THX 1138

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

THX 1138 (1971), produced by Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope company, is based on George Lucas’s college project. It shows his early interest in science fiction and the threats to freedom that he later explored in the Star Wars films. Here Lucas uses a depressing futuristic landscape, like 1984 and Brave New World, to comment on contemporary situations.

The pervasive white setting removes all color from life, presenting a sterile existence, devoid of variety and individuality. Everyone having shaved heads adds to the feeling of uniformity. The whole world is self-contained in a windowless environment contributing to a sleek, modern version of imprisonment. The holograms seem distorted as do some communications, creating a feeling of disorientation and alienation for the audience. The robot policemen presage our current apprehension about AI taking over the world.

The Director’s Cut version opens with a bit of Buck Rogers footage, which was shown like other short serials in movie theaters many years ago. The selection paints a future that is optimistic, stressing the benefits of scientific technology. What follows is the inverse of that prediction. Even the opening credits run backwards, suggesting that technology may advance but not the state of humanity.

Robert Duvall plays THX 1138 whose work consists of constructing robots which adds to the dehumanization process of the populace. People no longer have distinctive names and instead are assigned alpha-numeric codes, demonstrating how humans are just parts in a governmental machine. The State anesthetizes the population, like the use of Soma does in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. A female voice states, “if you feel you are not properly sedated call 348-844 immediately. Failure to do so may result in prosecution for criminal drug evasion.” It may sound like the opposite of current attempts to stamp out illegal drug usage, but the opioid crisis in the United States generated billions of dollars in legally sold drugs.

Individual desires are suppressed, probably because they ignite passion that could lead to personal satisfaction not controlled by the State. Therefore, sexual activity between individuals is considered “illegal.”

After 63 workers die, a voice tells the other people at the plant that the total for the section that suffered casualties is “242 to our 195. Keep up the good work.” The state dismisses the loss of workers to industrial accidents, since it prioritizes the whole, not the individual.

THX 1138 has anxiety about his life. He goes to a sort of confessional, called a “unichapel,” which has an image of an enlarged face of a man. IMDb says that it is a picture of Hans Memling’s “Christ Giving His Blessing,” quite a desecration of a religious painting as sued here. The man in the picture is called OMM, which is like the Hindu and Buddhist religious chant for serenity, another satiric thrust as used here. THX must sign in by repeating “Blessings of the state, Blessings of the masses,” and extolling “the Party.” There are many sayings repeated in the movie, like “Thrifty thinkers are always under budget,” which remind one of the proper responses in The Handmaids Tale that are a form of mind control. The stress again is not on the individual, like what is encouraged in a Communist or Fascist world. There is a voice that just repeats the prerecorded impersonal messages, “I understand,” and “Yes, fine.” THX says he couldn’t concentrate on the job, that his mate is acting strangely, and he doesn’t feel well. The film takes the idea that “confession is good for the soul,” and shows how the State utilizes it in an impersonal way for its own purposes. No matter the problem, the voice says, “Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents, and be happy.” This world’s religion is consumerism, which apparently should make you “happy” no matter the emptiness a person feels. THX has heard all of this before and starts to exit the booth early showing how this activity is not making him “happy.”

LUH (Maggie McOmie) is his mate. THX does not interact with her but instead watches a naked woman dancing on a screen while he uses some device that helps him masturbate. It appears that the State determines how sexual energies are channeled into nonpersonal activity. There is a holographic video of a robot policeman beating an individual. The image seems to encourage acceptance of violence against individuals. The robots emit soothing voices while they brutalize people, which creates a discordant, satiric effect. Another video that is supposed to be funny jokes about getting a vehicle and running into a crowd. The indoctrination here is that human life is dispensable. THX says the video is funny, but does not laugh, as human response is deadened.

He keeps going to the automated confessional saying he is not well. He says he only shares space with LUH. Subconsciously he is rebelling against this marginalized existence. She shows tenderness when he comes back to their domicile. They make love but are under surveillance so intimacy is not private here. She has substituted medication which allowed him to be affectionate and wants him to stay off the drugs so that they can escape and live in the “Superstructure,” which we learn about later.

SEN (Donald Pleasence) is a coworker who can manipulate computers. He says his roommate was destroyed which he says was “inconvenient,” a cold way of describing a loss. He summoned LUH , had a talk with her, and said he now wants THX to be his roommate. He says THX rates “very high in sanitation,” which fits in with this sterile environment as a priority. SEN wants conformity to the norms. THX considers SEN to be in violation of manipulating roommate selection, which shows he wants to stay with LUH and is showing resistance against manipulation, something which is unusual for this world.

