We left off last time with a cinematic version of what the Great Beyond might be: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, in which the newly deceased have a few days in a threadbare but friendly waystation to decide on the one memory that would be made into a film, and that film would then be all that remains of them for eternity.

Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks’ 1991 romantic comedy with a satirical slant, shares some surprising qualities with Kore-eda’s film. Its afterlife is also entirely mundane, though in a decidedly more American way, and it is likewise staffed with people who are there to determine what happens with you next. Like in After Life, none of the people who have just died question their fate, nor do they seem overly concerned with metaphysical questions. No one brings up God or religious belief, though in Brooks’ version of the hereafter people are somewhat concerned with heaven and hell – where will they go to next? But first there are more important questions – where will they go for dinner? This afterlife is a place of all-you-can-eat restaurants that will pack you nine pies to take back to your anonymous hotel room. Judgment City is the American hereafter, after all.