weekend watchlist: when the ghosts won’t shut up
Plus sci-fi noir, sun-fueled madness, and more. (First published August 12th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Andrew Niccol
Anon movie review: brings a whole new meaning to ‘private eye’
This sci-fi riff on the end of privacy is not as provocative as it would like to be, and its mystery completely falls apart in the end. But its visual worldbuilding is fascinating.
War Dogs movie review: sob havoc over this gun fun run
A comedy only in the bleakest way, satire only in the sense that the whole world has become a parody of itself. Appalling and amusing in equal measure.
Good Kill movie review: American droner
There are important issues running through this, but the film forgets to be sufficiently engaging in the course of being Significant.
Stephenie Meyer has found a whole new way for teen girls to be conflicted about sex (The Host review)
Did Neo come to see that the Agents had the right way of things? Did Luke eventually realize that the Empire was a stabilizing force in the galaxy? But poor Melanie is suffering from the ultimate case of Stockholm Syndrome.
The Host (teaser trailer)
I’d like to think that Andrew Niccol will make Stephenie Meyer tolerable…
In Time (review)
I’m starting to worry that Andrew Niccol has already said, with Gattaca and The Truman Show, all he has to say.
In Time (trailer)
I’ve been waiting a long time for another Andrew Niccol movie that felt like Gattaca or The Truman Show…
Lord of War movie review: sympathy for the devil?
Funny? Sure, *Lord of War* is funny. Funny like how you’re not sure whether that headline is from Reuters or The Onion. Funny like how Jon Stewart has to insist that what he’s about to tell you really happened and is not the invention of his team of political wagsters. Satirical? Sure, *Lord of War* is satirical. Satirical like the front page of *The New York Times* is satirical. Satirical like how, at the end of Andrew Niccol’s black comedy about a relatively small-time freelance arms dealer, he tells us that the biggest arms dealers in the world are the nations that are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Gattaca movie review: and you thought political correctness was annoying
If Shakespeare was alive today and writing science fiction, he might come up with something like the distopian GATTACA. GATTACA is real SF, not to be confused with the likes of Armageddon — GATTACA uses the conceits of science fiction not as an excuse for some really cool explosions but to explore what it means to be human.
