In our second episode, the girls review Moon (2009; directed by Duncan Jones) and share some of our favorite cerebral science fiction recommendations. Some Cast It Hot features, alphabetically, Alex from Film Forager, Allison from Nerdvampire, Caitlin from 1,416 and Counting and, well, me.
Episode Two: Space Oddity (Direct Link)
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Sasha James, otherwise known as The Final Girl Project, is a twenty-something Torontonian with an unhealthy amount of her week reserved for film and television. She also moonlights as The Doctor's companion on Saturdays. 
Had I been talking with you all, I would have made a pushy a-hole out of myself for the sci-fi segment and would have gone way over the 1 film per person rule. I love heady science fiction, and a few of my favorites that went unmentioned are:
Brazil: 1984 as farce about bureaucracy, with Jonathan Pryce giving a twitching, nervous performance that Hugh Grant spent a career ripping off without ever making nearly as endearing. With Terry Gilliam directing, Brazil pretty quickly jumps into dreamworlds and loopy aesthetics, but he always knows how to make a film coherent even as he’s confusing the hell out of you.
Solaris: Relating this to Moon, Duncan Jones based his film primarily on two sources: 2001 A Space Odyssey, and this quiet existentialist piece by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. It’s about a man who travels with an expedition to another planet where a previously stationed crew in orbit is already going insane. When he gets there, he finds out that the planet can project a consciousness into the group through their memories, so he’s confronted with his dead wife, albeit only the one that exists from his memory, not her true characteristics and thought process. It’s a bit overlong despite the director’s skill with long, slow movies, but it’s still thought-provoking and sometimes aching.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence: One of the most underrated movies ever, and the one Spielberg film to be thoroughly thought-provoking through and through. Some fault the ending, but I think it’s a deceivingly horrific closer for a film that basically posits that there is no inherent trait that makes humans special: not logic, not emotion, not even love. Not even the director’s beautiful aesthetic can mask how depressing the idea is.
Stalker: Andrei Tarkovsky’s second sci-fi movie is his masterpiece, a three-hour rumination on lost faith in a world devastated by war. The titular stalker is not some creep or hunter but a guide through a mysterious, cordoned-off area called The Zone, where alien energy has the power to grant people’s innermost desire, often to adverse effect. Sort of a gritty, futuristic Ingmar Bergman film, but even better.
And I was really hoping someone would mention The Man Who Fell to Earth, considering it linked up perfectly to the Moon discussion in that its star was in fact David Bowie, fresh off Young Americans (his role here informed his Thin White Duke persona on Station to Station and a promotional still for the movie became the album cover for Low). It was made by Nicolas Roeg, who was once cinematographer for David Lean and made some of the most visually sumptuous films ever; he guts the source novel and makes a surreal movie about the traps of modern America, as Bowie’s character comes to Earth to get water to take to his arid planet (explicitly made this way by nuclear war in the novel but left unexplained here). Instead, he becomes a mogul by passing off his alien technology as inventions and becomes addicted to easy pleasures like alcohol, sex and television. It’s a scathing indictment of Me Generation materialism that’s sadly as relevant today as it was then. Oh, and Rip Torn (and his penis) are in it too, so… yeah.
And at this point you’d all have collectively found a way to kill my mic to stop the fat man from speaking incessantly. Great podcast, once again.
Jake: I can’t speak for my podcast partners but, don’t worry, I can get carried away with my sci-fi, too, and it was so hard to think of only one film! Brazil is one of my absolute favorite movies and I didn’t bring it up simply because I was thinking of a more dramatic, underseen film for my recommendation. Solaris is quite good as well, but again, quite famous and I wanted something less well-known so it’d be more useful as a recommendation. I’ve yet to see Stalker or The Man Who Fell to Earth, but they’re both on my netflix queue- looking forward to Rip Torn’s penis!
I liked the musical prelude to the podcast! I will be checking out some more of Bowie’s music which I unfortunately am ill-aquainted with… and Moon sounds awesome. Rockwell and Ruffalo are two of my favourite actors.
@Jake Holy crap, man. You wrote a novel in my comments. Much appreciated. (And that wasn’t sarcasm.) We’re trying to limit the recommendations to one a person, so, we don’t talk for a gazillion hours. I’m sort of shocked that Brazil didn’t come up — and Solaris, for that matter. Those two films are huge talking points with the gals of SOme Cast It Hot. I’ll have to put your last two film recs on my list. I haven’t heard of either before, and they seem very interesting.
@Alex Logan’s Run will always and forever be my sci-fi recommendation.
@Caroline Thanks for the love.
the only part i don’t like about moon was the miniatures, they shot them and the look like toys not like how ILM did in the past.
@Jeremy Honestly, I thought the miniatures looked pretty good. They gave off a stark contrast with the whites and blacks, making the off-site scenes seem otherworldly.