Johnny Mnemonic

There's that cyber slam again.

"A pulse-pouding cyber-slam."

Now be honest, that kind of sounds like some sort of robot sex act doesn't it? Yeah I thought your silent agreement would be forthcoming, but that's beside the point! The point is that today I continue my aimless trek through the empty expanses of cyberfilms of the 90s. Today I go out of the hacker films all the way into full blast cyberpunk, with Johnny Mnemonic, a movie based on a William Gibson short story of the same name. If you don't know, William Gibson was one of the major voices of the cyberpunk sub-genre and also later of what would be known as post-cyberpunk (some of my all time favorite novels were among his later works) Johnny Mnemonic is relatively common of the genre however, and features a data courier who uses his own head for storage. Now me personally, I feel like if I were going to be a courier of stolen data who might be pursued by criminals, I wouldn't want brain to be the receptacle. I guess it guarantees that for a while my head is safe from bullets, but I feel like it sort of increases the chance of the rest of me getting torn up. At any rate, Johnny (played by the ever expressive Keanu Reeves who is 50 today, happy birthday Neo) seems less concerned with this, and more worried about getting enough money to have his implant removed. See while trafficking some guy's data is maybe lucrative, it comes at a serious cost. In this particular case, Johnny has lost all his memories of his childhood, and so is saving up to have that damage reversed, which I don't know how it's possible but apparently it is. So there's Johnny-boy's motivation, but what about the job? Well he's supposed to pick up some obviously hot merchandise from some nerds, and then carry it for them to their potential buyer. The problem is that it's way too much data, substantially more than johnny can carry safely in his noodle (I guess that isn't so surprising given the person we're talking about). Repeated warnings don't stop him from doing it anyway though, and moments later ole' Johnny is running for his life after his employers are shot to pieces and diced up by the Yakuza.

Wargames

Make a cover that's mostly black space.

"The only winning move is not to play."

That's also good advice if you feel yourself being drawn into an argument on the internet! Hello friends and welcome to a slightly late edition of the Tagline, I wanted to give Tron some time in the spotlight by its lonesome, and it looks like everyone got their money's worth. Now that time is over though, and it's time for us to move exactly one year ahead, to 1983, where a computer program was deciding not to try and take control of mankind, but rather to just blow it straight to hell. Today's feature film is WarGames, a film that I think is more or less forgotten along with things like the Cold War and Matthew Broderick. In this film Broderick starred in one of his first major roles as David Lightman, a generally delinquent high school student who prefers to spend his time hacking computer systems, only not in the really dumb way that Hackers did. One day while idling his time away by dialing every number in his town with his modem, he finds a computer that won't identify itself, and decides to investigate further. David eventually finds a way to access this computer, but doesn't realize that this machine is the supercomputer at NORAD that controls the nuclear missile silos of the US, and is continually running launch scenarios, and learning from these simulations. David engages the computer in a rousing, friendly game of "Thermonuclear War" which I think we can all agree is a really fun game to play on a sunny afternoon when you have nothing else to do. David chooses Russia as his side, proving that Matthew Broderick is a communist, and does not realize that in doing so starts the computer with its metaphorical finger on the metaphorical red button down a path that leads to mutually assured destruction. Oops.

Tron (1982)

Yeah the cover's pretty similar too.

"Trapped in a fight to the finish inside the video world he created."

Hello all, welcome to a new week at The Tagline! Summer is meandering towards its conclusion, and I am slowly being driven insane, so I thought now would be an opportune moment to explore a movie that features less preposterous science fiction than Hackers. To that end, I will be talking about Tron today. Yeah maybe it was a lame joke, but seriously, today I'm reaching back deep into history so that we can have a chat about the original Tron, a movie that spawned a franchise over the course of several decades, and eventually a sequel in 2010, which some people who clearly had never seen the original didn't like (and I'll talk more about that in a little bit). Originally conceived in 1976 by its director and writer Steve Lisberger, Tron was intended at first to be an animated feature, but as time went on and no one picked up the production, the emphasis slowly shifted towards backlit animation mixed with live action and computer animation, which was what ended up happening when Disney eventually picked up the film (yes it was always Disney, some people didn't know that I guess? I shouldn't be surprised but...) There it developed into the work that would eventually spawn a fairly prolific franchise, including a cartoon and a number of games. It's important to take this movie in a little bit in context of when it was made. In 1982 computers were very much not the mainstream, and even video games in their earliest form (Pong being a major inspiration for Lisberger) were an extremely niche attraction. It was the director's hope that he could sort of open up that world, and eventually that DID happen, though at the time Tron was not extremely successful (that being said it wasn't a flop either, it almost doubled its money).

