Shane Carruth’s alluring Upstream Color is Invasion of the Body Snatchers for the art house crowd, with hogs replacing pods and identity crisis substituting for McCarthyism. That may be an awfully crude comparison but it’s the overall gist I got as I watched this beguiling, beautiful film. One thing’s for sure, the plot’s mind-control science fiction aspect plays only second fiddle to the transcendent yet universal overarching theme of emotional resonance in people in the vein of Henry David Thoreau’s…

There is an unassuming moment in Alps, the latest offbeat puzzler by absurdist Greek director Giorgos Lanthimos, when the plot’s obscurity reaches its zenith, delineating that the story has taken a sudden dark, awkwardly humorous turn into surreal, Luis Buñuelian territory. A somber hospital nurse, played exceptionally well by Lanthimos’ muse Aggeliki Papoulia, brings bad tidings to a couple, reporting that their sixteen year old daughter has succumbed to her fatal car crash injuries and passed away. The couple sits…