Source Code – review | Film | The Guardian

Having seen this film, I was left in the paradoxical state of scratching both my head (puzzled) and my chin (thoughtful). Quoting this review from Peter Bradshaw, only because of some unusually insightful comments towards the end:

Source Code is glitzy and hi-tech in a 21st-century way, but also has something from an earlier age: it is a story from the Twilight Zone, with hints of Philip K Dick, and traces of the television world of The Prisoner and The Fugitive. With its weird deployment of playing cards in one scene, Jones has channelled The Manchurian Candidate – perhaps specifically through Jonathan Demme’s Iraq-themed remake – and the overall effect is smart and to the point.

In its own way, Source Code also aspires slightly to the status of comedy, and Colter’s increasingly wan and desperate conversations with Goodwin from his mysterious pod reminded me a little of David Niven’s radio conversations with Kim Hunter’s June in A Matter of Life and Death – as he plummets to his certain death, Niven’s character exploits his prerogative as a dying man to flirt with this radio operator.

The script is pretty muddled, so the film doesn’t entirely make clear whether the plot revolves around time travel or parallel universes. Perhaps it’s both? But it is commendable for throwing hard science-fiction elements into a mainstream Hollywood popcorn flick, and doing it well.

Also, while there is an obstensibly “happy ending”, if you dwell on it for longer than five minutes then you realise that the conclusion is rather sinister. To say much more would give the plot away, so go see and judge for yourself.

Why Minority Report was spot on | Technology | The Guardian

In predicting the future, Spielberg’s Minority Report helped to shape it:

What Spielberg didn’t count on, though, is what might be called “the Star Trek effect”. If you show off imaginary cool technology in a film or TV series, then kids, teenagers and enthusiastic technologists of all ages will try their damnedest to make it come true. When James T Kirk beamed down to an alien planet and flipped open his communicator, when Spock waved his tricorder over strange life forms and murmured “intriguing …”, when the crew of the Enterprise teleported, carried phasers, communicated with their computer by voice and carried data around on little plastic sticks, a generation looked at it and thought: that’s a future I want to live in.

What the article doesn’t mention is that when Spielberg was making this film, he consulted with a team of eminent “futurologists” to develop a compelling vision of the future. More on that here.