Avi Lewis’ documentary This Changes Everything looks at the narrative for civilization that allowed climate change to happen. Without preaching, the film takes a look at grassroots movements that are helping to mitigate climate change.
Science on Film
Racing Extinction: awe-inspiring images overpowered by activism narrative
We’re in an age of mass extinction. For centuries, you might expect one species to go extinct per year, but thanks to human activities, these numbers have increased by orders of magnitude. Director Louie Psihoyos’ Racing Extinction aims to not just manufacture outrage about this fact, but to create a sense of wonder at the natural […]
The Martian engineers the shit out of surviving on Mars
The Martian would be a great engineering recruitment film — if it ever mentioned the word “engineering.” When Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is faced with the challenges of surviving alone on Mars for four years, including growing his own own food and figuring out a way to communicate with Earth, he concludes he’ll have to “science […]
Ex Machina is yet another film about boys and their toys
Ex Machina isn’t just misogynistic; it gets the science wrong, too.
Merchants of Doubt: an inside look at the climate change denial industry that doesn’t delve deep enough
Merchants of Doubt takes an in-depth look at how the same public relations experts — these “Merchants of Doubt” — who helped tobacco companies persuade the world, in the 1950s and 1960s, that cigarettes weren’t harmful to health, even though the tobacco companies had done their own very good scientific studies that proved the opposite, were […]
The Imitation Game: cracking the Nazi code and the human one
Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, an engaging but often silly look at the team who cracked the Enigma code.