Zapatista-Influenced Science Fiction - (review of Sleep Dealer)

I was out of town and missed the first 10 days of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, but luckily I made it back to the Bay Area in time to see the premiere of Sleep Dealer.

I was alerted to the film via a rave New York Times review in which A.O. Scott described director Alex Rivera “showing some of the manic inventiveness of Richard Kelly’s ‘Southland Tales,’ but with a hundred times more intellectual clarity and storytelling discipline.” I’d forgotten that line until going back to look at the Times plug, but bits of Kelly’s wildly entertaining film did pop into my mind while watching Sleep Dealer. Both movies are characterized by impressively zippy visuals and caustic social commentary which evokes the bleak dystopian vision of sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick.”*

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