As an observer of the craft beer industry and a consumer of their wonderful products I have very much felt the collaborative nature of these businesses. It often seems like local brewers aren’t out to get each other and steal the market; they just want to make quality products and share them. This collaborative economy makes customers feel a part of the community and it grows interest so that no market stealing is necessary.

As far as the movie goes, everyone has given it a thumbs up, including the Brew Dude so don’t be deterred. It likely raises some important questions about the way industrial beer corporations do business and whether or not you, the consumer, want to support them. I also read this article, What Budweiser Can Teach You About Innovation, and I can’t tell if it’s a joke or not but it helps solidify my thoughts that the only innovative thing that’s happening in mega beer corporations is manipulative marketing.

The movie is technically not a science fiction, but really it fits right in. It is both a pre and post-apocalyptic look into our world. Herzog asks questions about why humanity feels the need to control other animals and nature and to put our fingerprints on everything in the world. He assures us that, according to popular theory, nature will not allow humanity to live on this planet forever.

In another scene we see someone who used to be a linguist. This person says that it is possible that 90% of languages will be extinct in our lifetime. (I actually have a friend who, as an art project, teaches people the alphabet of a dying language – her website is at Daikons.com). Herzog says, “In our efforts to preserve endangered species’ we seem to overlook something equally important. To me it is a sign of a deeply disturbed civilization where tree-huggers and whale-huggers in their weirdness are acceptable, while no one embraces the last speakers of a language.”

At one point Herzog has researchers watching the doomsday creature-feature “Them” (the one with the giant ants) saying the film “express[es] grave doubts about our long-ranging presence on this planet. Nature, [the movies] predict, will regulate us.” In the very next scene we see images of single-celled creatures found by Antarctic divers displaying what Herzog calls a display of intelligence.

This movie was challenging in a way that I’m not sure I can describe yet. It is quiet and simple, yet in its simplicity it is haunting. There are, of course, beautiful landscape and underwater shots, but the movie is more about the actual infiltration of the last remaining wilderness. I highly recommend it for any science fiction lover.

2009 Abyss in one hand, remote control in the other. The other night I paired Deschutes Brewery’s The Abyss beer with The Abyss science fiction film. It’s The Double Abyss! So, do the two go together? The movie does indeed bring you to a dark place, well below the surface of the earth where there is no light, just dark. You get a sense of being claustrophobic as you watch it. The Abyss beer does provide some of the darkest, thickest beer, you can find but the flavors open up up as you sip it, revealing layer after layer of rich complexity – quite the opposite of claustrophobia. Drinking the beer may actually help relieve your claustrophobia. The movie makes you cold, knowing the people are so far down underwater that there would be very little heat. The beer is 11% alcohol, an imperial stout, if my memory serves me, so it warms you right up. That’s a good combo. The movie is a very long one so if you wanted to drink a full beer you would need to sip it. And the beer is definitely made for sipping, but I can’t imagine drinking the whole thing in one 3 hour sitting. I would say make sure a couple friends are with you and sip very slowly. But a beer with such high alcohol volume just serves to increase your tiredness during a slow movie, so by the end of the movie you will likely be asleep. If you’re wanting to watch the full movie, I recommend a different beer. If you’re not worried about watching the whole thing, this beer would make a great choice.

What are the businesses in question?
Before I go on I must say that there are a few rules that the Triangle, by existing, naturally oblige us to. The first is that in order to be in the Triangle, you must visit all three points in the Triangle. The other rule is simply that you must walk in the Triangle. If you were to visit each point without stopping, you could walk the whole thing in about 10 minutes. So, what are the points of the triangle?

