Here is a key question: why do directors so rarely make a film about the future where society is not a grim, totalitarian nightmare?
"The Salton Sea," a grim, druggy nightmare of a film set in the Los Angeles demimonde of methamphetamine users and dealers, aims to be the ne plus ultra of sleazy West Coast hyperchill.
Macaulay's "licentious" Mrs. Pinchwife becomes in the 20th century a focus for moral concern: to critics such as Bonamy Dobrée, she is a tragic character, destined to have her naiveté cruelly taken advantage of by the "grim, nightmare figure" of Horner.
However, when residents finally began to recover from that grim nightmare around 2000, they found themselves smack in the middle of the Information Age, where global ideas — aesthetic and otherwise — were accessible for anyone with an Internet connection.
Part cyberpunk futuristic thriller, part post-apocalyptic nightmare, Wayne Simmons's Plastic Jesus (Salt, £8.99) is a grim satire on contemporary western hedonism and the religious impulse.
The history of failed British and Soviet attempts to dominate the country, however, stands as a grim warning to any country contemplating an invasion; the terrain is a dream for guerrillas and a nightmare for conventional forces.
Bad Dream depicts a screaming girl waking from a nightmare; Portrait of 50 Missing Girls superimposes the faces of departed children like fugitive memories; Playing presents a grim tableau of a dog-pack nuzzling and chewing human body parts.
That was a grim, grim day.
