Sunday’s gonna be very Verhoeven as well as really Rodriguez, as Texas’ own Troublemaker introduces the Dutch director’s most significant sci-fi satires. First on the bill is perhaps without equal as a cultural critique, aka the movie every movie nerd calls the American Jesus mythos. Peter Weller wears the robotic police uniform well, and few villains have worn their thinning hairline quite as good as Kurtwood Smith’s Boddicker. Second-billed is an screen adpatation of Robert A. Heinlein’s overtly militaristic original text. Verhoeven lines his version with shiny happy movie stars grinning through genocide as if, perhaps, to make a point about our culture’s glorification of war. – James Scott