THX files a violation against SEN, but being in drug withdrawal, he falters at work using radioactive material. He is arrested for drug usage violation. He is tried and the prosecution argues, “We must not continue to consume these erotics. We must exterminate the source of sin. Economics must not dictate situations which are obviously religious.” The State condemns sex as a “sin” which it must “exterminate” as an impediment to the hive-like operating system of this society. Conformity is its religion. The prosecutor says that the loss of THX to the workforce is not an excuse since the “sin” is so reprehensible. The State limits personal freedom to comply with its own dictates of social order.

It is determined that THX is to be held in detention and conditioned. Black-uniformed policemen prod him with shock sticks. He is forced to take pills, electrodes are used to monitor his brain activity, he is injected with chemicals, and other intrusive acts are done. They take control of his motor activities, and he is in the fetal position which shows how THX is forced into an infantile state so that any adult aspects can be reformed. There is voiceover from technicians who are experimenting with his bodily functions, dispassionately making him into a lab rat. IMDb states that Lucas has this scene to show his animosity toward doctors after his own near-fatal car crash when he was younger.

LUH enters the white cell where THX resides and states that she is pregnant. They joyfully have sex but then police robots enter. THX resists but is paralyzed by them. SEN and others are added to the detention area. There is one individual who appears mentally challenged and there is a dwarf, or “shell dweller,” who lives in the outskirts of the city. It seems outsider types who don’t fit in with the norm established by the State are removed from society. SEN is there because THX reported him. He gives speeches that IMDb notes are from President Richard Nixon’s speeches as Lucas satirizes what politicians were saying at the time the film was made. There is an attempted rape of one of the females and the destruction of one of the robot cops. It seems that extreme control over certain individuals creates an equal and opposite antisocial reaction by some. (The robot police are awkward, malfunction, or just fall down sometimes, which makes them appear as android Keystone Cops).

THX and SEN wander very far in the vast white landscape. The film becomes even more surreal as they encounter a third individual, a hologram, SRT (Don Pedro Colley) who decided to escape his confining existence. His plight mirrors the actual citizens. They exit into an area jammed with citizens bumping into each other. The documentary that accompanies the film states that Lucas feared “the empire crushing humanity.” Obviously, this idea flourishes in the Star Wars films. THX and SRT escape into an embryo-growing compartment, which conjures up how individuals are produced by the State in Brave New World.

Police androids search for SRT and THX in maze-like walls of electronic equipment which suggest manipulation and restriction. During the hunt for THX there is always a cost-estimate analysis being heard as to whether THX is worth the effort. The two then enter a morgue where the insides of the dead have been harvested for apparent recycling. Those servicing this area even have their faces whited-out, and they appear like ghosts, giving the whole scene a haunted appearance, as if all that is left of humanity are apparitions.

SEN enters the area where the monks of OMM exist. He prays to the oversized portrait of the Christ-like figure, apparently wishing to change and go back to the community. But a monk realizes SEN has no ID since he is a prisoner and SEN attacks the monk.

THX and SRT tap into a computer and discover LUH has been “consumed,” that is, reprocessed as a fetus to be grown as a new individual subject to the State. The technology here is frightening as it reduces individuals to new parts to be developed for society.

SEN in the trams underground encounters children playing a game which has them moving in unison to block their companions as they run through the group. The scene suggests a no-escape maze, symbolizing this culture. Apparently, SEN will be apprehended, but the audience does not see this act.

THX and SRT steal highly complicated sports car vehicles. SRT slams into a post, implying the overly technological world can be destructive. THX rockets through the underground expressway followed by android cops who, again, malfunction. (It is funny to hear a voiceover saying that a “Wookie” was run over, foreshadowing the Star Wars character).

It becomes too costly to continue the pursuit of THX, and the cops are called back. He climbs up a ladder lining a shaft. He is warned that he cannot survive outside, which turns out to be a lie. THX reaches the surface where there is an oversized sun greeting him. It is an escape from an underground hell to an ascension into the natural world. But whether he can flourish there is left unanswered.

2025 Noteworthy Films

 SPOILER ALERT! The plots will be discussed.

Marty Supreme:

This film has a dynamic performance by Timothee Chalomet. He has already received the Critics’ Choice Award and the Golden Globes Award for Best Actor, and he is the favorite for the Oscar. He plays an unlikable person who wants the recognition of being the best table tennis player in the world. The story shows how the single-minded obsession to achieve notoriety can create havoc and collateral damage in that pursuit. In the end, he finally can show his talent without actually being the world champion, and he begins to care for others. The movie is too long and a bit of a mess in the middle (especially the part with the gangster, his cash, and the dog) as Marty moves from one ridiculous situation to another.