Hackers

CAN YOU FEEL THE EXCITEMENT.

"Hack The Planet!"

Hello everyone, welcome to a fresh week of excitement here at The Tagline! Last night, in a moment of weakness I asked my Facebook for movie suggestions, and I don't know why I was surprised at the outcome. While there were a fair number of varied suggestions (many of which you will most likely see over the coming weeks) there was also a public outcry for me to review Hackers, a thing that I desperately did not want to do (as you may remember, earlier this year I reviewed another 90s cyberthriller, Sandra Bullock's The Net). Still, as reluctant as I might have been, the people spoke, loudly, and some of them said cusswords at me to emphasize their point, which I returned in high volume (which is to say I swore loudly, at my computer screen). The end result was that I decided I had to watch Hackers, in all its mysterious computers of the early 90s glory, only not actually because I question whether the people who made this movie had ever seen a computer. If you were not around in the 90s, or just suppressed this part of them feverishly when trying to craft an idyllic picture of your past, cyberthrillers pretty much had their day at the early to mid section of the 90s, when computers and the internet were just common enough that people knew they were a thing, but had no idea how they functioned or what mad wizards operated them. People mostly STILL don't have any idea, but they know at least what computers look like and that you can browse Facebook on them. Hackers stars Jonny Lee Miller (who mostly went on to a career in TV, but remember him in Aeon Flux?) as Dade Murphy AKA CRASH OVERRIDE, a high senior with a past as a hacker (when he was like 10) that gave him both a record and a reputation. Despite his bad history with the law and the net, he can't stay away from those tasty, crispy cyberwaves, or what the fuck ever they decide is thematically appropriate slang in this movie. Dade immediately falls in with a group of hackers upon moving to NYC and arriving at his new school, and that's when things start to get complicated. He finds himself quickly caught up in a complex web of plots and futuristic looking 3D animations, as his friends become the targets of a set-up that will allow inveterate asshole Plague (Fischer Stevens who was most notably also in The Super Mario Bros movie ouch) to steal 25 million dollars from the company he works as security for. Everyone needs a scapegoat I guess!

Cyber Seduction

Really took the time to make this legit.

"He's with hundreds of women every night... without ever leaving his computer."

Good morning my friends, and welcome. Normally its all shits and giggles up in here, but today I want to talk about a very serious epidemic that's sweeping the 2005 nation: Boys looking at mostly covered up boobs on the internet. Yes that's right, it's no joke, boys the nation over are giving up otherwise productive lives so they can almost see a boob on the internet, but not quite. They start drinking energy drinks, and will drain your credit card dry, just to pay for an almost glimpse at part of a boob maybe in some leather bikini. It's horrifying to imagine but we can't just turn a blind eye while the terrifying internets suck the souls from the still living penises of teenagers everywhere. Yes I really typed that sentence, looked at it, and thought "yup, let's go with that." That's not the point though. Okay it kind of is the point of today's movie actually, which is the often lauded and truly informative CYBER SEDUCTION: HIS SECRET LIFE, a made for Lifetime movie about a teenage boy who discovers internet pornography, and is then sucked headlong into a world of desperate jacking off, that ultimately destroys him almost.

The Net

SPECIAL DVDITION.

"Her driver's license. Her credit cards. Her bank accounts. Her identity. DELETED."

Hello Tagliners, welcome back, this week I decided that I'd greet this fine new year by taking a look back. But then I couldn't STOP looking back, and I just looked further and further and eventually I was all the way back in 1995 and I had no way of getting back to the present and instead had to watch old cyber thrillers. That's right, today we're going to take a look back at the internet as imagined by the brain trusts of Hollywood in 1995. This crack team of geniuses produced The Net, a film where Sandra Bullock stars as Angela Bennett, a computer programmer who works remotely, and has no friends in the real world. I think that covers most people in the world now, but in 1995 I guess it was a pretty novel concept, anyway Angela stumbles into some kind of conspiracy, because this is the 90s, and then her entire identity is erased and she can't prove who she is and everyone thinks she is a hooker and they want to kill her. I'll explain more but I mean the real great thing here is that Angela Bennett is such a recluse, that there are literally TWO people in the world who even recognize her by her face. Now that is some pretty epic hermit action. I mean granted they didn't have Facebook for her to post selfies to all day long but still, I think most people probably have at least THREE others who would recognize them and be able to vouch for them not being a prostitute who was in Mexico.