skjam

984: Prisoner of the Future (1982) dir. Tibor Takacs

It is the indefinite near future, and 984 is a prisoner...somewhere. Previously, he'd been Tom Weston (Stephen Markle), a slightly smarmy corporate executive. It's not clear what his corporation did, as the flashbacks are maddeningly vague, but they were somehow either involved with or opposed to the rise of the Movement. 984 is accused of actions against the Movement, or perhaps merely hanging out with people who took actions against the Movement. The Warden (Don Francks) has been interrogating him off and on for years, but 984 claims he's innocent or at least unaware of what his crime may have been.

This 1982 TV movie takes inspiration from 1984 (the cell block #984 is imprisoned in is #19 just in case you needed another hint) and Kafka's The Trial. And the ending twists from perhaps another source. While you can grasp the generalities of the backstory, it's never quite clear what Dr. Fontaine (Andrew Foot), the leader of the Movement, has as his actual plan beyond overthrowing the old order. Some of the prisoners are corporate types like Weston, but not all of them.

As the story wears on, what exactly the Warden wants remains unclear. Is he looking for the truth, as he claims? Trying to break 984's spirit once and for all? Or is he just desperate to pass the time, as much trapped in the prison as 984 is?

This movie really does show its low budget, clearly having 90% of the scenes shot in one big building. There's an odd computer monitor and some "futuristic" costume choices, but the main science fiction element is that the prison uses robotic hall guards, and they're not particularly effective once confronted.

Content note: Some torture, at least one prisoner dies and we see the corpse. There's a woman described as Weston's "mistress" but in the flashbacks he doesn't seem invested in the relationship, and 984 only ever mentions his wife. Weston gets a little violent during an escape attempt towards the end, but only a robot is harmed.

This is one of those painfully slow, deliberately obscure movies that might have been "arty" with a bit more care put into all its aspects, but as is, is a time-waster that's not even good for bad movie night.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) dir. Steven Spielberg

Elliott (Henry Thomas) is a middle child. He's old enough to want to participate in his teen brother Michael's (Robert MacNaughton) Dungeons and Dragons game, but not old enough to be welcome there. He thinks of his little sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) as babyish, and hasn't noticed yet how smart she is. The kids quarrel a lot, exasperating their separated mother Mary (Dee Wallace). But Elliott is about to become one of the most important little boys on Earth. An alien has been stranded near their Northern California suburb, and Elliott is the key to saving this extra-terrestrial.

Somehow, I had just never gotten around to seeing this much-beloved movie during the year it ran in theaters or on TV or home video. My knowledge of it was all from pop culture references and ripoffs. So it's nice that I was randomly challenged to finally give it a watch.

E.T., as it will come to be known, is a member of a group of peaceful explorers who were examining an Earth forest when the ship was forced to take off before meddling humans could get to close. In the excitement, E.T. was left behind, and evidently the aliens do not possess a way to return to the same coordinates. E.T. senses a kindred spirit in the nearby town, and slowly reveals itself to the shocked pre-teen.

Elliott is forced to admit the existence of the alien to his siblings--despite their own tensions, they quickly bond over protecting the visitor. They try to hide E.T. from their mother, though Gertie tries the other approach and Mary completely misses what's going on due to her own pressing concerns. Meanwhile, shadowy figures infiltrate the neighborhood, led by the mysterious Keys (Peter Coyote).

E.T. has seemingly miraculous powers, but separation from its people is slowly killing it. The kids need to help it "phone home." Fortuitously, Halloween has arrived, making it easier for weird creatures to go out on the street, but will it be too late?

Good: Neat special effects, excellent music, some lovely shots. Keeping the government agents shadowy and a bit sinister until the last third of the movie works well. I also like that said agents turn out to be well-meaning, if overbearing and not willing to listen closely enough to the children.

Oh, and one of the first D&D scenes in media and mostly positive!

Less good: I found my attention wandering during the early "cute kid" scenes. Elliott seems a little too invested in E.T. being "a boy" (officially, its species does not have gender as we understand it.)

Content note: Some naughty language from children. E.T. comes close to dying and Elliott suffers with him. Younger children should have a grownup for support during darker moments.

I think I missed the window to consider this a really great movie, but it is pretty good and suitable for families to watch together (if your family is okay with "penis-breath" as dialogue.)