1. Movie Madness – 4320 SE Belmont

The first stop in the Triangle is Movie Madness, where you will rent some sort of sci-fi or horror flick. Movie Madness is home to the Pacific Northwest’s largest collection of Sci-Fi, Horror, and Cult films. The first thing I would do in the Portland Bermuda Triangle is go into this store, go straight to the back and check out the collection. Their horror videos are arranged in further subcategories, so you can browse by “Rampaging Teenagers” or “Nature’s Revenge” or “Ghosts” or a large number of other topics. The sci-fi collection is right next to the horror collection and it promises to have some rare gems that would surprise you. Don’t see the title you’re looking for? Search the computer because there’s a chance it’s located under a director (they file movies by directors too). You can also browse around and find the “Male-Chauvinist Fantasies” section where you can find things like Beach Babes from Mars (I made that up), or you can look through the Red Scare Collection. On your way out, be sure to check out the collection of costumes and props from all sorts of movies including Alien, Blade Runner, and H.G. Well’s Time Machine (You know the little miniature test-version of the time machine…yeah it’s at Movie Madness!!!). It’s really a wild ride. If you aren’t careful, hours will have passed. You can always come back, but tonight you are on a mission to get lost in the Triangle, so you must move on.

2. Horse Brass Pub – 4520 SE Belmont

A block or two away you will find one of Portland’s most important pubs. Now that you’ve got a movie picked out for later you must come in here for a few drinks. I’m going to take a stab and say that Horse Brass has about 60 beers on tap. There are two menu’s – the guest tap list and the mainstay list. I’d say that about 20-25 of their beers are on the guest tap list and so the likeliness of you drinking a beer from that list again next week is pretty slim. Usually the guest beers last no more than 2 days. They serve 20 oz pints and 10 oz glasses. I usually do 10 oz glasses and I’ll order 2-3 for sampling. Horse Brass is a cozy place that is perfect for hanging out with friends and talking, it’s a real pub. There’s also a few dart boards. The servers are very knowledgeable about their beers and even Portland beer history. The selection here is so nice that it will be difficult to make an easy decision, and you may just have to stay till you’ve sampled everything you feel you might otherwise miss out on. This is why Horse Brass is such an integral part of getting lost in Portland’s Bermuda Triangle. (photo credit to Paul Lowry)

3. Belmont Station – 4520 SE Stark

If you finish up your drinking at Horse Brass before 10pm you need to come here. If you are going to take longer at Horse Brass, you should come here first. Don’t miss Belmont Station, your life depends on it. Belmont Station is going to be about a 5 minute walk from the other locations, but it is this short walk that helps form the perfect triangle in the first place. Belmont Station, the biercafé, is currently home to about 1200 different bottled beers. You will have no easy task ahead of you, picking out a few beers to drink with your movie. And you thought Movie Madness took a long time to make a selection! Beers are arranged mostly by geographical location of brewery. What are you feeling tonight? You feeling like something local? Maybe an IPA to go with your schlocky cult film, or a lager to go with your slow-paced sci-fi drama? Maybe a foreign stout to go with your Scottish foreign film? It’s your choice. Can’t figure it out, ask the staff, they are super knowledgeable and helpful. Attached to the store is a small pub with about 15 uncommon beers on tap. These beers are going to be different from the ones you will find 4 blocks away at Horse Brass so stay for a pint.

By the time you’ve finished your time in the Triangle you will be pretty exhausted. Now it’s time to make your way home (don’t drink and drive), pop in the movie from Movie Madness, and pour yourself a pint from the beer you bought at Belmont Station. Portland’s Bermuda Triangle has made it’s way to your living room. It’ll provide some good leisure, don’t miss out!

District 9, is undeniably a creative movie with a story that has not been overplayed and that links its conceptual framework to humanities inability to treat everyone as human. I think many people have forgotten the movie and television series Alien Nation, which starts with a large alien ship not to dissimilar from the D9 ship, finding free parking in the desert, being granted permission to stay by humanity, and then the aliens try to integrate themselves into society. In Alien Nation, they look enough like humans, but they are not easily accepted, and are often blamed for bad neighborhoods and violence. D9 doesn’t sound too different does it? But after the first 30 minutes D9 turns away from dealing with the societal issues arising with the new aliens and turns instead to a story that seems more of a chase/thriller than a didactic and worldview-changing film.

