step into the future and anticipate ∞ ELYSIUM ∞ (the dystopian science fiction blockbuster from the folks who brought you district 9, also matt damon + jodie foster)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=trueview-instream&v=QILNSgou5BY

oh wait i mean jodie foster :( -- change thread title, anyone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIBtePb-dGY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RSDaRttpzk

so this is crank + robocop + 2001 + the matrix + mad max + john q + ?

The movie's already sold, man, you don't need to pitch.

This looks cool

i'll see the shit out of this

looks like a lot of blunt 99% vs. 1% allegory (or is it even allegory?), i got no problem with that unless they redeem the 1% in the end metropolis-style.

i understand the last shot is them all shaking hands

the mediator between elysium and earth must be matt damon

this looks dope

metropolis is basically the father of all "blockbuster ideology" where you get to toy with all these rich, topical ideas and then just fudge them so that nobody can accuse you of taking a stand on anything.

reminds me of the public enemy and all its stern forewords and epilogues about how they are NOT glorifying gangsters, but that they are a problem that WE ALL must solve, and its not our fault, and come on

looks promising

this looks fascinatingly empty; bolted-on smash suits and robot fight explosions are usual MUST-SEE indicators to me but when I saw this trailer, the strongest reaction I had was "Jodie Foster really looks like a friend of mine who went to college with her"

reminds me of the public enemy and all its stern forewords and epilogues about how they are NOT glorifying gangsters, but that they are a problem that WE ALL must solve, and its not our fault, and come on

― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Monday, June 17, 2013 11:23 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you've seen that one scene (emphatically NOT directed by howard hawks) in scarface where the district attorney (?) sternly explains that organized crime is no joke, etc.

i think that's different from what i'm talking about, though. those are easily-parsable intrusions of the Production Code Administration and studio self-censorship at its least nimble.

what i'm talking about is stuff like the dark knight returns, which tangles "thoughtfully" with stuff like surveillance state, terrorism, etc. so as to seem relevant and Serious, but carefully parcels out the lines among characters and plotlines so that any serious attempt to nail down a point-of-view will necessarily fail.

see also the way that dr. mabuse is set up to be equal parts Right and Left. but in those films (and in Spies, which has a Mabuse-like villain) lang deals with this stuff with such flair, whereas in Metropolis it's so corny and unprepared-for by the rest of the film.

studio blockbusters aren't going to take a critical political position on anything, certainly not in this day and age

what i'm talking about is stuff like the dark knight returns, which tangles "thoughtfully" with stuff like surveillance state, terrorism, etc. so as to seem relevant and Serious, but carefully parcels out the lines among characters and plotlines so that any serious attempt to nail down a point-of-view will necessarily fail.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, June 17, 2013 12:33 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

yes the nolan batmans are the perfect example of this

Spies is one of the greatest movies btw everyone should see that shit, preferably on a big screen. the first 10 minutes alone are like the fleetest bit of visual storytelling ever.

i meant TDK btw, is there even a movie called "TDK returns?" what was the last one? ah, who cares, they're shit anyway.

studio blockbusters aren't going to take a critical political position on anything, certainly not in this day and age

― Bathory Tub Blues (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, June 17, 2013 11:36 AM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i actually think this is a bit overstated, but it's certainly truer now than ever before. a lot of film academics seem to keep hoping the revolution comes by way of a bruckheimer movie, hilariously.

i think a contemporary blockbuster can occasionally take a kind of political position, or at least have a coherent politics, albeit only by means of allegory e.g. rise of the planet of the apes.

and although zero dark thirty definitely makes use of the same sort of futzing around as TDK, i do think it makes some of its POV very clear, unfortunately that POV is mostly right wing, glenn kenny and others' attempts to recuperate it as a "critical" movie notwithstanding.

blockbusters aren't going to take a critical political position on anything, certainly not as long as Clooney is prom king.

why clooney of all people

I think Morbs is probing ILX for tender areas with a rusty scalpel.

I think Morbs is probing ILX for tender areas with a rusty scalpel.

