Thursday 26 May 2016

Thursday Movie Picks: The Internet


It's Thursday! Time for It's Thursday! Time for Movie Picks. If you're new to this, Thursday Movie Picks is a fantastic series hosted by Wanderer at Wandering Through the Shelves, where each week she picks a theme and we all choose 3 movies that we feel fit. This week's theme is The Internet.

I’m currently struggling to keep a straight face whilst writing this post, as whenever I type out ‘The Internet’ I’m just reminded about the time in The IT Crowd when Roy and Moss convince Jen that their router (was it a router?) is in fact...The Internet. 


Anyway, jokes aside, the internet is a weird and wonderful place, so it’s no wonder really that there’s a whole bunch of movies about it. I’m going with a bit of a theme within the theme this week, as my 3 choices focus on the darker, more sinister part of the internet. Hey, it’s not all sweetness and light here at Flick Chicks!

the-fifth-estate-movies-about-internet

Perhaps you’ve heard of Julian Assange. If you haven’t, you must have heard of the whistleblowing online platform he created with his colleague Daniel Berg, WikiLeaks. The Fifth Estate (2013) follows the events of these colleagues, played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Bruhl as they find themselves at loggerheads when the platform really takes off. It’s not the most interesting thriller out there, but when I first watched it I knew very little about Julian Assange, so it was more of a fun, educational experience for me.

disconnect-movies-about-internet

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I posted a review of Disconnect (2012) on here. It’s a fantastic movie, and tells multiple stories exploring the dangers of the internet, such as a bunch of school children ‘cat-fishing’ another student which goes terribly wrong, a young video chat-room stripper who lands into trouble when he agrees to tell his story to a reporter, and a grieving couple who have their identities stolen online. I’d have happily watched feature length movies of each of these stories. It’s a must-watch.

ask-me-anything-movies-about-internet

I want to say that the title of Ask Me Anything (2014) came from the infamous features on Reddit which go by the same name, or ‘AMAs’, but maybe that’s because I’ve been spending too much time there lately. Anyway, in this, Katie takes a year off before college to ‘find herself’, which leads to her creating a blog to detail her life, but mostly her sexual activities. Amongst all this, she finds herself involved with more than one man at a time. It’s an interesting watch, but takes a sharp turn at the end which leaves you confused.

11 comments:

  1. I picked The Fifth Estate too :) Ask Me Anything seems like its run of the mill but I'm still intrigued by it.

    Hhahahaha I thought of The IT Crowd too - love that episode!

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  2. I've only seen The Fifth Estate. We Steal Secrets, the documentary about WikiLeaks, is a LOT better.

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  3. How awesome you started with The It Crowd! I love this eposide when they break the internet :D
    Sadly haven't seen any of your picks...

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  4. I haven't seen any of your picks but do want to see The 5th Estate. I am so ....blond that when i first heard about this movie I thought it was about the Canadian News show called The 5th Estate:)

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  5. I'm with most everyone else in not having seen these three though this is the second mention of 5th Estate so now I'm intrigued.

    Odd that for something that is so widely used the internet rarely lends itself to really timely gripping movies. The technology moves so fast that the films date very quickly. I had a little trouble finding three that I really liked and quite frankly Untraceable outside of Diane Lane isn't one I'm overly fond of. My last pick while being the most antiquated remains my favorite since its more about the adventure of the story than specifically the net.

    Untraceable (2008)-FBI Special Agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) works in a division that fights cybercrime. World weary and jaded she is still shocked when confronted by a killer who posts live feeds of his crimes on his website, the more hits the site gets the faster the victim dies. Determined to stop him she and her team try to capture the killer before time runs out.

    The Net (1995)-Virtual recluse Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a software engineer who works from home as a freelance expert with few friends outside of cyberspace. One of those friends sends her a program with a weird glitch for her to de-bug. She discovers secret information on the disk just before taking her first vacation in years. While on that trip she meets an mysterious attractive stranger, finds herself embroiled in a web of computer espionage and her life endangered.

    WarGames (1983)-Young computer whiz David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) finds a backdoor into a system he mistakenly believes is devoted to games which he attempts to play. It turns out that he has accidentally infiltrated the US government’s computer and may have initiated the lead up to WWIII. Assisted by a young girl he’s sweet on (Ally Sheedy) and the inventor of the system he tries to stop the game before it’s too late. Made when computers on a personal user level were a relatively new phenomenon this is a solid adventure with a very winning Broderick in the lead.

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  6. Infamous reddit features? I know there have been one or bad ones (the Woody Harrelson one for instance) but i never knew they were looked upon badly.

    Anyway, I've only seen Disconnect, which I have also picked this week, pretty good and I even liked all the stories so the film never felt episodic. Though, with the catfishing story surely the kid should have picked up on the lack of facebook friends/activity on the account?

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    1. HA!
      TIL that infamous has negative connotations! I genuinely had no idea what that meant...
      - Allie

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    2. Haha. I discovered the meaning of word in a similar same way. Someone labelled Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech infamous in a presentation, not knowing the meaning of the word. The tutor corrected him explaining the mean of the word

      Until then I always used them interchangeably

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  7. I haven't seen any of your picks - and I've been saying it a lot this week - but I want to see The Fifth Estate.

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  8. I love Disconnected. I enjoyed Ask me Anything as well, but I never saw The Fifth Estate.

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  9. I have only seen the first two. I've never even heard of the last one so I'll have to look it up.

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