How to fail miserably in a science fictional Sundance universe.

I recently read a book called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.  It was a charming, quirky book that put a new spin on science fiction.  I liked it.  So I thought I might like a film billed as a different kind of science fiction movie at Sundance.  Boy was I wrong.


Another Earth is a strange movie that presents a world where there is a second earth.  There's also story line about a women who killed a man's family in a car accident, although I'm not sure you'd figure that out if you hadn't read the synopsis.  This movie is a bit like opera: If you haven't read the story before you go, you're probably going to be lost once you get there.


This is a science fiction world where people drive the cars you drive now, only maybe a little bit older.  And, in what has now become the most obvious movie cliche ever, people compute on a Mac.  And not even a newer Mac, like a Mac Book Air.  They compute on your run of the mill, old school Macs.  Apple really needs to do a better job of policing who's using their machines in movies.  Because this movie just makes Macs look outdated.


Do I have anything good to say about the movie?  Sure, the acting was pretty good considering the material the actors had to work with.  And the graphics featuring "second earth" floating effortlessly in the sky were lovely.  But that certainly wasn't enough to save this drab film.


Movies like this make me question the whole Sundance process.  A couple thousand people submit movies to Sundance.  They narrow it down to a hundred plus films.  And this is one of them?  Really, there wasn't a better movie than this?  I suppose it's hard to watch thousands of hours of movies in a few months' time.  So I'm giving Sundance a pass on this one. But I'm guessing a better movie got rejected for this science fictional snoozer.