Spielberg disappoints me again
I love a good sci-fi movie. Sadly, really good ones are all too rare. Case in point: this weekend, we went to see Minority Report. We came away feeling cheated out of a movie that had such great potential. In a nutshell, an agent from Precrime, a unit dedicated to preventing murders by intervening before they happen, sees himself committing a murder in the immediate future. He's determined to prove this prediction wrong. He does, and he doesn't, in a beautifully ironic twist of fate.

The story had such amazing potential, probably thanks to Phillip K. Dick's writing and visionary talent (I haven't read the short story it was based on). And the imagery was great, with wonderful, sombre lighting and rich or wispy, grainy images, depending on the sequence. What got me was Spielberg's need to spell out everything to the obvious, use a child for the most irritating, corny emotional effect, and cast one-dimensional, wooden actors (although Tom Cruise was pretty good). Add non-stop product placement (Lexus, AmEx, Reebok, Guiness... the list goes on and on and on), and bad screenwriting (made for a woman, clearly written by a man), and you get a very disappointing interpretation of the work of a sci-fi master.

AI was a great movie marred at the end by Spielberg's maudlin touch. Minority Report sinks two thirds of the way through. And I so wanted to like it! If anybody has any suggestions for great sci-fi movies or their all-time fave sci-fi flick, I'd love to hear about them.