After the Hunt:

The title may deal with the results following a trauma. This movie will be seen by some as a betrayal of the MeToo movement and views about discrimination. However, it should not be dismissed on that basis. It challenges entrenched views and can be admired for its courage to take on so many issues without becoming muddled. The story portrays the scholastic community, represented by Alma (Julia Roberts), a philosophy professor at Yale, and Hank (Andrew Garfield), a colleague, vying for tenure. They along with others come off as pompous elites. The film presents the advantages of white privilege. It also shows the devastation of sexual abuse in the person of Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), a PhD student, who says that Hank assaulted her. However, she is not your typical Black oppressed person, since her parents are rich, she plagiarized material in her dissertation, and she violates Alma’s privacy. Alma lied about a sexual assault on herself, and gives advice to Alma that entails surrendering to male oppression in the workplace. Her ulcers symbolize her guilt, and she fakes a prescription to obtain pain killers. The supporting performances by Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg as Alma’s neglected husband are particularly good.

Bugonia

Here’s another odd and inventive film from director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite, Poor Things). This one involves fringe characters kidnapping a female business executive, Michelle, played by Emma Stone, who they believe is a member of an alien race eliminating the world’s honeybees and manipulating people into passive victims. The story shows her at first to be a victim of a deranged man, Teddy (Jesse Plemons), who puts her in restraints and shaves her head, Samson-like, because he believes it is the source of a power to communicate with her fellow aliens aboard a mothership. He tortures her by inflicting electric shock treatments to prove his theory that the aliens can withstand high voltage. She eventually plays along with him, it seems, but as it turns out she really is the top extraterrestrial. Her race has found that their experiment of creating humans has failed since earthlings are too destructive to exist, and they terminate the species. The other creatures are allowed to live, and the bees again flourish. (The title refers to bees springing forth from the carcasses of animals, which fits here). The problem with the film is that it may inadvertently encourage conspiracy theorists to go down misguided rabbit holes. That is not what the film is saying. Instead, it points to people looking for hidden reasons outside of themselves for answers when it is they who are the problem. A Good performance by Emma Stone, who is again nominated for an Oscar. But the superior performance here is by Plemons, who was snubbed by the Academy.

Hamnet:

Chloe Zhao (Oscar winner for Best Director for Nomadland) directed this movie that uses the loss of William Shakespeare’s young son to place the writing of the great play Hamlet in the context of how to deal with the grief of such a tragedy. Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) is withdrawn, dealing with his emotions, it seems, internally, and not capable of comforting the grieving mother, Agnes, played by Jessie Buckley (Buckley is the favorite to win the Oscar for Best Actress). However, her husband is channeling his emotions into the play. Agnes witnesses the premier of Hamlet, in which Shakespeare plays the ghost of the main character’s father. Mescal, shrouded in white bandages and makeup, is like an apparition of himself after Hamnet’s death. Earlier, the playwright taught Hamnet sword fighting. Now the actor playing Hamlet repeats those moves, and the character becomes Shakespeare’s attempt to say goodbye to his son and grant immortality through the main character in his play. At the end of the performance, Agnes, at the front of the stage, reaches for the actor playing Hamlet, and he holds her hands in his. The rest of the audience extends their hands out also, showing how art and reality join together to raise tragedy beyond grief. It is a transcendent moment.

 One Battle After Another:

This may be director/writer Paul Thomas Anderson’s year. The film may win Oscars for Best Picture, Screenplay, and Directing. Like After the Hunt, this movie, derived from the novel Vineland by acclaimed and reclusive author Thomas Pynchon, critiques the many sides of the social and political landscape. Left-wing radicals are exposed for their violent tendencies, and the right-wing fanatics are satirized for their bigoted, sadistic ways. Sometimes some become attached to a cause just so they can be with the ones they love. That is the case with Pat (aka Bob) (Leonardo DiCaprio, Oscar-nominated for Best Actor). He is romantically involved with Perfidia Beverly Hills (Tevana Taylor, rightly Oscar-nominated nominated for her role), a Black woman who is a leader of the revolutionaries. The name Perfidia implies being deceptive with hidden motives, and the Beverly Hills name suggests Hollywood liberalism. She is not admirable because she later leaves her child with Pat (now Bob after they acquire new identities) and betrays her comrades to gain safety in witness protection. Her name fits as she has a sexual attraction for Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn, in a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his scary, over-the-top portrayal), who presides over a detention camp she liberates. (Anderson is not subtle with his character names). Lockjaw admits later to Pat that he “loves” Black women. Thematically, the relationship between the two works as the they are hypocrites to their causes. But, in reality, it is easier to accept a white man’s exploitation of a Black woman as opposed to that woman being attracted to a fascistic white oppressor. The scenes with DiCaprio becoming exasperated by trying to remember the paranoid leftish code word security are hysterical. That Lockjaw becomes a victim of his own people shows how the right-wing white supremacists eat their young if they discover anything that deviates from their agenda. Benicio Del Toro plays a laid-back neighborhood protector who aids Bob. (Del Toro’s performance, in my opinion, is not as good as either Stuhlbarg’s or Garfield’s in After the Hunt). Perfidia’s grown-up daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), goes off at the end of the movie to join protesters, showing how there is, indeed, one battle after another. 