― Home Despot (WilliamC), Monday, June 17, 2013 11:48 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i was tempted but not gonna take the bait. moving along...

Clooney did a mag interview about a year ago when he said he was "disappointed in Democrats who are disappointed in Obama," so I'm expecting a boring pro-Prism thriller from him soon.

are you talking to anyone, morbs?...

btw i'm not saying that all films that do this are inherently worthless or something.

stuff like TDK does bug me b/c there's so much heavy-breathing in the form of name-dropping topical memes, which for some critics and regular folk casts it in this glow of Seriousness, which Nolan is all too happy to bask in. but i think people confuse structural incoherence for complexity or something w/r/t the batman films. unlike other films that are purposefully incoherent it's hard to just ignore it in TDK, it seems to be fueling the film's overall tone of unwavering intensity which is exemplified in all the cross-cutting and in the sound design.

anyway i hope Damon does more Bam bashing on his promo tour for this

no, I'm not talking to anyone, it's the internets

zero dark thirty is strictly status quo reinforcement afaict. I mean yeah that's a political position, but it is not a critical one.

yup

well it's kind of brooding on the fact that we need to do such morally problematic things in this contemporary world in which we live in, which strikes me as a right-wing even though it's centrist now i guess

but its fatalism is def. political

kinda inclined to argue that the horror genre is the only place you find actual critiques of our socio-political status quo these days

this looks all right, but yeah i wonder how it will all resolve. guess i'll have to see it!!!

im not that pumped about it but i dug district 9 a lot so i'll wait and see

when i went to school
in elysium

pretty lame :/

damn it

some cool robots and neat-looking stuff but it basically stunk ya

Well that sucks.

you killed our dreams slockiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!

yeah the todd mccarthy review kind of killed any anticipation for me b/c his criticisms had the ring of truth and dovetailed w/ everything i hated about district 9.

so, moving on to snowpiercer...

im not surprised, everything i've seen from this just hasnt moved my meter

:( i was going to go see this tomorrow but now what

there's def some fun moments that i particularly think h4a might like but its pretty poorly scripted, not enough happens on elysium itself, jofo doesnt get to do anything but scowl, damon is pretty blank, every female character is cowering, conniving or saintly, and it has some terrrrrrrible flashback stuff

and much of the action is done in a shaky close style that really only paul greengrass can get away with, what is people's problems with letting us actually see all the stuff you spent all your time working on instead of the rest of the movie

if i want to go see a BIG SUMMER MOVIE tomorrow, what should i go see

wwz

I saw an updated trailer that had made me think it would be better than the snoozefest I thought but

oh well

I watched part of District 9 last night and that 30 minute chunk satisfied about 80% of my desire to see Elysium

I still haven't seen District 9. I dunno if I will? it really doesn't interest me at all

district 9 was really cool.

if this film is worse than wwz then god help us all

i mean district 9 was just a cool idea and i thought it was entertaining. it didn't follow every single cliche known to man.

I still kind of want to watch Jodie Foster look shocked and then mean but I could always just look up her Golden Globes speech

i just love that everything is so sci-fi now. everyone knows how close to the end we are. its a last-ditch effort and we are so totally doomed, but it makes for cool movies.

everything, eh?

if i want to go see a BIG SUMMER MOVIE tomorrow, what should i go see

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, August 8, 2013 10:13 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2 guns was mostly fun, although the one female character is treated very very poorly

i liked district 9

wwz was fun, fast-moving, the zombie stuff really looked cool and weird and new to me, it got dumb in a lot of parts but it never really slowed down

district nine started out very promisingly and then made a few wrong turns. by the end, with the sentimentalized father+son alien, it was huge letdown. which is basically what mccarthy said about this one. he also said the allegory is rammed down the audience's throats.

maybe i'll just sit in my apartment with the lights off and the a/c on and watch zodiac again

fun? FAST MOVING? which wwz are u talking about because the one I saw was a SNOREFEST

http://www.theonion.com/articles/dick-van-dyke-finally-confesses-to-zodiac-killings,33318/

lol dan

you probably watched the australian one

maybe i'll just sit in my apartment with the lights off and the a/c on and watch zodiac again

― congratulations (n/a)

depends on what beer you're drinking

that's important

i just watched contraband last night and it's pretty damn good except same deal with 2 guns (same director btw)... the kate beckinsale character is just there to look good and be abused

not that this is untypical of macho action movies but these two movies are particularly flagrant instances

what does it say about me that I'd still recommend them to most anyone? n/a, you could do worse.

also i just like mark wahlberg. seems like a shit in real life, but he's great onscreen.

what were we talking about?

oh yeah. i like matt damon too.

