There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.

The playlist for my trip to England.

“Resident Evil” is the second Zach Cregger movie in a row about children. It opens with Bryan learning that his girlfriend is pregnant and suggesting, a little obliquely, that she get an abortion. “It’s your body. It’s your choice,” he says, and declares this to be “the best answer” he can give.

At the same time that Bryan suggests this, though, he is, in a manner of speaking, carrying a life of his own. Unbelievably, Bryan (a medical courier who transports cadaver organs from hospital to hospital) doesn’t know what’s in either of the coolers we see him carry in the film—however, Cregger leverages Bryan’s ignorance for thematic depth. He assumes the first cooler contains “a kidney or a liver,” but after getting into an argument with his girlfriend about her pregnancy, he begins claiming the second cooler contains “a baby’s heart.” Thus, Bryan subliminally adopts the position of his pregnant girlfriend.

Over the following two acts, Bryan has many reasons to leave the “baby’s heart” behind—because a zombie apocalypse begins while he’s en route from one hospital to the other, and there’s little chance that the organ will be worth much after so much time elapses. Still, he doggedly holds on to the little green cooler, even treating it like a little person (seatbelted into his car for safety) even though it slows him down and inconveniences him.

By the end of the film, though, Bryan learns that the green cooler doesn’t contain a baby’s heart, but medicine that can save the world. While in the basement of a parking garage, looking at the stick figure family decal on the back of a minivan, he records a message for his girlfriend, who he never expects to see again, and says that he “hates” the answer he gave to her earlier, and that he wants her to have the baby, and that he wants to have the baby with her.

The whole film flies in the face of the lately deceased Gloria Steinem, who famously said, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” Bryan’s typological pregnancy inclines him to think more highly of the unborn, not less.

What is more, Bryan’s softened heart is not a matter of sentimentality, for when he leaves the message for his girlfriend, he has begun suffering the fatal body-transforming effects of an infection that was passed on to him by the only child in the film. Neither carrying a child nor raising a child is safe or easy, but safety be damned. The world must be peopled.

I had this exchange on LinkedIn recently and I found it a profound example of what is actually meant by the term “independent thinker.” This fellow I was chatting with, a PhD who teachers at a university, said his daughter was an independent thinker and a feminist and therefore wouldn’t marry at 19. One has to wonder what kind of “independence” this is, given that it doesn’t entail the independence (the autonomy and freedom) to choose when she will marry.

Perhaps the daughter in question was told, “Feminists don’t marry when they’re 19.” But that necessarily means, “Feminists have acceptable ages for marriage dictated to them by their fathers.”

And yet, this sort of thing is normally what I think of when someone talks about being “an independent thinker.”

“Independence” is just a by-word for a predetermined, laughably narrow set of fashionably new ideas.

Foie gras dumplings with leek jam and bone broth at Canard.

Made for a week spent in Los Angeles.

10. Metropolitan (1990), dir. Whit Stillman

9. Empire of the Sun (1987), dir. Steven Spielberg

8. Vertigo (1958), dir. Alfred Hitchcock

7. Birth (2004), dir. Jonathan Glazer

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), dir. Stanley Kubrick

5. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), dir. Anthony Minghella

4. Sans Soleil (1983), dir. Chris Marker

3. Lost in Translation (2003), dir. Sofia Coppola

2. Some Like It Hot (1959), dir. Billy Wilder

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), dir. Wes Anderson

Very few record labels have influenced my taste in music quite like the LateNightTales series. From the moment I heard Air’s mix twenty years ago, I was hooked.

This new entry from Barry Can’t Swim is incredible. Highest recommendation.