A recent watching of the DVD of George Lucas’s THX 1138, out 9.14 following a limited theatrical break on Friday, came as a bit of a surprise. For decades I’ve been calling this Lucas’s finest film as well as an indication of an intriguing path he might have followed if he hadn’t hit it big with Star Wars, and it still is that, I suppose. But it no longer cuts through. Where it once seemed darkly prophetic or at least stylistically striking, THX 1138 now seems a touch passe. Hard to say why this story about a spiritually sedated, shaved-head functionary (Robert Duvall) slowly coming to rebel against a white-on-white techno-oppressive society of the future now exudes a been-there, done-that odor…but that’s how it plays. It was all I could do to watch it to the end.