Soylent Green

This pompously prophetic thing of a film hasn’t a brain in its beanbag.

Its greatest attribute is not that it accurately anticipated many things about humanity's future. "Soylent Green" stands the test of time because it does these things while slamming you right where real anxiety festers and brews . . . in your guts.

Soylent Green is Edward G. Robinson's movie. As a man who remembers the wonders of civilization before it died, he is witty, cultivated and endlessly appealing.

The somewhat plausible and proximate horrors in the story of Soylent Green carry the production over its awkward spots to the status of a good futuristic exploitation film.

Uneven and slightly muddled futuristic horror story -- not really science fiction, more like an antipollution PSA gone berserk.

The grittiness of early-70s cinema works well for this fatalistic tale.

Where so many science fiction visions of the era have dated, this gritty creation of a depressed (and depressing) future recycling the junk of the past, and where assisted suicide has become simply another social option, looks all the more real.

Not a terribly good movie, it's nonetheless not a bad guess at a future...

Grounded in such a recognizable reality that the science-fiction elements are almost indiscernible.