7. A.I.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz7sPiOoU7A Spielberg, whether its said as criticism or a complement, almost always makes films which are seen through the youthful innocence of a child's eyes. In A.I., Spielberg's 2001 futuristic sci-fi film, the child-role is filled by a diminutive robot played by Where Are They Now poster-child Haley Joel Osment. The film makes rapid shifts in its scope, beginning as a family drama, leading to a Medieval torture-dungeon Holocaust metaphor, to a treasure hunt for the mythical blue fairy that the child robot David believes, like in the story of Pinocchio, can grant him the gift of human life. The movie's journey up to this point is interesting. Jude Law plays David's male prosti-robot guide through the big cities along with Teddy, a more interactive version of Teddy Ruxpin. David and Teddy, in a stolen helicopter, end up trapped in an oceanic prison, staring a blue fairy statue in the face for eons. Good movie. A morbid but fascinating ending about the limitations of one's own mortality and impotence to be able to control the surrounding environment. It's a sad lesson that life isn't fair, and even terrible things can happen to kind robots. Oh, but then they're unearthed by an alien species who manage to speak English by way of telekinesis and can bring back someone from the past, but only if there was a DNA sample. And for some reason Teddy has been lugging around a lock of some woman's hair for two thousand goddamn years. So the mom is brought back to the future for only 24 hours, just long enough to tell David that she loves him even though she abandoned him on the side of the road in the same city where hot air balloons with magnets go on the hunt to find robots to put in a torture chamber akin to Zed's place in Pulp Fiction. Christ, it's the worst deus ex machina since that dolphin swam in front of the torpedo that was going to run into Adam West.