"everything, eh?"

seems like it sometimes. like when i go to see pacific rim and there are five trailers for five dystopian/end of the world sci-fi movies.

i know the treatment of women in these kinds of movies is almost universally wretched but the way this movie just shoves them aside particularly bothered me

"everything, eh?"

seems like it sometimes. like when i go to see pacific rim and there are five trailers for five dystopian/end of the world sci-fi movies.

― scott seward, Thursday, August 8, 2013 10:39 AM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude, that's because they are better than ever at matching trailers to the features! when i saw 2 guns it was all trailers for comedies, mostly action-comedies.

yeah i mean i got that but it was wall to wall and it just helps confirm my suspicions that zombie/end of world/sci-fi mayhem is collective unconscious wish-fulfillment/fear/dread-of-the-future. like it was in the post-war/post-atomic 50's only with added cgi.

you're probably right, although i'd add that people just like to see shit blow up real big irrespective of the particular zeitgeist. there were a lot of post-cold war, pre-9/11 disaster/apocalypse movies after all.

you probably watched the australian one

― socki (s1ocki), Thursday, 8 August 2013 15:37 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wwz would've been more entertaining projected upside down (like a joseph cornell short)

zww

yeah i mean i got that but it was wall to wall and it just helps confirm my suspicions that zombie/end of world/sci-fi mayhem is collective unconscious wish-fulfillment/fear/dread-of-the-future. like it was in the post-war/post-atomic 50's only with added cgi.

i'm sure someone has argued this in depth, but i've often felt that these kind of movies are a "fort-da" game for adults--key part being that you walk out of the theater and the world is just as you left it.

if i want to go see a BIG SUMMER MOVIE tomorrow, what should i go see

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, August 8, 2013 8:13 AM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pacific rim

probably zodiac tho

ya PR and wwz the only things really worth seeing this summer

star trek if you're really in a pinch i guess

zww

― socki (s1ocki), Thursday, August 8, 2013 11:01 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

closer to zmm

ya realized that too late :(

australian wwz would have been over much quicker: Brad Pitt grabs his family, buys a slab of beer and heads to the beach.

a... slab?

the last wave. OF ZOMBIES!

you could just watch this for free if you want downunder doomsday action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiArDP3wh4I

pacific rim >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> world war z for fun movie of the summer timez

fun summer movies I've seen this year:

The Wolverine
Iron Man 3
This Is The End

still plan on seeing Pacific Rim

o ya this is the end is good

i second djp's list

though even if with the acclaim i still can't get excited for Avatransformers vs Godzilla

i forgot about this is the end already. i saw it though.

I love socialist revenge porn fantasies and this one looks especially good

its especially mediocre!

my problem with this ad campaign is the story sounds like old hat and damon looks stupid in that exoskeleton. It looks like a vin diesel movie with an oscar cast.

2 guns is something i buy at the FYE store across the street for five bucks in 6 months. i don't want to see anything playing right now at the movie theatre here. percy jackson and the smurfs and wolverine and THE CONJURING!!!!

would watch We're The Millers on netflix if i were stoned enough.

scott you might like the wolverine depending on your mood. Novel and weird for a mainstream super-hero movie, or tame and bloodless for a weirdo sci-fi samurai story

its especially mediocre!

― socki (s1ocki), Thursday, August 8, 2013 1:05 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:(

oh yeah, We're The Millers might be funny

just saw Wanderlust the other night, was surprised by how funny it was (and also that seemingly everyone in the world was in it)

s1ocki ruins everything :(

I can't remember, s1ocki, what did you think of Oblivion?

yeah wanderlust is really good, they just picked the worst time zeitgeist-wise to make a yuppies-meet-hippies-ZOMG movie

I can't remember, s1ocki, what did you think of Oblivion?

