This space lists suggestions of movies that make you think, from our members.We watch these movies and discuss them in specific workshops. If you can't attend the meetings you can join the discussion online here:
Gattaca
Sci-Fi |
Vincent (Ethan Hawke) dreams of becoming a space pilot, but in the world in which he lives only those people with prime genetic material can attain the top jobs. Determined to succeed, he makes a deal with the genetically-perfect Jerome (Jude Law) which will provide him with fresh daily samples of Jerome's urine, skin and hair, thus allowing him to fake his identity and find a place on the space program. The plan starts off working perfectly, but when one of the company's directors is murdered and Vincent becomes the main suspect, it can only be a matter of time before his secret is revealed.
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The Island
Thriller
Sci-Fi |
starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. Lincoln Six-Echo (McGregor) and Jordan Two-Delta (Johansson) are among hundreds of residents of a contained facility in the mid-21st century. Like all of the inhabitants of this carefully controlled environment, everything about their day-to-day lives is monitored, seemingly for their own good. The only way out is to be chosen to go to The Island, reportedly the last uncontaminated spot in the world. Recently plagued by unexplained nightmares, Lincoln is restless and increasingly questioning of the restrictions placed on his life. But he is unprepared for the truth when his growing curiosity leads to the terrible discovery that everything about his existence is a lie, that The Island is a cruel hoax, and that he, Jordan and everyone they know are actually more valuable dead than alive. |
Coma
Thriller
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Dr. Susan Wheeler suspects that someone is purposely murdering patients when healthy young people undergoing routine operations are slipping into irreversible comas. |
Idiocracy
Commedy
Sci-Fi |
In 2005, Private Joe Bowers (Wilson) is a soldier chosen to take part in a secret military scientific experiment in which he will be put into induced hibernation for one year, along with a woman named Rita (Maya Rudolph). Bowers is chosen for the assignment because he is statistically the most average man in the army, while Rita is a hooker ordered to do community service. Unfortunately, Bowers and Rita are forgotten about when the military base where the experiment took place is closed down, and when they wake up in the year 2505. Bowers finds himself living in a society where intelligence has taken such a landslide he's now the smartest man in the world. |
Thank you for smoking
Satire |
Satire based on the big tobacco industry and their constant struggle to remain in business despite the overwhelming evidence that they are killing people. A lobbyist and promo man for the big tobacco business (Aaron Eckhart) tries to promote smoking in any way imaginable - from product placement to sitting in on chat shows giving anti-spin to promote the dreaded coffin nails. His heightened public profile draws the attention of a reporter (Katie Holmes) and, when his life is threatened and his son starts asking more informed questions about what his dad does, he's forced to reconsider his moral stance. |
Bicenteneal Man
AI |
This film follows the life and times of an android named Andrew Martin (Robin Williams) who is purchased as a household robot programmed to perform menial tasks. In a story that spans two centuries, Andrew learns the intricacies of humanity while trying to stop those who created him from destroying him.
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Ex_machina
AI
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A chilling vision of the not-too-distant future of artificial intelligence.
In the mountain retreat of a gifted internet billionaire, a young man takes part in a strange experiment: testing an artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl. But the experiment twists into a dark psychological battle, where loyalties are torn between man and machine.Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac and Alici Vikander lead the cast of Ex_Machina, an intense psychological thriller, played out in a love triangle. The film explores big ideas about the nature of consciousness, emotion, sexuality, truth and lies. |
The Machine
AI |
With an impoverished world plunged into a Cold War with a new enemy, Britain s Ministry of Defense is on the brink of developing a game-changing weapon. Lead scientist Vincent McCarthy (Toby Stephens) provides the answer with his creation, The Machine - an android with unrivalled physical and processing skills. When a programming glitch causes an early prototype to destroy his lab, McCarthy enlists artificial intelligence expert Ava (Caity Lotz) to help him harness the full potential of a truly conscious fighting machine. |
I Robot
AI |
Special effects-laden sci-fi action thriller starring Will Smith, set in a near-future in which robots have become a vital component of human beings' everyday lives. Although the technology of the robots has become more and more advanced, they are all pre-programmed to always obey humans and under no circumstances to harm them. So when robot scientist Dr Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) is murdered and a humanoid robot is implicated, the authorities are extremely worried: if the robots can overcome the basic moral principle of their existence, what's to stop them taking over the world? Robot-hating Chicago Police Detective John Spooner (Smith) is assigned to investigate this alarming case... |
Blade runner
Sci-Fi |
When Ridley Scott's cut of Blade Runner was finally released in 1993, one had to wonder why the studio hadn't done it right the first time--11 years earlier. This version is so much better, mostly because of what's been eliminated (the ludicrous and redundant voice-over narration and the phoney happy ending) rather than what's been added (a bit more character development and a brief unicorn dream). Star Harrison Ford originally recorded the narration under duress at the insistence of Warner Bros. executives who thought the story needed further "explanation"; he later confessed that he thought if he did it badly they wouldn't use it. (Moral: never overestimate the taste of movie executives.)
