Are We In The Future?

Imagine a world with cameras everywhere, cameras with facial recognition that use real-time analytics to interpret your every move, which will be stored in an enormous database and monetized for every dollar it’s worth. Is that the work of science fiction or real life? Sadly, it’s a combination of the two, which is the themes in The Circle feel so relevant. Time Stamps 1:00 Intro to movie 1:27 Movie recap 8:14 Discussion of The Circle’s campus comparing it to Apple Park and other...

Single women with children are the most likely group to be burgled when someone is home, and no movie demonstrates this fact better than 2002’s Panic Room. Directed by the prolific director David Fincher, who you might remember from Fight Club, Gone Girl or The Social Network, Panic Room stars Jodie Foster as Meg Altman and a very young Kristen Stewart as her daughter Sarah. Upon moving into a beautiful townhouse that comes equipped with its own panic room, Meg and Sarah are burgled by the...

Roller blading. Techno music. Hacking. All activities are heavily associated with the 1990s, a time when personal computers were for tech nerds only and hacking was a relatively recent phenomenon. No movie encompasses the hacking subculture better than 1995’s Hackers, a film starring Angelina Jolie, Jonny Lee Miller and Lorraine Braco, among others. After they’re framed by an evil cybersecurity officer, a group of high-school hackers must prove themselves innocent using their incredible...

Home Alone is a movie so popular that it has become a Christmas staple like mistletoe or consumerism. It stars Macaulay Culkin, one of the most famous child actors of all time, as Kevin McCallister, a bratty eight year old who gets his wish of never seeing him family again when they all leave for a vacation without him. If that sounds like prime parenting, consider this: they also lacked a security system for their large house filled with valuables. Having reviewed and written about dozens...

Scarlett Johansson is notorious for playing characters outside of her race, but in Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie Her, she takes it to a whole other level. She plays Samantha, an unbelievably human-like operating system who falls in love with a human named Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix. After pondering the mechanics of an operating system-human relationship, Gabe and Aliza talk about what virtual girlfriends look like in 2019, from sex robots to girlfriend apps. While the girlfriend apps on...

For the socially awkward, having a person in your ear to tell you what to do and say may seem like a dream, but for others, it’s a dystopian nightmare. This episode focuses on White Christmas, an episode found in season 2 of the hit science fiction show Black Mirror. Not only does this episode include the devastatingly handsome Jon Hamm, but it also portrays technology that hits a bit too close to home, like voice assistants that live in your head, blocking people IRL, and even intercepting...

If you were a kid in the 90s then you’re probably familiar with 1999’s Smart House, perhaps the most recognizable Disney channel original movie. It’s about a family that moves into a smart house whose voice assistant Pat can do everything from cooking meals to playing movies, from helping with homework to setting showers to the perfect temperature— sound familiar? In some ways, this smart home vision has become a reality, with voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant becoming...