‘A Hard Problem’
Rent or buy it on most major platforms.
This thoughtful release is the latest in a long — and ever-growing — line of science-fiction movies considering whether or not artificial intelligence can develop self-awareness and feelings. Directed by a filmmaking duo calling itself hazart, “A Hard Problem” looks at what it means to be alive — which, naturally, also involves what it means to cease to exist. Ian (Johnny Berchtold), after the death of his mother, Mary (Jennifer Pierce Mathus), is left to sort her belongings. The willowy young man is adrift and forlorn, which seems like a legitimate response, but actually isn’t: He’s a synthetic “artificial parallel” of the actual Ian, who died of cancer, and was created to assuage Mary’s grief. Logically, Ian should be taken out of commission since his purpose is gone. But gradually both he and Olivia (Catherine Haena Kim), a representative of the company that built him, realize that shutting down a parallel is more fraught than turning off an appliance. Considering that people now clone their pets, the issues raised in this elegantly directed, acted and designed (far from a given among modestly budgeted indies) movie are a breath away from coming true.
‘Relax, I’m from the Future’
Most time-travel films incorporate jokes about someone encountering strange items for the first time. Luke Higginson’s comedy dispenses with them quickly: Casper (the New Zealand actor Rhys Darby), who has landed in contemporary Canada from a far-off future, discovers a library, smokes a cigarette. Similarly, the film does not spend all that much time mining the way that Casper and his new friend, the cooler-than-thou punk Holly (Gabrielle Graham), make money by betting on sports and buying lottery tickets.
Meanwhile, the mysterious Doris (Janine Theriault) dispatches other time travelers with what looks like a big electric stapler. Slowly, the story moves on to its real point, as Higginson drops clues — Casper informs Holly that contrary to pop-culture belief, there is just one single “mushy blob of reality” and not multiple timelines, and all the portals of the future lead to the same destination in time. While the final explanation is darker than you might have expected considering the fairly goofy tone of the proceedings up until then, Darby (best known for “Our Flag Means Death” and “Flight of the Conchords”) makes a meal out of the most innocuous lines and situations, and confirms that he is a comic force to be reckoned with.
Just as there are cozy mysteries, there is cozy sci-fi, a subgenre of which Marc Turtletaub’s movie is a prime illustration. When a spaceship crashes into his backyard one night, Milton (Ben Kingsley) reacts with a mild “Oh my.” In quick order he joins forces with Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris) and Joyce (Jane Curtin) to keep the alien’s presence a secret and help him repair his ride. The aged trio bond over the silent visitor, whom Milton and Sandy call Jules, but it’s really their shared isolation and loneliness that keeps their newfound friendship going.
They don’t see their kids enough (except for Milton’s daughter, played by Zoe Winters), their pets are getting older, their mind may be going, and until Jules turns up, it feels as if all they have left is being their town’s cranks (or eccentrics, for those feeling generous). “Jules” never makes older people the butt of the humor, and instead casts a gentle eye on three prickly individuals. And not only does the movie never lapse into sentimentality, but it displays a deliciously macabre sense of humor — Jules needs a very particular kind of fuel to power his vessel.
The title of this Spanish Amazon original suggests a story about A.I., or maybe something touchy-feely involving Goop. But in Daniel Benmayor’s movie, there is a key definite article that makes a big difference: The Awareness is a mysterious organization said to manipulate the higher spheres of politics and business for nefarious purposes. Then again, maybe it isn’t. Much of the story pits the Awareness against the equally mysterious Agency as we try to figure out who the good guys are. Caught in the middle is Ian (Carlos Scholz), a young man raised by his father, Vicente (Pedro Alonso, who portrays Berlin in the Netflix series “Money Heist” and its new spinoff, “Berlin”). Ian has the power to suggest incredibly detailed hallucinations, which he and his dad use to commit petty thefts. Despite Vicente’s attempt to keep Ian’s existence a secret, they are spotted by the sleek Adriana (Lela Loren), who explains the whole Awareness/Agency business. Well, sort of.
As befits a movie influenced by “The Matrix” and the outer reaches of superhero lore, the tone is both utterly serious and utterly silly. Ian’s “neurotrophic factor” is said to be off the charts, for example, and despite his moniker, a so-called perceiver (Óscar Jaenada) does not star in a Las Vegas mentalist show but tries to control the world. Perhaps I was fooled by one of Ian’s visions, but I went along for the ride.
‘Static Codes’
Micro-budgeted, awkwardly acted and directed, David M. Parks’s film is fairly representative of the fare streaming for free on Tubi. Except that unlike the majority of its brethren, I found it strangely compelling. Partly it’s because “Static Codes” tries to cast a fairly honest look at people who are derided in the mainstream, and its rough edges make it feel simultaneously authentic and a little forced, like a re-enactment in a documentary.
Haunted by the mysterious disappearance of his wife, Penelope (Taryn Manning), in the car accident that left him a paraplegic, Richard (Shane Woodson) lives alone and hosts a conspiracy-minded online show in which he goes on and on about his theory that Penelope was abducted by aliens. We catch him as he hits rock bottom: His estranged daughter, Angie (Augie Duke), doesn’t return his calls, one of his listeners schemed to lock him out of his own site, and he doesn’t have enough money to take his sick dog to the vet. “Static Codes” eventually gets to what happened to Penelope, but it’s far more interesting when it looks at Richard’s downward spiral, and what fuels “true believers.” The movie also touches on some of the contradictions plaguing conspiracy circles: Richard is wary of the “deep state” and the government, but he lives off checks from, yes, the government — an inconsistency he acknowledges to Angie, along with the fact that he voted for Barack Obama.
