Back in the 1990s, an unmarried woman in Japan who was 25 or older might have been called a "Christmas cake." The term equated them with the seasonal cakes that were sold for half price after Dec. 24, and it contained an explicit warning for women: Catch a man before you turn 25 because that's your official sell-by date. It embodied Japan's embarrassing tendency to discriminate against women. But a mere two decades later, it's single Japanese men that are the target of this societal get-married-or-else pressure. And here's a movie that delves into that very issue — a wry, dry, brutally cynical work called "The Lobster."

This is Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos' ("Dogtooth," "Alps") first English-language film and he has assembled a superb cast for the occasion. The film is set in a near-future society where people are punished for being single, and it centers around David, a paunchy, hangdog middle-aged citizen played by Colin Farrell. David had a wife, but after she left him for someone else, the authorities came knocking on his door to take him away with other singles. Their destination is a resort hotel where they have 45 days to find a romantic partner or they will be turned into an animal and set loose in the surrounding the woods.

Most people who "don't make it" choose to become dogs. But David asks to be turned into the titular crustacean, which is "an excellent choice" according to the terrifying hotel manager (Olivia Colman). As David explains, lobsters have an incredibly long life span and retain their reproductive abilities into their old age, so long as they don't end up on a seafood platter.