Sinners:

The title of this movie may be exploring who really are sinners given the context of the story. Writer/director Ryan Coogler does not use horror until later in this movie. He first deftly reveals the main characters and their plight. Michael B. Jordan, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, portrays twin brothers, Smoke and Stack Moore. The last name suggests that these two men can accomplish a great deal more than one might think. Their nicknames suggest fire, implying they are two fellows not to be trifled with. They have been living in Chicago, and their sojourn in the North has given them a news perspective on life. They bring a feeling of empowerment back to their hometown in Mississippi. With the money they earned working for the gangsters up north they buy an old sawmill and turn it into a music club, hiring local talent.

When the vampires do show up, they are symbolic of how the scary local Klan and “crackers” have been scaring the Black folk here for generations. They whites drained the life out of the African American population and now are there to do the same to the formidable Moore brothers. An epic battle occurs with many losses, but there is survival until dawn and the vampires are vanquished.

There is a remarkable scene at the club before the fight. The brothers recruited their cousin Sammy (Miles Canton) to play guitar at their joint. His magical music channels the indomitable African American spirit that can be found in this form of artistic expression. This surrealistic sequence transcends time as we see primitive performers and others that represent modern hip-hop artists.

This is a rich film, and I hope to do an in-depth post on it in the future.

Frankenstein:

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro (disappointing that he was not nominated for this film), as he did in his Oscar-winning The Shape of Water, subverts our preconceived notions of who are the true monsters. The film is structured to show the story from two viewpoints. It begins near the North Pole where an injured Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is brought aboard a ship. He tells his story. His father, Leopold (Charles Dance), an aristocrat, was a tyrant. He controlled every aspect of his son’s life to make him into a surgeon. He beat him in the face with a cane to enforce his agenda. Victor lost his mother in childbirth which suggests that is why he wants to use science to defeat death (the subtitle of Shelley’s 19^th century work is The Modern Prometheus which reminds us of the mythological being representing hubris and human advancement because Prometheus stole fire from the gods).

Victor is able to fashion the Creature (Jacob Elordi, nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar), because arms merchant Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz) offers Victor all the funding he needs. Harlander is dying and wants his brain transferred to the Creature so he can live forever. The film here suggests the power of the ultra-wealthy. The Creature’s body heals any wound and is extremely strong. Victor repeats his father’s cruelty when he tries to teach his creation how to speak. Victor also is attracted to his brother’s fiancée and lies when he says the Creature killed Harlander, who died trying to subvert the experiment for his own purposes. The thrust here is that humans are selfish and sadistic toward the outsider, the other, who is an innocent. Victor tries to burn his lab and the Creature, but he does have a change of heart. However, he is unable to stop a catastrophic explosion.

The Creature, after fighting the sailors in self-defense at the North Pole, then tells his story to Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen). He says that he escaped the explosion and was attacked by hunters who killed him, but he revived. He eventually helps a family of farmers, which shows his natural benevolence. He then encounters a blind man (David Bradley) who teaches him to excel in reading and writing. His blindness appears to signify that he can relate to the Creature without any prejudice, just like the statue of Blind Justice. His teacher dies when wolves attack the man, so the Creature is on his own again.

The Creature says he returned to get Victor to make him a companion since he knows he is immortal and suffers from extreme loneliness. Victor refused, and the Creature attacked him. Elizabeth (Mia Goth), the fiancée of Victor’s brother, sympathizes with the Creature. Victor is jealous of the Creature. He accidently shoots and kills her when he attacks his creation, afraid that the Creature might have offspring. It’s as if the proliferation of purity must be stopped by selfish humans. Victor pursued his creation to the Arctic, where the Creature failed to destroy himself out of despair with an explosive that harmed Victor. “Father,” Victor, and “son,” the Creature, reconcile in the end as Oscar succumbs to his wounds. At the end of the film, the Creature follows Victor’s early advice of reaching for the sunlight, a suggestion that we must try to illuminate our souls with acceptance of others.