Knowing (2009) dir. Alex Proyas

The time is 2009. MIT astrophysics professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) is trying to raise his son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), who has an auditory processing disorder that his hearing aid helps with, after the tragic death of his wife the previous year. As a result of his grief, John has adopted a nihilistic viewpoint that the universe is entirely random, and nothing has an actual purpose outside itself. (As a good teacher, he's quick to point out that this is his philosophical viewpoint, and not an objective fact.) This has caused him to become estranged from his preacher father (Alan Hopgood) and barely on speaking terms with his sister Grace (Nadia Townsend). His colleague from the Cosmology department Phil Beckman (Ben Mendelsohn) is trying to hook John up with an attractive acquaintance of theirs, but John's become something of a helicopter parent to Caleb and keeps canceling.

As it happens, Caleb's school, William Dawes Elementary, is having its fiftieth anniversary. At a ceremony honoring this, a time capsule with students' drawings from 1959 imagining the far future year of 2009 ia unearthed. Caleb is given the envelope containing the entry of Lucinda (Lara Robinson), who printed out a sequence of apparently random numbers. This is baffling, but later that evening, a seeming coincidence causes John to realize that it's actually the dates and fatality lists of various disasters that were in the future at the time the list was created. (Later on, seemingly "junk" numbers turn out to be location markers.) The numbers are too exact to be random, and three of the dates are still in the future.

Now John must find some way of proving the list is genuine, and attempt to stop the coming disasters! This is not helped by the mysterious Whisper Man (D.G. Maloney) who keeps approaching Caleb, or that Lucinda has since died, and her long-suffering daughter Diana (Rose Byrne) doesn't want to open that wound, despite her daughter Abby (Lara Robinson) making a quick connection with Caleb.

This science fiction disaster movie is haunted by 9/11, which is specifically called out. Not so much because of the terrorism thing, but because American culture was still trying to process what it "meant"; something that would have happened anyway, or something that could have been prevented if only the right people had known?

Good: Some awesome disaster scenes. Especially the first two disasters go the extra mile. Lara Robison is quite good in her double role. Nicolas Cage as always does a good job of seeming unhinged enough that he's undercutting his own attempts at convincing people. The scene with elderly teacher Miss Taylor (Alethea McGrath) is effective.

Less good: Since the universe is deterministic in this story, all of John's actions are ultimately pointless, as is the prophetic set of numbers. Nothing can be changed, the future is set in stone, and John just as well could have stayed home and slept through the events without that being an issue. (Except that he can't because his actions are also predetermined.) The Whisper Men's plans also make near zero sense, but apparently they are (despite knowing the future) trapped into doing exactly the things they end up doing. This makes the movie bleak and miserable. Some viewers may question why they spent two hours of their life on this story.

Content note: People and animals burn to death. Other gory deaths. Children in peril. John has a bit of a drinking problem, though he is easily able to stop drinking alcohol once there's something more important to do.

It's certainly an interesting movie, and I would recommend it to people who are okay with bleakness.

Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe (1990) dir. Damian Lee

Sonia Murray (Marjorie Bransfield) has lived all her life in the small town of Thornbury in Canada. About six years ago, she was assaulted and impregnated by a foreign criminal who'd entered the country illegally. The criminal was almost immediately captured and hauled away by the foreign law enforcement officer who'd been in hot pursuit. Shortly thereafter, Sonia gave birth to a son, Thomas D. Murray (Francis Mitchell). Despite the stigma of being a single mother whose child had no visible father (Sonia hadn't even gotten his name), she's done okay for herself and Tommy, running a health food store. But now the criminal is back in town, and wants to take away her child.

The criminal in question is Secundus (Sven Ole-Thorsen), a former member of the galactic Finder organization who went rogue when he discovered a path to the "Anti-Life Equation" (shout out to Jack Kirby) that will allow him to become completely immortal and omnipotent. This involves mixing his genetic material with a fertile female of certain humanoid races (such as Earth humans) to create a "Komate", a child with telekinetic abilities and enough brainpower to calculate the Anti-Life Equation without discorporating.

Pursuing Secundus is his old partner Abraxas (Jesse "the Governor" Ventura), an eleven-thousand-year-old Finder who we first see having his skin toughened by what looks like electrical torture. His job is made more difficult because by ancient law Secundus cannot be executed, even while resisting arrest, and Abraxas refuses to kill innocents like Sonia or Tommy to remove Secundus' victory conditions. Abraxas must find a way of protecting the two Earthlings while also thwarting Secundus' plans.

