Destabilizing futurism set to a pulse-pounding score isn't just for sci-fi and fantasy thrillers. It works just as well to sell documentaries like Last Call at the Oasis, which thirstily peers into our present and future water wars, as can be seen in the film's trailer above.
Unlike the comic-book vision of global annihilation in The Avengers, the blockbuster whose record-setting opening drowned news of Last Call at the Oasis' limited debut last week, director Jessica Yu's documentary delivers a truer story of civilization on the verge of collapse.
Also unlike The Avengers: "We're screwed," as hydrologist Jay Famiglietti explains in the PG-13 movie, which opens in more markets Friday.
Produced by Participant Media (Food Inc., An Inconvenient Truth, The Cove), Last Call at the Oasis joins Famiglietti with fellow science geeks like Peter Gleick and Berkeley's Einstein-quoting biologist Tyrone Hayes, as well as activists like Erin Brockovich. All drive home Last Call at the Oasis' central thesis, as explained in the trailer: "It's not a question of if, it's a question of when."
Of when disaster strikes, to be specific. Last Call at the Oasis warns in impressive visual fashion that, as increasing water consumption continues to exceed the planet's capacity to renew itself, we're inevitably headed for the kind of heated dystopia we regularly associate with speculative fiction.
"We just always think that can't be me," Brockovich says. "It already is you."
