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Charlotte Lozier Institute

Phone: 202-223-8073
Fax: 571-312-0544

2776 S. Arlington Mill Dr.
#803
Arlington, VA 22206

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Charlotte Lozier Institute

Phone: 202-223-8073
Fax: 571-312-0544

2776 S. Arlington Mill Dr.
#803
Arlington, VA 22206

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“Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something.”

-Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

 

One of the most striking things about the realm of science fiction is that it is seldom fiction. Humans have an innate ability to imagine a future that takes some aspect of our existence and radically improves it – often at the expense of all other aspects. Today “radical improvements” are coming fast and furious, and public debate strains to keep up. Charlotte Lozier Institute has reviewed dozens of the most compelling science fiction films of all time, not to foretell our future but to help us manage the present. Please join us on this voyage, and spread the word, as we search in a dark age for “Signs of Life.”

Read Intro

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

    June 22, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    This landmark movie transformed and elevated the entire genre of science fiction films by realistically portraying space exploration, spacecraft and space itself, and doing so via beautiful cinematography...

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  • 2081 (2009)

    March 15, 2019 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “Please be advised that Bergeron is a genius and an athlete…If you see this man please contact your local authorities immediately.” This is the warning a broadcaster from the National News Service in Washington, D.C., gives the public about a certain prison escapee in the year 2081...

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  • A Quiet Place (2018)

    November 30, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    A Quiet Place is essentially a parable for raising a family in what oftentimes seems a broken world...the actions, expressions, and burdens of a family living in such dark and dire circumstances are given the opportunity to shine in the midst of near silence.

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  • A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

    February 09, 2019 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    A.I. is a dark fairy tale -- complex, full of literary allusions, stitching genres together in episodic fashion -- and Spielberg tackles an adventure of biblical proportions...

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  • After Yang (2021)

    September 15, 2023 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    The lines between ethics, technology, and humanity become blurred in Kogonada’s 2021 film After Yang. Parents Jake and Kyra find themselves faced with a difficult decision regarding their daughter's artificially intelligent brother.

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  • Animal Farm (1954, 1999)

    November 02, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    The two movie retellings of George Orwell’s 1945 novel Animal Farm – the animated version from 1954 and the live-action-and-animatronics one from 1999 – each follow the author’s allegory about Soviet Communism, the 1999 film a little more so.  Neither film is for children...

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  • Arrival (2016)

    October 05, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    Put a linguist and a theoretical physicist together in a common task to save the world from space aliens, or more accurately from governments’ reaction to the aliens, and, you never know, love might blossom...

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  • Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

    March 01, 2019 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    The story begins in deep space, where mega-villain Thanos (Josh Brolin) is busy at his usual pursuits: killing, torturing, robbing, and destroying.  He is all about death, as his name suggests...

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  • Black Panther (2018)

    October 19, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    The beauty backing Black Panther and its fictional nation of Wakanda is that what appears impoverished is in fact home to great advancement and vibrant life. It is not simply a response to fill some void of history, but it is a celebration of life’s potential and history we can make as a part of it. 

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  • Blade Runner (1982)

    January 11, 2019 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    Blade Runner is a bleak future worth revisiting, if not simply to warn us in the manner of bygone prophets then perhaps to show us that life in the hands of amoral science presents dark and dreary possibilities.

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  • Blade Runner: 2049 (2017)

    December 17, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    In Blade Runner: 2049, the 2017 sequel to 1982’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner, the whole world, and (almost) everyone in it, is barren...internal and interpersonal drama arises from the realness or fakeness of each character...

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  • Children of Men (2006)

    August 17, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    At one point in the film, Miriam describes the start of the infertility disaster to Theo: “As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in.  Very odd, what happens in a world without children’s voices”...

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  • Don’t Look Up (2021)

    September 22, 2023 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    Adam McKay’s satirical comedy Don’t Look Up makes an attempt at combining the political, philosophical, and ethical threads that continue to dominate our society.

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  • Dune: Part One (2021)

    September 29, 2023 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    It might seem odd trying to connect the world’s largest soccer event with a science fiction movie based on the seminal Frank Herbert novel, but the two have something in common: money and economic power at the expense of innocent life.

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  • Ender’s Game (2013)

    September 21, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    It sparks much fantasy when you’re 12 or so, or maybe two or three or six times that, to watch a movie that puts a kid in charge of something – and not just as a mere hallway monitor or recess captain...

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  • Equilibrium (2002)

    August 24, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    In a post-nuclear-war and not-too-distant future, the totalitarian regime that runs the metropolis of Libria and its environs has its enforcers shoot you on sight, or capture you for later execution by incineration, for having…feelings. 

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  • Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

    October 13, 2023 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    Everything Everywhere All at Once tells the story of Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), who must save all human existence by exploring hundreds of universes outside of her own.

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  • Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

    October 12, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    A totalitarian government hates independent thinking so much that for decades or longer it has banned the printed word. 

