Dear Watchers,On the menu for this Genre Movie Wednesday: a few vivid dreamscapes, multiple rats and one Sam Rockwell. In the first of two sci-fi movies chosen by Elisabeth Vincentelli, our expert in that genre, Rockwell stars in a loopy time-travel comedy about artificial intelligence fears. Her other selection involves long-haul space travel and creative dreams, with a little more A.I. dread in the mix. Read below what Elisabeth has to say about each film, then head here for more of her picks. Happy Watching. ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’
Where to watch: Stream “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” on Hulu. When a mysterious, unnamed man (Sam Rockwell) barges into a diner and announces it’s his 117th visit, he doesn’t mean that he eats there a lot. Rather, he is from the future and keeps coming back to try to stop the looming artificial-intelligence Armageddon. If it were a time-loop story, this movie would show us several of the man’s other visits. Instead, it sticks to the 117th, inserting mini-narratives about some of the people he enrolls in his mission, including Susan (Juno Temple), whose son was killed in a school shooting and replaced with a clone, and Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), who is literally allergic to technology. Directed by Gore Verbinski, “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” (2025) offers some inventive and dark-minded developments, building to a climax that recalls Terry Gilliam’s mix of fantasy and social commentary — though Verbinski’s film naturally demonstrates an even more intimate familiarity with the dangers of modern technology. And while the movie is overlong, a lot can be forgiven when the surprises, and the rats, keep coming. ‘Per Aspera Ad Astra’
Where to watch: Stream “Per Aspera Ad Astra” on Netflix. A decades-long hibernation on an interstellar trip is a pretty familiar premise at this point, but this demented epic from the director Han Yan adds a great wrinkle: In order to prevent the sleeping travelers’ brains from atrophying, they are kept active with incredibly vivid dreams. When something goes wrong during a ship’s journey, the first to be alerted is the dream administrator Xu Tianbiao (Dylan Wang) — he’s the equivalent of an I.T. specialist, watching over a large-scale network and able to log into everyone’s interface. Xu and the captain, Li Simeng (Victoria Song), are battling the software engineer Ge Yang (Duo Wang), who has decided to be the godlike overseer of a never-ending dream. “Real or not, does that matter?” Ge asks. “Per Aspera Ad Astra” — which also involves classic space-opera conventions like a meteorite shower — eventually drags in rogue artificial intelligence. But its best scenes are the ones set in the passengers’ hallucinatory dreamscapes, with Han doling out an astounding amount of eye-popping visuals and directorial flourishes.
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