Authority Figures

All were fantasy/sci-fi variants, though you could parse them further into sub-genres like Spanish steampunk, Disney-inflected French CGI, etc. Curiously, two of the three took place on or around the day that I was watching them - these were by no means Christmas movies, so I take the "coincidences" to be fated (and, therefore, not to be coincidences at all). Also, two of the three (not the same two as before) included vivid scenes of the world breaking into floating bits, like little islands untethered by familiar gravity, terrestrial rafts cast into a platformer-like dither-scape (imagine floes bumbling through the sky like balloons).

In all three, the crux was that "time-is-running-out." All three movies embodied this plot device as infernal entities: sarcophagized Sarcophagidae, anachronistic Satan, colossal skeletal dragon. However fantastically represented, "time-is-running-out" is an inherent characteristic of all narrative films.

The "darkest" of the three (and all of them were "dark") sparkled with its auteur's usual stylistic/narrative tics: weird/noble children, filigree, archaisms, clockwork, insecta.

-

Around midnight several years ago, I saw a man laying on his back, cruciform, on the hood of a car. He wasn't moving and his forehead was riddled with bruises. This was in Brooklyn on a busy, well-lit avenue in front of a supermarket. Several people took pictures of him with their cellphones, and I called 911. A firetruck was the first to arrive, followed by an ambulance and finally the police. The 911 dispatcher had asked me to stay at the scene, so once the police had "secured" the situation, I asked one of the officers if the man was alright.

"He's dead," responded the officer flatly.

I felt suddenly, very sick. Another officer started laughing. I looked back at the original officer and he was laughing, too. He then made a quick gesture with his hand, suggestive of someone taking a swift nip from their flask.

"Just kidding. He's drunk."