Formally astonishing and beautifully made. But honestly, I didn’t understand any of it until I went to look things up online. There’s a certain amount of “just go with it” that I think any film is entitled to, but at what point does purposeful obfuscation—or conspicuous omission of basic expositional information—become just an exercise in artistic self-flattery? That’s what a lot of Lowery’s filmmaking feels like to me, and this is maybe his most self-flattering project of all. I liked it, but I would have liked it better if it had worked a little more like a conventional movie and a little less like a Matthew Barney piece.