Category: Uncategorized

Video on Demand is a wonderful service, for indie movies. In my area at least, we never get them early on, it will take many many weeks later, perhaps months. At that point, I might as well wait to watch it in the comforts of my very small apartment.

But video on demand lets them complete the indie circuit and let me still get to watch the movie relatively early in a movies theatrical release. I feel like a celebrity, watching a movie before it comes out.

Thankfully, Drinking Buddies, stacked with a pretty famous cast and an indie comedy, has chosen to VOD UP, and let me get my review on. Thanks guys!

Wow, they really do look like buddies!

Ugh. Chicago. Okay, I won’t judge the movie by the city. But still. Chicago.

Our heroes work at a craft beer company in Chicago! Hero is a strange term. Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson) are both high up the ladders, so they have extra time to have fun while on the job. Their boss (Jason Sudeikis) is fine with it all, as long as their work gets done.

But life is a playground when you work at a beer company! They’d be the perfect couple too, with all their flirting and shenanigans. Too bad they are both in long term committed relationships. Oh yes, what a bummer.

Luke is with Jill (Anna Kendrick), and they are even in marriage talks. Kate is with Chris (Ron Livingston) and he doesn’t get to hang out with Kate’s coworkers like ever. UNTIL NOW. That is, until they go to a cabin in the woods (not a horror movie) as two couples to experience nature and infidelity.

Whoops. That’s no good.

Say one of them breaks up with their significant other anyways. The chances are not high that the other one will break up too, and even lower that it will lead them to each other. Right? Right!?

Fuck. This movie title is so aptly named.

Most important thing to note about Drinking Buddies is that I did not laugh once. Not a single time. The characters laughed, quite often, but there was nothing ever inherantly funny about what they were saying to make me laugh too. It was just friends goofing off with each other, shooting the shit. Character laugh, doesn’t mean comedy. Shit, the term comedy doesn’t even really mean happy ending.

Drinking Buddies ends up being just another strange “comedy” drama indie movie, that tells part of a story, without a real conclusion, and a lot of very real situations. Just this one stars four relatively famous people. That is it.

Okay, sure, you can see Olivia Wilde’s boobs in this one, but only briefly, and that is just because sometimes you just NEED to go skinny dipping. But that isn’t a good reason to watch a movie, is it?

Sure, things happen in this movie, but it doesn’t feel like a lot when it is over. The acting is okay, but the story itself just doesn’t seem like one that needs to be told.

1 out of 4.

I should have seen Insidious two years ago when I worked at Blockbuster. I have never been great at the horror genre, so back then I didn’t watch them. However, there was a huge lull of no horror movies coming out, so when they would ask for new good horror, I basically had to recommend Insidious for two months.

That’s right. I was recommending a movie without seeing it. For shame. Which is why I had to watch it now to redeem myself, but also because of the sequel coming out in a few weeks, shockingly named, Insidious: Chapter 2.

I don’t even know man. I don’t even know.

The Lambert family has recently moved into a new home, as is the usual for a haunted house movie.

Josh (Patrick Wilson) is a teacher, and Renai (Rose Byrne) is…not a teacher. I guess she is a house wife. They have three boys, and one of them, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), likes to pretend his a super hero who can fly. Silly Dalton. I know him as that annoying kid added to Iron Man 3 because Disney.

Well, he plays in the attic, falls, hits his head, and goes into a coma. A coma that no one can really explain either. Oh well.

Three months later, shit is rough. No sign of Dalton awakening, and their marriage is getting rough. Josh spends more and more time at work, and his wife is freaking out at home. She is starting to see people where there are none. Hear voices over the baby monitor. Shit like that. Her mom is freaking out too. They think they are haunted.

So they get Elise (Lin Shaye) a family friend to investigate the house, since she works with the paranormal. Elise and her lackies (Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson). They agree. Shit is fucked up in this house.

But that isn’t the worse part. The eerie behavior might not even be attached to the house at all. It might be attached to several family members.

Oh a nice image of a bed room that is p- OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING OVER THERE?

