Mike Salsbury’s Blog

1

12 Monkeys
This movie is a little hard to follow because it does a lot of time-traveling between the past, present, and future.  Still, it’s incredibly interesting the first time you watch it because you can’t tell if Bruce Willis’ character is really a time traveler, or if he’s delusional, or dangerous, or what.

2

The Andromeda Strain
This movie, filmed back in the 1970’s, holds up well even today.  It tells the story of a deep space probe that brings back more than just information about a distant galaxy.  It brings back a microbe that threatens to destroy the Earth in very short order.  It’s intense at times, even frightening, and shows you just how quickly something as small as a microbe could destroy the world.

3

Bicentennial Man
Not widely praised by critics, this movie tells the story of an android who wants to become human.  Along the way, he ends up doing a great deal of good for mankind.  Starring Robin Williams, it manages to be both funny and touching.

4

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
A sci-fi movie from back in the 1980’s starring Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum, and a variety of others.  It starts on the supposition that Orson Welles’ famous “War of the Worlds” broadcast really WAS about an alien invasion.  It’s very campy, with a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek humor, and features John Lithgow doing an Italian accent.

5

A Clockwork Orange
If you can’t stand violent films that depict some of the most despicable crimes on the books, like rape and murder, stay away from this film.  You will definitely not be able to stomach it.  It tells the story of a bunch of futuristic street thugs who steal, rape, rob, and murder their way through life, until one of them is arrested.  This film’s main purpose in my personal video library is one of catharsis.  If I really feel angry and want to hurt someone or something, this film is so much more violent destructive than my own worst fantasies that it shocks me back to normal.

6

Death Race 2000
Filmed in the 1970’s, this film depicts a future in which the government’s solution to population control is to sponsor a cross-country road race in which participants get points for running over pedestrians with their souped-up cars.  It’s interesting because of its very campy and over-the-top nature, cheesy acting, and especially for the scene in which Sylvester Stallone gets his butt kicked.

7

Forbidden Planet
This 1950’s era sci-fi film tells the story of an alien race whose technology grew to such great levels that they’d built a machine that could create any desired object merely by reading the thought waves of the person using it.  Yet, somehow, their entire race was wiped out almost immediately afterward.  One of my favorite parts of this film is the robot “Robby” who makes an appearance in many sci-fi TV shows and movies in the years following this movie’s completion.

8

The Ice Pirates
Starring Robert Urich, this 1980’s sci-fi comedy tells the story of a future in which water has become so rare that it’s the ultimate valuable.  Shipped around the galaxy as ice, pirates like Urich’s crew attempt to steal it to make a profit.  It features some of the most interesting and entertaining “robot action” I’ve seen outside of “Battlebots” and “Robot Wars”.

9

Titan A.E.
This animated feature is set in a future period “After Earth”.  Aliens who feel threatened by humans attempt to exterminate them all.  The few who survive live in exile, like criminals.  It’s got a good soundtrack, nice animation, and a decent (though not fantastic) story.

10

TRON
This was something of a pioneering film for Disney when they did it.  It’s set in cyberspace, where a programmer finds himself living inside the computer as a program, in a system controlled by an “evil” Master Control Program.  It stars Bruce Boxleitner of Babylon 5 fame, and features some very neat special effects for its time (though pretty poor by today’s standards).