Another criminally underappreciated sci-fi film, director Andrew Niccol's 1997 "Gattaca" deals with both the hard science and social science aspects of human genetics technology. In a near-future setting, a kind of popular eugenics system allows parents to genetically profile embryos prior to implantation, selecting for optimal hereditary traits. Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke -- surely two of our most genetically gifted movie stars -- must navigate a scary future society in which destiny is determined by genes. The name of the space agency in the film, Gattaca, is composed of the letters GATC -- or guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine, the four bases of DNA.
While there's nothing particularly gross or disturbing in "Gattaca," the very subject matter -- and the presence of those two elite specimens Thurman and Hawke -- might lead a romantic interest to start questioning your own genetic potential.
