And yet the world doesn't feel smaller. If anything, the erasure of boundaries can make the world feel intimidatingly large, too large to feel at home in. These movies play on our unarticulated sense of that scary bigness, and they posit the feeling of being lost as the unavoidable consequence of a world in which we can go almost anywhere -- instantly, through virtual means, or in a few hours thanks to air travel. Some of these movies ("Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset," "Irma Vep," "Lost in Translation") feature characters in foreign ports of call; in others ("Hamlet," "Nadja," "What Time Is It There?") the characters are just as lost in the places they call home. These are not xenophobic films, not movies that preach the virtues of sticking close to safe, familiar surroundings. They are about a world where the safe and familiar are being erased...

It's nice to know I'm not alone, even if the article is slightly overwrought. The author's defense of Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is, well, "unique" I suppose.