Review - The Zero Theorem

WTF did I just watch? "The Zero Theorem." [Brain... hurt...] Terry Gilliam movies are like falling down the rabbit hole. This one is about falling down the rabbit hole. Yes, you fall down the rabbit hole while falling down the rabbit hole. No, I don't expect you to understand that. In a lot of ways, despite it's "near future" setting, it plays out in a (anti?)-Kafkaesque classic film. Christopher Waltz(!) plays John Malkovich, a somehow stoic anxiety ridden hero whose existential crisis of meaning finds him falling in love with Bainley, the virtual reality hooker with a heart of gold (hired by his boss to...) and eventually together they have Bob - the teenage hacker son they never had (but who the boss [Matt Damon{!}] did have [maybe]). Gilliam's comic sense shines through in a future world littered with cyberpunk hippies run amok. It all kind of falls apart at the end, though (or implodes). Or maybe that's the point. This one definitely takes some afterthought to work through. Or maybe it doesn't. I haven't figured that out yet. Rating pending/5 ...or perhaps out of some irrational algorithm. ...Shiny....

Review - Romantics Anonymous

I didn't want to watch "Romantics Anonymous" because I knew I'd love it. I watched it. And I was right. It's actually kind of horrible and cheesy and predictable and yes, it's subtitled. But it has some good laughs and probably takes a more realistic view of falling in love than any Hugh Grant fluff. 3.2/5.

Dream #21 - Mind Prison

It's like being in space only it's not space. It's pure blackness forever and ever. Here and there are tiny sparks of light. Each is a portal into the dreams of another, a back door into the subconscious of someone else. I'm standing on nothing yet my feet are firmly planted; there is a clear orientation of up and down despite no sense of gravity. One little star burns a little brighter than the others. By will alone I move toward it, half flying, half bringing it toward me. Defying the laws of physics, it doesn't appear to get any larger as I get closer. Though I may pass a million miles in a few seconds, the star sits before me within touching distance and no larger than a pinprick. I have been here many times. I touch the point of light and somehow squeeze through into another world. I don't get any smaller and it doesn't get any bigger nor do I get spagettified in the process. Somehow I just fit through.

But wait. This isn't right. Each time the portal takes me to a different place but it's a normal, real-world place or looking down on one. It takes me to her, no matter where she is. This place isn't right. It's an extension of the dream space I've just stepped from, a bubble of space. It's dark here. I step forward in wonder and feel my feet stay put while the rest of me pitches forward. The lights come on as I hit the floor and I catch only a fleeting glimpse of a white clad leg retreating through the door, leaving these words behind: "I don't want you here, anymore!"

The door closes between me and the phantom. I stand and look around the room. It's circular in a way. Or I perceive it as circular. It seems to go on and on for a great distance like the black dream space outside but completely white with a definite ceiling I can reach up and touch and a floor I can stand on. There is a circular white couch in the middle that seems to retreat each time I move toward it, getting larger and larger and further away like a metal nut will expand under heat. There is no light source, no colour, no windows or seam of a door that once was there. It's a prison of my own making and intended for me alone. Her words rattle the bars of my brain like a tin cup.

It's a prison all right but not in the conventional sense. It's more like a wall. Or simply being transported to another universe with no way back. I can leave this room and I do. I simply walk toward a wall and enter back into the black space outside. I can see my prison is a fairly small ovular structure, stark white against the blackness, apparently larger on the inside. It hangs from a pair of yellow walk ways that go nowhere and never end like the ones Marvin the Martian used to tread. My only options are to wander this black space in any direction but with no direction worth going, back into my prison with nothing to do but sit on a couch or go back to my own reality. I heave a deep sigh and sit on the couch.