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2011 sci fi roundup: the congress, limitless, I am number 4 by blackwater 03/15/2015, 10:12pm PDT I normally don't watch millenial movies because they are all shit. But I do like science fiction so I made a few exceptions recently. Here are a few recent science fiction movies I watched from 2011. THE CONGRESS: This is an adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's "The Futurological Congress" from the 1970s. I haven't read the book, so I went into this with no real expectations. The first part of the movie is following the plight of a washed-up old actress who is being asked to sell the rights to her likeness to software engieners who will then use it to create whatever computer-generated movies they want. It's a surprisingly intelligent take on the sitaution which (mostly) avoids depicting either side as mustache-twirling villains. And then... the movie gets weird. I can't really summarize what happens without totally spoiling it. But suffice it to say, a large part of the movie is animated and deals with the boundaries between fantasy and reality. I enjoyed the visuals and the creativity of this part a lot. But ultimately I wished that they could have followed up on the dilemma of the first part of the movie. What would ex-actors do in a world dominated by perfect CGI? How far can or should people own their own digital represenations? Phillip K. Dick could have written volumes on this. But the movie kind of passes it up to become something very different. And honestly the second part of the movie has a lot of plot holes. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but some of these are big enough to drive a truck through. Anyway, I would give it a thumbs-up. It's more worth seeing than any other 2011 movie I've heard of. LIMITLESS: This is Hollywood's take on so-called "smart drugs." If you don't know what smart drugs are, they are basically a bunch of substances that nerds on the internets think will make them smarter. Seriously. Things like Modafinil / Provigil or Armodafinil. The cool kids term for these are "nootropics." Do nootropics really work? A lot have been written about this, and I'm not going to tackle the issue here. My take on them is that they're at least a "better caffeine," promoting wakefulness without the collateral euphoric and dysphoric effects of traditional stimulants such as methamphetamine. But I have never taken them, so make of that what you will. ANYWAY. The movie is about a magical drug that can make you super smart and so on and so froth, and its effect on a loser wannabe writer in New York City. There's a lot of directions they could have gone with this. They could have done a "flowers for algernon" ripoff, or talked about the dangers of knowing too much, or playing God.... yeah, this movie had potential. So what did they do? They chose to go the "summer blockbuster" route by introducing some stereotypical Russian mobsters and one-dimensional wall-street moneymen to advance their shitty generic plot. The movie also treats intelligence as some kind of superpower that can magically save you from people chasing you (seriously!). Oh, and the pills take effect instantly. Oh, and a 100-pound woman can fight off a 250-pound Russian mobster using kickboxing. Oh, and... you know what, fuck this movie. So clearly the directory is a simpleton trying to write about smart folks and stuff. I wish could at least say that this movie had a "heart of gold" or some such phrase. But actually the tone is... really kind of off. A lot of innocent bystanders die and the main character doesn't seem to give much of a shit. Honestly, I'm left with the feeling that the protagonist is kind of an asshole and the movie is kind of an unsavory adolescent power fantasy. And it's the worst kind of unsavory fantasy, a self-serious, unironic one with no tits or ass. Thumbs down. I AM NUMBER FOUR. What can I say about this movie? It's a Teen Coming of Age Story with a few good action scenes, but a lot of unpleasant filler. This movie really dragged at 109 minutes. It might have dragged even at half of that. Are people contractually unable to make movies shorter than an hour an a half these days? If you are surprised by anything that happens in this movie, you probably had a frontal lobotomy. Negative.

2011 sci fi roundup: the congress, limitless, I am number 4 by blackwater 03/15/2015, 10:12pm PDT