Robot Stories (DVD)

Greg Pak's Robot Stories is science fiction with a heart, a film that sensitively and intelligently maps an emotional frontier where people confront technology. Through four "impeccably staged and acted" (Hollywood Reporter) stories, "in less than 90 minutes Robot Stories says more about humanity's relationship to machines than the entire Matrix trilogy" (St. Louis Dispatch).

Robot Stories' four chapters, each "stunningly executed in its own right" (SF Bay Guardian), spans a symbolic lifetime stretching from childhood to maturity. "My Robot Baby" is a social satire that "gets the feeling of new motherhood exactly right" (Austin Chronicle) as a busy couple is challenged to nurture a mechanical infant before they can have the real thing. In "one of the most moving pieces I've seen all year" (John Petrakis, Chicago Tribune), a mother's quest to connect with her comatose son transforms her into "The Robot Fixer." Framed within an office jungle yielding "one of the most disturbing images in modern sci-fi cinema" (New York Press), android iPerson Archie (writer/director Pak) questions whether romance can flower between synthetic hearts in "Robot Love." Finally, a sculptor in the lonely twilight of his life must weigh the ethical and spiritual risks of digital immortality in "Clay."

Though hailed as "a great science fiction movie" (New York Press), Robot Stories is light-years ahead of most contemporary sci-fi pictures. By investing Robot Stories with "a dexterous sense of wonder" (The New York Times) and substituting imagination and compassion for a blockbuster budget, "uncannily assured visual storyteller" (The Village Voice) Greg Pak has created a film that's a genuinely stirring indie rarity" (Voice).