person. This isn't a "men – who needs them" message, but it's a strong reminder that a woman's worth and identity is not defined by the man she's attached to.

I also loved that her experience in roller-derby wasn't based on success but on being empowered by the experience. Unlike the typical guy sports film where the team ends up winning the state championship (and hence proving that hard work pays off blah, blah, blah…), when Bliss's team comes in second place they don't despair or choose to learn from their defeat or work harder next time – they break into a joyous team chant of "We're number 2! We're number2!" happy in their accomplishment of playing the game. They were a team and they proved to themselves as women that they could do this thing. That, not winning, was what mattered. I loved it.

Whip It was all about this healthy empowerment. It was the story of a girl discovering her own strength in community. She can be fierce and powerful and good, really good, at what she does. She doesn't need to define herself by the warped standards of this world. She can be herself. This is the sort of story that we need to hear more often. Instead of the standard plotlines of "princess in need of rescue" or "someday my prince will come" found in most girl coming of age movies, Whip It provides a realistic role model I wouldn't mind my daughter looking up to. Instead of telling women that we are defined by our bodies, our relationship with a man, our ability to compete and win, or our ability to be nice and compliant – we can hear that it's okay to be ourselves in all of our glory and messiness.

But lest you think that Whip It is just a sappy after school special, remember that this is a movie about roller derby. It has action, fantastic skating scenes, and tough self-assured women all over the place. In short, it's a fun movie that (thankfully) isn't just drivel and fluff.

I recently headed out to a sold-out showing of the documentary Food, Inc. at Austin's own Alamo Drafthouse. Generally, getting dinner and drinks along with my movie is my favorite "night out" activity, but in watching a film which critically examines our industrial food system, it was a bit strange. Granted, all around me I heard orders for veggie burgers and the local organic veggie platter and there wasn't a high fructose corn syrup soda to be seen, but I was glad to have finished my (veggie) burger by the time the previews ended. Although I have sought to inform myself about the injustices in our modern food system, Food, Inc., presents the most comprehensive and disturbing summary of that system I have seen yet. It is a necessary film for basically anyone who eats food.

A film which took three years to make with a large part of its budget going to pay the legal fees defending itself against lawsuits from the industrial food companies, Food, Inc. takes a hard look at how corporations now control the production of our food, resulting in generally unhealthy, environmentally hazardous, and completely unsustainable food that in truth threatens the very well-being of our country. From the animals that are confined in inhumane cages, left to stand in their own mire, fed unnatural diets and cocktails of drugs and hormones to the impoverished workers who are treated with the same disrespect this system has sacrificed the respect and well-being of living creatures and people for the sake of profit. But Food Inc. doesn't just stop with detailing those atrocities, it delves into the problems with government subsidies and the ways the fearmongering enforcement of genetically modified food copyrights are destroying the small farmer. People are being hurt by this industrial food system that dumps chemicals into our environment with reckless abandon and produces unnatural and unhealthy food for our consumption.

I appreciated though how Food, Inc. didn't simply present the issues with industrial food as a clear cut, good vs. evil scenario. It acknowledged that poor workers have no choice but to take jobs on the factory farms, and that farmers have no choice but to give into the pressure to work with the huge industries. Those industries have so altered our nation's laws and have so many lawyers working for them, that any farmer who resists joining their ranks finds themselves out of work at best, and sued penniless for simply encouraging people to not buy the big company's products. The farmers and workers are desperate for a better system where real freedom and healthy standards exist, but for now they have to work with what they've got.

Food, Inc. also explores why for the average working class family in America, buying healthy food isn't an option. It is far cheaper to buy the cheeseburger from the drive-thru dollar menu than it is to buy fruit or vegetables. That is because everything in that cheeseburger comes from corn which our government subsidizes so much that farmers can sell it below the cost of production. So the poor American eats the extremely unhealthy food because it is cheaper. But the rising epidemic of type 2 diabetes shows the hidden cost of that value meal. The poor in our country – those with no health or job insurance – are getting sick at alarming rates due to the unhealthy cheap food they eat. This is injustice of the highest extreme – but it's all part of our industrial food system. It's a complicated system that gives us unhealthy, unsustainable food that disrespects the earth, animals, and people all in the name of making the greatest profit for a handful of corporations. This is the story of the food we eat every day.

