Welcome

The story follows Luke Wilson as a quite literal average Joe who gets roped into an army science experiment to be frozen, which, of course, goes wrong. He wakes up five hundred years later, as everyone has become insanely dumb through generations of inbreeding and bad traits passing down, he is the smartest man in the world.

This is a notorious, or rather infamous, film for a number of reasons I’m about to get into. But I’ll start with this: Paul Thomas Anderson accomplished what this film wanted to be with his late 90s hit Boogie Nights (1997). PTA skillfully, and more importantly, tastefully weaves pornographic story elements with clever cinematography. Caligula is not that.

Hazy recollection of the recent week’s days. It was a full and long week of work, and I was really feeling the monotony this time around. You know you’re cooked when you show up to work and immediately start creating checkpoints for yourself. “Okay, we just gotta make it to nine o'clock”… Then, “Now, ten”…

The story follows Kyle MacLachlan as a young man back from school in his small, idyllic American suburb when he stumbles across a severed human ear in a field. After taking it into the local police station, his curiosity gets the better of him as he sets off into the secret underworld of a town once thought to be innocent.

With themes reminiscent of Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000), this film takes a comic approach to the horrors of drug abuse and addiction. It follows four friends united by opium addiction and a life of robbery and crime overall to sustain the habit. Ewan McGregor leads the cast as Renton, a soul grappling with the harsh realities of his present and (lack of) future as he fights to find a way out of the vicious cycle.