A number of professional wrestlers have managed to move into full-time acting careers. Jesse Ventura didn't quite make it, but did have a number of memorable movie appearances, including this Canadian science fiction action flick. He's okay in this role, but the emotionally restrained Abraxas does not allow him to use some of his better emoting skills. Good thing he had politics to fall back on!

Typical for low-budget efforts, this movie tries to have as little "science fiction" as it can get away with. One of the two Finder dispatchers mentions that while humans are no great shakes intellectually, Earth technology isn't that far behind the Galactic standard. And most of the tech that would be harder to show is destroyed in the landing. Far from being a Guardian of the Universe, Abraxas struggles to guard just two people while Secundus cuts a swath through the population of Thornbury.

Mr. Ole-Thorsen is playing Arnold Schwarzenegger-lite, which is a bit disconcerting at times. Secundus kills people for efficiency, because they annoy him, and sometimes for what looks like fun. Unlike Abraxas, he doesn't think of others as real people, only his ascension to godhood is relevant in the long run.

Tommy is voluntarily mute due to his fear of his own developing powers, which apparently involve a verbal component in their full form. This causes the problems you'd expect, including bullying. The sharpest moment in the movie is when the elementary school principal (Jim Belushi) tries to get Sonia to withdraw her son ("This is a normal school for normal children") because it's easier for him than actually stopping the bullies. We only see the bullying ourselves later when Tommy starts using his powers to make a bully back off.

The bulk of the movie takes place in the days leading up to Christmas--I think there might be some residual parts from an earlier draft that would have tied Tommy closer to being a baby Jesus figure.

Political: Abraxas is a "good cop" frustrated by a situation where the criminal has more rights than the prospective victims. His dispatcher specifically orders him to kill civilians as this will resolve the incident faster, and he refuses, trying to find another way (and eventually resorting to a loophole.) Secundus is an ex-cop who allowed the job to fray away any sense of connection with others before he began seeking personal power instead. The local police are bumblers who are in no way prepared for an actual dangerous criminal in their small town and serve mostly as comic relief. Their big moment is fetching a submachine gun from the armory, which actually manages to knock Secundus off his feet for a moment. (It would have been kind of hilarious if Secundus took serious damage from an Earth weapon.)

Content note: What is essentially high-tech rape without any actual sex, children in peril, bullying, an incontinence joke, the tops of women's breasts are shown. (The print I watched was apparently the HBO version, which cut a bit of nudity.) A little bit of gore.

Overall: I'm going to put this in the "okay" category. It's not actively bad, an attempt was made. But it never rises to the level of good, either. Mr. Ventura doesn't have the right screen presence to sell his leading man role, and the overall writing isn't sharp enough to sell the rest of the movie. This is the sort of movie I would settle for if it happened to be on and I was just wanting to have something on while working on another project or stuck in a hospital bed.

Serenity (2005) dir. Joss Whedon

This is what we are told: It is around 500 years in the future. Life on Earth That Was became unsustainable, so humanity went looking for new worlds to live on. At least one place they found was a trinary star system with multiple planets and planetoids in its "habitable zone." The so-called "Core Worlds" were easy to terraform and travel between, and they soon developed a unified civilization called the Alliance. The Border, Rim and Frontier Worlds were less hospitable, and developed more independently. Over time, the Alliance, with its greater resources, sought control over the Border Worlds, which opposed becoming junior partners (at best.) Some years ago, this brought on war, called the Unification War by the Alliance, and the Independence War by the Border Worlders who lost.

One of the defeated soldiers (known as "Browncoats") has refused to fit in to the new order. Captain Malcom "Mal" Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) managed to get ownership of a small Firefly-class transport ship, Serenity (named for the Battle of Serenity Valley) and performs transportation and...other services for those who can pay. He and his crew often run afoul of the occupying Alliance, more so since they took on a couple of fugitive passengers.

This was the premise of the 2002 television show Firefly. Helmed by fan-favorite director and writer Joss Whedon and featuring an innovative setting and viewpoint, it could have been a huge hit. But the executives running Fox's programming at the time were much less fond of Whedon than their audience and had little faith in the show. It was given a bad time slot, poorly advertised, aired out of order (the pilot episode was shown last, after the show had already been cancelled!) and cancelled before the halfway point of the first season. Ordinarily it would have joined the scrapheap of failed series that get fondly remembered by a few diehard fans.

