Summer Blockbusters With a Tech Upgrade

Technology has often played a central role in Hollywood productions, from the sublime (Tron) to the gawdawful (that ridiculous file searching scene in Disclosure, anyone?) We imagine what this season's movie hits would be like with an IT angle.

Open Source Code
2011, Thriller

Jake Gyllenhall stars as a soldier who relives the last eight minutes of a bomb-laden commuter train over and over, each iteration slightly different thanks to contributions from the community at large.

Rating: 3.5/3.5.1/3.5.2 out of 5

Planet of the Apes: Rise of the APIs
2011, Science Fiction

Notable for the motion-captured CGI performance of Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings) as a genetically modified, hyper-intelligent chimpanzee who creates a Facebook game, Angry Apes, that wipes out Farmville.

Rating: Two hairy thumbs up

The SQL Tree of Life
2011, Drama

Director Terence Malik’s latest opus centres on the roots of a family with three boys, the eldest traversing the country to reconcile with his father and querying the meaning of life. No, I didn’t think this one was funny, either.

Rating: *+23

The Help Desk
2011, Drama

A spunky line-of-business manager exposes the dreary, depressing conditions of her company’s technical support operations. Trust me, this one’s a five-hanky weeper.

Rating: Ctl+Alt+Del

The Smurfs-as-a-Service
2011, Animated

Little blue people who can’t afford to live by themselves anymore make their way to the city to offer on-demand IT consulting to the surprise and delight of sceptical CIOs.

Rating: Really? Smurfs?

Cowboys and Aliens and VARs
2011, Science Fiction

Tempers flare as a band of redneck farmhands try to fend off an attack from outer space by trying to source some high-tech weapons, only to have cost-prohibitive responses to their RFP.

Rating: 6-shooters

Crazy, Stupid Love of Social Media
2011, Comedy

Spurned by his bitter ex-wife, a man tries to remake his life by doing everything he is suggested to do via Twitter, Facebook and Google+, only to be mobbed by an army of smitten Mark Zuckerberg lookalikes.

Rating: +1

No Search Strings Attached
2011, Comedy

Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher (really?) star as a man and a women trying to keep their relationship purely physical, but realize they’re looking for something more. On Google.

Rating: 1 of 325,491 results

Quarantine 2: Terminal Emulator
2011, Thriller

Survivors of a virus attack band together to save their quarantined PCs. Filmed in black and green.

Rating: 1 out of 101

Shark Night: 3D
2011, Horror

OK, so this has nothing to do with tech. But it’s got sharks. In 3D. You know you wanna see it.

Rating: dun-dun dun-dun dun-DUN DUN-DUN

A Dangerous Method Call
2011, Thriller

Code written by Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud conflicts, driving debuggers crazy.

Rating: 1 cigar