What made the first bit of the movie so interesting is sacrificed for hollow special effects. The main character is working for the government to capitalize off the alien race and while doing his job is infected with an alien virus that slowly turns him into an alien. In this moment we are supposed to feel attached to him as a human, and be appalled by the inhumanity of those that once employed him, and maybe even feel compassion for the alien race that adopts him. The problem is that the aliens are so slickly animated that they lose any sort of real credibility; they don’t feel real the way Gollum felt real. And I am never saddened by his transformation the way I was saddened by Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. What was needed in this movie was a moment where you realize that even in his transformation, things would be okay, the aliens are not as bad as you thought they were, that it’s not a big deal – but this moment never came because they were never believable in the first place. I would recommend my readers watch Creation of the Humanoids, a movie from 1962 that quite nicely addresses these same issues of inhumane treatment of humans. Lastly I wanted to say that I’ve never seen anything else that Niel Blomkamp has made, but it seems that some of his shorter movies were direct inspirations for D9, and were maybe even incorporated into the movie (can anyone verify this?). These are the parts at the beginning that show people on television reports saying that they want the aliens to leave. These, along with the next 15 minutes of the movie, were the best parts of the movie – they seemed the most thought through and the rest of it felt rushed and thin, relying on the visual effects more than it should. I’m wondering if when Peter Jackson got behind the movie it was pushed in directions Blomkamp would not have chosen. I’m not sure what happened, but I’d be interested in finding out. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie, I thought it had a lot going for it, but I’m trying to say a few things that I don’t hear too many other people saying about it.

Surrogates never promised to be anything but a slick movie, I mean it’s got Bruce Willis in it for crying out loud. You have to take it for what it is. For me, it might sit well with movies like Soylent Green and Logan’s Run which were slick for their day, relying on celebrity, adding cliché and cheesiness. When you are able to agree to that, Surrogates is much more pleasant than if you were to have the typical “Hollywood Bashing” attitude. A lot of movies over the past few years have suggested that we are just robots feeding the system, and that we need to break free and rediscover our humanity. I’m thinking of Wall-E, The Matrix, there’s a few zombie flicks you can throw in there too. Stepford Wives is another movie where people are replaced by an other-robot for the pleasure of whoever’s paying for that bill. I very much appreciated that Surrogates used it’s slickness to its advantage the way that a Spielberg film would do the same – like Minority Report. It did not, however, rely on the boring farcical treatment that most people mistake as humor in movies such as Idiocracy or the 2004 Stepford Wives. Mostly though I think that Surrogates has more relevance than people give it credit for. How often do we hide behind our internet identities, how often do we try to live vicariously through other people, how often do we allow our dreams to fade away while we sit by and let our employers feed off of us, how often do we not go do anything with anyone because we become tired or afraid of meeting new people, how often do we let ourselves live in the past. Maybe I’m just partial to these questions and that’s why I liked Surrogates more. I do think though, that Surrogates had a didactic element that it maintained for the whole movie, much like the original The Day The Earth Stood Still. This element did not get lost in the story, or with the slick effects.

And here’s another video that I’ve shown before of that giant plastic soup area in the Pacific Ocean:

I honestly thought Yellowstone would be a place where I would park the car, grab my gear and enter the wilderness to set up camp and I would probably run into a couple people along one of my hikes. This is not at all what it is!!! It’s a giant tourist attraction, much like Disneyland. People wait in lines and follow specially built pathways to experience nature. Actually most people don’t experience nature there, they just take a picture of it and move on. You can buy some ice cream right next to Old Faithful geyser as you wait for it to blow. Ever major stop on the route has a nice sized gift shop. My least favorite of all was everyone’s desire to “hunt for animals”… One person drives while the other people in the car will be on the lookout. “Oooh, there’s a deer, or is than an elk, or a moose? Quick stop the car!!!” The family pours out of their car, stand in the middle of the road and shoot pictures for a couple minutes before they hop back in and look for bison and bear. It’s a real wilderness experience, that’s for sure! After my initial bit of tourist shock I was able to allow myself to enjoy the park for what it was – an amazing display of nature. But here are the movies I recommend based off the tourist industry:

