My Favorite Movies

     These are my favorite movies. Some are thoughtful, some are emotional, and some are just plain fun. They are not listed in any particular order--I put 'em down as I think of them.

Blade Runner

     It is Los Angeles, 2019. Robot evolution has progressed to the Nexus 6 stage: Genetically enhanced bioandroids (Replicants) that are equal, if not superior in intelligence to the genetic designers that created them. After several bloody Replicant massacres on Off-World colonies, Replicants become illegal on Earth. Special policemen called Blade Runners are given the authority to destroy, upon detection, any trespassing Replicant.

     This was not called murder.

     It was called retirement.

     Blade Runner offered everything that a movie could--good special effects, an intricate and developed plotline, characters one could respect if not like, and even a moral. The story centers around Deckard, a retired Blade Runner who is called upon to find another batch of "skin jobs." His search takes him to the opulent complexes of the Tyrell Corporation all the way to the disintegrating "kipple" of the Bradbury hotel. Meanwhile, the Replicants led by Roy Baty fight their hardest for survival against not only the police but their own bodies--to keep them from having the chance to rebel, Tyrell not only implants memories but a four-year life span in his creations. The cast expands beyond the main characters to Tyrell, the egotistical genius; Rachel, his enigmatic secretary; and J.F. Sebastian, a lonely genetic designer.
     This movie brings up hopes, memories, thoughts, fate, everything. You are supposed to make up your own mind on the characters, and I like that.

Rashomon

     One of Akira Korusowa's masterpieces, Rashomon is almost a psychological study. A woman is raped by a bandit, who then kills her husband. Open and shut. However, this is seen (in combination testimony/flashback style) from the viewpoints of four different people: the bandit, the woman, the husband, and an uninvolved witness. It turns itself into a question on morality, hope, and the chances for humanity itself. Rashomon was the basis for the western The Outrage starring William Shatner.

Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)

     Stanley Kubrick's famous black comedy about nuclear war. Set in the 1950s, it chronicles the consequences when General Jack D. Ripper of Strategic Air Command orders his bombers to nuke the Soviet Union without Presidential approval by using a 'second strike' order. To the pilots, Washington has already been dusted so there is no need to question the validity of the order. It so turns out that if even one bomb hits Soviet soil that a "Doomsday Device" will kill all life on the surface of the Earth, as reported by a Soviet ambassador. The fate of the world rests on the unlikely shoulders of Captain Lionel Mandrake, an Royal Air Force liason captain; General Buck Turgidson (sporting a binder labeled "World Targets in Megadeaths"), a high-ranking war hawk Air Force general; President Muffley, a mousey President; and the ex-Nazi scientist himself, Dr. Strangelove. Irony plays a great part in this movie as well as the occasional cheap gags. This is where the classic 'riding the bomb' scene comes from.

2001: A Space Odyssey

     Arthur C. Clarke's literary and Stanley Kubrick's visual masterpiece. With its accurate depictions of space travel (silence in space, weightlessness, artificial gravity through rotation) 2001 is the flagship of the "hard science" genre of science-fiction films.
     A huge magnetic anomaly is detected in the Tycho crater on the Moon. An excavation project to determine the source unearths (unmoons?) a 2 - 2.5 meter tall jet-black Monolith which then screeches a radio signal to a point near Jupiter.
     The USS Discovery is the first manned mission to Jupiter. It is crewed by Dave Bowman, the commander, and Frank Poole, the pilot, who watch over several scientists sleeping in cryogenic hibernation. In charge of Discovery's vital systems is HAL 9000, an intelligent computer. HAL (and possibly the hibernating scientists) are the only ones who know Discovery's true mission to determine the destination of the Monolith's position.
     HAL, stuck in a position it wasn't programmed for (specifically, having to lie to Bowman and Poole), goes nuts. After creating a few 'problems' in the communication system, Poole and Bowman realizes that HAL is of its rocker and needs to be eliminated. HAL, fighting for his own existence, kills off the scientists.
     One EVA pod accident and one freeze-dried Poole later, Dave Bowman is all alone with a nutzoid computer and a gigantic Monolith a kilometer long between Jupiter and Io. It has not been a good six months.

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