A guide to films that express social realism or escapism; and a guide to culturally important films that may reveal a character's thoughts, dreams, or motivations.
Image from Blade Runner from gifer.com at https://gifer.com/en/Mv6M
Science Fiction
2001: A Space OdysseyMankind finds a mysterious artifact buried on the moon and with the intelligent computer HAL 9000, sets off on a quest to Jupiter.
Call Number: MOVIE 2001
ISBN: 9781419830587
Publication Date: 1968
AlphavilleA cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry, Godard's irreverent journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional films of all time. Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60. Criterion's edition of this seminal film features a new digital transfer.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE ALPHAVILLE
ISBN: 0780021541
Publication Date: 1965
ArrivalWhen mysterious spacecraft touch down around the world, a team ,including linguist Louise Banks, is brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers, and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.
Call Number: MOVIE ARRIVAL
ISBN: B01LTHYE04
Publication Date: 2017
Blade RunnerLos Angeles, 2019: Rick Deckard of the LAPD's Blade Runner unit prowls the steel & microchip jungle of the 21st century. His job is to track down and eliminate assumed humanoids known as 'replicants.' Replicants were declared illegal after a bloody mutiny on an Off-World Colony, and are to be terminated upon detection. He wants to get out of the force, but is drawn back in when 6 "skin jobs," the slang for replicants, hijack a ship back to Earth. The city that Deckard must search for his prey is a huge, sprawling, bleak vision of the future. This 2007 "final cut" was remastered with improved visual and sound effects, and made some revisions to the 1992 "director's cut" revision.
Call Number: MOVIE BLADE
ISBN: 9780780662704
Publication Date: 1982
Blade Runner 2049A young blade runner's discovery of a long buried secret leads him to track down former blade runner Rick Deckard, who's been missing for thirty years.
Call Number: MOVIE BLADE
ISBN: B0785WY1YM
Publication Date: 2018
Children of MenLondon, 2027. Humanity has become infertile and no child has been born for 18 years. Science is at a loss to explain the reason. Immigration is a crime and refugees are caged like animals. African and East European societies have collapsed and their dwindling populations are migrating toward England and other wealthy nations. In this climate of nationalistic violence, a London peace activist turned bureaucrat joins forces with his revolutionary ex-wife in order to save mankind by protecting a woman who has mysteriously become pregnant. These three set out on a desperate struggle to deliver the world's only pregnant woman to the Human Project with hope that they can discover the cure for global infertility. As they carefully navigate between the battling forces of military police and a pro-immigration insurgency this small group must endure a death-defying ordeal of urban warfare.
Call Number: MOVIE CHILDREN
ISBN: B000N6TX1I
Publication Date: 2007
The SignalNic, his girlfriend Haley and his buddy Jonah take a detour from an idyllic cross-country road trip when they are contacted by a mysterious hacker who has gained entry into MIT's most secretive networks. But after a rendezvous in an eerily isolated spot goes awry, Nic wakes to a living nightmare in an isolation unit. Interrogated by Dr. Wallace Damon, Nic soon realizes that the only way to decipher the past is to escape the present.
Call Number: MOVIE SIGNAL
ISBN: B00SNE112G
Publication Date: 2014
Under the SkinAn alien in the form of a voluptuous young woman combs the streets of Scotland in search of men. She lures a succession of lost souls into her otherworldly lair, where they are seduced, stripped of their humanity, and never heard from again.
Call Number: MOVIE UNDER
ISBN: B00K6NYJCG
Publication Date: 2014
VideodromeCable TV programmer Max Renn seeks out the ultimate in bizarre shows for his channel. He meets a mysterious supplier named Harlan who gives him access to an underground sex and violence network called "Videodrome."
Call Number: MOVIE VIDEODROME
ISBN: 9780783228457
Publication Date: 1983
Image from Beyond the Black Rainbow from gifimage.net at https://gifimage.net/beyond-the-black-rainbow-gif-9/
Science Fiction
Enter the VoidA brother and sister are trapped in the hellish night world of Tokyo, where he deals drugs and she works as a stripper. A crime gone bad leads to shocking violence and then moments of transcendence in which the movie plunges viewers into death and rebirth like no film has ever done before.
ISBN: 9780788613753
Publication Date: 2011
Ex MachinaCaleb, a 24-year-old coder at the world₂s largest Internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a retreat belonging to the company₂s reclusive CEO, Nathan. But when Caleb arrives he finds that he will have to participate in a fascinating experiment with the world₂s first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot woman, Ava. Truths, emotions, and motives are blurred as the relationship between Caleb, Ava, and Nathan intensifies.
Call Number: MOVIE EX
ISBN: B00XI059W8
Publication Date: 2015
The Face of Another/ Tanin no kaoOkuyama, after being burned and disfigured in an industrial accident and estranged from his family and friends, agrees to his psychiatrist's radical experiment: a face transplant, created from the mold of a stranger. As Okuyama is thus further alienated from the world around him, he finds himself giving in to his darker temptations.
Call Number: MOVIE FACE
ISBN: B0006ZLD5K
Publication Date: 1966
Fantastic planetThis futuristic story takes place on Ygam, a faraway planet where blue giants rule, and oppressed humanoids rebel against their oppressors.
