Thursday Movie Picks #53: Science Fiction Movies (No Space/Aliens)

I missed last week's Thursday Movie Picks because I went on a road trip of my own. Due to a train driver strike I was forced to catch the bus to get to a small town in Gloucestershire instead of using the train. I left the house at 8.30 am and didn't get back to 10pm so I had no time to write or publish my three favourite Road Movies. Anywho I am back this week. The instigator of Thursday Movie Picks can be found here - http://wanderingthroughtheshelves.blogspot.co.uk/

Cult Classic from the 70s where everything is fine and dandy in the futuristic world where poverty, war and starvation is a thing of the past. For this blissful tranquillity everyone seems happy to accept that they only live until they are thirty as they are vaporised and renewed once they hit this age. However, a couple discover something that changes everything.

In contrast to the idealistic futuristic settings in Logan's Run, the future depicted in Soylent Green isn't quite as nice. In 2022 New York City has 40,000,000 inhabitants many of whom are suffering deeply from overcrowding, poverty, starvation, depleted resources and incredibly humid conditions. Many survive on something called soylent green but what is soylent green?

Gojira is allegory to the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo as Gojira is a beast born from American activities which caused the beast monster to rise from the seas as a result of American testing of the hydrogen bomb. The theme of nuclear anxiety is commonplace in Japanese cinema, Akira Kurosawa directed two films (I Live in Fear and Rhapsody in August) that dealt exclusively with such a theme. Gojira arguably contained some anti-American themes of which were cut out of the American version of the film which, as a result, caused the American cut to lack the depth of the Japanese original.