Film

Landscape with Invisible Hand

Name: Landscape with Invisible Hand
Genre: Science Fiction, Comedy, Drama
Released: 2023
Cast: Asante Blackk, Kylie Rogers, Tiffany Haddish, Brooklynn MacKinzie, Josh Hamilton

Alien contact

A sci-fi comedy-drama about teenagers monetizing their romance for alien viewers during a benevolent occupation that's hollowed out the human economy. It's wickedly clever about surveillance capitalism and precarity, shot with real warmth and odd tenderness. For people who like their satire with heart and their futures plausible and bleak.

TMDb rating

3.0

If you liked this

Her2013

A lonely man falls for an AI operating system. It shares Landscape's fascination with how technology reshapes intimacy, desire, and what we're willing to commodify about ourselves.

But The pacing is deliberate and melancholic; if you want zippy comedy you'll find it slack.

Never Let Me Go2010

Quiet, devastating science fiction about young people whose bodies have predetermined purposes. Both explore how systems reduce humans to resources while preserving their emotional complexity.

But It's austere and tragic where Landscape has comedic moments. The resignation is harder to sit with.

Fleabag2016

A protagonist breaking the fourth wall to narrate their desperate scramble for money and connection while navigating family chaos. Same tone: funny, sad, unflinching about economic desperation.

But It's two seasons of thirty-minute episodes, not one film. And considerably ruder in nearly every direction.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Landscape with Invisible Hand

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Both treat the monetization of the self as a philosophical horror that's also somehow deeply human and occasionally funny.

Charlie Kaufman's devastating spiral about an artist recreating reality as performance. It's the ancestor of Landscape's core idea: what happens when you package and sell your actual life for consumption?

But It's three hours of maximalist, deeply personal abstraction. If you want clear narrative and likeable characters, you will drown.

Sorry to Bother You2018

Surreal satire about a young Black man monetizing his voice for a telemarketing scheme. Shares the DNA: economic desperation, racial subtext, comedy that cracks to reveal genuine harm.

But It's more overtly absurdist and angrier. The tonal shifts are wilder and won't land for everyone.

The Adam Project2022

Sci-fi adventure with real emotional stakes about family and time. Like Landscape, it uses speculative elements to examine how we connect with people we love and need.

But It's considerably more conventional and mainstream—rounder edges, bigger budget, less willing to stay uncomfortable.

Oxygen2021

A woman wakes in a cryogenic chamber with no memory. Tense, clever, and genuinely inventive within its constraints. Both films do a lot with limited scope and committed premises.

But It's a high-concept thriller with one location. If you want the social comedy of Landscape, this goes harder on dread.

Upload2020

Dark comedy about a man uploaded to a digital afterlife as a service. Landscape's tone cousin—absurd future, economic precarity, people commodifying intimacy in weird new ways.

But Two seasons so far, lighter on the genuine heartbreak. The comedy sometimes undercuts the stakes.

The Vast of Night2019

A small-town sci-fi mystery about two teenagers investigating strange radio signals. Shares Landscape's adolescent POV, genuine affection for characters, and unsettling future lurking at the edges.

But It's atmospheric and slow-burn. If you want answers wrapped up and resolved, you'll leave frustrated.

Advantageous2015

A near-future drama about a woman who gives up her body to save her daughter's future. Like Landscape, it thinks carefully about what we'll sacrifice when systems leave us no other choice.

But It's quieter, more tragic, less funny. The SF elements are subtle to the point of being easy to miss.

Kim's Video2023

Both are about the economics of desire: what we're willing to pay for, what we value, what gets preserved when systems collapse.

A documentary about an underground video store in New York and the man who archived thousands of films, then disappeared. A meditation on why we collect and preserve culture, and what we choose to keep.

But It's a documentary about movies and memory—deliberately meditative, genuinely strange. Mainstream audiences find it precious.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both explore how people sell intimacy and performance in systems that profit from their vulnerability, and what becomes of love when it's content.

Lynch's fractured narrative about Hollywood, performance, and the gap between the self we present and who we actually are. Formally daring, emotionally devastating, operating on dream logic.

But It's deliberately nonlinear and doesn't explain itself. The second half contradicts the first. Many intelligent people hate it.