fandango-essential-movies
Image Courtesy of Den of Geek
Have you ever had one of those surreal moments where you feel like you are in the middle of a movie scene during the backdrop of a global crisis? Imagine if you wrote those types of movies for a living and all of your typical background research kept getting featured as reality on the front page of the news every day. In times like these, it’s a good moment to escape. Let me guide you through the movies I’m thinking of revisiting, by their themes.
Does man deserve his comeuppance?
Many films are about humanity (or a single human) breaking some type of social contract or law, with vengeance coming back to revisit them. If you’re in the mood to mull over payback, but want to keep it lighter, here’s a few to float your boat:
Planet of the Apes (1968) – Charlton Heston plays a scantily clad astronaut named George Taylor who finds himself stranded in an upside down world, where Apes are the superior species. The themes knock you right over the head, and the culture is the opposite of woke. But despite it’s cheesiness, it’s still fun cinema and worth a revisit.
Jurassic Park – As the character Dr. Ian Malcom famously states “you scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you never asked if you should.” Man plays God and resurrects dinosaurs, with predictable results.
Godzilla (any of them) – When man decides to experiment with nuclear bombs, nature might bring a little payback in return. Does humankind have the power to triumph against the vengeance of nature?
Poltergeist – A nice suburban neighborhood is visited by a strange, ghostly menace. What could they possibly have done to deserve something so terrible? Honestly my favorite bits in this movie are all the lovely slice of life moments, like burying a goldfish, fighting over the remote, and saying you won’t tell your oldest teenager daughter what’s going on because “she would blab.”
Fatal Attraction – If you make a vow to someone you better keep it. Michael Douglas plays a husband who strayed, and boy did he pick the wrong woman to make that mistake with.
Don’t want to dwell in the negative? Doesn’t a good attitude and a belief in a better world make it all work? Well isn’t that what we go to the movies to see? Stay tuned for next week’s: The Good Guys Win in the End!
ABOUT JULIA FAIR. Julia moved to Bainbridge Island three years ago with her husband and two children, and has found her work home at IslandWood. An original native of Mississippi, Julia started her career working on the successful independent film, The Blair Witch Project. Her first produced feature length scripts, Believers and Alien Raiders, were released on DVD by Warner Brothers home video, and she strongly encourages you to rent them as she does still receive residuals on them. Quentin Tarantino counts Alien Raiders as one of his personal favorites, just saying. Outside of writing, Julia has been heavily involved in research as well as viral marketing for a variety of science fiction and paranormal movies and shows, such as In Search Of and Hellboy. Her experience as an intensive and detailed researcher, as well as a horror and fantasy/sci-fi maven led her to be tapped by Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios where she worked behind the scenes in the Brain Trust for both Stephen King’s The Dark Tower and Michael Bay’s Transformers. She recently spoke at the Library of Congress, discussing the making of modern myths and how Blair Witch, like War of the Worlds, reveals the way humans can seek out and even forcefully choose to believe misinformation. She enjoys long walks, nature, white papers from the National Institute of Health, the companionship of good friends, and dystopian sci-fi.