But Firefly sold phenomenally well on DVD (with three unaired episodes) and a burgeoning fan community refused to let the show die. Letter-writing campaigns, merchandising, rebid internet interest and fundraisers allowed Whedon to convince enough people at Universal Pictures there was a market for a movie version. Thus Serenity, a sequel to the series.

The movie begins with a standard history voiceover, only to actually be a classroom propaganda lesson, only to actually be a hallucination by psychic/test subject River Tam (Summer Glau) who's being rescued from an Alliance laboratory by her doctor brother Simon Tam (Sean Maher), only to actually be a recording of that event. The person reviewing the recording is The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who has no name or rank. While previously the Alliance had been tracking down the Tams just because of the whole "escaped from a lab" thing, The Operative has realized she's potentially a danger to the Alliance itself.

Cut to Serenity, where Mal is planning a payroll robbery. His first mate Zoe (Gina Torres) (also a Browncoat), pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk) (Zoe's husband), engineer Kaylee (Jewel Staite) and violence expert Jayne (Adam Baldwin) are more or less on board with this plan, but Simon is not, since Mal wants to take River along because of her sometimes useful psychic abilities. Mal points out that because the ship is carrying fugitives, it's not able to land many places, or accept many honest jobs. The robbery is interrupted by an attack by Reavers (basically monstrous space marauders.) Mal does try to limit the loss of life, but makes hard choices about who and what to save, something Zoe calls him out on.

Simon and River are scheduled to leave the ship right after the payroll is delivered to the client, but a subliminal message broadcast by the Operative triggers River's "kill people switch" right in the middle of a crowded bar.

As the Operative closes in, the crew and passengers of Serenity must reconnect with old friends preacher Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), courtesan Inara (Morena Baccarin) and information broker Mr. Universe (David Krumholtz). They will uncover just what it is that the Alliance wants kept secret, but at a terrible cost.

When I first saw this in the theater, I had not yet seen the DVDs, and indeed had watched at most two episodes of the TV series, but had the plot and in-jokes forcibly inserted into my consciousness by the internet. So I was able to follow along just fine. These many years later, I have seen all the episodes, so the movie hits a bit differently. It's possible to follow the plot perfectly well if you're coming in cold, but much of the emotional resonance won't be there.

Whedon's trademark quippy dialogue hadn't gotten stale yet, and there are many excellent lines. "I aim to misbehave" is still a banger. There's also exciting action scenes.

While River is the fulcrum of the plot, we learn more about her as a plot device than as a person. Mal is the star of this story, and most of the best lines and emotional moments go to him, or to people speaking directly to him. The Operative's goal may be River, but he does all his interaction with Mal. this leaves relatively little time for everyone else, just moments to tie off some subplots.

The Operative is a good choice for the antagonist. He's a "true believer" in the Alliance goal of making the 'Verse better, but also realizes that once the world is better, there will be no place in it for him because of the monstrous actions he's taken to achieve that utopia. It makes his final scene in the movie make sense.

The Reavers were, while the show was airing, one of the big mysteries/complaints as they didn't make sense as a group that simultaneously had a spacefaring capability and a single-minded desire to harm others violently that would seem to make them unable to handle complex tasks. The big reveal in the movie tries to explain how and why they got that way, even if it's a little cloudy on how they continue to exist.

There's a lot of death in this movie, both of minor characters and a couple of major ones; some of these are foreshadowed while others are for shock value. Hope you didn't get too attached to anyone in a Joss Whedon production!

Content: Lots of deadly violence, some gory. Medical torture. Cannibalism (no gorier than the rest of the violence.) Mention of rape. Desecration of corpses.

Overall: Joss Whedon's star has somewhat faded as his more unpleasant behavior has become better reported. As such, some viewers may feel uncomfortable revisiting this franchise. But it is a good movie for Firefly fans, with some excellent performances, and may be of interest to general science fiction fans. Recommended with reservations.