The movie's spectacular futuristic vision of Los Angeles--a perpetually dark and rainy metropolis that's the nightmare antithesis of "Sunny Southern California"--is still its most seductive feature, another worldly atmosphere in which you can immerse yourself. The movie's shadowy visual style, along with its classic private-detective/murder-mystery plot line (with Ford on the trail of a murderous android, or "replicant"), makes Blade Runner one of the few science fiction pictures to legitimately claim a place in the film noir tradition. And, as in the best noir, the sleuth discovers a whole lot more (about himself and the people he encounters) than he anticipates. The cast also includes Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah Rutger Hauer and M Emmet Walsh. --Jim Emerson |
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
AI Sci-Fi |
Programming love into an android boy who is used to seeing dead people (Haley Joel Osment) sounds like a recipe for disaster. But this robot riff on Pinocchio is cram-packed with stuff to like--maybe too much. Gloomy genius Stanley Kubrick handed off the project to genial film savant Steven Spielberg because he was dissatisfied with the special effects in the '90s, but by the time Spielberg cranked this out in 2001, the state of the art had progressed mightily.
It's a futuristic fairy-tale detective story/domestic drama featuring one life lesson: When a droid can love, he can also die of a broken heart ... only to be frozen in a glacier and revived years later after the A.I.s have taken over for the now-extinct humans. Yeah, there's a lot going on. But it's hard to argue with any film that typecasts Jude Law as an android male prostitute. |
Her
AI |
A lonely writer who falls in love with a sentient operating system. Newly separated from his wife Catherine (Rooney Mara), Theodore works for a company that composes love letters for those who lack the creativity to pen their own. Growing more and more isolated from the outside world, his curiosity is piqued by a campaign advertising the latest artificially intelligent operating system. When he is first introduced to his new technological assistant Samantha (voice of Scarlett Johansson) he is surprised by her ever-growing emotionality and fresh way of looking at the world. As time passes, Theodore finds himself connecting with Samantha in ways he could never have imagined... The film was nominated for five Academy Awards and won for Best Original Screenplay (Jonze), for which it also received the Golden Globe. |
1989
Dystopian Sci-Fi
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In a holocaustic future world, perpetually at war, where failure to conform is the ultimate crime, Winston Smith (John Hurt) rewrites history books and finds himself dreaming of escape from the all-seeing eyes of the Authorities. He embarks on a passionate (and illegal) affair with a young woman (Suzanna Hamilton) but they are soon caught and Smith undergoes a nightmarish brainwashing at the hands of the chief inquisitor O'Brien (Richard Burton). |
The handmaid's tale
Dystopian Sci-Fi |
In a future America ruled by extreme Christian Fundamentalists, women have been stripped of their independence and are divided into classes; wives, aunts (spinster domestic workers) and handmaidens - the few women who have not been rendered sterile by pollution, who are placed with couples solely to bear children. Offred (Natasha Richardson) is one of these women, haunted by her past life and child. |
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Commedy Sci-Fi |
Sci-fi adventure based on the novel by Douglas Adams. Earthman Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) is having a very bad day. His house is about to be bulldozed, he discovers that his best friend is an alien and to top things off, Planet Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Arthur's only chance of survival is to hitch a ride on a passing spacecraft. For the novice space traveller, the greatest adventure in the universe begins when the world ends. Arthur sets out on a journey in which he finds that nothing is as it seems. He learns that a towel is the most useful thing in the universe, finds the meaning of life, and discovers that everything he needs to know can be found in one book: 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. |
Interstellar
Sci-Fi |
Sci-fi feature written and directed by Christopher Nolan, director of 'The Dark Knight' trilogy. On a resource-depleted Earth in the near future, the discovery of a wormhole which can transport users through time and space unites scientists and explorers in the most important mission in human history. Among the potential travellers is a widowed engineer (Matthew McConaughey) who must decide whether to remain with his two children or to test the limits of human space travel, to see if there is a future for humanity out among the stars or whether the end of the Earth spells the end for humanity. Academy Award-winner Hans Zimmer returns to partner Nolan and score the film. The cast members include Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine and Anne Hathaway. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards and won for Best Visual Effects. |
WarGames (I) and (II) |
Double bill of sci-fi films. In 'WarGames' (1983), David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) is a young computer whizz who hacks into what he believes is a new line of video games, little knowing that it is in fact NORAD, America's defence program. He inadvertently creates a hostile global situation, placing the world on the brink of nuclear war. Together with his girlfriend Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) and a misanthropic computer expert (John Wood), David must fight to prevent an atomic meltdown. In 'Wargames 2 - The Dead Code' (2008), Will Farmer (Matt Lanter) is a computer hacker who engages a goverment super-computer named RIPLEY in an online terrorist-attack simulation game. However, Will is unaware that RIPLEY is in fact a highly-classified government defence system and he has just become its next target. |