Galloper's Quests

 Yeah, I'm plugging my most recent novel again. Here are parts of some reviews.

Inspired by the classic novel 'Gulliver's Tales', this edition of Galloper's Quests: The Fall of Earth and the Rise of a New Destiny, a new science fiction novel  by author Augustus Cileone, is a fun read from cover to cover.

 Written with imagination, humor, and a distinctive flair for the kind of narrative driven storytelling that fully emerges the reader from start to finish, "Galloper's Quests" is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists and community library Science Fiction & Fantasy collections.  – Midwest Book Review

Galloper’s Quests catapults readers through wormholes into a cosmic odyssey brimming with starborne intrigue and high-stakes adventure. Navy Captain Samuel Galloper, a maverick scientist, escapes Earth to prevent his quantum-drive technology from fueling intergalactic war. As he navigates alien worlds—one utopian, one dystopian, one on the brink of annihilation—he battles cybernetic foes, befriends a rogue AI, and falls for an extraterrestrial with secrets that could reshape humanity’s destiny."  —NewInBooks.com

Galloper’s Quests is perfect for fans of thought-provoking sci-fi, especially those who enjoy books that question authority, challenge societal norms, and explore the weight of human choices. If you like stories that mix The Forever War’s military critique with 1984’s oppressive regimes and Star Trek’s exploratory wonder, you’ll find a lot to love here. It’s not a light read, it makes you think, it makes you uncomfortable, and at times, it makes you angry. But that’s the point. It’s a journey worth taking, even if the destination isn’t what you expect. – Literary Titan

Eraserhead

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

We recently lost one of the quirkiest and most artistic film directors, David Lynch. Some people hated his work, others love it, and those who love some of his projects dislike others. In any event, he was a challenging filmmaker. I was lucky enough to see Lynch in person at an interview at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. He related that he was an art student in Philadelphia when he saw air blowing through a window which caused his painting to move. He said it was then that he decided to make motion pictures. He said living in Philadelphia was not a pleasant experience as he observed violence and decay. However, the experience influenced his filmmaking. His movies explore the underbelly of existence. Think of the opening scene in Blue Velvet when the camera moves from the beauty of the garden to the insects swarming over a human ear.

Lynch’s first full-length film, Eraserhead (1977), in black and white, gives us that dark view in a surrealistic landscape. To attempt to analyze this unique work in a traditional manner would be unfair to the film. As Roger Ebert said, “to explain Eraserhead would be like cutting a drum open to see what makes the noise – you may get your answer, but you tend to ruin the drum in the process.” For myself, I feel like the main character Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) when he is asked what he knows. His response is, “Oh, I don’t know much of anything.” I think that may be a good way to start to approach this movie. So, I will draw on my own perceptions, and some from others.

The general view is that the story takes place in either an alternative world or at least a sort of post-apocalyptic one on Earth. Or, it is just an objectification of a Lynch nightmare. There is artificial food, presumably the only kind that can exist, and procreation does not end well. The whole of the film could be seen as a satire on how we as a species have fallen from grace and are irreparably damaged.

The opening has a soundtrack that almost sounds like what is in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the astronaut flies through the psychedelic light show toward the end of that film. We have the image of a man in a suit, Henry with his high, frizzy hair, floating in space in front of what appears to be a desolate planet. (I always thought, when I first saw the movie poster, that Henry’s hair looked like an eraser which fits the title of the film). The camera dives into a black hole where there is an emaciated, disfigured man (or as Ebert suggests one who has burns) looking out a window which evokes a silent scream from Henry. A diseased sperm seems to emanate from Henry’s mouth. The man pulls a lever and the sperm is sucked into fluid where then floats through another hole. Is this image supposed to be a grotesque version of a conception?

                                    

Henry, sporting a nerdish pocket protector, walks through a setting that is drab and barren, with mud, piles of dirt, and tall, filthy buildings. The sound in the background sounds like the drone of machinery, possibly a critique of a world becoming engulfed by mechanization.

He walks into a building that has zigzag carpeting in its lobby, which is what Lynch uses later in his TV show, Twin Peaks. IMDb notes that the pattern may have come from Stanley Kubrick’s influence on Lynch. The effect is one of things being off kilter. The ironwork on the heavy elevator doors has a Gothic feel to it. Henry’s apartment has dirt and grass in it. An IMDb note says that Lynch may be suggesting that below the surface of the human attempt at civilization, there will always be filth and creatures, “both literally and figuratively.” The picture he has of his girlfriend, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart), is in two pieces, one showing her head, as if she is decapitated (a foreshadowing), and thus, a fragmented entity. (The “X” last name of Mary and her parents seems to have something to do with the lack of true identity or individuality).

