I Want Your Sex

The 2026 film, I Want Your Sex, is ostensibly about sex, for the film is saturated with that leitmotif, but the narrative is actually a critique of California culture, with European culture playing a minor role to provide a contrast. Generally, comedy can be used by screenwriters as a means by which audiences can accept, or at least acknowledge criticism that would otherwise be met with ferocious denial befitting a drug addiction. In 2026, the sheer dogmatism of ideologically-soaked imposing at will, as if with facts of reason rather than the gloss of merely subjective opinion, was the mentality of the day afflicting (young) adults under 40 years-old in California. Film can expose such banality to the light of day and thus serve as a self-correcting agent for a societal or sub-societal culture, for the human brain, standing on its own as arrogance on stilts, may be woefully and even unretrievably vulnerable to purblindness when  beliefs and values are in the grip of ideological idolatry.

The full essay is at "I Want Your Sex."

The Maltese Falcon: Greed as Pathology

To Aquinas, greed is the worst of the major sins. Augustine had privileged pride with the dubious distinction of being the worst of the worst. In films, avarice is typically clothed with riches. The Maltese Falcon (1941) and (1931), as well as Satan Met a Lady (1936), which is based on the same novel, all depict greed as an obsession. Even though the object sought is thought to be very valuable, no one in the “hunt” is wealthy. Greed is presented in this story primarily as an interior motive that relentlessly and obsessively grips the whole person. That is to say, greed is reductionist, and in so being, distortive of any sense of natural perception and proper proportionality. This is depicted best in the most famous of the films. In this respect, the prior two films can be seen as building up to, or evolving into, a depiction of greed full-blown in a distinctly pathological sense.

The full essay is at "The Maltese Falcon"