The first half of Insidious is your standard haunted house movie. Things go bump in the night, demons and spirits appear, noises abound, and people freak out.

Then it gets a bit weird.

Like. A lot. Really really really weird.

So weird I didn’t want to expand upon it in the plot outline. It is just incredibly different, which is a good thing. They are starting to think outside of the box and try new things. So it gets all sort of looney and I like that.

What I thought was weaker was the scares. I think this movie was applauded for the lack of jump scares in it, but at the same time, they use loud crashes and piano cords several times, which are just jump scares in noise form. It does benefit from being scary without a big loss of life, or blood, or gore.

I also feel as if the acting was a bit poor from our lead two actors. I haven’t seen Rose in much, but I have seen Patrick in a lot, and I know he could do better. The ending is also a bit strange, but given that we know there is a sequel, I guess it will continue right from where we left off.

Maybe.

TL;DR – Weird unique horror movie. Okayish.

2 out of 4.

The full title of this movie, for legal reasons, is Lee Daniels’ The Butler, but eh, technicalities.

This film is supposed to be a biographical film of Eugene Allen, a butler who served in The White House for 34 years until he retired in 1984.

I’d say your best possible experience with this movie would be treating it like your average fictional film, set through a back drop of history, almost like Forrest Gump.

I hope you came here to see pictures of butlers.

Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) came from very humble beginnings in the 1920s. He was living with his family on a cotton plantation in horrible conditions. After his father gets shot and his mother goes a bit insane, he is trained to work in the house, to serve and to serve properly. Eventually he leaves the plantation, gets a job at a hotel, gets discovered, and finds himself as a butler at The White House.

Yeah, butlering at The White House is probably the sweetest gig out there. Unless you mess up, you have job security for 30-40 years.

While at The White House, Cecil finds himself interacting with decades of presidents. He is there for Dwight D. Eisenhower (Robin Williams, his second time as President), John F. Kennedy (James Marsden) and his wife Jacqueline (Minka Kelly), Lyndon B. Johnson (Liev Schreiber), Richard Nixon (John Cusack), and Ronald Reagan (Alan Rickman) with his wife Nancy (Jane Fonda). For you patriots out there, yes, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter just get kind of skipped.

During these years, Cecil also has to deal with his family life. His wife (Oprah Winfrey) has bouts of alcoholism, and depression due to her husbands long hours at work. Their youngest child, Charles (Elijah Kelley) eventually decides to join the army for the Vietnam War. Their other son, Louis (David Oyelowo) is able to graduate high school and go down to college in Tennessee. There, he meets other “radicals” who want equal rights. He begins to participate in sit ins, protests, becomes a Freedom Rider, a marcher on Washington DC, and a follower of Martin Luther King Jr. (Nelsan Ellis). Basically, he is there for all of the major civil rights events. Well, the ones that don’t involve sitting in the back of the bus.

Most of the movie involves splicing the civil rights movements through the eyes of the son, with the servitude of Cecil at the White House during these nation changing events.

In case you wanted more star power, fellow butlers are played by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz, while Terrence Howard plays his wise crackin’, woman lovin’ neighbor.

I tried to find a picture of each actor as a president. This will do.

Like everything in Hollywood, most of the movie is fictionalized away from the source. Like, Louis, the civil rights activist. He never existed. They only had one son, Charles (who actually did go to the Vietnam War!). So, half the movie right away is fictional. Sure, the events all happened, just the make believe son wasn’t a part of them.

While the butler in question did exist, he also probably didn’t have the small conversations about civil rights with the various Presidents, but they make the film a lot more interesting.

Despite it’s inaccuracies, The Butler is incredible. Over two hours long, it spanned decades of American history and put it in such a powerful context, that it is hard to not feel emotional over it.

All of it is very dramatic and very sad at times, but as you learn by the end of the film, the journey is totally worth it.

