Netflix pick for 9/29/14 – ‘Silent Running’

“Silent Running” is a cool science fiction film from 1972, starring a young and wild-eyed Bruce Dern and directed by movie special effects maverick Douglas Trumbull, known most for his award winning work on “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and he took that clout to make his own movie, this little sci-fi tale about a floating bio-dome in outer space and the botanist who defied orders so he could save the trees. Yes, this movie has a hippie message. Deal with it.

In this story, it is the future, and in this future, life on Earth has gone mostly extinct. Some plant life was saved and put into orbit via bio-domes hooked up to spacecrafts (American Airlines space freighters, actually), with the goal being to keep the plants and trees alive and then go back to Earth one day to re-plant them. But before that could happen, the people on the freighters get orders to jettison the bio-domes and blow em up because the ships themselves were needed for something else entirely. And all of the domes are blown up except for Bruce Dern’s because he’s all like “we gotta save these trees.” So most of the movie is about his corporate subordination and then his use of the on-board drones as helpers and companions.

This is a weird, crazy sci fi movie featuring some of the Saturn’s Rings special effects that Trumbull couldn’t figure out in time for “2001” but he managed to sneak them in here so huzzah for that and also featuring great early 70s special effect work via models and macrophotography that is fun to watch and way more interesting to look at then some computer rendered digital fakery.

So check out this cool movie here on the Netflix Instant and enjoy!