Writer-director Greg Pak's debut feature Robot Stories is an omnibus film featuring four separate tales, each touching on the subject of artificial intelligence, and using a vaguely sci-fi format--as have Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, and Harlan Ellison (as well as Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg)--to raise humanistic questions about our emotional connections. One story involves a couple supplied with a robot baby to test their suitability as adoptive parents; another concerns an android typist programmed to interact with people, who is shunned by his coworkers; a third centers on a terminally-ill man who resists the transference of his consciousness into a new body; and the fourth--the most moving--depicts the obsessive effort of a mother to complete the action-figure collection of her comatose son. Each of the episodes has been fashioned with elegant simplicity, and while they vary in quality (and budgetary limitations are always evident), they also compare favorably to earlier television anthology series such as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits--never quite reaching their heights but also avoiding their depths. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include three audio commentaries (one by writer-director Greg Pak; the second by Pak, animator Dan Kanemoto, and producers Kim Ima and Karin Chien; and the third by Pak, Ima, and actors Tamlyn Tomita, Wai Ching Ho, Cindy Cheung, Bill Coelius, and Sab Shimono), eight deleted scenes--including three alternate endings (with optional commentary by Pak), Pak's 1997 short “Mouse” (11 min., with optional commentary by Pak), a stills gallery, and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a small, but thought-provoking film.] (F. Swietek)
Robot Stories
Kino, 85 min., not rated, VHS: $24.95, DVD: $29.95, Feb. 8 Volume 20, Issue 2
Robot Stories
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