The acting is phenomenal on all parts. I am willing to bet Whitaker gets nominated for Best Actor in this film, and Oprah potentially Best Supporting Actress. The line up of presidents was hilarious in its own right. All of these big name actors getting to play a US president, but only for a small part in a movie. Heck, they had a British actor playing Reagan, even better!

I think The Butler is going to be one of the few stand out movies of the year when it comes for Best Picture consideration. Its treatment of racism in the United States is spot on and informative. I am most excited for Forest Whitaker though, who has been in some less than great roles recently. Hopefully this gets him back on the right path again, like when he did The Last King Of Scotland.

4 out of 4.

I didn’t know a lot about Paranoia before viewing it. Outside of the trailer, it didn’t have any advertising from what I could tell.

But it did have two great actors in head roles, so there is some amount of hope that it is surprisingly decent.

Hey. That guy looks like a thinner, less strong, less manly, Thor. How weird.

The story centers on Adam (Liam Hemsworth), who works for a big phone company lead by Nicolas Wyatt (Gary Oldman). Adam is leading a small team to help develop a tool for their new phone model, but Wyatt ignores him, causing Adam to lose his temper. Needless to say, Wyatt does not choose their project and fires the whole team.

Adam, despite being in debt with his sick dad (Richard Dreyfuss), decides to use the company expense card to live it up with his former coworkers in a moment of mutiny.

Well, now Wyatt has him on credit fraud. Adam doesn’t want to go to prison, so he will do anything Wyatt asks of him. Even if it means stealing.

Wyatt and his associate Judith (Embeth Davidtz) hook Adam up with a fancy new wardrobe, apartment, and personality, so he can get a job as an executive for Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford), who happens to run the biggest phone company. They are working on a sleek new phone that is said to revolutionize the world, and Wyatt wants a prototype. If he succeeds, he will get his friends (mostly Lucas Till) their jobs back, have money for his dad, and will have job security for the rest of his life.

We also have Amber Heard as a marketing direct and main love interest forAdam, Julian McMahon as a lackie of Wyatt, and Josh Holloway as an FBI detective.

These two are juggernauts in the acting world. I have now used ‘juggernaut’ in a review.

If you watch the trailer, you really don’t have to see the movie. They tell you the entire main plot while also spoiling the main twists as well! Seriously, something is given away in the trailer that doesn’t happen until the final twenty minutes, a major plot point.

Unfortunately, the plot itself is predictable (even without the trailer). Having a predictable plot is bad if you are trying to make a crime/thriller. The acting is also not really anything special. The side plot with the friends who lost their job is nothing more than cringe worthy and a distraction.

But the so-so acting and bad plot are not the worse parts. The worse part comes from the tiny details they did not care about.

These two men are the heads of the two biggest mobile phone makers in the world/country. They have their own unique names and everything. Yet they and their heads of staff are using iPhones. I might have seen a Galaxy S3 in there as well. That is just pure laziness. I wouldn’t have noticed if they didn’t constantly show the phones up close.

It almost seems like they are taunting the viewer. They are taunting us by showing how little they cared about the final product of this movie and it showed.

1 out of 4.

Well, if no one else is going to say it, I will.

I thought the title was better when it was written out as jOBS. It made me laugh and it was cute. Sure, some saw it as disrespectful, but I thought it was funny. Steve Jobs had a sense of humor after all, and this movie isn’t even a full biography.

Now we have the title as Jobs, (Trailer) which is a terrible name for a movie if you try to Google it without any extra words.

Sony is doing their own Steve Jobs movie that is being written by Aaron Sorkin, based on his biography from 2011. It will come out within the next two years, it will probably include his death and it will have a more serious tone.

“Draw me like one of your French Girls…”

The iPod. You probably have one. It helped change the music scene forever. Our story begins with a press conference of its release in 2001, then takes us back a few decades to get a more complete story.

It takes us back to Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) while he is already in college. I mean physically he is in a college, but he is a free spirit and not actively enrolled, despite being a pretty smart dude. After some design classes, we then see him working for Atari. He wants to be innovative, but everyone else just wants to keep the status quo. It turns out, he doesn’t work well with others, so he has to be put on his own projects.

