Courtney Duckworth

‘Taboo,’ sings a shorn Robert Pattinson to a gurgling infant in ‘High Life’. Leave it to the gutsy French director Claire Denis (making her English-language debut) to dissect her latest movie with a single word. Taboos abound in the elusive, elliptical sci-fi film, at once a continuation of the carnal concerns of her films ‘Trouble Every Day’ and ‘Let the Sunshine In’ – and the colonial ones of ‘Beau Travail’ and ‘Chocolat’ – as well as a hyperspace voyage of remarkable alienation and grief. Viewers queuing up to see the brooding R-Pattz may leave gasping for air. Drifting in a decrepit spaceship that resembles a boxy cargo container, Monte (Pattinson) and his young charge seem alone, but jumbled flashbacks reveal them to be survivors of an ill-fated mission: Death-row inmates, whose alleged crimes remain obscure, volunteer to investigate the Penrose process, a real-life theory concerning black holes, in exchange for vacated sentences. Meanwhile, the ‘shaman of semen’ Dr Dibs (a murkily sensual Juliette Binoche) withdraws sperm from male inmates to see if conception is possible in the irradiated outskirts of space. The crew soothes their frustrations in the Fuckbox, an oozing chamber of mechanical dildos where Binoche writhes in one memorable, flickering sequence. Monte, however, abstains from it all, and his monkish celibacy baffles his shipmates. Sparse in dialogue, ‘High Life’ demands unrelenting restraint from Pattinson, whose Monte, an off-kilter ascetic, is fascinating.

You’re reading a good book. Or maybe you’re texting your group chat (because you contain multitudes) about The Bachelor results. Either way, you want a seat on the subway during rush hour, lest you be condemned to spend your hour-long commute guessing the precise time to let go of a pole—if you can even reach one—to search for that GIF, guzzle that thermos of coffee or turn a page. Welcome to a full-scale war in a car packed with people who all want the same thing and will violate all standards of human behavior to get it. RECOMMENDED: See more New York rants The competition begins on the platform. Prepare to stand as perilously close to the edge as possible, and get ready: If you aren’t tensed like Usain Bolt at the starting blocks—only much slower, more sleep-deprived and weighed down with a bulging tote—just forget about winning a seat (or even that choice strip of territory where you can press your back against a door, rather than committing accidental, unwanted frottage with a stranger or face-planting into a backpack). Once the train arrives, the twisted adult version of musical chairs springs into action—but in this game, the soundtrack is a busker or SoundCloud rapper mercilessly drowning out the podcast you’re trying to listen to. Carrying groceries? Sorry, you’re too slow. Engrossed in your Instagram feed or that The Great British Bake-Off episode you downloaded from Netflix? You just lost that forward-facing seat with plenty of legroom to a clueless tourist who’s o