Bruce Dern does practically a solo turn in Silent Running as a botanist-astronaut and the last master gardener of a defoliated Earth whose inhabitants have forgotten all about the pleasures of the garden. One of a group taking the remaining samples of flora and fauna into orbit for safekeeping, this gentle nature lover is not above killing his fellow astronauts when they decide to abort the mission. After that, it's just him and the cantaloupes and bunnies, plus two adorable R2D2-like robots, and his growing store of memories, loneliness, and guilt. It's not Solaris but the idea is there, and director Douglas Trumbull, who was responsible for many of the special effects in 2001, applies his wares handsomely to this spacey ecological tale that is by turns touching, funny, ridiculous, and strangely poetic.