3. Source Code
Duncan Jones debut feature Moon was a superb Sci-Fi movie, novel, innovative and excellently executed. As such there was a lot of anticipation surrounding his follow up Source Code, and the trailer certainly whetted appetites further. The premise is a great one, put simply, when somebody dies their brain stays semi-alive for a brief spell after death, during which time, scientists have invented a way to plug into the last 8 minutes of their memory and allow another person to relive those final minutes as the deceased. The whole movie is built around the idea that what has been created is only a simulation, it is not real, it is merely a fully immersive replica of life itself. So (and stick with me on this one) when Jake Gyllenhalls Colter has served his purpose and located the deadly bomb which has struck/will strike, and his 8 minutes are up, he should, by the logic set out in the film itself, cease to exist. Yet somehow, after the 8 minutes runs out, he is still alive and kicking and seemingly living out a life in an alternative reality. The scientists themselves in the film, the ones who explain to us the films central premise, are proven wrong. This in itself is a rarity for a Sci-Fi film as whilst such a movie may not abide by the standard rules of time and space, they do operate within their own set of rules. So in Inception, if you die in a dream, you die in real life. In Back to the Future, if you cease to exist in the past, you are erased from the present. These are concepts that do not apply in our real world, but are cast iron in the movies themselves. In Source Code though, the entire logic of the movie itself is thrown out in favour of a happy ending where Colter inexplicably continues to exist in a parallel universe which has also somehow inexplicably been created. It was so close to being a brilliant movie too!