Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning

An artificial intelligence-powered supermind known only as “Entity” is wreaking havoc, duping submarines into attacking themselves and rearing for total world domination. Determined-faced HAWK Ethan goes undercover as a newly elected member of the Chamber of Deputies--so many of them appeared on the combined party lists across the whole country that nobody can actually prove he wasn’t elected--and infiltrates secret conversations, learning that the world superpowers are seeking a key that can control the rogue AI.

To everyone’s surprise, however, it is the European Union that succeeds in bringing Entity in. The well-known political bloc achieves this not by recovering the key, but by issuing a summons to the AI for a breach of regulatory legislation. “As laid out in the EU Sentient Machine Act, originating from the European Commission’s Centre for Digital Sentience and Trustability, with the drafting help of twelve additional working groups, it is unlawful for any AI programme, be it sentient or not, to seize control of naval submersible warships without e-filing its intentions to do so in advance,” says the EC president in a statement.

In the film’s third act, it looks as though Entity and its legal team are going to wriggle free of the charges, but HAWK Ethan nabs the malicious AI on, of all things, a GDPR violation: Entity had posted photos of local supercomputer Meluxina, itself lately become sentient, without the latter’s consent. And despite the photos having appeared on an obsolete platform called “X”--used ironically by superminds to swap information at one-six-thousandth the speed of light, mathematically proven to be an unmonetisable speed--it still, in doing so, contravened Article 7 of the landmark data privacy legislation.

Barbie

We open on Barbieland, a plastic and pink-exploded paradise of sisterhood and girl power, where our hero, ROBERTS Barbara, is readying herself for another ideal day. Soon, however, she experiences feelings of mortality and together with CARSON Kenneth travels to the real world, to a place actually known for mortality--Esch-sur-Alzette--to investigate.

In Esch, ROBERTS Barbara’s perfect world is shattered by wolf-whistlers, patriarchal aggressions and the price of a one-bedroom flat. “This city must be amazing if 37 square meters costs that!” she exclaims. The man whom she is addressing, who has already attempted to mug her in French and German, now switches to English. She has no cash, but waits politely while he finds a translation for “chèque repas” on his smartphone. “I don’t know what that is,” she says. The camera zooms in on his face: he looks forlorn. Pitiable, even. The real world--and particularly Esch--is, viewers are given to understand, bleak in myriad ways.

CARSON Kenneth, meanwhile, is having a whale of a time: it’s just past Boxemennecher season but the clerk at the local supermarket fishes one out (plastic wrapped, so still fresh) of the bins. “What do you call this thing?” asks CARSON Kenneth, tearing into the pastry. “It’s like… box man,” responds the clerk. “Box man?” repeats CARSON Kenneth with a friendly, bewondered smirk. “Well, it’s super. Let’s call it a box super-man, eh?” Later, a teenager sells CARSON Kenneth some weed in a parking garage.

Nyad

When NYAD Diana turns 60, she rediscovers a long-dormant ambition from her youth: completing the toughest long-distance swim in the world, i.e. Stadtbredimus to Mertert. Some swims (such as the shark-infested Cuba-to-Florida route) may look more arduous, but this particular stretch of the Moselle--as we learn via TV interviews with a younger NYAD Diana, who had foolhardily attempted the feat some decades prior--is a deadly maze of overstocked German ferries, yachts heavy with company parties, and Swallowtail butterflies, which are demonically territorial and will attack intruders with unbridled mania. “I will not swim in a cage!” growls NYAD Diana to her coach and friend, STOLL Bonnie, who is torn between two truths: not wanting to weaken the fragile tenacity of the marathon swimmer… and not wanting to see what a swarm of Swallowtails could do to her.

Ultimately, when a nearly limp NYAD Diana emerges from the water on the shores of Mertert, a bunch of confused civil servants on a cigarette break crowd around her. “I have three messages,” says the athlete, gasping for breath. “One: never give up. Two: you’re never too old to chase your dreams. Three: it looks like a solitary sport but it’s not…” and against a dramatic soundtrack comes a montage of flashbacks, including STOLL Bonnie hand-feeding a piece of Gromperekichelchen to the swimmer, followed--slowly, methodically, lovingly--by a dollop of apple compote.

Oppenheimer

A young and moody OPPENHEIMER Robert is studying theoretical finance at Cambridge University while missing his hometown of Mondorf-les-Bains. Feeling particularly low and frustrated one day, he leaves several Träipen on the desk of his tyrannical professor, but soon recants, doubles back and recovers them. Even though the Träipen were not (as such) poisoned, the film’s thematic seed is planted: total annihilation is at this boy’s fingertips.

Much later, OPPENHEIMER Robert is in Belval, leading a team of researchers at Luxembourg University’s Institute of Experimental Finance. When quantum bonds are discovered in Berlin, he immediately recognises the potential to convert the technology into an investment vehicle and sets to work doing just that. As he inches closer to success, however, the full import of what he’s doing hits him… if the European Central Bank greenlights the vehicle for use, the world will never be the same.

Asteroid City

A family arrives to Wilz for a youth astronomy convention. The setting presents an obliterating remoteness that makes the arrival-by-UFO of an alien all the more credible: cleaved from all human civilisation, the witnesses--the astronomy cadets and their families and teachers--begin to question the meaning of life.

When the Luxembourg army descends and puts the whole camp on lockdown, two of the pluckier cadets manage to get the news out anyway, alerting classmates in Ettelbruck. These classmates attempt to break the news via the school newspaper but must first found a school newspaper; a fair amount of red tape ensues, including a funding application to the education ministry, but the story finally goes live and Wilz comes under national spotlight.

A twist! It is revealed that this entire scenario is transpiring on a stage, and that reality is actually (or is it?) tethered to a frame story in which everybody is an actor. Suddenly, the recognisability of the cast--and indeed, it’s choc-full of A-listers known nationwide from other hits [just the one hit, actually: Capitani; editor’s note]--hits differently, since attention has now been drawn to real-life actors playing characters who are also actors. “What is the meaning of life?” viewers, cold with this reality-check, ask themselves. “A colourful and neatly organised mis-en-scene,” the movie replies.