Watchcast Schedule for January 2025: Jude Law Sci-Fi!

Greetings, Watchcasters! I hope you are all having a good (or at least good enough) start to the new year. We're just a couple of short days away from returning to our full time schedule, but I'm popping in here a little bit early to let you all know what we've got coming up on our Watchcast slate. And what we've got is a collection of movies we've been joking about doing for at least two years now, and following our ticking off of eXistenZ late last year, it felt like the time was right to make good on the full concept.

That concept? Sci-fi films in which Jude Law stars! Why do we love Jude Law so much? Why are we so obsessed with his sci-fi output in particular? I truly do not remember the provenance of this theme, just that it somehow made its way into our big doc of ideas, and I think we even had y'all vote on it during one of our user-voted months. Whatever the case, we're here now, and we're doing the damn thing. Here's what we've got coming up this month.

Monday, January 6th: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Kicking things off is this curiosity from 20 years ago, a movie that was, for its time, an ambitious effort to try and render out a movie in the style of a classic serial using nothing but blue screen and as many computer generated robots and airships as the budget allowed for. As this predates Revenge of the Sith by a year, this is widely considered to be the first film shot almost exclusively on a sound stage using blue screens, a distinction that's either impressive or dubious depending on how you feel about the current state of blockbuster filmmaking.

It's also one of the movies on this list I was most dreading watching, but having already recorded this one before the break, I'm happy to report it is by no means terrible. Stilted and chintzy in the exact sorts of places you'd expect an experiment like this to be, but there's a spirit to it that's admirable, and our Reason for the Season Jude Law is genuinely pretty charming and fun in this, even when he's paired up with Gwyneth Paltrow (who did not fully understand the assignment). It doesn't completely work as a movie, but I had a good time revisiting it nonetheless.

Where to Watch

Monday, January 13th: Repo Men (2010)

We're gonna do it, folks! We're finally going to finish teaching Vinny the difference between Repo Man and Repo Men!

I don't know why this movie has become one of our most joked about movies that we've never actually done for the Watchcast, but I think it might be because this is Vinny's Freejack, a not-that-great sci-fi movie of minimal regard that has taken up an outsized piece of real estate inside his brain for one reason or another. I'm like 60% sure I've seen this movie exactly once, but I do not remember much that happens in it besides the basic premise, which pertains to a dystopian future where people have their surgically replaced organs repossessed if they do not make their payments. Timely!

Regardless as to whether this movie is any good or not, I'm just happy we finally got some Forest Whitaker in here. I promise we'll do one of his better movies next time. Maybe Ghost Dog or something.

Where to Watch

Monday, January 20th: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Alright, I've put this off for entirely too long. I have been seriously overdue to give A.I., a movie I genuinely HATED when I saw it in theaters, another honest shot. I am confident enough in my opinions and beliefs to allow them to be challenged after a time, and despite my active disdain for this movie, I think it's deserving of a reappraisal.

It's not that there's nothing to like in this movie. I think its performances are largely quite good from what I can remember, and that's especially true of our man Jude, who absolutely hams it up as the prancing sexbot Gigolo Joe. My problem with this movie mostly stemmed from its interminable length (2 hours and 20 minutes that felt like twice that), sometimes unbearable sentimentality, and its seeming inability to pick an ending and stick with it. I was genuinely irritated by the whole thing walking out of the theater, and I didn't even pay money to see it. This is one of those movies I saw as a midnight test screening with the folks I knew who worked at a movie theater. And I was still angry!

That said, I've come around on other movies from this time that I absolutely hated. Hell, Mulholland Drive came out this same year and I didn't like that movie one bit at the time, either. Maybe I'll change my mind about A.I., too! OK, probably not, but I should at least shake the dust off this one and see where I land. And I will! And so will all of you. Sorry about that.

Where to Watch

Monday, January 27th: Gattaca (1997) 

Now here's the one I'm most excited to get to. It's been too many years since I last sat down to watch what is probably my favorite Andrew Niccol movie. Depending on my mood that might also be Lord of War, but Jude Law isn't in that, so that'll have to wait for another month.

Anyway, Gattaca! It's probably the least amount of Jude Law per volume of any of the movies this month, but it's more than enough to qualify. Here he plays support to Ethan Hawke in a dystopian future where eugenics are the norm and the genetic elite discriminate against those bred outside the system. Hawke is one of those In-Valids who yearns for the chance to go to space alongside those elites. Getting too into the particulars of the plot would spoil the fun for those coming to this one for the first time, so I'll just say our boy Jude is very good alongside Hawke, Uma Thurman, and an incredible mix of supporting actors that includes everyone from Maya Rudolph to Gore Vidal.

Like I said at the top, been way too long since I last gave this one a go, and I'm glad we can close out the month with it.

Where to Watch

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And that's what we've got lined up for January! We'll have more to say about what we're thinking for this next year of the Watchcast once we get to the end of the month. But for now, I'm going to sign off and enjoy these last precious moments of vacation. As always, thanks for listening and watching along with us. We'll see you at the movies!

--A