A satire on future birth and parenting to a remake of the ET premise, but with a strange twist. Two that are streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Pod Generation (Amazon Prime on Demand) - Set in the near future, this film hopes to be carried by the SciFi premise and the casting. Sophie Barnes writes and directs this look at parenting, carrying a child, and how technology may affect all we know in this arena. Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are happily married but have different lifestyles. She’s a full-steam-ahead corporate type who takes pride in outperforming all in the office, while he’s a laid-back botany professor, pushing his students to experience nature in the raw while they still have the chance. In the near future, thanks to AI and technology, fruits no longer grow on trees, and his botany department is in financial crisis, and the suggestion to rely on holograms is made.

Against this future, Rachel and Alvy decide to have a child. Still, Alvy doesn’t know that Rachel applied to the Womb Center, where fetuses come to term in a pod/egg outside the mother's body, allowing her not to be affected by the pregnancy. Alvy, to no one’s surprise, was hoping for natural childbirth but adapted to the scenario as time passed. Something precious is being said about what is lost with technology, with convenience, and how it can challenge conventional wisdom, knowledge, and how we look at things as basic and human as birth. There’s a lot of soft comedy and commentary, and I’ll credit Barnes for her ideas and the world-building of her future. Clarke and Ejiofor invest in their roles, but there isn’t enough palpable tension or conflict created to make us care enough. Pity.

Jules (Amazon Prime on Demand) - Here’s a film with a daring twist on an old and worn premise. What if you took the plot of ET, but instead of having a child encounter the alien being, have senior citizens in small town USA be the welcoming committee? It’ll be regarded with disbelief by everyone they encounter - just as children are presumed to be fantasizing, these geriatrics will be seen as suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia. So you have the makings for a charming variation on the Cocoon movie of yesteryears, with seniors as your heroes. Put together veteran actors who excel in deadpan comedy, and you have the makings of a droll, lighthearted movie. And that is what we get with Jules - the name given to the extra-terrestrial.

Ben Kingsley, with an American accent (which, while spot on, takes away a lot of his presence) leads the cast, and of note is the presence of Jane Curtin, who I recall as one of the original cast of Lorne Michael’s Saturday Night Live. There are some good set pieces and earnest performances, but the screenplay never quite lifts off. The alien is a somewhat silly-looking creation, so while he is essentially harmless, he also doesn’t evoke the mystery and fascination that such a being should evoke - even when he displays uncanny powers. It’s all fine on the small screen, but don’t expect much from this film, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised that the two hours have passed. Perhaps ET is best left alone.