Metropolis (film)
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Metropolis is a 1927 silent science fiction film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and Thea von Harbou. Lang and von Harbou, who were married, wrote the screenplay in 1924, and published a novelization in 1926, before the film was released. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film stars Alfred Abel as the leader of the city, Gustav Fröhlich as his son, who tries to mediate between the elite caste and the workers, Brigitte Helm as both the pure-at-heart worker Maria and the debased robot version of her, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the mad scientist who creates the robot.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(film)
Modern Times (film)
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Modern Times is a 1936 comedy film by Charlie Chaplin that has his iconic Little Tramp character struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. The film is a comment on the desperate employment and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in Chaplin's view, by the efficiencies of modern industrialization. The movie stars Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Stanley Sandford and Chester Conklin, and was written and directed by Chaplin.
Modern Times was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress in 1989, and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Times_(film)
Take This Job and Shove It (film)
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Take This Job and Shove It is a 1981 film, starring Robert Hays, Barbara Hershey, Art Carney, and David Keith, and directed by Gus Trikonis.
The film was named after a popular Country Western song, Take This Job and Shove It, which was written by David Allan Coe and sung by Johnny Paycheck, both men had minor roles in the film.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_This_Job_and_Shove_It_(film)
Nine to Five
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Nine to Five, also known as 9 to 5, is a 1980 American comedy movie starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman.
The film concerns three working women living out their fantasy of getting even with, and their successful overthrow of, the company's autocratic, "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss.
Nine to Five was an across-the-board hit, grossing USD$103,290,500 in the U.S. alone. The film became the highest-grossing comedy of 1980. As a star vehicle for singer Parton, it launched her permanently into mainstream popular culture. Although a television series based on the film was less successful, a musical version of the film (also titled 9 to 5), with new songs written by Parton, opened on Broadway on April 30, 2009.
This film is number 47 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_to_FiveRoboCop
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RoboCop is a 1987 cyberpunk themed film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg known as "RoboCop". RoboCop explores larger themes regarding the media, gentrification and human nature in addition to being an action film. It has spawned merchandise, two sequels, four television series, video games and two comic book adaptations.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboCopGung Ho (1986)
When a Japanese car company buys an American plant, the American liason must mediate the clash of work attitudes between the foreign management and native labor.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091159/Soylent Green
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Soylent Green is a 1973 dystopian science fiction movie depicting a future in which overpopulation leads to depleted resources, which in turn leads to widespread unemployment and poverty. Real fruit, vegetables and meat are rare, expensive commodities, and much of the population survives on processed food rations, including "soylent green" wafers.
The film overlays the science fiction and police procedural genres as it depicts the efforts of New York City police detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) and elderly police researcher Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) to investigate the brutal murder of a wealthy businessman named William R. Simonson (Joseph Cotten). Thorn and Roth uncover clues which suggest that it is more than simply a bungled burglary.
The film, which is loosely based upon the 1966 science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room!, by Harry Harrison, won the Nebula Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film in 1973.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_GreenThe Ugly Little Boy
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"The Ugly Little Boy" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the September 1958 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction under the title "Lastborn", and was reprinted under its current title in the 1959 collection Nine Tomorrows. The story deals with a Homo neanderthalensis child which is brought to the future by means of time travel. Robert Silverberg later expanded it into a novel with the same title published in 1992 (also published as Child of Time in the UK).
Asimov said that this was his second favourite of his own stories. Like most of his works the story centres on science fiction and other fiction based on futuristic science.
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In 1977, "The Ugly Little Boy" was made into a 26-minute telefilm in Canada, directed by and starring Barry Morse. London-born actress Kate Reid played the role of Nurse Fellowes. The film is noteworthy for its fidelity to the short story, as well as the pathos between Timmy and Nurse Fellowes which has gained the film praise from both fans and reviewers. It remains the best adaptation of Asimov's short stories to date.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Little_BoyWALL-E
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WALL-E (promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E) is a 2008 computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. It follows the story of a robot named WALL-E who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future. He eventually falls in love with another robot named EVE, and follows her into outer space on an adventure that changes the destiny of both his kind and humanity.
After directing Finding Nemo, Stanton felt Pixar had created believable simulations of underwater physics and was willing to direct a film largely set in space. Most of the characters do not have actual human voices, but instead communicate with body language and robotic sounds, designed by Ben Burtt, that resemble voices. In addition, it is the first animated feature by Pixar to have segments featuring live-action characters.
Walt Disney Pictures released it in the United States and Canada on June 27, 2008. The film grossed $23.1 million on its opening day, and $63 million during its opening weekend in 3,992 theaters, ranking #1 at the box office. This ranks as the fourth highest-grossing opening weekend for a Pixar film as of May 31, 2009. Following Pixar tradition, WALL-E was paired with a short film, Presto, for its theatrical release. WALL-E has been met with universal acclaim among critics, scoring an approval rating of 96% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It grossed $534 million worldwide, won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and the 2008 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and was nominated for five other Academy Awards.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-EProphecy (1979)
June 15, 1979
Screen: Frankenheimer's 'Prophecy':Mercury, Lukewarm
"PROPHECY" is a very small horror movie that pretends to be as big as all outdoors. It's about the dreadful effects of a mercury compound that has been used for 20 years at a lumber mill on the ecology of rural Maine. Raccoons lose their minds and attack tourists with the frenzy of rug peddlers. Tadpoles attain the size of salmon, and salmon the size of dolphin.
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http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9905EED61539E732A25756C1A9609C946890D6CFThe China Syndrome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The China Syndrome is a 1979 thriller film which tells the story of a reporter and cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant. It stars Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Scott Brady, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Richard Herd, and Wilford Brimley.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_SyndromeThe Running Man (film)
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The Running Man is a 1987 film adaptation loosely based on the Stephen King novel The Running Man. Directed by Paul Michael Glaser, the film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, María Conchita Alonso, Jesse Ventura, Jim Brown, and Richard Dawson.
The film, set in a dystopic year 2019, is about a television show called Running Man, where convicted criminal "runners" must escape death at the hands of professional killers. The film differed significantly from the novel; it recalls some scenes from a French film with a similar theme, called Le Prix du Danger, about a television show where participants must escape killers live on television.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Man_(film)
That's just what I could come up with off the top of my head for now.