Call Number: ANIMATED FANTASTIC
ISBN: 9781681431666
Publication Date: 1973
The Living Skeleton"In this atmospheric tale of revenge from beyond the watery grave, a pirate-ransacked freighter's violent past comes back to haunt a young woman living in a seaside town. Mixing elements of kaidan (ghost stories), doppelgänger thrillers, and mad-scientist movies, Hiroshi Matsuno's The Living Skeleton is a wild and eerie work"--Container.
Call Number: MOVIE LIVING
ISBN: B008Y5OXDI
Publication Date: 1969
Mad Max: Fury RoadA return to the world of the Road Warrior, Max Rockatansky. Haunted by his turbulent past, he believes the best way to survive is to wander alone. Nevertheless, he becomes swept up with a group fleeing across the Wasteland in a War Rig driven by an elite Imperator, Furiosa. They are escaping a Citadel tyrannized by the Immortan Joe, from whom something irreplaceable has been taken. Enraged, the Warlord with his gangs, pursues the rebels ruthlessly in the high-octane Road War that follows.
Call Number: MOVIE MAD
ISBN: B00XQ13ZSO
Publication Date: 2015
The Man Who Fell to EarthDavid Bowie makes his feature film debut as a visitor from a dying planet who becomes a reclusive multi-millionaire, only to lose himself in an earthbound abyss of decadence, self-destruction and alienation.
Call Number: MOVIE MAN
ISBN: B000A88EVE
Publication Date: 1976
Image from Solaris from giphy.com at https://gph.is/19r7Efp
Science Fiction
AntiviralCelebrity obsession has reached an all-time high, with the public now clamoring to be infected with the same diseases their idols carry. At the Lucas Clinic, Syd March sells injections of live viruses to those fans who can afford it. But Syd also has a black market trade in illness, selling viruses smuggled in his own body to piracy groups. After super sensation Hannah Geist reveals a new disease she carries, Syd is quick to capitalize on the opportunity and inject himself with some of Hannah's blood. When Hannah dies a few days later, Syd suddenly becomes the target of rival clinics and collectors.
Call Number: MOVIE ANTIVIRAL
ISBN: B00CERJIR8
Publication Date: 2012
Beyond the Black RainbowA young, mute woman is kept captive and sedated in a secluded compound by drugs and a mind-control sadistic leader, manages to escape her confinement. As she tries to escape the compound, obviously hindered by lack of communication skills and terror of the search by her captors & guardians of the compound she has no one to trust, no one to help her.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE BEYOND
ISBN: B008B9JUJO
Publication Date: 2012
CubeSix ordinary strangers awaken to find themselves in a seemingly endless maze of interlocking cubical chambers armed with lethal booby traps. Without food or water, they have only a few days to live. None of them knows how or why they've been imprisoned, but soon discover that each possesses a skill that could contribute to their escape. As they work together to extricate themselves from their claustrophobic cell, one thing becomes painfully clear- unless they learn to cooperate to solve the secrets of this deadly trap, none of them has very long to live.
Call Number: MOVIE CUBE
ISBN: B00005B967
Publication Date: 1997
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless MindWhen Joel discovers that his girlfriend, Clementine, has had their tumultuous relationship erased from her mind through an experimental scientific procedure, he decides to ease his own pain by getting the same treatment. But, as each memory of Clementine is systematically eliminated, Joel suddenly realizes how much he still loves her and desperately attempts to reverse the process.
Call Number: MOVIE ETERNAL
ISBN: 9780783297842
Publication Date: 2004
MelancholiaJustine and Michael are celebrating their marriage at a sumptuous party in the home of her sister Claire , and brother-in-law John. A planet called Melancholia is heading directly towards Earth and threatening to collide. Meanwhile, tensions are mounting and relationships are fraying as the family deals with their fears.
Call Number: MOVIE MELANCHOLIA
ISBN: B006KH6CF4
Publication Date: 2012
MetropolisIn 2026, the rich rule over the poor, who live underground. One man tries to bridge the gap between the two classes. In July 2008 a complete 16mm copy of the film was discovered with an additional 25 minutes of lost footage that had not been seen since the film's premiere in 1927. In restoration, the text of the intertitles was taken from German censorship records and translated into English. Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung in co-operation with ZDF and ARTE supported the restoration, and the sci-fi epic was re-released in 2010.
Call Number: MOVIE METROPOLIS
ISBN: B0040QYROA
Publication Date: 1927
SolarisAdapted from a Stanislaw Lem novel. Ground control has been receiving strange transmissions from the three remaining residents of theSolaris space station. When cosmonaut and psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to investigate, he experiences the strange phenomena that afflict the Solaris crew, sending him on a voyage into the darkest recesses of his own consciousness.
Call Number: MOVIE SOLARIS
ISBN: B004NWPY20
Publication Date: 1971
StalkerInside a mysterious realm called the zone there is The Room, a place that will grant you your innermost desire. Stalker, a man that knows how to pass the deadly secrets of The Zone, escorts a group of people to the Room.
Call Number: DVD MOVIE STALKER
ISBN: B071YCQJRD
Publication Date: 1979
Image from Alphaville from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/2012/08/10/alphaville/
Image from The Signal from imdb.com at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2910814/mediaviewer/rm2895787008
Image from The Signal from imdb.com at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2910814/mediaviewer/rm3411201792
Image from Ex Machina from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery/54%20(337).jpg?bwg=1547215728
Image from Ex Machina from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery/54%20(337).jpg?bwg=1547215728
Image from Cube from film-grab.com at https://film-grab.com/2017/10/26/cube/#bwg167/9842