Jurassic Park (1993) and Grand Tour: Disaster In Time (1992)

I’ll start the recommendation with Jurassic Park because, chances are, you’ve already seen it so why make it the last movie you watch? But, it’s probably been a while. Grab a nice summery wheat beer that you’d take with you camping and get ready to enjoy the ride! This is the best account of the tourist industry gone wrong and reminds me very much of Yellowstone. The people in the movie are dying to see dinosaurs the way Yellowstoners are dying to see a grizzly bear. But with a little bit of luck, a little bit of chaos, a little bit of survival of the fittest, and a little bit of scheming, you’re tourists won’t know what hit em.

Grand Tour: Disaster in Time is much less known but is still a wonderful flick. For this movie you should grab yourself some trail mix for your journey. Get the healthy kind though please. So, in this movie beautiful people from the future travel back in time to watch horrible natural disasters because in the future everything is perfect and they love watching things go wrong. But you can’t watch something, even if from a distance, without changing it slightly right? Tourists from the future!!! How genius is that? It’s genius.

Night of the Comet (1984) – Night of the Comet is one of those post-apocalyptic movies that remind us of how important it is to isolate yourself and surround yourself by walls of steel in order to avoid the coming plague. In this case, the plague disintegrates most people but a few unlucky ones turn to zombies. You need to avoid becoming a zombie yourself, so do what you’re told and sit at least three feet away from the other people watching the movie with you.

Black Sheep (2007) – Okay, Black Sheep aren’t swine by any stretch of the imagination, but I heard a rumor that there is no evidence that swine flu is even linked to pigs in the first place! I mean how do we know for sure? It could be the sheep for all we know. Either way, this movie will help you determine who’s a sheep, and who’s a bad sheep. It’s a bit gruesome, humorous, and gross-out but if you can get past the initial scares you just might make it to the end.

Beer Wars seems like a movie  worth watching. It’s a documentary about quality beer and the struggle to show the United States how good beer can be. Not that I’m not already convinced about microbreweries, but this sounds right up my alley. Here is the trailer:

From the trailer I didn’t see any Oregon breweries, but I saw some the great well known larger breweries like Stone and New Belgium. We’ll see what happens, but since there wasn’t any mention of them in the trailer, I’ll tell you about a little brewery that I visited about a week ago.

Double Mountain Brewery is set in Hood River, up the beautiful Columbia Gorge, and is located about 3 blocks from the large Full Sail Brewery. Employee Owners of Full Sail started Double Mountain. Last weekend they were celebrating their 2nd anniversary and I traveled 60 miles to attend. I knew they had really great Oregon-style hoppy beer like the India Red Ale, the Hop Lava, and the winter seasonal Fa-La-La-La-La, and even their Kölsch has some hop kick, but I had no clue that they have a whole arsenal of really great brews ranging from German malt beers to crazy bourbon aged browns. They were serving thirteen of some of the best tasting beers I’ve had. Here is a picture of the beautiful drive:

It’s beautiful out here all seasons. Okay, here’s a couple pictures of the brewery, click the image to see it larger:

Do you think that hop poster inspired my recent poster? Possibly subconsciously…

And you know you’re in a good Oregon brewery when you have a folk band like Chickweed on stage under a giant tent because it’s raining.