But once his friend Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) shows him an invention he is working on, his life changes. Woz has made a machine that will display text that you type on a “keyboard” when hooked up to your television. Mind blowing, I know. That way you can see what you are working on, as you work on it.

With an eventual investment from Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney), they soon turn their garage corporation start up into a very successful corporation, leading the personal computer craze with the Apple II launch!

They even become a publicly traded company! This becomes bad news when they end up in development hell with the Lisa computer (and eventually the Mac) spending tons of resources and time on a machine that Steve will not release until it is 100% perfect. This leads the board of directors (J.K. Simmons) to get a new CEO for the company, John Sculley (Matthew Modine), the man who invented the Pepsi Challenge.

Jobs tells the story of a man who had a vision, and had a hard time getting that vision to the public. Steve Jobs would walk over anyone to achieve his dreams too, even his friends, because he really isn’t a nice person. The movie basically takes us up to the release of the Mac computer in the late 90s, in their attempt to make it sexy again. and briefly talks about the release of the iPod.

The Woz was later made even more famous thanks to the show Code Monkeys.

Basically, what I learned from this movie is that Steve Jobs could be a real jerk. He ignores his friends who helped get the company off of its feet. He threatens to sue his competition. He refuses to let people who work with him who tend to differ in opinion. He even refuses to believe his daughter is actually his.

He was not a swell guy.

What I dislike most about the movie is how disjointed it all feels. It is not a complete story by a long shot, only focusing on a few major events. By skipping around every few years, we are left to catch up every time the movie skips to another important event.

The ending included an inspirational radio quote by Steve, but it came about pretty suddenly. It was odd that they didn’t even talk about the idea for the iPod, and only mentioned it in the first scene. If they had it in complete chronological order, they could have at least ended it with the iPod scene, which would have provided some sense of closure. Partial biography or not, as a movie, it should have a coherent plot and an ending.

Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs did give him a chance to actually act for once and I’d say he did a great job. But the rest of the acting was just okay and overall this didn’t feel like it did a good job of telling me a lot about Steve’s life outside of a few specific events. It didn’t try to find out why he was a jerk to his friends, or where he got his inspiration from. I hope the next movie they make on his life is a bit better, and gives a more complete story.

 

1 out of 4.

Author Note: This review has been censored by the Author himself for hilarity sake, not any entity running this review.

Kick-[Butt] 2 is the sequel to Kick-[Bottom], that much is obvious.

What is not obvious is why Jim Carrey started acted strangely this summer, so I think we should discuss it first. In June, he tweeted that he could not support the level of violence in Kick-[Rear] 2, which was shot a month before the Sandy Hook incident.

However, his actual character in the movie, while violent, happens to be a born again Christian who refuses to use guns or swear. Yes, he actively protests gun violence with his character, yet won’t support the film? Ridiculous. Needless to say, his cast members had some choice words to say about the incident, and the sheer silliness of it all probably will lead to more people seeing Kick-[Posterior] 2 than before.

Thanks Jim. Gee whiz. This movie takes place a few years after the events of the first film. Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has now given up crime fighting, but we all know that isn’t going to last long. Mindy (Chloe Grace Moretz) is going to high school for the first time, and as a 15 year old girl, she has a lot to learn about real world teenage girls. She eventually gives up Hit-Girl, as a promise to her passed away father and new caretaker, Detective Marcus (Morris Chestnut).

It doesn’t take long for Dave to go back to his superhero roots, but finds fighting crime alone to be a bit daunting. He decides to team up with Dr. Gravity (Donald Faison), who introduces him to the vigilante group, Justice Forever! Lead by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Carrey), it also features Battle Guy (Clark Duke), Insect Man (Robert Emms), and Night [Female Dog] (Lindy Booth).