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  • Frankenstein (1931)

    September 07, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “Now I know how it feels to be God.”  That line in this film, uttered by a raving Henry Frankenstein right after he brought his patched-together-from-cadavers man to life, sums up all the blasphemy, megalomania and sheer cruelty inherent...

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  • Gattaca (1997)

    June 15, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “No, we’ve got discrimination down to a science.” That great line is at the hub of this film, a narrative of a future absolutist society that classifies you and judges you from birth onward, based on your genes...

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  • I, Robot (2004)

    October 26, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “Those robots don’t do anyone any good.”  So says police homicide detective Del Spooner (Will Smith), and he has his reasons for thinking so...

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  • Interstellar (2014)

    September 14, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    "Love is not something we invented...It has to mean something...Maybe it's...some artifact of a higher dimension that we can't consciously perceive."

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  • Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

    February 15, 2019 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “Something evil had taken possession of the town,” a disheveled, grimy and frantic Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) begins to narrate as the movie unfolds in flashback...

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  • Jurassic Park (1993)

    November 16, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    In Jurassic Park as with Frankenstein and similar films, scientists’ attempts at playing God have unforeseen and catastrophic consequences.

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  • Minority Report (2002)

    January 25, 2019 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    In a world where society is seduced by the total eradication of murder, questions are raised regarding rights, freedom, governance, privacy, human life, and ethics. In short, what becomes permissible by law quickly becomes permissible in the moral fabric of society.

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  • Moon (2009)

    August 03, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “Gerty, they’re not programs, they’re people.”  That’s what you would say, too.  That is, you would if you were stationed on a mining base on the Moon and the artificial intelligence robot – Gerty -- that runs the base and monitors your every move needed to hear it...

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  • Ready Player One (2018)

    December 22, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    When virtual reality becomes easier and more interesting than real life, the world turns upside down.

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  • Silent Running (1972)

    February 01, 2019 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “Take good care of the forest, Dewey!” That is astronaut Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) talking to his robot Dewey on their giant spaceship Valley Forge way out past Saturn...

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  • Soylent Green (1973)

    July 27, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    The year is 2022, and things are rotten. So bad are they, in fact, in this movie that the environment is wrecked, natural resources are depleted, the food supply has run out, the economy is in shambles, and cities are out of housing space for millions of desperate unemployed and homeless people who are left…

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  • The 6th Day (2000)

    August 31, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “Am I really human?  Do I have a soul?”  Vital questions, these, because they are asked by a cloned man at the end of this new millennium film...

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  • The Forgotten (2004)

    October 20, 2023 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    Science fiction films often become an avenue through which we warn society to be careful, to be mindful of the harm that certain technologies could cause or that certain decisions could manifest. So, what exactly is a film like The Forgotten trying to say about our culture?

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  • The Giver (2014)

    June 08, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “If it’s against the rules, how can it be right?” That’s the pivotal question asked of the young hero of this dystopian film, and life and death are at stake in his response...

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  • The Hunger Games – Mockingjay, Part 1 (2014)

    July 13, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    The Hunger Games – Mockingjay, Part 1 continues the series’ noble theme of individuals – in this case, teenagers – taking the responsibility of defending themselves, their families, their community and their countrymen against an all-powerful state that has zero respect for human life...

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  • The Hunger Games – Mockingjay, Part 2 (2015)

    July 20, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    With this film, The Hunger Games series comes to a close. In a dystopian future North America renamed Panem, a particularly amoral dictatorship presides over a capital city whose denizens live in luxury off the backs of the beleaguered residents...

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  • The Hunger Games (2012)

    June 29, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    What do you look for in a heroine? Do you want courage, integrity, self-sacrifice, mercy, love of liberty? You’ll find them all in this film’s heroine...

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  • The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

    June 03, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    A cinematic tribute to integrity of soul and conscience, to the value of human life, and to the raw courage it takes for anyone to stand up...

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  • The Island (2005)

    August 10, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “I want to live! I don’t want to die!” These frantic and forlorn cries, made by a desperate escapee to his pitiless captors, embody the essence and the thesis of this film...

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  • The Martian (2015)

    December 07, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “Improvise!  Adapt!  Overcome!”  On the surface, that sound advice from the U.S. Marines – and second-handedly from Clint Eastwood and Bear Grylls – seems the whole theme of this Ridley Scott film about an American astronaut...

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  • The Truman Show (1998)

    November 09, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    In the film, “The Truman Show” is the ultimate soap opera, and audiences have been eating it up for decades, watching the entire life of a person unfold before them, day by day.

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  • Wall-E (2008)

    September 28, 2018 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “Wall-E” beautifully and memorably affirms love and life and portrays babies as the hope of humanity and the wonderful treasures they are. 

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  • Z.P.G. (Zero Population Growth) (1972)

    January 04, 2019 | Charlotte Lozier Institute

    “The penalty for birth…is death!”  That’s the tagline and the premise of this U.S.-Danish dystopian drama – and, sadly, such a notion is not entirely foreign to today’s (not to mention 1972’s) population controllers.

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