A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Everything is not going to be OK.
Filmmaker(s): Richard Linklater
An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.
Limitless (2011)
Everything is possible when you open your mind.
Filmmaker(s): Neil Burger
A paranoia-fueled action thriller about an unsuccessful writer whose life is transformed by a top-secret "smart drug" that allows him to use 100% of his brain and become a perfect version of himself. His enhanced abilities soon attract shadowy forces that threaten his new life in this darkly comic and provocative film.
24 Dec Limitless (2011)
Constraints There are two things here to recommend. The first is that the screenplay is based on a fresh idea that springs from the kind of gangster genre typified by Snatch. I’ll characterise this as an anti-genre film because it uses that genre as a...
Her (2013)
A Spike Jonze love story.
Filmmaker(s): Spike Jonze
In the not so distant future, Theodore, a lonely writer, purchases a newly developed operating system designed to meet the user's every need. To Theodore's surprise, a romantic relationship develops between him and his operating system. This unconventional love story blends science fiction and romance in a sweet tale that explores the nature of love and the ways that technology isolates and connects us all.
24 Dec Her (2013)
Wild Things One recipe for a whole narrative is to create a world, a character and a situation, each affecting the others while containing them. It is a hard, hard thing to do cinematically, but look at what has been done here. The world is...
Baby Geniuses (1999)
Think innocent. Think helpless. Think again. Naps are history.
Filmmaker(s): Bob Clark
Scientist hold talking, super-intelligent babies captive, but things take a turn for the worse when a mix-up occurs between a baby genius and its twin.
16 Dec Baby Geniuses (1999)
99 Dalmatians People hate this movie. I’m not sure I know why. Oh, it is bad, but other movies that are just as bad are not seen as so: — with the plot being the some sort of thin adventure. This is actually a bit...
1984 (1984)
George Orwell's terrifying vision comes to the screen.
Filmmaker(s): Michael Radford
George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian future society in which a man whose daily work is rewriting history tries to rebel by falling in love.
15 Dec 1984 (1984)
Is What It Shows It is a pet peeve of mine to discover films whose point is undermined by its container. Most of these are the trivial case of movies about taking chances and being unique, but the form of the movie is the complete...
Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
The legendary sci-fi animation, a live-action film at last.
Filmmaker(s): Takashi Yamazaki
In 2199, five years after the Gamilons began an invasion of Earth, the planet has been ravaged by the aliens' bombs. The remnants of humanity have fled underground to escape the irradiated surface. One day, former pilot Susumu Kodai discovers a capsule sent from the planet Iscandar that tells of a device that can remove the radiation from the Earth's surface. The Earth Defense Force rebuilds the battleship Yamato with a new type of propulsion system to make the 148,000 light year trip to Iscandar in hopes of saving the Earth. Within one year, the radiation will drive the rest of humanity to extinction.
10 Dec Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
Teen Explosions I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about what the necessary ingredients may be for a successful space travel-centric sci-fi movie. ‘Interstellar’ used a device to place the images in the past, leveraging established movie notions. That was a movie that referenced...
The Midnight Sky (2020)
There's a universe between all of us.
Filmmaker(s): George Clooney
A lone scientist in the Arctic races to contact a crew of astronauts returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe.
06 Dec The Midnight Sky (2020)
Dersu Solaris Films about filmmaking and internal narrative will always get poor reception among the general public. Nolan is able to straddle the line by delivering worldly action; that’s why his effects have to be so practical. But in general, when you make a film...
Transcendence (2014)
Yesterday, Dr. Will Caster was only human...
Filmmaker(s): Wally Pfister
Two leading computer scientists work toward their goal of Technological Singularity, as a radical anti-technology organization fights to prevent them from creating a world where computers can transcend the abilities of the human brain.
06 Dec Transcendence (2014)
Behind the Screens One of my angels die when I encounter a film like this. It has a mix of things that disturb and disappoint. A minor but essential problem is that the actors do a bad job. All of these men at least has...
Terminator Genisys (2015)
Reset the future
Filmmaker(s): Alan Taylor
The year is 2029. John Connor, leader of the resistance continues the war against the machines. At the Los Angeles offensive, John's fears of the unknown future begin to emerge when TECOM spies reveal a new plot by SkyNet that will attack him from both fronts; past and future, and will ultimately change warfare forever.
06 Dec Terminator Genisys (2015)
Reincarnation What do you do if your strategy is copying old successes, and the copies don’t do as well as you like? This strategy of ‘rebooting’ is mainstream now. We accept it, so long as the new franchise shows promise. That means that some storylines...
The Crime of the Century (1933)
AD 2031, the passengers in the train are the only survivors on Earth.
Filmmaker(s): Bong Joon-ho
In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.
