No, I'd agree with that. With the exception of "goofy robot sidekick" it's about as dark a sci fi movie as ever targeted to a mainstream family audience.

I can't blame people for disliking it, though: it's a fascinating but deeply flawed film. Pacing IS a problem. Plus there's no getting over Candy Clark's acting, or the horrible old-age makeup they put on her in the last section of the film.

Because, @ryan1 - among other things no one ever refers to Jackson Square as "the Square". The city's got a very specific jargon, and that's not in it.

Indeed. LLAD was the only movie I looked for on the list. Eh, well.

So…
"The audience knows everything he doesn't, so there's no tension to his efforts, just a grating wait for him to catch up. "

@Batman: "Tarkovsky doesn't ignore the book's theme, he just shifts the emphasis from the unknowability of the living planet to the unknowability of other people."

Start with Ivan's Childhood: it's zippy by Tarkovsky standards, the plot is relatively straightforward, the imagery is striking without being cryptic, and it sets up some lifelong themes of his work (horses!)

@SimpleGreen, I was being a little tongue-in-cheek there.

i.e. instead of "a friend of Wexler's". Read it in context of Sam's critique of Wexler throughout.

I'm with Lem:
the novel is one of the greatest works in all of science fiction, and while the movie is very good it's a completely different animal. Tarkovsky's poetic mysticism is fine, but I much prefer the devastating isolation of Lem's novel. Tarkovsky did much better work, too, although I can't hate on his…

Right there with you, Todd.
Not a lot of people are likely to put an episode like Mixology on their top five, but I do think it's one of the strongest they've done, and it gives the characters the kind of depth that makes the rest of the series work.

"whom Wexler identifies as a good friend"
Nicely acid little aside there, Sam. You get a gold star.

Whatever problems the show may have
with Guinan, the fencing scene in "I, Borg" pretty much justifies her existence on the show. Having regular characters lose their cool from time to time is expected, but having someone whose whole run has been "level-headed earth-mother" snap like that is really, really effective. …

Double Team, Troll 2, Irma Vep
Well, that's quite a triple feature.

All the reviews that you've written,
and this may be the funniest single sentence you've produced:

Very clever, Ruffalo…
"Mark Ruffalo only gave himself a small part in his directorial debut"

Yeah. Plus it was the second riot - an earlier one in San Francisco had led to the creation of a special police liaison on LGBT issues, one of the first real victories for the community.

The greatest film since Fireproof?
So it sounds like the movie is about as stilted and static as the book. Credit to the directors for a faithful adaptation.

Better than workmanlike. Films like Dog Day Afternoon require a really, really delicate sense of tone, and that's tough both for journeymen directors and for directors who want to put their 'stamp' on the material. It's rare to find someone with such a good ear for why a great screenplay is a great screenplay, and…

Quick note on the music:
People have already caught the Satie at the end, but during Abed's long monologue, I'm pretty sure the music is a riff on the Being John Malkovich score. Which makes sense, given he's talking about his first experience feeling like he's inside another person.