It's as visually impressive as I was lead to believe, but I think the comparisons to "2001" are based mostly on the intended references rather than similarity in achievement: a lonely bot in space, a villainous robot that looks like HAL, classical music pieces borrowed from the same Kubrick movie; "Hello, Dolly!" in space instead of "Daisy Bell" sung by HAL in "2001." It's easy to generate an audience's feelings for robots when you give the robots human features -- eyes, fingers -- so I don't think that's much to write home about. I had heard conservatives disliking the movie for its environmental aspect -- how Earth is abandoned when no more plants can grow -- but what I found more suspect was the insinuation that robots are lovable but people are all fat idiots. I'm not offended by the environmental doom, but rather the lazy cynicism. The movie ends with chasing and robots fighting each other, and that doesn't live up to the lonely opening. There's a lot about the movie to admire, but the hype overtakes the actual achievement.
Criminal Justice (2008, Otto Bathurst, Luke Watson)
Although the miniseries starts off as murder investigation and trial, eventually, though the nature of its length, it manages to make broader points about the court and justice system, albeit never straying from its sole case of a wrongfully convicted murderer. We're mostly sure that he's innocent from the start, even though the incident isn't quite clear and the evidence points towards him (a splendid Ben Whishaw). A large part of the emotional content is from the verbal abuse the suspect is dealt in court from the people who believe he did it. The series doesn't take any cheap shots, and while I wish that when the new evidence comes into play for an appeal that the filmmakers would have reentered the court, it's understandable why they didn't want to repeat themselves. In prison, as the suspect waits for his trial to finish, the series mostly manages to successfully portray the solitude and danger of prisons without resorting to pop psychology. (These sequences involve Pete Postlethwaite, which may remind viewers of "In the Name of the Father.") The ties between the prisoners and the police that are discovered near the end of the series make the scope of the series larger, but for the most part it focuses plainly on the tragedy of how institutional justice reduces people into things, even while admitting that it's the best system there is.
Seed of Chucky (2004, Don Mancini)
I can't imagine the reactions of audiences who went to see this as a horror movie; its main concerns are a family breakdown between Chucky, his wife, and their gender-confused puppet-child. You can't really call it a satire, but it's certainly a comedy long before it's a horror movie. The comically exaggerated deaths come in completely irrelevantly to the plot, which is mostly jokes about Jennifer Tilly's B-movie career, John Waters hassling her as a paparazzo, and movie references to "The Shining," "Chinatown," and "Rebel Without a Cause." It's not a badly made movie, but it's the kind of movie you'll only enjoy if you think a puppet that looks like David Bowie dressed in drag is funny.
The Savages (2007, Tamara Jenkins)
Both Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman are extraordinary actors, so it's their level of artistry that helps them escape from the general tone of charming contempt that this film exudes. Linney's character in particular is slathered on thick: not only does she have an affair with a married man, but she pops pills and steals stationary from work. That married man is played by Peter Friedman, which audiences may remember as the director of the retreat in "Safe." That may seem insignificant until you notice a few scenes that directly ape those of "Safe" -- Laura Linney doing aerobics badly in her hotel room (this mirrors a similar scene in "Safe") and a sex scene between the two shot from above, with the receiving partner looking incredibly disinterested, which is a famous scene from "Safe." The slight tone of mockery of nursing homes and their fraudulence -- preying on the guilt of families -- is not unlike "Safe"'s examination of New Age healing, although with much less austerity and, well, horror. At its best "The Savages" shows the indignity of old age, but it's a distanced movie, and it doesn't bother to fill that distance with anything that will make you think.
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