{"id":846,"date":"2007-02-08T17:53:35","date_gmt":"2007-02-08T17:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=846"},"modified":"2007-02-08T17:53:35","modified_gmt":"2007-02-08T17:53:35","slug":"15_geek_movies_to_see_before_y","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2007\/02\/08\/15_geek_movies_to_see_before_y\/","title":{"rendered":"15 Geek Movies to See Before You Die"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfsignal.com\/archives\/004767.html\">SF Signal<\/a>, a link to Dwight Silverman&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.chron.com\/techblog\/archives\/2007\/02\/fifteen_geek_movies_to_see_before_you_die_1.html\">15 Geek Movies to See Before You Die<\/a>. Silverman is the Tech Blogger for the <i>Houston Chronicle<\/i>; see his original entry for explanations on why these particular films made the list. As usual, my own comments follow:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>Brazil<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>The Matrix<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>The Fifth Element<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Serenity<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Dark City<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>12 Monkeys<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Shaun of the Dead<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Darkman<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Army of Darkness<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>War Games<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Monty Python and the Holy Grail<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Office Space<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Repo Man<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>First thought: my geek cred is in pretty good shape, according to these criteria. I&#8217;ve seen all but two of these films (<i>Repo Man<\/i> and <i>Dark City<\/i>, although it&#8217;s been so long since I&#8217;ve seen <i>Brazil<\/i> that it probably qualifies as &#8220;never seen&#8221; as well) and I own quite a few of them on either VHS or DVD. That said, I have to say that I personally find <i>The Matrix<\/i> and <i>12 Monkeys<\/i> both overrated and depressing as hell to watch. In the case of <i>The Matrix<\/i>, it&#8217;s that grungy, clammy look of the film that gets to me &#8212; I&#8217;ve mentioned before that I hate the look of a lot of movies that came out of the latter half of the &#8217;90s &#8212; while <i>12 Monkeys<\/i> depresses me because, well, it&#8217;s just a downer of a movie. I&#8217;m not a big fan of <i>any<\/i> of Terry Gilliam&#8217;s movies, to be honest. He&#8217;s a fine filmmaker, but the stories he&#8217;s drawn to rarely engage me very much, certainly not enough to warrant a second viewing. But that&#8217;s just me.<\/p>\n<p>Just as interesting as what&#8217;s on this list is what&#8217;s <i>not<\/i> on the list. Any true geek is, of course, going to have <i>Star Wars<\/i> on their &#8220;must-see&#8221; list, but what about <i>Tron<\/i>? <i>Blade Runner<\/i>? <i>Alien<\/i>? <i>2001<\/i>? <i>THX 1138<\/i>, surely the geekiest titled film of all time? <i>Colossus: The Forbin Project<\/i>, which anticipated something very like the Internet? How about <i>The Terminator<\/i>, who was controlled by an evil variant of the Internet? Or John Carpenter&#8217;s <i>Dark Star<\/i>, the climax of which is a philosophical conversation between a frazzled astronaut and an artificially intelligent nuclear bomb? The list could go on and on&#8230; and I&#8217;m just thinking of the movies of the &#8217;70s and &#8217;80s, when &#8220;geek culture&#8221; as we now understand it was forming. What about movies from before that halcyon period? Do any of them count? I&#8217;m just asking, here&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via SF Signal, a link to Dwight Silverman&#8217;s 15 Geek Movies to See Before You Die. Silverman is the Tech Blogger for the Houston Chronicle; see his original entry for explanations on why these particular films made the list. As usual, my own comments follow: Brazil The Matrix The Fifth Element Star Trek: The Wrath [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}