Hey! The name's Cal. Welcome to my own personal viewing studio. C'mon in, grab a seat, and get comfortable. You in the mood for some TV? How about a movie? I've got a huge selection, so feel free to browse and pick something out. Maybe I'll organize some watch parties in the future? I guess we'll see! Anyways, enjoy!

Title: Minority Report | Release Date: June, 2022 | Genre: Sci-Fi / Crime Thriller / Action

In the year 2054, a division of the police known as Precrime prevents murders from ever happening. By acting on prophetic visions from a trio of people known as the Precogs, the Precrime department can see murders coming, sometimes days in advance. The Chief of Precrime, John Anderton (Tom Cruise), works together with a team of detectives to use the information gleaned from the Precogs and take action before it's too late.

Minority Report was a bit of a double-whammy of goodness for me- not only is it a competent (though sometimes clearly aged) crime thriller, but the aesthetics are impeccable. According to the movie, the future is sleek, glossy architecture, with lots- and I mean lots- of glass. The slick, curving design decisions occasionally clash against the movie's depiction of more impoverished areas in the Washington metro, which are rendered in dingy, brutalist, angular and straight-edged fashion. On more than one occasion during this movie, I thought, "Man, I would love to live in Anderton's apartment."

A favorite part of the movie for me was getting to watch people interact with the system that interfaces with the Precog's minds. It's kind of like having a CCTV feed directly into their visions of the future, all controlled on a big, curving monitor (wonder how much one of those things would cost today) with the help of high-tech gloves that allow you to dig into the evidence hands-on. For a movie out of the very early 2000s, the CGI and editing impressed me pretty consistently throughout the movie.

Now, a lot of the tech is cool in this movie, but some of it is pretty scary and- ironically- was kind of prophetic for its time. One of the most unsettling things in the movie is how advertisements speak directly to people as they're walking around. There's a particularly tense scene where Anderton doesn't want to be seen, but every advertisement is calling out to him by name because they can read who you are in your eyes. The way advertisements are personalized now, I wouldn't be surprised if we weren't too far off from something like this by the time we catch up to the movie in 2054.

All in all, the movie was a lot of fun, and the setting was so cool to take in. Every now and then, the film did show its age a bit, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I had never seen the movie before this viewing, but it definitely felt like a relic of its time, and that made it even more enjoyable. They nailed the kind of semi-utopian, smooth futurism vibe, and I would watch it again just for that alone; it's just bonus points that the movie is pretty good, too!

Rating: 4.2/5