Altered States
Adapted by Network scenarist Paddy Chayefsky from his only novel, Altered States (1980) is an unusual work of mainstream psychedelic science fiction, one that posits the unfettered mind as an engine of radical corporeal transformation.
Monolith
A public case of professional disgrace has driven a journalist (Lily Sullivan) to hide out at her parents’ vacant, sprawling country home. But the young woman, credited simply as “the interviewer”—we learn her subjects’ names but never her own—refuses to be defeated.
Protected: Starman
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Planet of the Vampires
Planet of the Vampires is a film you haven’t seen at all if you haven’t seen it in the wee hours, with the lights off, and its hypnotic sound turned way up.
Nr. 10
From its opening image of ocean waves stuttering slowly behind a sheet of steely rain to its final vista of human detritus turned into cosmic junk, Nr. 10 seems determined above all to enter and exit every scene in medias res.
The Fly
It’s an unfortunate fact of life: even super-smart women sometimes end up with terrible boyfriends. This, along with a very different tragic, universal reality—everyone’s body radically changes and deteriorates with illness and/or age—forms the basis of David Cronenberg’s The Fly.
The Pink Cloud
Brazilian writer-director Iuli Gerbase’s debut feature begins with the whole of humanity being forced indoors by a pervasive vapor as deadly as it is seemingly innocuous. As days, weeks, months pass with no indication of when the rose-colored threat will recede, prolonged universal quarantine gives rise to a mental-health crisis.
Soylent Green
There’s no crueler fate for an inventive, well-crafted film than being remembered solely for its twist ending, especially with said twist divulged through a line reading that oxidized into self-parody as soon as it entered the atmosphere.