Dead Man’s Letters
If there’s a prize for the dourest sci-fi movie ever made, surely Dead Man’s Letters would win it. Sometimes the original Russian title, Pisma Myortvogo Cheloveka is translated as Letters from a Dead Man, which is hardly any jollier. While Blade Runner or Solaris or Dark City or Threads will all have their advocates, this strange, dark, almost entirely subterranean movie set in the bowels of a museum in the aftermath of a nuclear attack has to be a contender. The movie’s opening scene more or less says it all: a dark, stygian basement, lit in garish yellow/orange, where an old man is tending to a woman who appears to be dying, while … Read more