delson Reviews

Sneakers (1992)

One of my favorites, a real computer film

[13 December 1998]

Part of the unofficial Internet-generation trilogy including Tron and Wargames, Sneakers is a rare occasion where the filmmakers know and respect the way computers really work. You'll find no computer viruses eating through financial records and making the screen go crazy here. As cryptography is accurately represented, Sneakers is a chilling "what if" story regarding a chip which can quickly hack everything from Air Traffic Control to the FBI criminal archives. However, this is not Mechanical Universe; the science of it all is dumbed down (perhaps too much) for the layman to understand, and the film has much more than just nerdy computer stuff. I just hope Dan Ackroyd managed to lose all that weight...

Geri's Game (1997)

A feat of computer animation

[29 October 1998]

Academy Award winner for best animated short film, "Geri's Game" tells the story of an elderly man who passes the time by playing chess against himself in a large park. While the direction is clever and the editing great, the real point is in seeing the progress of cutting-edge 3D graphics. For example, Pixar devoted enormous resources toward creating the complicated algorithms needed to get Geri's suit to crease the right way when he moves to a new position. Although Pixar has yet to make human flesh tones convincing, the photorealism of the rest of "Geri's Game" is nothing short of extraordinary.

Queen of Outer Space (1958)

Hilarious cliche-ridden sci-fi fun

[23 October 1998]

Steve Rhodes (newsgroup review) sums it up best when he says, "'Queen of Outer Space' is a parody of science fiction films. Whether it meant to be so at the time is another question." This is prime material for MST3K (very similar to "Fire Maidens from Outer Space"), but they might be avoiding "Queen" because it almost makes fun of itself. It reeks of cardboard sets, silly dialogue, and more phallic symbols, hot babes, and sexual innuendo than you can wave a stick (or laser gun) at. The astronauts ride in Lay-Z-Boy chairs and Zsa Zsa Gabor is a real treat. Never taking itself seriously, it's the "Austin Powers" of the sci-fi genre.