Thursday Movie Picks - Cyberpunk

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks - Cyberpunk.

Minority Report (2002)

Based on a story by Philip K. Dick, Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) leads the Precrime unit which utilizes psychic technology to arrest and convict murderers before they commit their crime. When he's accused of a future murder for a man he hasn't met yet, Anderton goes on the run to investigate his own crime.

Can you believe there was a time when it felt like Cruise and Spielberg were never going to stop making movies together? They produced five projects overall, but Cruise only ever starred in two of Spielberg's projects - this and The War of the Worlds. Though most of the action scenes usurp the plot, it's an underrated film that gave both something different outside of their trademark work. 

Blade Runner (2049)

Officer K (Ryan Gosling), a new blade runner for the Los Angeles Police Department, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. His discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former blade runner who's been missing for 30 years.

This isn't the first movie I thought of for cyberpunk because the production and setting feels so natural. The aesthetic tends to stand out in smaller ways that have a big impact like the city where Officer K lives, his big furry jacket, and when/how technology is used throughout the story. Everything blends in with the amazing cinematography and direction, I have to remind myself sometimes that this is set in the future in a "cyberpunk" world.

The Matrix (1999)

Neo (Keanu Reeves) is contacted by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), a beautiful stranger who leads him into an underworld where he meets Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne). Believing he is the chosen one to help battle against a cadre of intelligent secret agents, he trains to understand the truth of the Matrix.

I'd be extremely surprised if this wasn't popular this week. When I hear cyberpunk, the first thing that pops into my head is The Matrix and its sequels - the long flowing leather jackets, the tiny sunglasses, the computer coding in lime green for the posters scream cyberpunk. It set a precedent for the genre that I don't think other movies can live up to in terms of the aesthetic, action scenes, and world-building.