Directed by Steve Barron • 1984 • United States, United Kingdom
Starring Lenny Von Dohlen, Virginia Madsen, Maxwell Caulfield
This awesomely ’80s comedy puts a sci-fi spin on the classic love-triangle premise with the tale of a man who finds himself in a romantic rivalry with his PC. Nerdy architect Miles Harding (Lenny Von Dohlen) buys a new computer, Edgar (voiced by none other than Bud Cort), which rapidly acquires sentience—learning to talk, make music, and even fall in love. The problem: the object of Edgar’s affections is Miles’s own crush, his cellist neighbor Madeline (Virginia Madsen). In the battle between dweeb and hotshot machine, who will win out? Prolific music video director Steve Barron brings a distinctly MTV aesthetic to his debut feature, which bops along to a synthy soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder, Culture Club, Jeff Lynne, the Human League, and others.
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Teknolust
Directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson • 2002 • United States
Starring Tilda Swinton, Jeremy Davies, James UrbaniakTilda Swinton plays four roles in Lynn Hershman Leeson’s feminist sci-fi brain-bender about Rosetta Stone and her three Self-Replicating Automatons, (SRAs), which she cloned from her own...
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Computer Chess
Directed by Andrew Bujalski • 2013 • United States
Starring Patrick Riester, Myles Paige, James CurrySet over the course of a weekend tournament for chess-software programmers forty-some years ago, COMPUTER CHESS transports viewers to a nostalgic moment when the contest between technology and t...
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Life After BOB: The Chalice Study
Directed by Ian Cheng • 2021 • United States
Starring Poonam Basu, Cherami Leigh, Dana LeeIn this innovative anime created by artist Ian Cheng in the Unity game engine, neural engineer Dr. Wong installs an experimental AI named BOB (“Bag of Beliefs”) into the nervous system of his ten-year-old ...
