Posted on 02/11/2014 3:21:29 PM PST by Usagi_yo
It's a cold day here in the South, snowing, raining and freezing. So it was a good day to curl up with my Basset Hound and watch some old sci-fi movies. They're dated, but still relevant for today's world.
Soylent Green. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
1973 movie set in 2022 with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson (his last appearance). The world is overpopulated, polluted, suffering from global warming, short on food and many people are homeless. Charlton Heston plays a detective trying to solve a murder case of an "Important" person. Important being code word for rich elite quasi government business man.
Rollerball. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073631/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
1975 movie set in 2018 with James Caan and John Houseman. The world has evolved into one big global corporate melange. Large global City/States sponsor Rollerball teams. Rollerball is introduced as an innocent seeming game with about as much violence as today's NFL football. James Caan is a player. A good, perhaps too good of a player. John Houseman plays a go between between the game and the corporation full intent on seeing Johnathan fail as an individual -- the slightly submerged theme of the movie.
On the Beach
1959 movie set in 1963 with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins. Gregory Peck is a commander of a U.S nuclear submarine who's looking for safe harborage some weeks/months after loosing her nuclear missles in a nuclear conflagration with USSR. They eventually find a safe port in Australia and meet some survivors.
All 3 fine movies to see again if you haven't and to definitely see them if you've never. Just keep the understanding that these movies are dated.
Love the original Rollerball, although I really want to find whatever ammo they were using in that Ruger MKII that blows up trees.
Soylent Green is a good one as well, but Eddie Robinson’s death scene gets me everytime. He died of cancer shortly after that movie, and Heston knew it was pretty much inevitable when they filmed that part.
ping
Another one that is worth watching
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Rollerball wasn’t my thing though a good movie but I LOVE LOVE the other 2.
May I suggest “The Bedford Incident”?
"Time...to die."
They may be dated as far as special effects and such, but Rollerbal and Soylent Green still have things that speak to today’s viewer. The only thing that is obsolete is the left wing belief that we will soon be overpopulated. Otherwise, Soylent Green hits Obamacare pretty well.
Good films, all three of them.
Another couple, sort of forgotten; “Colossus: The Forbin Project” and “The Relic”.
The problem with Ridley Scott movies is that you have to wait decades until his “very final of all finalest director’s cuts” comes out to know what he was originally trying to do.
That said, Bladerunner is my favorite sci-fi movie, and incredibly beautiful.
CCI mini mag HPs in the explosive version. I think you can get them at Cheaper Than Dirt.
Bladerunner used to be my #1 favorite SCI-FI film. Soylent green edges it out this week.
I still love “Forbidden Planet” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” as intelligent scripts done well. Of course, the real screen writer for “Forbidden Planet” was a old-time play write, W.Shakespeare!
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Loved it.
Oh, thanks a lot for reminding me of that movie. Now I've got Waltzing Matilda stuck in my head.
I have little doubt that “World Control” was the inspiration for James Cameron’s Skynet.
Blade Runner is an excellent pro life film. Just because a black robed lawyer says something isn’t human, and it’s legal to kill it, it doesn’t make it moral.
Soylent Green gets my vote. “Soylent Green-—is people!!” For just pure awesome factor at the time, though, on the big screen, nothing tops 2001, A Space Odyssey. It didn’t have the political themes in it, but it was spectacular on so many levels, for its time. “What.. are.. you.. doing...Dave?”
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