Dark City

Alex Proyas' film has a distinct element of visionary science fiction. It has many of the same qualities of Blade Runner and what would later become The Matrix. The city is eternally dark because it is a fabrication by a group of super-intelligent aliens whose race is quickly becoming extinct. They have fabricated a world of people because humans have a secret that they do not: souls. They build the city, reshape it with the power of their mind, and change personalities, memory, etc at will, all in the attempt to discover the essence of the human soul. But one man "wakes up" and somehow develops the power to change things at will like the aliens can. It's certainly no Blade Runner but it's probably a better film than any of the Matrix movies, even if it is less action oriented. The world Proyas creates reminds me of Tim Burton's Gotham City in the first Batman film. It's a noir future where not everything is clean -- in fact, much of it is old. Science fiction is one of those genres that has almost endless thematic possibilities, and this is probably one of the better examples of the genre from the last twenty years.