​​A placid science fiction story interested in exploring the continuous impact the past has on the present, how memory is malleable to our subconscious impulses, and the artificiality intrinsic to such constructions. Rigorous formal designs project a sterile environment, one which feels safe, manufactured but ultimately cold and detached from emotion, sensuality, or affect. The objects that define us, the interplay between the artificiality and the organic not as clearly defined when the emotional core of our nature of being has its say. Subjectivity, the great equalizer when it comes to experience and how we see and construct reality is infused not only with logic but also emotion. The Trouble With Being Born is a fascinating meditation that struggles to connect much on an emotional level, delivering a somewhat cold but fascinating rumination on artificiality that doesn't completely work but it intrigues far more than it falters; The whole controversy here seems uh, really really dumb.​

​Quite diabolical. Quite delightful. A sardonic takedown of extreme wealth and the pernicious effects such power can place on those who know nothing else. Greed is a pathological impulse to those born into extreme privilege, and Joji wonderfully encaptures how the heinous acts its principal character produces don't come from any place of personal conviction or courage, they are solely reactionary, spawned out of fear and a pathological commitment to retain a certain status, a certain power in society. The principal character Joji doesn't even seem to be aware of the abject moral decay of his actions, at least in the moment, and what Joji as a film does so deftly is it embraces the utter absurdity of this lack of self-awareness. Bordering on black comedy in the way it exhibits the fracturing of familial decorum when the material wealth becomes up for grabs, Joji is a slyly enjoyable critique of wealth and privilege that is well designed narratively and formally impressionistic at illustrating rather pensively the vapidness and true cognitive dissonance of those born into such privilege​