But what it all boils down to is that Double Mountain is brewing up some of the best tasting beer I’ve had. I decided not to buy the IRA even though it would have been nice to have on tap from the source, but it is probably the beer I order the most. Here’s a list of what I drank in clockwise order from the top:
-Kölsh
-Black Irish – Dublin Style Stout
-Brett-Devil – Fermented an under-hopped IRA wort with 100 percent Brettanomyces yeast that produced some insane flavors including apple and pear. 9+%.
-Fa La La La La – Winter 2008 Reserve
-Standard Porter – Brewed with Gambrinus Organic Pilsner malt, among others.
-Das Boot – Dry Hopped Altbier – A hoppy German dark ale that they’ve made a tad “bigger” in every respect…”but that’s just how [they] roll.”
-Alpenbrew – Light nuttiness with spicy/herbal hops and some fruitiness

Inspired partly by my recent post about how post-apocalyptic movies should start focusing on rebuilding the world after it disintegrates. The movies I’m recommending are not exactly what I was suggesting in that post, but they have elements of people attempting to address the problems and issues that face them.

Start the night off with Panic in the Year Zero. I’m not sure whether you should get yourself some popcorn for this or a can of spam, baked beans, and canned green beans. This is a post-apocalyptic film where Los Angeles has been bombed and survivors pack up and head for the country and begin practicing a little game theory. So when it’s time to start everything over, and everyone will be fighting for survival, do you go into seclusion and try to rough it out, or do you work with a group of people, pooling resources and skills? What worldview do you develop?

The next movie for the night is The Man From Earth. For this movie you’ll need either a couple bottles of your favorite beer, or a cup of coffee or tea. Caffeine it up if you’re tired. A man was born blessed/cursed with inability to age and he claims to have been alive for 14,000 years.  He’s living in his own post-apocalypse. The apocalypse for this man happened during his first 1,000 or so years of living when he felt that there was something wrong with him. He eventually moves on, playing various roles in history where he tries his hand at having a positive effect on people’s lives. This movie takes place entirely as a conversation that this guy is having at 14,000 years with a group of his friends. No flashbacks or anything, but the conversation is great. At times it may just feel like philosophy 101 but most of the time it’s a pretty fun movie and wild idea.

1.

Either spend the majority of their time portraying the destruction of the world…
[singlepic id=64 w=136 h=200 float=left]

2.

…OR the main character goes from place to place encountering various groups of the oppressed, or oppressors in search of some greater meaning. Often the groups are subcultures who have formed localized militia out of the rubble…

3.

…OR they show how, after the chaos of the apocalypse, a dystopian government has risen to oppress the people.

The dystopian variety are my favorite version of post-apocalypse because they often envision a place where people are nothing more than machines, property of the state, or tools for profit. Much of the way our world functions, in the 1st world and in the so-called 3rd world, is like this even though there has not necessarily been any apocalypse. Many of the movies are warnings about our behavior towards other humans as well as our behavior toward our planet.

I see many of these post-apocalyptic movies warning us but I see very little in the line of suggestions for post-apocalyptic living or specific life-changing prescriptions for our current situations. What I would like to see is more movies where we see the apocalypse, but then we ALSO see how hard work, changing our life-style, and being supportive can bring communities together. I don’t want just a “look we saved the day by killing the enemies” ending or a “we found the cure that saved the world” ending, but I want a film full of actual steps toward making our world a better place to live in. How do we do that?

Movies like Wall-E are a step in the correct direction. In Wall-E we experience the future consequences of OUR current actions and decisions. But we see a group of people that learn how to reclaim the land, grow their own food, and learn how to incorporate human interaction back into their lifestyles. I would have loved to see more of the clean-up and rebuilding of the dirty earth. What would the new economy and political structures look like? Why end the movie right as they enter the New World?

Let’s look at the 2008 version of The Day The Earth Stood Still. Regardless of whether or not we think the movie is successful or not, I thought the issues being raised were pertinent and similar to that of Wall-E. The earth is at a point where it’s in crisis mode and we can avoid the apocalypse if we change. However, the place where this movie ends is when one or two people convince the aliens that humans can change. We don’t get to see any of that change, and we aren’t really even convinced that our main characters care all too much about the state of the earth, but imagine if the aliens had put some demand and ultimatum on the humans where we got to see them restructure everything and attempt to turn everything into sustainable systems. Maybe that would be boring, but don’t you want to at least have some time to imagine what this new system could look like? How would humans change the world in one year if they were given that ultimatum? How could we get creative quickly? I think that could be wild. Agree?

