{"id":4473,"date":"2010-04-20T20:53:09","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T04:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/?p=4473"},"modified":"2010-04-20T20:53:09","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T04:53:09","slug":"heres-one-for-your-netflix-queue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/?p=4473","title":{"rendered":"Here’s one for your Netflix queue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quick: name five real science fiction movies. Real <\/em>ones, not monster movies, nor pseudo-Westerns or pseudo-Samurai or pseudo-whatever with a thin overlay of SF . . . I’m talking a movie that could not exist without the science at its core, and moreover, a movie that focuses on the themes that SF deals with best.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to be human, for example.<\/p>\n

So toss out Terminator<\/em> and its sequels (pursuit by crazed killer, feh), Alien<\/em> and its sequels (monster movie), Star Wars<\/em> and its prequels (fairy tale) and what are you left with? Karen and I came up with 2001<\/em>, THX 1138<\/em>, and Blade Runner<\/em>. Maybe Planet of the Apes<\/em>, for all its flaws.<\/p>\n

And then there’s Moon<\/em> (2009).<\/a><\/p>\n

\"sam-rockwell-moon\"Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the sole flesh-and-blood operator of the helium-3 mining station Sarang, on the Moon’s far side. He’s accompanied by GERTY, the soft-spoken AI (voiced by Kevin Spacey) who will instantly conjure memories of HAL 9000. Sam’s nearing the end of his three-year term, with only two weeks to go before shipping back to Earth to be reunited with his wife and the nearly three-year-old child he’s never met. But all is not well with Sam; he’s having headaches and hallucinations of increasing intensity, and when he crashes his rover into one of the station’s four harvesters, things really start going to hell. <\/p>\n

This is one of those films that cannot be reviewed. Either you screw up the next viewer’s experience with spoilers, or you provide such sketchy details that the reader draws the wrong conclusions. Yes, there’s a ruthless corporation (anyone with any sense of irony whatsoever will see right through the movie’s opening, wherein we are treated to a Lunar Industries Limited commercial — aren’t they wonderful?<\/em>) and Kevin Spacey’s GERTY seems more than a little likely to win the AI Most Likely to Go Nuts Award, so isn’t this more of the same-old same-old?<\/p>\n

Um, no.<\/p>\n

Instead, this is a movie that confounds its viewers’ expectations, that provides a richness of detail that can keep people arguing for days (check out the discussion boards on IMDB — after you’ve seen the movie, of course), that packs a huge dramatic punch, and that tackles one of the big SF themes in a fresh and provocative way. There’s even a sly bit of social commentary here, snuck in on us with the film’s last line. It’s subtle and damn near everyone watching the movie will pass it off as a joke. And no, it’s not the oh so tired “Aren’t big corporations eeeeevil?” trope.<\/p>\n

Good stuff, my friends.<\/p>\n

D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quick: name five real science fiction movies. Real ones, not monster movies, nor pseudo-Westerns or pseudo-Samurai or pseudo-whatever with a thin overlay of SF . . . I’m talking a movie that could not exist without the science at its core, and moreover, a movie that focuses on the themes that SF deals with best.… Continue Reading Here’s one for your Netflix queue<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-the-movies","category-reviews","radius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4473"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4476,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4473\/revisions\/4476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}