― carlos danger zone (mh), Thursday, August 8, 2013 1:12 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

didnt see wwanna see it

many xposts -- slab of beer = 24 cans/bottles

no CASES in the antipodes? lord

A primitive nation.

...

I was looking forward to a description of the magical animal off of which you could slice slabs of beer ;_;

There is such a magical animal, and the remaining meat goes into the tacos.

Anyway, RichJuz continues the beatdown:

http://gawker.com/matt-damon-can-save-humanity-but-he-cant-save-elysium-1068441948

But the film suffers by rendering paradise as what we already have, right now, perched on the west coast. Elysium didn't take me to a new world; it just turned regular old L.A. into a giant space wheel. The decision to hold up a gleaming, manicured L.A. as an aesthetic ideal could be ironic commentary from Blomkamp. Or it could be his way of telling us to be grateful for what we have in 2013 (even if it happens to take us more than 9 minutes to get there). But it's probably no coincidence that the paradise of a filmmaker's first big Hollywood movie is the paradise of modern-day Movie City. Blomkamp has arrived.

does anyone actually think that exoskeleton looks badass?

the mother of the person who designed it?

"You've made me so proud, dear."

that's not LA that's vancouver

the exoskeleton and assorted related stuff is definitely not the worst part of this movie. that stuff is fine.

Gawker trifecta on this

http://deadspin.com/subtle-as-a-boomsaw-elysium-reviewed-1077355077

http://io9.com/neill-blomkamps-elysium-is-crazy-sweaty-fun-1074576876

http://takimag.com/article/elysium_neill_blomkamp_fools_the_critics_again_steve_sailer#axzz2cBplGiAm

this was not very good

this should've been an hbo series

not really

did you really think this movie was trying to fit too much story into 2 hours?

no but i thought the depiction of the two worlds was fascinating/really well done and i would've liked to see exploration of the two worlds beyond just matt damon's story

the world of "elysium" is barely portrayed except for some girls in bikinis and a couple of politicians!

i just found it so, so thin

the world of "elysium" is barely portrayed except for some girls in bikinis and a couple of politicians!

― socki (s1ocki), Sunday, August 18, 2013 5:40 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

true but i thought it looked so on point that i wish they had many more hours to build the infrastructure for stories on elysium

i don't think this was very good at all but i loved "district 9" and thought this had tons of potential that could've been drawn out if they were able to make both worlds more expansive (i.e. what else does earth look like beyond LA)

well exactly

they had a "look" for each world, not actually fleshed-out worlds themselves

yeah fair enough... i'm admittedly more starry eyed about what this could have been

hmmm. I'm off tomorrow and was gonna check this out in the morning.

I was pretty disappointed too, not least by the sheer number of massive plot holes/logical inconsistencies. What let me down more than anything though was the slide into total humorlessness. There was some great cynical Verhoeven/2000 AD/etc black humor in the beginning (and visual gags like the parole officer, William Fichtner with his "Riché" face brand, gold-plated robots and luxury-car spaceship, filthy deranged Sharlto Copley pulling a cartoonishly huge rocket launcher out of a big shiny bin marked "Civil Cooperation Authority," that kind of thing) and it just dissolves into this bland action-movie gruel about halfway through.

It also probably didn't help that I couldn't watch the guy who played Spider without thinking of Charlie Day as Serpico.

i was wondering why anyone had any expectations for this being a better than average sci-fi movie before i knew the District 9 guy did it. didn't really think that movie ended up being above average itself, though.

