Say this for writer-director Matt Ross: he is not shy about making his intentions clear from the outset. In the opening sequence, a young man ambushes and kills a deer in the primordial Oregon forest using only a knife. As his mud-caked family emerges from the surrounding undergrowth, his father (Viggo Mortensen) anoints him with the animal’s blood and calls him a man. Then everybody pitches in to carry, dress, carve, cook, and eat the beast before settling in for an evening of deep reading and music-making in a world unsullied by the cheap distractions of electronic technology and the corrupting influence of corporate culture. But amid the familial intimacy and intellectual excellence, one little scamp absconds with the gutting tool so that he can work on his private shrine to Pol Pot — rodent skulls subbing for the human versions that decorated the Killing Fields. Well, hello there, economic theory of man! This here is a family that celebrates Noam Chomsky day instead of Christmas, that avoids making fun of anyone except Christians, and that sure as heck isn’t going to let a little thing like common decency stand in the way of (dead) Mom’s desire to be cremated and flushed down the toilet. Throughout, you wait for something to pierce the smugness, for the unfettered intellectual to learn a little something about the civilization he so blithely rejects, the lumpen mass of humanity he so gleefully excels. But after a while, you begin to suspect that the smugness is the point. (Eventually, the Captain does descend from his mountaintop, and it's telling to note what he gives up along the way.) (2016)