Movie: Black Mossad.  A faux-blaxploitation revenge fantasy a la Inglorious Basterds.  Set in the 70s.  A group of black men, disillusioned with the civil rights movement, decide that if the Israelis can track down and assassinate former Nazis living in Uruguay then they can do the same to ex-lynchers in Mississippi.  Their mastermind is a little old grandmother who funds them with the money from her husband’s life insurance policy.  They train, make a list, then go and get the job done.   Of course, some of the picturesque racists they take on (hats, bolo ties, Colonel-Sanders-style mustaches) provide more of a challenge than they expected, being expert not just with a wide array of guns but with other weapons too: knives, compound bows, sabers first forged for the Civil War and kept cleaned and polished ever since…

Movie:  Journey To The Center Of The Earth.  Main character, a scientist, has worked with his team for years preparing trip for a manned voyage to somewhere…Venus, somewhere hot.  At the last minute, the mission is cancelled because of politics or some tragic accident.  He is crushed but secures the funds to keep the ship in working order, just in case.  Years later: divers discover a new fissure in some ocean crevasse that could offer a chance to explore deep below the earth’s crust — if only they had a vehicle that could do it.  The scientist and his ship are recruited.  The team descends seven miles down.  Weird bioluminescent fish blink on an off in the blackness around their staging area.  The team of scientists, packed into the little ship, descend deeper and deeper into the superhot fissure of the earth.  There are dangerous events and personal drama.  At last they reach a solid mass.  It is not magma.  They take a sample and return to the surface.  At their floating lab far out in the Pacific, they analyze the core sample and find, to their disbelief, rage, and despair, that it’s chocolate.

“Wait, Doctor.  There’s another object here.”

“What is it?”

“…It appears to be an almond.”

“FUCK!!!”

Human existence, it turns out, is a joke.  This chocolate happens to be milk chocolate, a kind you’d be most likely to find in the British Isles.  Probably if you were to take core samples from other places in the world, you would find darker or lighter, sweeter or less sweet kinds, and quite likely bits of caramel or sweetened puff rice bits and even veins of kirsch or Bailey’s too.  But the scientists know when they’re being kidded.  They vow never to speak a word of what they’ve found, and they stage an accident in which the ship is destroyed in an explosion that also collapses the entrance to the earth.  Final scene, scientist’s daughter’s wedding.  Dad is leaning back in his chair and gazing off happily, content, full, and slightly tipsy.  Daughter:

“Dad?  What kind of cake do you want?  Vanilla?  Or chocolate?”

His face clouds over.  “Vanilla!  Dammit, vanilla!”