A to Z Challenge
A Month At The Movies
Hello and welcome back to A Month at the Movies, my contribution to the A to Z challenge for 2023.
This year I am copying from a myriad of other A to Z challengers by reprinting the same synopsis about my theme with every letter. You can skip over this part if you want to.
I love movies and have decided to share with you a movie each day that I have enjoyed to one degree or another. With each entry, I'll give a brief synopsis of the film, share a positive and negative review from Rotten Tomatoes ( a website, I didn't use much at all until preparing for the challenge), discuss its resiliency (the theme of the A to Z challenge this year), and other tidbits like whether the film may appear in my top 100 film list, which I have been revamping this year. I think that's enough in the way of introduction, considering you'll be reading it (hopefully) 19 more times this month.
Film: Gattaca (1997)
.Director: Andre Niccol
By Unknown author - ProSieben MAXX HD, screenshot (15.06.2014), Public Domain, Link
Gattaca is a genre blending delight of a movie. Part science fiction, part cultural critique, part noir; Roger Ebert rightly called it a thriller with ideas. Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Jude Law head a stellar cast in a work that is superbly written, beautifully captured on film, and blessed with an evocative score.
Positive Tomato: The writer- director crafts a paranoid discriminatory world out of ripped-from-the-headlines science. Adapting a noirish mood and an austere dystopian backdrop, it's the sort of Orwellian vision that could only exist in a movie. Brian Eggert - Deep Focus Review
Negative Tomato: You have to admire Nicol's humanizing agenda in movie terrain usually crowded with numbing technology and digital stereo explosions. But jeez what a downer. Jan Stuart - The Advocate
Resiliency: Ethan Hawke, who I remember best from his sweaty toothed madman poem in Dead Poets Society does a character study of resiliency in Gattaca. Science conspired against him and he was told he would never reach for the stars. But reach for the stars, he did and the degree that he did reach shows his resiliency and disregard for the imposed status quo.
Top 100: Gattaca is a movie that I could see ranking any where between 75 and 125. So we'll have to wait and see if Gattaca makes the list.
A to Z Connections: This is the 2nd science fiction film in the challenge (The Empire Strikes Back).
For more A to Z challenge click here.
Next Time: Honoring unsung heroes.
5 comments:
That’s exactly where I might rank Gattaca, bottom of the list to off the list. Good movie, but not highly rewatch-able. I’m loving your blog and the movie thoughts.
I've never seen this movie, but I do like Ethan Hawke.
I have not seen this film yet…not sure I will but, ya never know:)
I haven't seen Gattaca and probably won't. I will now go see what other movies you've reviewed.
I thought Gattaca was superb and sadly unrerated. I really liked the exploration of trying to beat the system of destiny based on genetics. For me some of that dystopian future is already here with facial recognition scanning crowds - there were reports from China of criminals being pulled out of a large crowd and just generally that surveillance technology in China is used to monitor, control, and shame its citizens with examples of blacklists preventing travel on planes or very fast trains. Also lots of parrallels with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
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