Maybe I’m not old enough to have been part of the discussions about Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan movies, but one of my all-time favorites which I’ve never heard spoken except by my aunt who showed it to me is Joe vs the Volcano.

It’s very heavy-handed in its symbolism and story-telling, but damn is it effective.

Man working dead-end job in a no-window office building with shitty fluorescent light bulbs gets told by a doctor on a billionaire’s payroll that he’s going to die because of a fake disease. Said billionaire suddenly shows up and offers to pay “dying” man in a few weeks of luxury the likes of which “dying” man has never seen in exchange for convincing a small relatively uncontacted tribe on a remote island to allow billionaire to mine for computer manufacturing resources on their island. All along the way, “dying” man meets different versions of the same woman whose joyfulness is inversely proportional to how tied to the Things of Man she is.

It’s fuckin great.

Oh, yeah, and that movie Disney would prefer to pretend they never funded: A Bug’s Life.