The landscape appears even more hellish as we hear crashing sounds and smoke emanating from the environment as Henry visits Mary X’s house for the first time. The awkwardness of the meeting with her parents is palpable. Henry scrunches in a corner of a couch, as if trying to recapture the womb experience. We see puppies vying for milk from their mother, their screeching sounds adding to the uncomfortable setting (more foreshadowing). Henry responds that he is a label printer to Mrs. X (Jeanne Bates). But this answer seems out of sync with the fact that Mary X seems to be having some sort of seizure which is only calmed by her mother stroking her hair (a maternal act that Mary X will not be able to sustain). Mr. X (Allen Joseph) says that he remembers that the area used to be a pasture and has declined into a “hellhole,” which implies how civilization has decimated nature. Grandmother (Jean Lange) sits catatonic in the kitchen as Mrs. X places a salad bowl and tosses its contents in her lap. It is humorous and upsetting at the same time, showing the numbing of life here. There is a contorting mechanical cuckoo bird coming out of the clock on the wall. IMDb states that the image may have come from Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, which is a story about an alcoholic experiencing hallucinations. When Henry attempts to cut up a tiny man-made chicken, it spouts oozing dark liquid and its cooked legs begin to move. It is now Mrs. X who goes into a trance and has a fit. What an inviting meal. One will either shake one’s head or laugh at the satiric thrust of this uber strange boyfriend-meeting-the-family scene.

It gets stranger. Mrs. X confronts Henry by asking if he and her daughter had sex. He is very embarrassed. She proceeds to nuzzle him saying things could get worse. Quite an understatement. Mrs. X says there is a baby at the hospital which is very immature. Mary X questions whether it even is a baby, an accurate assessment. Ebert says the “child” could be “a cross between a fetal version of E.T. and some form of skinned ruminant that has been plagued with an eternal cold that causes it to cry, whine and spit up various forms of goo practically around the clock.” Is the implication that this creature is what the human trace is devolving into – a domestic atrocity? The existence of this wild situation contrasts comically with Mary X asking Henry, like any other wife, if there is any mail.

After Mary X leaves for home because she can’t stand the situation, the child/creature becomes sick with facial pustules and breathing problems. Henry tries being a regular father in this highly irregular situation, taking temperatures and using a humidifier.

What follows is a nightmare, although reality in this film is already unreal. Henry’s loudly hissing radiator divides and turns into a stage revealing the smiling Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near) with grotesquely large jowls. Those deformed sperms from the beginning of the film begin falling on her stage, which she squishes. Henry later encounters these entities supposedly waking up from his sleep, adding to the disgusting aspect of the film. He then has visions of the beautiful woman across the hall (Judith Rogers), who may be a prostitute. They have sex in a tub of water that looks like a witch’s cauldron. The Lady in the Radiator then sings, “In heaven, everything is fine.” The lyrics are ironic since what Lynch is serving up for us is a view of life that is far from heaven.

Henry then sees his own decapitation and his deformed offspring replaces his missing head, as if that horror is what the future holds. His head falls to the street and a boy takes it to a pencil factory where the worker there drills into the skull. The extracted material is used to make eraser head pencils. So, Henry, the nerd with the pocket protector, is an eraser head before actually being reduced to one in this fever dream.

After waking, Henry, who moves like Frankenstein’s monster here (is Lynch Dr. Frankenstein?), witnesses a savage beating from his window, a foreshadowing of what is to come. (The music in the background at this point sounds like sideshow carnival music. Send in the freaks?) He sees the prostitute with a man who has rouge on his cheeks (clown make-up to fit the sideshow feel?) entering her apartment. Henry pictures himself as the creature of his dreams, with the body of a man and the head of his deformed child. He then cuts through the bandages encasing the child, revealing its diseased organs. He then kills the creature with the scissors. Is it a mercy killing or is he trying to abort a decaying future?

Electrical lights blink in the apartment and outlets spark, while Henry sees what appears to be a smooth dinosaur doll head in the shadows. More about evolution? We return to that eerie globe at the beginning that cracks open revealing a hole. The burned/deformed man from the beginning reappears fighting with his levers. Is he a demonic god who has created this fallen world? The last image is of Henry being embraced by the Lady in the Radiator.

Is Henry living in an insane world, or is he himself insane and all this surrealism emanating from his mind? Like the main character in the movie Brazil who finds solace in insanity, is Henry embracing the woman at the end who sings of heaven because that is as close as he can come to escaping the madness? Your guess is as good as any.

