Demon Seed (Donald Cammell, 1977). This hybrid of science fiction and horror imagines a future where homes are equipped with smart devices that anticipate their owners’ needs and tech wizards are developing artificial intelligence with a blithe disregard for the warning signs that there’s danger ahead. Wild stuff, right? Demon Seed, adapted from a novel by Dean Koontz, is sometimes impressively prescient about the dangers of AI, a real feat for movie that came out a half century before the technology become the dominant topic of our age. Aside from that foresight, this is a pretty dreadful and dull-witted movie. Julie Christie plays Susan Harris, a woman who is trapped and terrorized by a malevolent program that commandeers her home and becomes obsessed with impregnating her to create some sort of cyborg super-race. The script’s approach to biology isn’t as convincing as its computer science. Harris never gets a handle on her character and often seems to want out of the movie as much as Susan wants out of the house. Donald Cammel makes all sorts of iffy choices, led by the infusion of very nineteen-seventies trippy visuals.

Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985). Desperately Seeking Susan was heavily promoted at the time of its release —and is probably best remembered now — as the first starring vehicle for Madonna after her meteoric rise to fame. Looking at it now, the comedy is more notable for the wild procession of ludicrously talented character actors populating supporting roles: John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurie freakin’ Metcalf. None of them really flashes the talent they’d show on screen soon enough (Esposito probably comes closest in a role that’s little more than a cameo), but it’s still fun to see them in up-and-comer mode. Madonna is fine as the free spirit who drives a plot built around mistaken identity and mobsters trying to retrieve a pair of dangly MacGuffins. It’s Rosanna Arquette who impressed the most, playing a unsatisfied housewife who’s obsessed with this young woman who lives a far more daring life than her own. In a different era, Arquette could have been a master of screwball comedies. The plotting doesn’t always hold up, but Susan Seidelman directs with such verve and charm that it hardly matters.

SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of (Jason Hehir, 2026). The title is obnoxious, the filmmaking choices are occasionally frustrating, and the documentary itself is irresistible. SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of goes deep on the Canadian sketch comedy show that aired for nearly ten years beginning in the nineteen-seventies and launched comedy careers with a better batting average than arguably any other show of its ilk. Director Jason Hehir gets interviews with all the major figures who were still alive when he made the film, and he is effective in his use of archival footage, In particular, Hehir deploys clips from the original comedy series with laser precision. The interviews with famous fans are more of a mixed bag. When Tom Hanks sits for an interview, that footage is going to get used. That’s understandable. It’s preferable, though when Hehir gives screen time to Conan O’Brien and Bob Odenkirk, comedy obsessives who can astutely evaluate why SCTV was special.