But evil is lurking. Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is upset over his fathers death (understandably), and wants to get revenge. In order to do that, he has to start his own evil organization. He is no longer The Red Mist, that was his hero name. As a super villain, he is now The Mother[Fornicator]. He recruits a few sociopaths, including Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina), The Tumor (Andy Nyman), Black Death (Daniel Kaluuya), and Genghis Carnage (Tom Wu), and calls his group The Toxic Mega [Very Bad Insult Name For Women]. They plan on bringing down NYC and all the masked vigilantes. Especially Kick-[Gluteus Maximus].

I already tagged a lot of people, but lets tag a few more. John Leguizamo plays Chris’ Bodyguard/Butler like person, Augustus Prew plays the “other friend” Todd, and Claudia Lee plays Brooke, the high school drama queen.

Wow, he is wearing Big Daddy’s armor. That is all sorts of [Sexed] up. In a lot of ways, Kick-[Buttocks] 2 is a lot like the first movie. There is over the top violence (involving teenagers) and a lot of people end up dying. But in a lot of ways, it is also different.

It is hard to describe, but something is missing in this sequel. I think it lacks the heart of the first film. In the first film, you could definitely tell Dave wanted to be a good guy, to do good things, and help save the world. In this movie, he felt like almost an entitled jerk, and he certainly felt selfish. Sure, he said he wanted to just help people in the movie, but it all felt superficial.

The film also has far too many plot lines, lessening its potential. You know what is boring? Watching a movie about “Superheroes” not fighting crime. This is unavoidable if it is the first movie in a series, because we need to get an Origin story. This movie had our heroes away from their costumes many times throughout and gets in the way of a lot more fisticuffs. The comedy and violence is the only thing this franchise is going to have going for it.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse, however, played the self entitled super villain really well, especially when his super power is being rich. It was amazing.

Overall, the movie is just not as good as the first, it isn’t as funny, and it spends too much of its 100 minute run time lollygagging.

2 out of 4.

Hooray sequels! If you missed it the first time, I reviewed V/H/S only a few months ago and thought the whole thing was interesting and rather creepy.

Then I found out the sequel, V/H/S/2 (good name) would be out soon. It actually went out on Video on Demand in early June, theaters in early July, and here I am, mid August finally watching it. No good excuses for that one, especially when I had it since June. You will forgive me eventually, I can only hope.

The whites around this photo are like the whites around your eye. I guess.

This movie comes with four new stories and a new narrative.

Our “main characters” are far more likable than the first film.. That story is named Tape 49, is about two private detectives searching for a missing college kid. His apartment his abandoned, with VHS tapes lying everywhere, and a mini video blog on his laptop. They realize they have to watch the tapes in order to figure out where he went. Those stories are…

Phase 1 Clinical Trials: A guy gets a free robotic eye! But they record everything for testing, and there may be glitches. Uh oh.

A Ride In The Park: A guy goes on a bike ride in the park with a go pro camera! He then gets attacked and turned into a zombie. Whoa.

Safe Haven: A documentary crew go to a cult like area in Indonesia, with improper behavior amongst the leader and his subjects. Also, sacrifices. Eek.

Slumber Party Alien Abduction: Well, this one sounds self explanatory.

Did you see the last picture? Robot eye yo. This is just your standard Indonesian male suicide room.

Shit, I don’t even really need a new review for this.

All of what I said before applies. The short story concept is neat, and lets stories that might not have worked as a full movie shine. The grainy-ness adds a bigger element of fear.

By far, the coolest story was Safe Haven, which I think on its own could be a full movie. Or at least 70 minutes in length. It was twisted and had a nice plot.

A Ride In The Park was not the best thing to watch while eating dinner. Zombie POV, shit was creepy.

The Phase 1 Clinical Trial was decent, could have been a bit more expanded. Felt a bit rushed.

I hated Slumber Part Alien Abduction. I also think the main storyline was a bit weak and just…meh. But hey, they all can’t be winners. And I think 3 of the 5 being pretty decent makes this a pretty damn decent horror flick. Sure I didn’t describe a lot of this, but at least I actually watched it before my review, unlike Rex Reed.

3 out of 4.

