Last year was a good year for futurist movies. Now that a film festival has allowed me to see “No Men Beyond This Point,” I’ve seen all 16 of the futurist movies I’ve detected.
This is what I thought of them, in inscrutable graphic form:
Briefly, these ratings capture:
- Futurism (blue) — how carefully was the future on screen constructed?
- Plausibility (green) — how plausible is that version of the future events it depicts?
- Storytelling (red) — how entertaining is it?
I judge these four the best:
- Advantageous — This film ponders how far we might go in transforming ourselves, in this case using neurological technologies. In the background is a future that is all the more alarming by seeming ordinary.
- Mad Max: Fury Road — A thoughtful vision of how a human society might evolve underlies this two-hour vehicle smash-em-up.
- Ex Machina — This movie is an extended rumination on what a real Turing test might look like.
- No Men Beyond This Point — Technically, this is an alternate present, but it amusingly and elaborately explores a post-male world.
Longer reviews of these movies’ futures are to come.
I’ll wan’t to see included or know the index for Interestelar (2014)