By Danny Flannery

Everything really is garbage, isn’t it? When reading the following reviews, be sure to do so with a Rod Serling voice.

Impressionable (Dir. Brian Tran)

I mean everything sucks now, and what makes it even worse is we can pin it all on a couple dozen names and faces that know exactly what they’re doing. Say you were a worker for one of these omnipresent dipshits – your Musks, your Bezoses – and day after day you see him invade your every waking moment. He’s the star of every commercial, the self-help guru on every channel, the anchor of every news station. You see him in your dreams, this hollow suit. If you could occupy his space for just a moment, if you could just hack into whatever he’s using to project himself into your life, what would you claw back from him? What cost would you pay to unplug him?

Stop Taking Pictures (Dir. Arlin Godwin)

I mean nothing ever leaves. Loss festers in the heart, creeps into the shadows of every picture, sits alongside us on the subway. Suppose you took the same photos at the same stop at the same time every day, always seeing the same face of someone you dearly miss. How many months would you linger in grief? How long would it be until you fell into the photo – or worse, were dragged in?

Ahoy! (Dir. Julian Alvarez)

I mean that very literally. Truly, we live in a pirate’s bounty of stinking, floating trash. If it’s just going to keep piling, why drown in it? Why not grab every stray part and person you can, build an ark, and set sail on the stinky open sea. You build a new you, a new culture, a whole new world out of what you pull painstakingly out of the water with old spare buckets. Say one day you pulled up a baby, and it starts to dream of land. How could you warn them? More importantly, what stories would you tell them?

FATHER TIME (Dir. Javad A Karimabadi)

I mean it’s all a waste of time, your own father too absorbed in work to look up from his desk to say happy birthday. Say, though, that your mother bought you a device that could bring you to his level. Say you could speak to him when he was a young, goofy Persian college student. Maybe there’s something to salvage, an explanation of why he’s remained so cold, or even a phrase to keep him open in the future. Or maybe you just hang as bros in 2002 for a little while.

All That Remains of Project Falcon (Dir. Trevor Taylor)

I mean the country churns you out like you were garbage, rather. It’ll make you nothing, scoop out your brain and fill it with whatever, whoever it wants. Say you were a soldier, or a researcher, or somebody off the street. It doesn’t matter to them. They’ll say you saved lives. Did you? They’ll say you needed to do it. Did you? They’ll say you endured. Did you? And as

the two remnants of Project Falcon ask, is enduring something worth fighting for? At the end, wandering the street, you’ll have the notion that the real you is a brain in a jar.

Something About Plutonium (Dir. Raoni Assis)

I mean when it’s all said and done, when the fat lady sings, when The Big One comes, what is all of this but trash? An old woman on the street, a stray dog, a bus, a church, all fuel for the fire. When we look toward the sky from the center of the nuclear inferno, our skin sloughing off our sad frames, our skulls grinning behind blown-out sunglasses, poisonous wind screaming like TV static, all the color of the world replaced with a deep orange and choking gray, a flame that gives no light, what can we possibly say? We are all devil worshippers, and our prayers have been answered.

Distant Futures is sci-fi fun for the whole family! Check out the screening and Q&A session Thursday, March 5, 1-3 p.m. at Flaghsip Theater # 4, with a second screening and Q&A Friday, March 6., 3:30-5:30 p.m. at the Cambria Hotel.