Triple-jointed review

Our favorite Light Reader directs us to a Phil Nugent post about two topical films, The Situation and Screamers. Since Jenny's post also mentions my recent PKD-related postings, I assumed that Screamers was the low-budget (or low-budget-looking) film adaptation of Second Variety, which I actually saw in the theater (one of those situations where you and a friend can't quite agree on what to watch, and so...).

I still thought Nugent (not this guy) was going to discuss the PKD film until I hit this line:

I went to see Screamers partly just because I was so curious about what it was really like after reading the reviews, which tended to be favorable but also tended to describe it as "the System of a Down genocide documentary."

I started having some doubts. Had the film (in which, if I remember correctly, robots on a bleak planet have attained the capacity to build themselves) touched on more contemporary hot-button issues than I'd imagined? I knew I was barking up the wrong movie when I read:

It opens with an interview with the journalist Samantha Powers...

(My one other memory of the film: An android—or human?—with a blue tear tattooed underneath an eye. That's how low-budget it was: This very small tattoo will make him really menacing—you can apply it with a Bic!)