But in truth, I have a lot of friends who don't want to know anything about their food. They shelter their kids from knowing the whole "circle of life" stuff, but also tell me point blank that they don't want to know the story behind their food. In their mind, what they don't know won't hurt them. Unfortunately, as Food Inc. shows, that isn't always the case. I wasn't expecting this film to be a tear-jerker, but hearing a mom talk about how her toddler son ate a hamburger and was dead in 12 days had me weeping. This mom, was the typical middle-American Republican mom on vacation, but the hamburger they bought their son on the way home was tainted with e. coli 0157:H7, a deadly antibiotic resistant bacteria common in factory farmed cows. These cows, fed unnatural diets of corn develop diseases (like e.coli) and are treated regularly with antibiotics, which leads to drug-resistant strains like this one. This mom has become the unlikely activist for food safety. The meat company who sent out the tainted meat knew it was tainted and didn't issue a recall until two weeks after her son was dead. As she puts it, all she wants is an apology from the company and a guarantee that they are doing everything possible to prevent it from ever happening again. Instead she finds the companies fighting for more lax food safety laws and herself under threat of a lawsuit under the "veggie libel" laws for discouraging people to buy meat products. Yeah, look up these laws – express fears about the safety of your food and you could be sued for causing these companies loss of revenue. So much for free speech, much less safe food. It's hard to know the truth if you are not allowed to talk about it.

But for all the doom and gloom that Food, Inc. rightly covers, I was grateful that it didn't end the story there. Instead of throwing up it's arms and admitting defeat or even insisting that we all go join some intentional community/ hippie commune immediately, Food, Inc. details the practical ways we can start changing the system from within. It profiles the organic dairy farmers who although they had boycotted Wal-Mart all their lives, were now selling their product to the them. Some may call them sell outs, and they are under no illusion that Wal-Mart jumped on the organic bandwagon out of the goodness of their hearts, but to get a store with a distribution as huge as Wal-Marts means significant amounts of pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics are kept from polluting our ecosystem. That's a really big deal, and one of the main reason to buy organic to anyway. Working within the system, even if it is with Wal-Mart, makes progress happen faster and on a much larger scale. Similarly, the movie concludes with the reminder that we can each make a difference every time we go to the store. The point isn't to abandon the food system, or stop buying food, but to simply demand healthier, sustainable food. We can choose to vote with our pocketbooks for the type of food we want to support. Do we want to support the food that oppresses animals, workers, and the environment or the food that does its best to care for all those things? We have that choice, we just have to be willing to make it.

Food, Inc. opens across the US during Summer 2009. Check the Food, Inc. website to see if it is playing near you.

Fuel is the outcome of activist and writer Josh Tickell's quest to stand up to our country's addiction to oil and propose alternative solutions. It recently won Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and is in many ways unlike any other documentary I've seen recently. Most documentaries that speak to fuel usage and the global crises it causes are fairly doom and gloom oriented. They paint a hopeless scenario, are pretty heavy-handed with the guilt, and speak vaguely to the need for change. Fuel though is different. While it unequivocally points out the problems with petrochemical corporations and our political dalliance with oil, it does so from a very personal perspective. Tickell tells his own story – from his mother's heath struggles common to those living near the Louisiana refineries to his experiments with veggiemobiles. His candid approach is a constant reminder that the fuel crisis is not just an abstract phenomenon, but a very personal issue.

But what really sets this film apart is its hopeful outlook for the future. There are alternatives out there – solutions are available, we just need to jump on board. Tickell spends a good portion of the movie describing the early biodiesel/ethanol movement. I appreciated that he dealt head on with the worldwide economic and pollution issues involved in some of the production of those fuels. But he then moves on to describe better biodiesel options (like algae based fuel grown from wastewater) and the potential behind other alternative energy sources like solar and wind energy. These aren't vague options he suggests either, but he outlines plans for exactly how these technologies can work, help create jobs, and benefit the economy. Everything from multistory greenhouse gardens that can feed entire cities to Sweden's plan to be petroleum free by 2020 are presented in this hopeful view of the future. I liked this tangible and practical vision and left the theater wanted to invest or something in algae fuels and windmill technology.

Unfortunately as positive and practical as the film was, to make a real impact it needs to be reaching the masses. But I have a feeling that the few people seeing the film are already on board and fairly informed about these issues. Case in point – out of the six of us in the theater watching the film, I saw that two of those couples drove a Prius and a Smart Car (can I just say I was glad I was in my compact car and not the family SUV…). They are already there, I'm trying to get there – but real change will take a major movement. It will take the US government doing what many European governments have done and subsidize the eco-friendly options (instead of our oil addiction). It has to be practical, easy, cheap, and widespread for it to happen.

So I encourage you to go see the film if it is playing in your area. Get educated about these solutions. We don't have to be addicted to oil, there are viable alternatives. And this movie is a great reminder that there is hope.

Tags: Fuel Film, Josh Tickell, biodiesel, environment, oil addiction, alternative fuel