20th Century Boys 1: Beginning of the End (2008) dir. Yukihiko Tsutsumi

When Kenji Endo (Toshiaka Karisawa) was a teenager, he loved rock music, especially "20th Century Boy" by T. Rex. He thought rock, and in particular his own music, could change the world. But some twenty years on in the late 1990s, his life is nothing like he'd imagined. The band he was in never got traction, he had to start helping out in the family liquor store (now a chain convenience store) and his sister disappeared, leaving him to raise his niece Kanna. He's feeling like a failure and wondering if this is all his life will ever be. But when he attends his elementary school reunion, Kenji learns that odd things are happening, including the death of old friend Donkey (Katsuhisa Namase), that may tie into an even earlier time in his life, when he and his buddies created an elaborate game of good vs. evil.

It seems there is a cult run by the mysterious Friend which is growing in power. It's behind several disappearances at the very least, and may be responsible for a new virus that's causing deaths in Africa, San Francisco and London. The pattern of attacks is uncannily similar to "The Book of Prophecies" Kenji wrote as a child, about an evil organization preparing to take over/destroy the world on the last day of the 20th Century.

Kenji must bring together his friends from the old days, including chubby Maruo (Hidehiko Ishizuka), cool Otcho (Etsushi Toyokawa) and tomboyish Yukiji (Takako Tokiwa). But they're all just relatively normal people, can they possibly defeat a global doomsday conspiracy?

This is the first of three movies based on the 20th Century Boys manga by Naoki Urasawa, which ran from 1999 to 2006. It's an epic plotline filled with twists and turns, and the trilogy movies were the most expensive ever made in Japan to that date.

Good: The plot is epic, and features some twists that are frankly amazing. The characters are interesting, though it's going to take a while for you to figure out who's who because there are a boatload of them, some of whom won't have their full importance revealed until much later on. A particularly interesting one is Cho-san (Raita Ryu), a police detective who figures out Friend's true identity way before anyone else. He's only in one scene, but his legacy will be vital in the second and third films. The casting is also spot-on with many of the actors being very recognizable as the manga characters.

The music is decent, though there's one deliberately mediocre song with punny lyrics that Kenji derides as "not rock."

Fun bit: The Japanese word the Friend's cult uses when they murder people, which is interpreted as "rejection" in English, is also children's slang for "we aren't friends anymore."

There's an odd blend of realism and fantasy: A couple of science fiction technologies turn out to be much less awesome than you'd expect due to real world physics, but people with genuine psychic powers exist.

Less good: While the main plotline remains intact, a lot of scenes had to be trimmed out. Combined with constant flashbacks to different time periods and a few flash-forwards, the plot can get very confusing to those who either don't pay rapt attention (and it's a long movie at over two hours) or haven't read the manga. Also, this is very much part one of a trilogy and some viewers may not like where it leaves off, or having to commit to two more movies to find out what happens.

I don't know that this movie ever had an official American release, so it may be difficult to track down, but if you liked the manga, this has a lot of the manga in it.

The Amazing Transparent Man (1960) dir. Edgar G. Ulmer

We open with the daring escape of notorious safecracker Joey Faust (Douglas Kennedy) from prison. We swiftly learn that his release has been sponsored by Major Paul Krenner (James Griffith), who received a medical discharge due to a shrapnel wound. (Joey snarks that it was probably in his head...but no one contradicts this, and Krenner does seem to have some issues, if you know what I mean.) Krenner has also recruited driver Laura Matson (Marguerite Chapman) and guard Julian (Red Morgan) to assist him, but the plan centers around his pet scientist Dr. Peter Ulof (Ivan Triesault).

Dr. Ulof has developed a method of using radiation to turn organic matter (including humans) invisible. A second treatment can reverse the process. Krenner wants to use this to build an army of invisible soldiers to--well, anything he wants to. He's holding Dr. Ulof's daughter Maria hostage to ensure cooperation.

To start mass production, Krenner needs more radioactive materials. Problem is, the materials he needs are heavily guarded by the government. Only a master safecracker could get into the vault, and invisibility will allow Joey to evade the human guards.

While the plan meets with initial success, the conflicting motivations of Krenner's group, and the non-perfection of the invisibility process, lead to disaster.

The basic idea for the plot is sound, and Dr. Ulof is a suitably tragic character. There's a lot of potential here. I especially liked the opening credits, with a flashlight illuminating the prison wall.

But this is very much a cheap B-movie, and the lack of budget shows in the minimal special effects, sloppy writing and rushed storytelling. It could easily have used another ten minutes or so to flesh out the characters and their relationships. Who is Joey Faust when he's not being a safecracker? What's Laura's motivation and how did she join the group? Does Maria understand that Krenner's a bad man?