Come on. Look at Vamp U. Look at it.

You know exactly why I got it. The same reason anyone gets these type of movies. I was bored and wanting to see something ridiculous, when I had a spare afternoon. I can’t always watch super dramatic or actiony movies. Sometimes you just want something that has a chance of having some cheap laughs. A good old fashioned college sex comedy. This one just so happens to be about vampires.

And the dashing young gents who have to bring em down.

Hey now this movie stars a guy named Wayne Gretzky (Adam Johnson). No, there is no relation to the hockey player. But he does have the nickname “The Great One,” so I guess that is something. He teaches history at some nondescript university. It is typical if not small. There is at least on fraternity and one sorority. Wayne is very popular among the students. He also happens to be a vampire.

He is rather unique in that he doesn’t kill humans. Why not? Because he is impotent where it counts. No not there, his teeth. His teeth just don’t want to come out, so he can’t feast. It might have something to do with killing the love of his life 300 years prior. Since then he hasn’t really had the ability to get it up. His teeth.

That is until Chris Keller (Julie Gonzalo) walks into his life and reminds him oh so much of his former lover. Yeah. That gets his gears back in motion. But after a series of flings, he does the unthinkable and makes her a vampire too. Well that’s just great. Now she is going to terrorize the campus, turning them all into vampires. First her sorority, then the campus, then…the world?

Gary Cole plays the horn dog dean, Alexis Knapp (from Pitch Perfect and Project X) plays a sorority girl. Maclain Nelson plays a love sick guy who really wanted Chris, and Matt Matson (What) his best friend, blogger, and soon to be vampire hunter.

I swear that this is a relevant picture.

College sex comedies!

Well this one is definitely comedy. The other two thirds are doubtful though. Well, in terms of sex, I guess the professor and the one girl. They for sure have sex. Off camera. Implied. Then that is it. No naked people at all, that is the closest naked part. Alexis Knapp in a bra.

Alright so that is lame, and yes I will base my rating off of that.

As for comedy? Well, it is obvious that is what they were going for. And I probably laughed at least twice. But so many of their attempts were just miss after miss after miss, it got a little bit depressing. Matt Mattson’s entire point is comic relief, but he can only do so much. The other main male college student spends half the movie whining that his favorite professor got to his girl first, even when she is a vampire.

Honestly, it took an actual okay idea (vampire sorority?) and just did nothing with it.

Obviously the main jokes were going for sexual inadequacy with the vampire in regards to not extending his teeth. But they just didn’t work.

I’d probably rather see Twilight again.

1 out of 4.

Let me preface this review by saying that I don’t know much about Jack Kerouac, especially on how to spell his last name. I know enough about him to know that he totally wrote On The Road as a poem/bio/narrative thing, and enough to make that joke during my tiny review of The Road.

I also know that they have been wanting to make this movie since the poem came out. Shit, that is some major production hell. I expect it to be similar to Howl, and will probably be confused by the end. Yay literature!

Some parts of the title can be taken literally.

I don’t really want to go over the plot of the book. Most likely, you have either read it, which is why you want to see the movie, or you haven’t and want to see this movie to see a naked Kristen Stewart. Because that happens in this movie, along with a few more compromising situations. But I really doubt you’d watch it just for a small scene.

But this movie is mainly about Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) and Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), aka Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. Jack changed the names of everyone in the novel, so that he could most likely change the story in smaller ways too, but still keep the actual truths of his journey visible.

Marylou (Stewart) is the third main person on their journey I guess. Not just because of the sex and other shenanigans they get in to.

But yeah, they meet a lot of interesting and unique characters. People who help them discover their sexuality, their interests. People who just have interesting stories to tell. I could tell you about them, but again, eh, just watch/read it. They are played by a lot of people, including Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge, Alice Braga, Elisabeth Moss, Kirsten Dunst, and Viggo Mortensen.

Viggo Mortensen? Huh. That makes my The Road joke that much better.

They are way too excited in this picture. They need to have faces full of angst. Especially Kristen, so the internet can continue to make the same joke over and over.

