Six Geek Movies on your Holiday Gift Guide
- First, they have everything.
- Second, the things they don't have, you've never even heard of.
- And, third, if you've heard of it, they probably don't want it anymore!
So what is a Geek Gift Buyer to do? Buy DVDs!
Every geek has a favorite movie or two, and often it's easy to quickly scan their shelves to find out if they already own them.
So what movies would we suggest buying your geek?
This year's only geek movie was a massive box office success. As well it should have been, it's adorable. Even the coldest heart -- or the most emotionally detached kernel hacker -- would find something to love about WALL-E. Better still, WALL-E is cute enough to watch with your significant other, and tame enough to watch with the kids. A copy should be under the tree, menorah or Flying Spaghetti Monster effigy of every single geek, regardless of gender, age or orientation.
Shall we play a game? Grown up geeks who spent their hours at the arcade in the 80s love this movie. Younger geeks who don't remember a time before CD-ROM will revel in its naivety. We just love it because Ally Sheedy and Mathew Broderick are the 80s power couple that never happened. Unbelievably durable, and endlessly quotable, I think Wargames belongs on the DVD shelf of every geek in America.
I'll let you in on a secret; geeks make fun of this movie -- but deep down they love it. Angelina Jolie and Johnny Lee Miller put on convincing performances in the world's least realistic "hacker" movie evar. It's awful, it's inaccurate, and geeks secretly love it. Bonus points if given with a bottle of booze, for a rollicking Christmas afternoon drinking game. The only rule? Drink when this movie is inaccurate. You'll be hammered in no time, and you won't remember how it ends. All the more reason to watch it again
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A star-studded cast makes this a must see, even without the geek cred. Dan Ackroid, River Phoenix, Sydney Poitier and Robert Redford make their living as a band of highly paid rouges who break into banks and find security flaws. It's got intrigue, it's got extortion, it's got government plots... the entire plot is based around encryption schemes... What is there not to love about this?
I'll admit, TRON hasn't aged well. Our own Christina Warren put it best when she said, "Pixar movies make inanimate objects loveable.. TRON makes live characters into inanimate objects." TRON is a giant pile of FAIL as a movie, but it's a programmers parable and their just aren't many of those. If your geek's day job is writing code, TRON is at the least a great stocking stuffer.
If you were a slacker-doofus computer lover in the late 80s, you secretly wanted to be Val Kilmer in this movie. A brilliant kid with a charmed and seemingly effortless existence at MIT, this flick gave over-inflated expectations and under-achieving tendencies to a legion of wanna-be engineers. It's goofy, it's campy, and after all these years it still manages to be a whole lot of fun to watch. What are *your* favorite geek movies? We'd love to hear about the cinematic gems we certainly missed and why they should be under your tree this year!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Salsa Shark said 9:12PM on 11-24-2008
Er. Geeks own all these movies and then some (The Matrix, Weird Science, etc)
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Seth said 9:48PM on 11-24-2008
2001: A Space Odyssey.
That is all.
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Stuart Halliday said 10:08AM on 11-25-2008
and CEOTTK of course...
If you're a non-American (remember us) then maybe add the Quatermass films to that...?
Now there _was_ a guy who knew how to fix things!
SRK said 9:58PM on 11-24-2008
You are all wrong. Geeks want porn. Or better, a girlfriend.
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Grant Robertson said 9:59PM on 11-24-2008
You have no idea how complete my Christmas is by your definition. God bless us, every one!!
http://christinawarren.com/
SRK said 10:04PM on 11-24-2008
You see, MOST OF THE TIME articles about geeks are written by those who are not exactly geeks.
Only a true geek can guess another geek's Christmas wish.
Rocketboy said 10:13AM on 11-25-2008
Self spamming?
Evan said 10:41PM on 11-24-2008
Firefly on Blu-ray is definitely on my list.
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I-Found-404 said 10:50PM on 11-24-2008
All excellent movies. But a top 10 would include :Blade Runner,Pirates of Silicon Valley,The Matrix and Pi. ( I would also include,Frequency, October Sky,Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001 ASO in MY list, but that's just the nerd in me sneaking in on the geek.)
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Grant Robertson said 10:51PM on 11-24-2008
I don't know how I missed Pirates of Silicon Valley. I own that, and have watched it with the girlfriend recently. Major oversight. Thanks for the catch!
Grant Robertson said 11:37PM on 11-24-2008
I haven't seen Frequency but, being a ham radio geek -- yah, yah, I'll admit it, just this once -- I can see the appeal.
HeyCrabman said 1:36AM on 11-25-2008
One movie I've been hunting for lately is "Electric Dreams" (and if you think it's a porn title, then you're not a real geek). I actually think this would be an interesting movie if it were remade with today's tech. But Hollywood would screw it up and have it run by Skynet or something. Love, Moles
P.S. And it also had that sweet theme song that you could later run over people in a car to in Vice City. Ah, the 80's.
P.P.S. Save Ferris.
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Christina Warren said 8:10AM on 11-25-2008
Oh, Electric Dreams -- with Maxwell Caulfield (I'm the girlie geek who remembers him because of the AWFUL slumber party staple, Grease 2) -- awesome!
And to agree with I-Found-404 -- the omission of Pirates of Silicon Valley is just tragic. We just watched that too! Well, that AND Blade Runner, but then, I'm the chick with like 8 various BR editions in various formats, including Laser Disc (and I don't even have a LD player any more and when I did, I didn't have the BR LD), so my Blade Runner obsession is slightly more neurotic than most.
Not to mention the total David Cronenberg slight. I mean, I know eXistenZ sucked, but that doesn't mean Scanners and Videodrome aren't totally geek worthy.
But then, this is what happens when you let a mere film fan do a real film geek's work. :-)
Wally said 10:13PM on 12-01-2008
I love that movie. I went on ebay several years ago and found the actual VHS tape.
Whitefort said 4:57AM on 11-25-2008
How about 'Hardware'?
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godless said 8:29AM on 11-25-2008
true geeks no longer use dvds..they stream ripped hd movies through networked media centers off ssd driven computers
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fineliner said 10:31AM on 11-25-2008
ok, i got the geek (me) and a network, i need for Christmas:
Mediacenter-pc with ssd-drive, HD-Movie, and HD-screen.
Who wants to supply? :-)
Panhandler said 10:32AM on 11-25-2008
I'm usually trying to entertain a younger audience with nerdy movies. We've done Tron, WarGames, Sneakers, PeeWee's, Last Starfighter, all the obvious space flicks I can think of, etc.
From the foggiest depths of my own childhood I remembered _Cloak & Dagger_ the other night. Got a hold of it in the usual way. It had an 11-year-old in utter and complete suspense. Yes it's cheese, to an adult. No, they'd never make a movie like that these days. (Children on their own in the 'real' world; Henry fires an actual gun and hits an actual child? Not on your LIFE does this movie get made in Helicopter Parent Hollywood.) That's why it worked. Also, as an adult I'm watching it and thinking... they must have made this movie for FREE, with all the tax credits from San Antonio.
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HeyCrabman said 4:23AM on 11-27-2008
I read about how the six fingered man from The Fugitve and also the six fingered man from The Princess Bride are donating their extra fingers to that old couple from Cloak and Dagger. It's a Festivus miracle! God Bless us every one!
Panhandler said 10:33AM on 11-25-2008
(er - "hits an actual adult, I meant to say... stupid bad guys.)
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