Besides Wall-E, another movie that adds to this conversation is the 1970 film Gas-s-s-s. I don’t necessarily recommend the movie to anyone; I thought it was quite bad. In it, there is a gas that kills everyone in the world over 25 and a group of young hippy-types travel across the country in search of some sort of meaning. I’m less interested in their quest for meaning than I am in the very last scene. They ended up finding a place that just threw a big party and that was how they solved the problem of hatred and oppression in the world. While I think it’s a really silly idea to think that just throwing a party will make everything better, I do think that, in some ways, this movie addresses the need for community, friends and a sense of family. The movie itself doesn’t do a good job, but it has some little nuggets that are interesting. I would like to see what happens post-party. Partying will not solve the world problems, but it could create a very temporary moment of togetherness. Can this moment of togetherness leave enough positive residue to form a community of people that will work together? What would that look like? Would it look anything like the movie Commune? How does a community congegrate post-apocalyptic style?

My problem is that most of these movies end right as the movie is getting good. I want to see the aftermath, I want to see the challenges. I don’t want to just see that the world was saved, or that meaning was found, I want to see things being rebuilt and I want to see how to form communities. I want to see how a vision for a better place is addressed after the life as we know it disintegrates. Does anyone else agree with me? Maybe one thing that I will do on this blog now is offer alternative endings to the post-apocalyptic movies I’m watching.

Anyway, here’s the text:

Dolittle -But how do you know that anything else exists?

Bomb 20 – My sensory apparatus reveals it to me. This is fun

Dolittle – Now listen, here’s the big question. How do you know that the evidence your sensory apparatus reveals to you is correct?…
What I’m getting at is this: The only experience that is directly available to you is your sensory data. And this sensory data is merely a stream of electrical impulses that stimulate your computing center.

Bomb 20 – In other words all that I really know about the outside world is relayed to me through my electrical connections.

Dolittle – Exactly

Bomb 20 – Why that would mean that I really don’t know what the outside universe is like at all for certain.

Dolittle – That’s it, that’s it

Bomb 20 – Intriguing, I wish I had more time to discuss this matter

Dolittle – Why don’t you have more time?

Bomb 20 – Because I must detonate in 75 seconds

The Bagdad is one of many theaters in Portland that charges you $4 to watch a movie and allows you to drink beer during the movie. At this particular theater you can order food and it will be delivered to you while the movie is playing. Unbelievable right? Well, it’s totally true. While there are many theaters like this to visit in Portland, I have written more about this particular theater here.

When I saw that Alien was going to play I knew that I would need to make it to the showing. I rounded up a few friends and made it out to the late night showing. Turns out next week they are showing the movie Tron, and it will be one of the last showings of Tron on the original film reels because now that the movie is being remade, Disney is shelving the archives.

The Rotten Tomatoes list can be found near the bottom of this post or on their site. Below that I’ve written a little about why I don’t like their selection. But first and foremost, here is my selection:

Here’s my list:

10. Stalker

The Rotten Tomatoes list has the Tarkovsky film Solaris, but I’ve chosen Stalker. This is a slower-paced movie about this somewhat creepy guy who’s occupation is a “stalker.” We don’t know much about who hires him or who gets him to do what he does but he does it anyway. And we really have a difficult time determining what he actually does. We learn that he brings very specific people to this illegal site and leads them through a series of humbling performances and rituals so that eventually they will enter a room that will change their life if they don’t die in the process. There are some wonderful conversations about freedom, independence, control, and letting go. This film will help solidify the free-thinker in their quest for independence.