Recent films - 2022

 SPOILER ALERT! The plots will be discussed.

Here are some thoughts on films recently released.

BELFAST

Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, the story has its basis on Branagh’s childhood in the Irish city in 1969 during the turbulent confrontation between Protestants and Catholics. By centering on the upending of the world of a Protestant child and his family, the events the movie depicts gain power by personalizing the chaos and violence occurring. We sympathize with how the young boy, Buddy (Jude Hill), is shocked by the violence perpetrated by the Protestant majority on the nurturing neighbors on the street where he lives, where Catholics and Protestants were living in harmony. Buddy’s father (Jamie Dornan) is caught in the middle between the Protestants, the police, and the Catholics, and Protestant criminal/revolutionary Billy Clanton (Colin Morgan) who is trying to recruit Buddy’s Pa through intimidation. Pa works in England, and the family eventually must leave their beloved country to escape the violence tearing their city apart.

The film, shot in black and white with shades of color, has numerous camera angles at ground level to immerse the audience in the action, but also to provide the viewpoint of a child. The cinematography is beautifully done as it evokes a gritty beauty on the streets of Belfast. Branagh adds numerous pop culture elements to recreate the time and place of this period in history, and the songs by Irishman Van Morrison provide texture to the tale. The movie is a stunning accomplishment.

DON’T LOOK UP

Writer/director Adam McKay gives us an apocalyptic story that, although containing some sharp satire, tries to hit too many targets. What results is an unfocused movie. He did better in his previous outings (The Big Short, Vice) because they were based on actual events, the economic meltdown of 2008 and the political clout of Dick Cheyney, which made the satire in those films upsetting because they were real. Here he takes a hypothetical event, the planet destroying approach of an asteroid, and shows how even such a catastrophic event becomes politicized given the current divisiveness in the United States. (Of course, McKay is referencing films such as Armageddon, and Deep Impact). People want to do something to avert the disaster, others say the reaction to the threat is out of proportion, and some deny the problem exists. Climate change and also COVID come to mind. The film most likely is arguing that climate change is similar to the approach of the asteroid, but the impact of the lethal heavenly body is more immediate.

That chunk of space matter is discovered by Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), and she and her mentoring professor, Dr. Randal Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), go on a quest to warn the world of the cataclysm that approaches. They encounter President Orlean (Meryl Streep) who only cares about how to spin facts that will increase her popularity. Her son, Jason Orlean (Jonah Hill), is her shallow Chief of Staff. He says at one point that his mother is hot and suggests that he would make a play for her if he wasn’t her son. His comment is an obvious reference to Donald Trump’s incestuous remarks about his daughter, Ivanka. As IMDb points out, when they try to get the citizens to ignore the coming crisis as a type of “fake news” they get everyone to chant “don’t look up,” which sounds like a reference to Trump’s chant of “lock her up,” referring to Hillary Clinton.

Mark Rylance’s Peter Isherwell is a nerdy tech CEO who has zero social skills and is an egomaniac. His character is a shot at Mark Zuckerberg. But the spaceships that Isherwell wants to use to harvest mineral riches from the asteroid look like Jeff Bezos’s penis-shaped rocket, linking billionaires’ arrogance with male sexual preoccupation. There is also a car pictured in space which reminds us of Elon Musk’s launching of his Tesla car, which again stresses how the ultrarich believe they are like the gods in the heavens. The worship of wealth is referenced by Jason, who says a prayer even at the imminent destruction of everything as he mourns the loss of “stuff.” IMDb points out that during the closing credits the Wall Street bull floats in space, a reference to the biblical warning about worshipping “false gods.”

There is also a jab at the public’s preoccupation with fame and celebrities as reported by TV hosts played by Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett. Mindy has an affair with the latter, and is seduced by becoming the center of attention on TV as the spokesman for the end of times. Don’t Look Up is an interesting film, but again, it’s all over the place.

THE POWER OF THE DOG

This film, written and directed by Jane Campion, takes place in Montana in 1925. The setting is important since we are dealing with a macho-cowboy-oriented story at a place and time when being gay was condemned. Given that context, the story explores repressed homosexuality in the person of Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch, in a riveting performance).

Phil is ranch partners with his brother, George (Jesse Plemons). The two couldn’t be more different. George is softspoken, and neat, always wearing a bowtie. Phil is loud and sarcastic, and always looks like he climbed out of the mud. In fact, he prides himself in the fact that he smells. For him, that odor emanates manhood. But, appearances are deceiving in this movie. Phil has not married, and it is his brother that weds Rose (Kirsten Dunst). Rose has a tall, thin son named Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who looks as if the wind could blow him over. He creates paper flower arrangements, which to the cowboys is an effeminate activity. Phil is nasty as he says to Peter, “Ain’t them purrdy? I wonder what little lady made them?”