Because it's short, this movie often winds up as a double feature with other Fifties sci-fi. And that's probably the best way to watch it, paired with something like The Brain That Wouldn't Die or the MST3K version.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) dir. Mamoru Hosoda

Makoto thinks of herself as an ordinary high school girl, neither brainy or stupid, neither athletic or clumsy, usually good luck slightly outweighing the bad. She also enjoys hanging out with her buddies Koutaro (a serious lad who wants to be a doctor like his father) and Chiaki (an exchange student who's rough around the edges.) But today has been exceptionally bad. She failed a pop quiz, caused a fire in home ec, had an accident in the science room with a mysterious nut, and then her bicycle brakes failed on a steep hill and Makoto flies directly into the path of an oncoming train.

Except that when she opens her eyes, Makoto finds that she instead plowed into a hefty woman shopper several yards up the hill, and the train went by harmlessly. What just happened?

With some guidance from her "Aunt Witch", an art restorer working for the local museum, Makoto realizes that she's had a time leap. She works out that she can repeat the process by literally leaping, and promptly starts using this awesome power to eat her favorite dessert whenever she wants, score well on tests, and avoid accidents.

But eventually Makoto discovers that her time leap power is not limitless after all, and it does come at a price. Just because she's erased certain events happening doesn't mean she doesn't remember them, with knock-on effects, and sometimes meddling with the timeline hurts others. Eventually, Makoto finds herself in a heartbreaking situation with no remaining do-overs. What now?

This movie was inspired by a young adult novel of the same title, and it's implied that "Aunt Witch" is the heroine of that story, now grown up. (It would explain how she knows so much about time leaps!)

As you might expect, Makoto is the kind of person who leaps before she looks, often failing to consider the possible consequences of her actions. She's also not the type of person who takes precautions, as we see from the faulty brakes. She frequently has trouble sticking the landings for her leaps. But she means well, and tries to bring about the best overall situation for everyone she can.

We slowly learn more about the other characters as well through the repeated days; some are exactly what they seem, while others reveal hidden sides.

Director Mamoru Hosoda uses many of the same production crew as his other movies, most notable in the character designs. It's a pretty movie, with some painterly effects in the time travel sequences. Like most of Hosoda's movies, there's some tearjerking scenes.

Content note: Offscreen deaths, bullying, a couple of bath scenes for Makoto (we never see anything beyond the tops of her breasts.)

Recommended for science fiction fans junior high on up. (Younger viewers will probably enjoy the comedy moments, but get bored by the romance aspects.)

Ready Player One (2018) dir. Steven Spielberg

It is the dark future of Columbus, Ohio in the year 2045. Ecological disaster and economic collapse have made the outside world unbearable for many of the world's citizens. Fortunately, there's an online virtual world known as the Oasis that they can escape to. But worse news, creative culture has stalled out since sometime around the pandemic of 2020. And that's been made worse by a resurgence of fanatical worship of 1980s pop culture. You see, Halliday (Mark Rylance), the inventor and owner of Oasis, died a few years back and left control of the company and its virtual world to whoever solves a series of riddles and challenges, and to beat them you must know all about Halliday's obsessions--and since he was an 80s kid....

One of the Gunters (Easter egg hunters) is Wade Watts, known online as Parzifal (Tye Sheridan). He lives in the Stacks (mobile homes stacked on top of each other in rickety frames) outside Columbus with his aunt and her abusive boyfriend. He's secretly created a base where he has a decent gaming rig to play games in Oasis and search for clues. Wade is best online friends with Aech (Lena Waithe), who often teams up with Daito (Win Morisaki) and Sho (Philip Zhao) in competitions. During a race meant as the first challenge in the Halliday contest, Parzifal meets his favorite livestreamer Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and quickly falls in love despite warnings from both Aech and Art3mis that he only knows her online persona.

Opposing our heroes in their quest is the monopoly-seeking IOI corporation, led by CEO Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) who was once Halliday's intern. IOI wants to turn the Oasis into a pay-for-play advertising-ridden cash cow. "We can cover up to 80% of the display with advertisements before triggering brain aneurysms." Most of IOI's employees are anonymous Sixers (because they are issued six digit employee numbers) but two minions who get names are online expert I-R0k (T.J. Miller) and offline enforcer F'Nale Zandor (Hannah John-Kamen). F'Nale is a movie-exclusive character.