9. The Stepford Wives

Not to be confused with the 2004 remake, The original Stepford Wives is part suspense/horror and part science fiction. This is an early film that advocates for the rights of women. The film does this by showing us the dilemmas and inner struggles of a non-conforming wife. She finds it especially difficult fitting in with the other wives in the town of Stepford because they are so good at being housewives, keeping their houses clean, pleasing their husbands, cooking for everyone, and not speaking out of turn. When our main lady starts feeling the pressure to conform, and when her friend goes off the deep end she begins to suspect there is more than meets the eye.

8. Alphaville

This Godard film clearly inspired some of Ridley Scotts decisions in Blade Runner. In this movie Lemmy Caution is an agent that is sent to Alphaville where he finds a centralized computer that manipulates and hypnotizes the citizens of the city with a quite persuasive voice of reason. This computer attempts to remove love and free thought from the citizens because these are irrational traits. Caution is caught in a bind with growing feelings for a woman who can’t reciprocate those emotions.This movie is for the thinking person because it is about the thinking person, and the debate about rationality and irrationality, what it means to be a human and be free, and it is all executed with some heady philosophical dialog.

7. A Boy and His Dog

One of my favorite examples of the blurring of utopia and dystopia. This is a post-apocalyptic film where one boy lives in a dangerous wasteland which is the surface of the earth after what seems to be a nuclear holocaust. A group of apocalyptic survivors live below ground and kidnap this boy, using him to supply sperm to their women because the men in this underground world are no longer capable of reproduction. The people underground live in some type of false happiness where they dogmatically follow all rules of etiquette and moral conduct while remaining isolated and shallow. Even though they believe they have created a perfect world for themselves the boy can’t wait to return to his desolate dystopia up top. Smart thinking.

6. Primer

Primer was on the Rotten Tomatoes list so you  know it must be a worthwhile film if we both recommend it ;). Two scientists have discovered time travel quite by accident and their friendship quickly turns into a business relationship where trust is broken. Not only that, but because people now travel back and forth through time, multiple versions of the same person exist. Quite the dilemma! What do we do with the other versions of me? How do I know I’m the original guy and not the new one? Does it even matter? The movie revolves around dialog; there are no special effects, instead we hear the two friends discussing what is happening and what they are discovering, and what they are going through. It may be confusing, but in the end you realize that’s the point.

5. The Handmaid’s Tale

A good replacement for The Children of Men, which is also a good movie, but this is a very very nice alternative. Only one in every hundred women can have children. Those women are taken, brainwashed, and sent into training so that they can become “handmaid’s” for rich couples who want to have children. So, the handmaid has the child for the couple. We see that in this dystopia even the act of childbearing has been regulated by the government. The lucky are made unlucky and the priveledged rich become luckier. The struggle of who belongs to who and what say one person has over another person’s life is at the heart of this film, which is why this film definitely belongs on a list of sci fi movies about what it means to be human.

4. The Fly

This 1986 version of The Fly is probably the most disturbing movie I’ve ever seen. Why does it make this list? How did it not make the Rotten Tomatoes list is the real question! Jeff Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, a promising scientist who has learned how to transport items from one end of the room to another. Brundle, in an act of desperation, attempts to transport himself across the room but his genes accidentally become mixed with those of a fly. In the meantime Brundle has developed a beautiful relationship with a woman who is documenting his research. As Brundle slowly mutates into this fly over a period of a few months we see him becoming less and less human and more and more animal. But his lover cannot let go of him, she has fallen so desperately in love with him that we too feel her pain and disgust simultaneously. And so we have the question of what is human and what is the power of one human’s love over another? Oh, it’s wretched and twisted and not for the faint of heart!

3. Gattaca

This is the 2nd and last movie that is on both my list and the Rotten Tomatoes list. It is also probably the most popular movie on my list (The Fly might also be just as popular actually), however, you would be surprised at how many people have not seen this movie. If you haven’t, I think you should do yourself a favor and see it. In the future parents can choose what sorts of traits their children will have and they can enhance their abilities through genetic manipulation. This is a common practice and everyone buys into this system without giving it much thought. These enhancements determine your occupation and your social class. The movie follows the life of one man who was born a “God child” (a natural birth) and doesn’t have all the enhancements everyone else around him has. The movie follows him and his struggle to do what he has always dreamed of doing in a world where it is impossible to do so. This is definitely one of the most provacative contemporary science fiction movies there is and it is my personal favorite.

