'The Matrix'
Don't get me wrong -- it's a pretty cool flick. I've watched it about a billion times (so much for my own accuracy) and there's just something about it that makes me put down the remote every time. Maybe it's all the latex.

The premise is that in the future, machines rule the Earth. They use humans as a power source, somehow planting false visions of reality in our minds and converting our heat output into useable energy for themselves. It's a grim prospect, and the movie is suitably dark and foreboding.

The problem is, it won't work. In the energy business, efficiency is everything, and humans make a terrible energy source. We take in a lot of food but convert only a tiny fraction of it into energy, and even that is in the wasteful form of heat. It would be more efficient for the machines to take the food they feed us and simply throw it into a big bonfire. It would be easier than keeping billions of people suspended in red goo, too.

'Enemy of the State'
Machines may not run the world, but maybe they help humans run it. If the big bad guys in charge need to keep track of someone, what better way than through machines? They can tag your cellphone and put tracers in your watch and pen. They can watch your every move through store cameras while you're shopping, and use satellites to watch you once you leave the store. The government does just that to Will Smith in "Enemy of the State," a decent flick about conspiracy theories, Big Brother paranoia and, of course, the Mafia.

But is this possible? Everyone knows the government can use satellites to track you for hours while you're outside, right?

Not really. It's an open secret that there are spy satellites at least as good as the Hubble Space Telescope, but pointed down instead of up. The problem is, there are basic limitations to how much they can see. Turbulence in the atmosphere can muddy a picture, like the way your view of a distant car on a hot road shimmers and wiggles. That means a satellite can only see details a few inches across at best.

Worse, satellites orbit the Earth. They move at least 5 miles per second, so they cannot track people for very long. They move slower in higher orbits, but that means they are farther from their target, making it look smaller, diminishing detail even further.

'Jurassic Park'
Need a getaway to a tropical island someplace far away, like maybe the lush Isla Nubla from the movie "Jurassic Park"? Of course, when you get there it'll be quiet because cloning a dinosaur can't be done, even if you are a jovial Santa Claus look-alike with tons of money and an annoying niece and nephew.

The idea in the movie is that by finding a mosquito trapped in Mesozoic amber, one might hopefully find dino DNA from its last meal still in its gut. By sampling the DNA you can construct the full genome of the dinosaur, inject it into the egg of a frog, and voila! You get eaten by velociraptors.

Alas, the real world is not so simple. First, the stomach of an insect (or any living creature) is pretty hostile to DNA. Instead of letting us assimilate some other living thing's DNA into our own, the stomach quickly breaks down the long, delicate double helix into small fragments. That makes them hard to put back together. Worse, the mosquito's own DNA would get mixed in. Putting together complete dinosaur DNA would be pretty much impossible.

I should add that unlike the other movies I have reviewed for "Call for Help," I really do like all three of these flicks. They're fun and enjoyable. But they aren't exactly textbook science.

So don't take their reflection of science and technology so seriously. There are plenty of other things to be scared of. For instance, have you ever seen Chris Pirillo without his stage makeup on? Be afraid. Be very afraid.