Early in the story, Wade figures out a clue that no one else had in the last five years, and wins the first key. Although he refuses to "clan", it's people near him that get the idea from him, and become the High Five. Can the High Five solve the remaining challenges and beat IOI to the prize before they're zeroed out online and in the real world?

This movie is based on the novel by Ernest Cline, which I have previously reviewed. As with the novel, this movie is squarely aimed at men who were nerds in the 1980s, although the big cultural references are well known enough that other audiences will be able to follow along. The move from book to movie means that quite a few references have to be changed because of rights issues, and there's much more emphasis on movie references. On the good side, this also means that at least in the background of scenes, we see much more variety in eras and fandoms than the book has, even a blink and you'll miss it appearance by a character from a movie that wasn't out yet in 2018!

The CGI is nifty, and really shows off what you can do with a full budget. (The Iron Giant and Gundam RX-78 vs. Mechagodzilla!) The actors for the High Five do an okay job, but the baddies' acting is better. Spielberg (famous director in the 1980s) is still good at his profession.

Good: The movie scraps a lot of Parzifal's stalker tendencies towards Art3mis, probably to condense the timeline, but it also makes him a bit more likable. This version of the story also foregrounds that the contest is as much about not making the same mistakes Halliday did in not connecting with people and pushing them away as it is about sharing his obsessive fandoms. This Wade Watts, having learned those lessons, would never have made the mistakes the Wade Watts of Ready Player Two did.

Less good: The main romance still feels forced.

Content note: attempted suicide, gore (the movie warns you it's coming up) and female nudity.

Overall: A fun popcorn movie, especially for male nerds of a certain age. Watchers the same age as the protagonists may find it a bit baffling.

Summer Wars (2009) dir. Mamoru Hosoda

High schooler Kenji Koiso is a math whiz who almost qualified for Team Japan in the Math Olympics. But almost won't get you a good summer job, so he's a low level maintenance admin for the OZ online service. OZ is the most popular online virtual world, featuring everything from social media accounts with personalized avatars through online shopping to government agencies and satellite guidance. It needs a lot of low-paid grunts like Kenji to keep it running. So Kenji is willing to take a slightly better-paying job escorting cute senpai (senior at school) Natsuki Shinohara to a family reunion for her great-grandmother's ninetieth birthday.

The Jinnouchi clan used to be powerful and wealthy back in the day, but poor financial decisions by the late clan head mean that Great Grandmother Sakae is down to just owning the (very nice) house she lives in and the surrounding grounds. Which is not to say the large extended family is impoverished, as most of them have perfectly decent jobs that they're good at. What Natsuki didn't tell Kenji until they already arrived is that he's actually there to pretend to be her boyfriend and fiance, as she'd lied about having one to help keep Sakae's spirits up.

That's stressful enough, but Kenji also falls victim to a phishing attack disguised as a math puzzle sent to him in an email. This allows the malevolent artificial intelligence known as "Love Machine" to steal his moderator account as part of its bid to take over OZ. Even worse, Love Machine frames Kenji as the criminal! With the entire world in danger, Kenji and the Jinnouchi clan must find a way to defeat Love Machine.

This 2009 movie reuses some plot points from Hosoda's earlier movie Our War Game, part of the toyetic Digimon franchise, but places much more emphasis on the physical world and family relationships. By the end, almost every family member has contributed to the story in some important way. Which is not to say that all of them always contribute positively. Off-duty cop Shota makes several bone-headed choices (while still meaning well) while black sheep of the family Wabisuke has inadvertently set the larger disaster in motion trying to make good for running off with most of Sakae's money years ago. (In an amusing twist, we learn that Natsuki's fake background for Kenji as her boyfriend was based on Wabisuke's achievements.)

(There's also a nice parallel sports story going on in the background.)

Both the human and virtual worlds are important and the art for both is good, though I preferred the warmer tones of the "real" segments. I strongly connected with the characters' emotions and the theme of family working together, even when they struggle to understand each other.

The one part that's perhaps a little weak is that there's an awful lot of coincidence needed to make sure that this one particular family and their guest are pivotal to both creating and solving the worldwide crisis.

Content note: There's a bit of partial nudity, and I am told the English dub has more swearing than parents of young children may be comfortable with. That latter bit and a particularly affecting death may make parents want to screen the movie to decide if little ones are ready to see it.

Overall: This is a superior animated movie that tugged my heartstrings. Highly recommended.