Two unusual movie experiences (with more commentary to come, I think). For both of these movies, we liked the trailers and were looking forward to them. And then we heard some spoilers that made us think that maybe we didn’t want to see them after all, and then we did some more research and decided we wanted to see them anyway. It turned out to be right choice.

“Passengers” is a paradox. The science is downright awful; it isn’t just a matter of the kind of pseudo-tech babble that SF has been using since its inception; it is full of stuff that is just plain WRONG. I get the impression that the story started out as quite hard, reality based SF, and then it went through serveral iterations of, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” from people who did not care about reality checks AT ALL. On the other hand, the emotional side of the story is VERY well done, and addresses some REALLY interesting ethical issues with style. At the heart of the story is a question: “How much would you be willing to steal from another person to save your own life?” In the end, we enjoyed the movie a great deal.

“Collateral Beauty” is a fantasy fable about grief and fear set in contemporary Manhattan. The cast is great, the performances are excellent, the story is all kinds of strange, but mostly worked, and we are very glad we (eventually) decided to see it.

More on the ethical issues of “Passengers” (flooded with spoilers) to follow, I think.

Uncle Hyena