I couldn't possibly top my previous review, though I have to ponder what short film played for my dad 'round 12:30 AM on March 6? Was it something charming and domestic, a slice-of-life film at the end of his own? Or was it action-packed, starring the likes of Bruce Willis or Clint Eastwood? Was my own father the next James Bond?

Either way, my dad remains a hero to me, and I'm fairly sure it wasn't something "weird" such as…

Cast to sea and cast ashore, violently yet without great urgency. We abruptly find ourselves in a barbaric world without a hero or even an anti-hero; there's no one to root for. Rather, we can only hope to escape with most of our fingers intact.

"Big" Ed Hurley (Everett McGill) is an unsympathetic, disfigured tyrant and misanthrope. It's the Tempest but for the cruelest among us, as viewed by Thomas Hobbes. The photography on location and cast have glimpses of…

Whatever reservations I had with the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD have been wholly rectified on this beautiful new film, once again pairing Joachim Trier with Renate Reinsve, though I don't expect Trier to have worked with this house before, y'know, because the house is an anthropomorphized character.

Fine. I'll move on. The film hits all the right notes, balancing flashbacks masterfully along with experimental interludes, never forcing its hand. Nor does it steep in detached melancholy; there's a lived-in…

*Bruce Springsteen voice*

Well, they blew up the Chicken Man in [new town] last night
they shot up the mansion on the hill, too
and on the bluff, they're getting ready for a chickie run, all right
these boys lived and died for the thrill like the characters they portrayed

Well now, it's no less tragic no matter how overly melodramatic,
gonna be trouble out at the planetarium
and the misguided adults can hardly temper the youth's revolt

Well, we…