If you are hoping I say anything to praise or take down this movie, I wont. It was okay. It is a famous story that people read. It was made for a niche group. So if you think you fit that group (and you totally know if you fit that group) give it a watch.

But I doubt this movie has any ability to change your life, which hey, the book might. Whoa. Am I promoting reading a book? Maybe. Just maybe.

I can honestly say, this movie is no where near as good as the book. I can make that claim without reading the book. I guarantee the book has more themes and messages to get across than the movie. But the movie is probably a fair enough adaptation of the book. To me, it sounds like the book is the type of thing that should never really get a movie, because you won’t get the full experience Jack is trying to tell you.

Eh. Everything gets made into movies anyways. Always has, and always will. Also, Kristen Stewart’s naked scenes weren’t that impressive, which is why I watched the movie.

2 out of 4.

In 2009, Neill Blomkamp changed the world.

Okay, that is an exaggeration. But he did release the movie District 9, a beautiful, very detailed, sci-fi movie, with great acting, plot, and messages associated with it. More importantly, it was his first major film as a director and it was an independent movie. That’s right, they found out they could make big epics without breaking the bank at the same time.

This is why four years later, most people are excited about Elysium and wondering if it can repeat his earlier success.

I’d want to live there too. Shit’s dope, even if the Earth was fine. In the year 2154, Earth is left in shambles. Not from an alien attack or war or mole people. No, from just straight up over population, pollution, and an ever growing lower class. To fix this issue, the rich people decided…to leave Earth completely! They made a giant spaceship habitat to orbit Earth (called Elysium!), to live out their lives in luxury. They got everything there, green grass, fine dining, and of course the ability to heal any ailment, disease, or virus. Aw yeah.

On Earth,people are dying from these diseases a, the high costs and a strict robotic police force. It is hard not to be a criminal. Like Max (Matt Damon). Sure he used to be a criminal, but now he wants to earn money the right way. Too bad the man ain’t letting him get on his feet! In fact, at work, he gets bombarded with a lethal dose of radiation, leaving him with only five days left to live! So they fire his butt, and leave him in his misery.

Yeah. Max really needs to get to Elysium.

A man with five days left to live will go through a heck of a lot to try and survive. Even if it involves attaching a permanent exo skeleton power suit to his body, kidnapping the CEO of the company that fired him (William Fichtner), and teaming up with members of his old criminal team (Wagner Moura). It would also be nice if he could bring his lady friend Frey (Alice Braga) and her daughter with them to Elysium.

It won’t be a cakewalk either. He has to deal with the Elysium head of security (Jodie Foster) and a sociopathic sleeper agent (Sharlto Copley) who will stop at nothing to bring him to “justice.” Poor Max. Why couldn’t you just be born rich?

I wonder if in 2154 they have classified at what constitutes a cyborg. Officially. The best sci-fi films have always been those that offer great social commentary. Actually, I’d say that most sci-fi films and stories offer some form of social commentary. What better way to “secretly” criticize government or policies than by setting it hundreds of years in the future?

This one really isn’t even that subtle about it. Basically it takes the rich getting richer to extremes, along with some elements of overpopulation and immigration.

Sometimes films can feel a bit too preachy, but this one does a good job of providing enough entertainment at the same time for it to be acceptable. Most of the film I’d describe as “action light.” There are only really two action scenes: a robbery, and the ending, which is exciting enough to make up for the slower parts of the film.

Strangely, I think the films main issue comes with not making everything clear enough. No one likes to be spoon fed, but they could definitely fleshed out more details to enrich the world, and answer some more questions. The dialogue of the film could have also been better. Jodie Foster’s character felt underused to me, which might have been on purpose.

But overall these points are pretty minor. It was a really well done story, and Sharlto Copley was fantastic in it. Probably the best acted character in Elysium. His character was so exciting and vivid, I almost had a hard time cheering for Matt Damon at the end. I think we can all agree that we need more Sharlto Copley in our movies.

 

3 out of 4.