Phil is hostile to Rose, and can’t abide being in the next room when he hears lovemaking sounds coming from his brother’s bedroom. The hostility eventually drives Rose to becoming an alcoholic. Phil had a mentor named Broncho Henry, who he often references as being a great cowboy. He starts to teach Peter about the skills that he believes a man should know. Peter learns how to ride a horse and Phil is impressed that the youth can look at a hill and see the shape of a dog that other cowboys have not been able to discern.

Even though he may appear weak, Peter is studying to be a doctor, and is not squeamish about dissecting animals as he learns about diseases. When he and Phil are mending a post, they come across a lame rabbit, and Peter has no problem breaking the animal’s neck to put it out of its misery. The turning point in the plot is when Phil masturbates while holding Broncho Henry’s handkerchief, and Peter discovers magazines of nude men in Phil’s hiding place that have Broncho Henry’s name on them. Phil tells Peter a story about how Broncho Henry saved him from the cold by using their body heat to keep warm. Peter asks if they were naked, but Phil just smirks and says nothing. It appears as if it is an admission of his gay nature, and the two then intimately share a cigarette.

Peter, out alone, uses a scalpel to cut some hide off a steer that died due to disease. He gives that cowhide to Phil to finish a lasso he was making for the boy. Phil had cut himself earlier while skinning a rabbit, and does not wear gloves while finishing the lasso. He becomes sick from an infection and later dies. We see Peter, wearing gloves, pushing the lasso under his bed, and he sees a revitalized Rose with George outside his window. The implication is that Peter infected Phil with anthrax so that his mother would no longer be threatened by the toxic Phil.

The title comes from the Book of Psalms, which reads, “Save my soul from the sword, and my darling from the power of the dog.” The dog is considered a tormentor to King David. Perhaps the rock formation that Peter recognized as a “dog” may represent the danger in succumbing to the overcompensating masculine mentality that drove the self-denying Phil.

BEING THE RICARDOS

Writer/director Aaron Sorkin zeroes in on one episode of the hit 1950’s TV show I Love Lucy, but then does some time jumping to give us a sense of what Lucille Ball and husband Desi Arnaz were like behind the cameras. The story focuses on the adversity that Lucy encountered when she was accused of being a Communist during the McCarthy witch hunt era, and how the couple lied by saying Lucy just filled in the wrong block on a questionnaire. The truth was that she cared and respected a relative who belonged to the Communist Party. She did not want to be deceptive about what really happened. Lucy (Nicole Kidman) was a tough, shrewd woman before it was inspirational to be such a person. She is also a perfectionist when it comes to the show’s episodes. Despite the series depicting farcical situations, she argues against any illogical elements in the scripts, and adds funny material. The couple fights back at not being able to say the word “pregnant,” and the two not sharing a bed, despite their characters and themselves being married. Desi (Javier Bardem) is very supportive and respectful of his wife when it comes to the work, but Lucy does discover that he has been frequenting prostitutes on the side. The two come off as witty and intelligent members of the show business community.

Sorkin’s script is sharp, as usual, and the performances of Kidman and Bardem are very good, as are those of J. K. Simmons as the abrasive although well-meaning father figure, William Frawley, and Nina Arianda as Vivian Vance, who is close to Lucy, but who sometimes feels she must appear unattractive so as not to upstage the star.

SWAN SONG

This movie has a sci-fi context, but it is mostly an idea and character driven story. Cameron (Mahershala Ali) has a terminal illness. In this future time period, there is an innovative way to basically replace oneself with a duplicate. It is not cloning since the scientists, headed by Dr. Jo Scott (Glenn Close), upload all of one’s memories and feelings onto the double, and can make small physical variations to tell the original from the copy. Ali also plays his duplicate, Jack. Cameron agonizes over the course of the story as to whether he should go through with this action. The catch is that the family and everybody else must not know of the illness so as not to raise suspicion that the duplicate has been substituted. The purpose of this deception is to allow Jack to easily slide into Cameron’s life. If Cameron goes through with the procedure, he will live out the rest of his time at the medical facility where the swap is taking place.

The story deals with identity in a way that writer Philip K. Dick did in several stories. Questions rise as to what defines an individual, and what makes each individual unique. Another great performance by the Oscar-winning Ali.

The next film is Roman J. Israel, Esq.