Tag: sci-fi

Gattaca (1997)

The movie Gattaca combines many things successfully. For one thing, visually, it is a retrostylized future with buildings, clothes, and cars designed to look like those of the past. For another, the society has several types of advanced technology: rocket science, embryology, DNA forensics, and electric cars, which, well, we have too, just not as good as theirs.

But do we want biotech as good as theirs? I mean, look what they did with it: Gattaca depicts a dystopia where people with unfavorable “in-valid” DNA sequences are consistently excluded from social and career opportunities.

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Project Hail Mary (2026)

I don’t think there was *anything* I didn’t like about Project Hail Mary.

It was a grand, beautiful, mysterious, high-stakes sci-fi adventure, with a lot of comedy and drama and symbolism. Really the best new movie I’ve seen in a long while. 100% recommend.

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

It’s a niche classic. A strange blend of a lot of things at once.

It’s sci-fi, it’s action, it’s horror; it’s hand-drawn and computer animation; it’s made in Japan but set in Hong Kong; it’s about evolution but upholds the idea of the soul; and it’s futuristic but looks and feels and sounds like the past.

I wish I liked it, but I don’t; I still think it’s clunky and weird. Here are some previous thoughts (because apparently this is my third blog post on this same movie, omg):

Watched in 2017 (around the time of the remake)

Watched in 2013

Minority Report (2002)

I like sci-fi movies, and I like Tom Cruise movies, but I don’t like this particular sci-fi Tom Cruise movie, which I just watched for perhaps the second or third time. It’s a murder mystery that thinks it’s sci-fi—a philosophical murder mystery with some annoying CGI and a dash of horror.

See below for more thoughts (no spoilers).

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Total Recall (2012) again

The sensibility of this version is different. Totally different. 😉

I like the overall feel of this version better than that of the 1990 movie, but the story is much, much worse. The conflict between the haves and the have-nots doesn’t hold up. The resolution is not one.

I’ve written about Total Recall (2012) before. Here’s what I have to say this time. Beware spoilers.

Continue reading Total Recall (2012) again

Total Recall (1990) again

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, the original Total Recall was one of the most expensive movies of its time, and like a lot of movies based on stories by Philip K. Dick, it has an interesting premise. It’s a classic of the sci-fi/action genre and its plot is a lot cleverer than that of the remake, but it’s still too bloody for my taste. Here’s what I wrote about it before.