BEFORE: Well, I could skip right ahead to my Easter film from there, but then I'd miss out on the chance to remove three other films from my list, which can fit in-between here and there. So Rose Byrne carries over again from "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" and here are the links that will get me to Easter and a bit beyond that:
Hilary Swank, Imelda Staunton, Hayley Atwell, Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg, and Reece Shearsmith. As you can probably tell, the final "Mission: Impossible" film is on the schedule somewhere in there. I'm working on the rest of April now, I think I've found a path to "Jurassic World: Rebirth" and then the Springsteen bio-pic and then "One Battle After Another", but I don't want to confirm this until I know I have a path to Mothers Day.
I can't possibly schedule something appropriate for April Fools Day, there just wasn't enough time between St. Patrick's Day and Easter, I had to just take whatever chain I could find - I just have to put something on the big board and hope it somehow works out - this film sounds a bit like a good Mothers Day film, though, so maybe that's the trick?
THE PLOT: In the wake of humanity's extinction, a teenage girl is raised by a robot designed to repopulate the earth, but their unique bond is threatened when an inexplicable stranger arrives with alarming news.
AFTER: Well, by now I've seen so many end-of-the-world or post-apocalyptic films that if we get anything like this in real life, at least I'll be prepared for it. Who knows how this "war" or "excursion" or whatever in Iran is going to escalate, plus everyone's all in a panic over A.I. too, I can't really say if those are two separate problems or two parts of the same problem, but we're all just headed for something, probably, right? I mean five years ago I would have said that global warming was due to end us all within the century, but know, who can say? If it's not a nuclear explosion it could just as easily be an asteroid striking the earth ("Don't Look Up") or some kind of SkyNet operation, or come on, how many alien invasions have been predicted by movies? We're prepared for those things though, so yeah, it'll probably be something else.
This film very cagily does NOT tell us exactly what happened (past tense because we're in the future and it already took place) we only see the plans that humanity made to preserve the species if something were to happen. Namely a bunch of fertilized embryos were place in a well-protected storage facility, and there's a robot in charge of determining if and when it's time to re-populate the planet by birthing some new humans, then raising them to be their best selves. Sure, what could possibly go wrong with THIS process? Something tells me we're about to find out...
The head robot in charge goes by "Mother" of course, and starts simple with one baby girl who she names "Daughter". Most likely Daughter is a test case, because Mother is new at this and still learning how to mother. Finding out what music soothes the baby, reading stories to the baby, teaching the baby not only language skills but also science, medicine and even ethics. There's a rigorous training schedule, even if we and they are not exactly sure for what, what happened to the human race, how did it go extinct and what kind of world is there outside? Is there radiation, disease, or just a charred landscape? Knowing this might give us a clue what happened to humanity, so of course we're just not going to get it.
Despite what Mother told Daughter, one day a woman does come knocking on the door of the bunker, and despite what Mother has told her, Daughter lets her in. I should point out that before this, a mouse somehow came in through a hole near the airlock, and while Daughter was looking forward to having a pet, Mother incinerated the mouse, just to be on the safe side. So, umm, what will Mother do to this woman when she finds out about her? (That's two films in a row with a dead rodent as a plot point, just saying...)
Surprisingly, Mother just wants to help the woman, who has been shot and needs medical attention - this maybe raises a few more questions about what might be going on outside. Who shot her, and why? So there must be multiple people still out there and alive, or something else entirely is going on. The stranger (or "Woman" in the credits) says there is no contamination in the outside world, but Woman could also be lying. For that matter, Mother could be lying about the entire extinction event, we all saw what happened in "2001" when a computer was asked to lie to a couple astronauts, it caused massive programming conflicts and the computer could not resolve them without killing crew members.
Mother also says that Woman was shot by her own weapon, so Daughter is forced to investigate this herself, in an attempt to determine which entity might be lying to her. After finding out this information and a few other things, Daughter decides to leave the bunker with Woman, only Mother doesn't want to let them go. Yeah, things get complicated after that. Mother offers to start birthing a brother or sister for Daughter, but you know, the trust just isn't there anymore. But then learning what Mother really is and what the extinction event was is really the big reveal of the film, so no spoilers here.
Surprisingly, this film played at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, although I don't remember hearing about it at the time, and I don't know exactly why it took me 5 or 6 years for me to even hear about this movie, I guess it flew under the radar for a long while. I guess I added it to my list when it hit Netflix in mid-2019, and it's just been there, not linked to for an even longer while. But I watch so many movies it's impossible for me to remember HOW I learned about them, it's really only important that I do, because learning about a movie is the first step toward putting it on my watchlist, and only then can I try to connect to it. The film is based on a novel called "The Final Version" from 2014, so yeah, it was pretty much a 12-year journey from that book to me watching the film today.
Still, when it comes to apocalypses, I feel like this is all pretty basic stuff, there's not a lot of wow factor here that we haven't seen in films like "I Am Legend", "2012" or "Greenland", only the exciting bits concerning how the world dies and people panicking and trying to save themselves is absent, leaving behind only the much more boring tasks of trying to fix the world and repopulate it with humans.
Directed by Grant Supore
Also starring Clara Rugaard, Luke Hawker, Hilary Swank (last seen in "Ordinary Angels"), Tahlia Sturzaker, Hazel Sandery, Summer Lenton, Maddie Lenton, Jacob Nolan, Tracy Britton, with archive footage of Johnny Carson (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Martha"), Steve Martin (last heard in "Love the Coopers").
RATING: 5 out of 10 ballet classes (taught by a robot who can't dance?)
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