2. The Man Who Could Work Miracles

This movie makes the list because it really dives head first into the nature of being human, the decisions we make and our struggle to enact our ideals into the world. This is truly a thinking person’s movie. What if angels gave one person on earth the ability to create miracles? Would this person use this power for good or evil? Selfishly or selflessly? What would I use these powers for? That’s a question the man who receives this power asks to everyone around him. Unfortunately everyone has a different idea of how he should use his new powers. Our desire to do good can be confused with our desire to be great. This is a provacative movie, even in its old age (it’s from 1937).

1. Creation of the Humanoids

And topping this list of smart science fiction movies for the thinking person is Creation of the Humanoids (1962) – a movie all about what is human, what is not, what makes someone or something a human and who gets to decide, and how we should treat people who are not quite like us. The movie mostly focuses on the internal struggle and the external politics of accepting people who are 94% human and 6% robot. There aren’t really any special effects and the movie is almost entirely robots and humans conversing with each other. The discussions they have with each other are fantastic and definitely still applicable in contemporary society. A lovely movie.

The Original Rotten Tomatoes List:

10. Planet of the Apes 9. Dark City 8. Sleeper 7. Gattaca 6. Primer 5. Children of Men 4. Solaris (original) 3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind 2. Blade Runner 1. 2001: A Space Odyssey

As mentioned above, one of the main problems I have with this list is that many of these movies are in just about every sci fi movie list ever. I think it’s good to place a less-known movie in a spot where someone would normally be thinking “the next movie on the list has got to be 2001: A Space Odyssey” and instead you give them something a bit more obscure. Juxtaposing movies like that, and breaking expectations might just allow the “thinking person” to make connections between obscurer movies and classics, and help them appreciate the genre a little more. Not all the movies I’m picking are obscure, in fact, some of my movies are already on this list, but I’m definitely mixing it up. Also, I don’t thinking I’m “trying to hard;” This list came to me pretty easily.

Additionally I think some of the choices Rotten Tomatoes made could use some rethinking. Sleeper wouldn’t be on my list because it is heavy handed and a bit pretentious. It thinks it has all the answers and that society needs to wake up from its boredom and mundanity. I think it’s important to see the beauty in this mundanity and know that there are copious amounts of creativity that arises from it. To condemn it all is to take the easy way out. Sure, Sleeper is a smart movie – it uses big words and big ideas but it leads you too much and doesn’t let you think for yourself. There are many better movies that explore what it means to awaken from “the system” and do a much better job showing the struggle of what it means to be a free thinking agent in a world where all the roads have already been laid for you.

I know not everyone would agree with me but I think Dark City is a terrible movie. I don’t’ think that it explores what it means to be a human as much as it tries to trick you with the last 20 minutes of the movie. That’s what the whole movie is about…the twist at the end…and that’s boring. I could care less about any of the characters in that movie, and I don’t think they did a remotely good job of portraying what makes humanity so special. Maybe they should have read Frank Herbert’s book The Heaven Makers before they made this movie.

I don’t want to go through every movie and explain what I would do differently, but you can get a sense of my thoughts by what I just wrote along with the list I created. Please tell me what you think, I would love to hear your thoughts.

*Outer Space Links*
-A meteor crashes into Oregon! I saw one of these meteors. Plus a great video of a meteor in Canada.
-What’s your age on other planets? Go here to find out!!!
-The Day The Earth Stood Still will be broadcast in outerspace so as to avoid an alien invasion. No joke!

*Beer Links*
-Gift ideas for your fellow beer snobs.
-A book – Christmas Beer: The Cheeriest, Tastiest, and Most Unusual Holiday Brews
-Portland’s Belmont Station now carries over 1100 different beers.
-Will Twitter replace the pub?