Written, produced, directed, co-scored, and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky (director of EL TOPO), THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973) is a cult classic and one of my film holy grails. I finally scored a copy, and wow, what a trip. The film is a psychedelic allegory of humanity’s search for meaning, distraction into materialism and extreme politics, and spiritual war to conquer oneself, and concludes with an admonition to live an authentic life free of artificial restraint.

The film begins with The Thief, who goes into the city to make money. Finding a mysterious tower where gold is lowered on a basket in exchange for food, he scales the tower to confront the Alchemist, who takes the Thief’s excrement and turns it into gold but promises that since the Thief himself is excrement, he too can be transformed. The Thief must choose gold or enlightenment, and he chooses to apprentice to the Alchemist, who gathers a group of highly successful people representing the worst traits astrologically associated with the nine planets. They destroy their wealth and travel to the Holy Mountain, where they will overturn the immortals who run the universe and take their place. Or so they’re told…

This movie is one hell of a trip. There’s very little dialogue, with an emphasis on the score and stunning, artistic sets, every piece of which is beautiful, provocative, and spiritually symbolic as related to the Tarot, astrology, or metaphysics. Thematically, you can’t get much higher with its spiritual journey and final message. Going into it, I wondered it would be pretentious, too artsy and slow, and incomprehensible. Instead, I was presented a beautiful exploration of metaphysical spirituality with mind-blowing sets, bizarre set pieces, and solid pacing.

I haven’t seen this film streaming anywhere, I had to score it on DVD. If you can get a copy, I highly recommend it, though it’s not for everyone.

Hitting the big screen in 1999, the clever satire GALAXY QUEST is one of those films I can watch every couple of years and still enjoy.

In the 1980s, the show GALAXY QUEST, which chronicled the adventures of the intrepid crew of the spaceship Protector, developed such a cult following that twenty years later, the actors are still getting into costume to earn a living working conventions and other small sponsorship events. When a group of aliens show up to hire “Commander Peter Quincy Taggart” for a role-playing gig, he and his crew find himself on a very real Protector. To survive and save the aliens, they will have to become the team they once played on TV.

For me, this is an almost perfect comedy, satirizing the original STAR TREK series and Trekkies while also paying a loving homage. The show doesn’t simply trade on satire for laughs, though these gags are clever and hilarious, it’s also a great story on its own with people you root for and a satisfying finale. It’s great seeing the actors having to play a real-life version of the show, deal with the strange oddities built into the ship because they were on the show, and otherwise rise above their failings to be a very real, capable crew.

In short, this is a lot of fun, a hilarious satire that has its own integrity and a very strong story, backed by clever writing and a terrific cast including Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Sam Rockwell, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, and others. If you haven’t seen it yet, I think you’re in for a treat.

Adapted from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story, David Fincher’s THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2008) is beautiful, wistful, and otherwise pretty empty.

The film begins with an old woman (Cate Blanchett) on her deathbed in a hospital that is about to be struck by Hurricane Katrina. She asks her daughter (Julia Ormond) to read a diary kept by a man named Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), who claims to have been born in his 80s and lived his life in reverse. Through this lens, we follow his strange life from beginning to end and his also the life of the old woman, whose life intersected Button’s while she was growing older and he was growing younger.

Through this lens, the film explores life and death and how to live a full life, as Button meets various characters who teach him lessons from their personal philosophies–e.g., embrace the body you were born with, become whatever you want to be regardless of outside pressure, and nothing lasts so live life to the fullest while you can. Meanwhile, Button meanders through early 20th century America like an inconsequential Forest Gump, learning and living and finally connecting with the love of his life.

It’s all quite beautiful, the device of aging backwards is interesting, emotionally there’s a soulful longing in the story, and the film leans toward the philosophical by asking the question, what does a human life mean when all life ends? But the answers are fairly vapid, and we never really see Button changing or growing based on what he learns, so we assume he’s become wise without knowing how or why or even to what effect. Everybody he meets is pretty kind to him, and he never really faces much adversity aside from his fundamental condition. As a result, I just couldn’t connect with the film emotionally aside from a general discomfort at being reminded of my own mortality.

At the end of the film’s nearly three hours, I asked the same questions of the film as I should probably ask of existence–what does it all mean? Is there a point?–but I will say I enjoyed the way the three hours passed. It really is a beautiful film, as charming as FOREST GUMP but not as saccharine, with superb acting and direction. So I guess I’d recommend a watch if you haven’t seen it yet. (Seen on Netflix)