I didn't either. A blast for its first thirty minutes; otherwise I didn't think it realized the script's ambitions.

btw what is up with that deadspin link, is there any reason that each paragraph is numbered or is it just some pointless affectation?

more like peelysium

yeah this was pretty dumb

and the main plot didn't make any sense at all. why didn't the richie riches just let the poor people on earth have magical healing pods too? either they're all just total assholes for no reason, or they were genuinely concerned about extreme overpopulation caused by no one ever getting sick or old or dying, in which case the "happy ending" is not particularly happy

and man, jodie foster was SO TERRIBLE in this! like just ridiculously bad. and when matt damon was dying and had to deliver that line that was like "tell her... i understand why the hippo did what he did..." ugh

two things i liked
1. sharlto copley
2. when that robot blew up into a million pieces in slow motion

Yeah, he does disintegration really well - several people go really messily:)

The movie that this oddly reminded of was the Total Recall remake, particularly the detail that the hero in both films is some mook working in a factory making robot police.

It's possible that carrying that comparison around made me like this film more - it has a terrible case of the moppets, and the ending did remind me that District 9 was brought to us by Peter Jackson, who probably bonded with Blomkamp over their shared love of meaningful slo-mo.

But it is fun world-building at the start, and Sharlto Copley and William Fichtner and generally I enjoyed watching it - I'd really like to see him direct a movie by a good writer, or Shane Black, or ideally both.

The weird thing is that they had subtitles on throughout - the Spanish and the French and all of the English. I'm not sure if it was that which made it look like Jodie Foster was overdubbed.

convenience store 2 doors down from my store that sells bongs has the bootleg of this for 4 bucks. was thinking of getting it.

get the bong

sorry to be such a user but i dont wanna spoil this whats the consensus on this iyo ilx

some cool looking stuff but ultimately dumb and lame

noted ta

still kind of want to see this but now I am also really intrigued by scott's local convenience store

this was straight ass

and straight ass aint no good to nobody amirite

yeah this was bad. its weirdly sterile - its telling that blomkapmtp elects not to get any body horror mileage out of the exoskeleton. damon's just like, yeah, plug your shit into my skull. nbd. and he's not like, super stoked about it either. he doesn't seem to have any feelings about it. the guy's a nothing, so's the movie around him

its too bad. i really felt like district 9 was different. its a pretty weird movie! and i was kinda hoping this might be a weird movie on a big budget.

Pretty disappointing and lots of shit made not-much sense.

Like... the easiest way to stop people getting there was to shoot them with a rocket... from back on earth? Maybe it's plausable deniability to show that Elysium itself wasn't involved in killing innocent people... But what if the dude was taking a crap or something when Jodie Foster ordered him to do it?

Terrible ADR on Jodie Foster

yeah, this was lame, except for the exploding robot

he should have just looped that for 60 minutes and called it a structural film

This was moderately diverting but pretty much instantly forgettable. The only thing I took away from it is that Blomkamp has a real talent for creating cool-looking futureweapons.

One thing that bugged me when I was was watching it: when we see the exoskeleton being bolted on to Damon, he's basically naked. How does he get his clothes back on again intact under the exoskeleton?

Actually, I've just watched the scene again and he's actually fully-clothed - they just cut open his clothes where the parts need to be bolted on. And then I guess expertly sew the clothes back up again around the exoskeleton? Weird.

this might have been the worst film i have ever seen? every single aspect of it was laughably dreadful. terrible dialogue, plot apparently made up as we went along, no explanation or indeed internal logic about anything, piss-poor acting, really cringeworthy racial stereotypes...was almost surprised that the guy who made district 9 failed so badly but it's just new-big-budget overreach, right?

You're far from alone in yr disappointment: http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/criticwire-survey-2013s-biggest-disappointments

i was sooooo bored while watching this

its crazy bad

not surprised, but then again i didn't really think district 9 was anything special either.

weird how every single person in future LA is mexican except for the one super dude who can save us all.

also lame was the last-minute villain switch from rich people to super-sharlto

oh spoilers i guess~~~but if that stops you from watching this movie i did u a favor

still cant figure out why the super space station where all of the world's wealthy people are concentrated's sole defence system is a hairy guy on teh ground with a bazooka

Pretty disappointing and lots of shit made not-much sense.

Like... the easiest way to stop people getting there was to shoot them with a rocket... from back on earth? Maybe it's plausable deniability to show that Elysium itself wasn't involved in killing innocent people... But what if the dude was taking a crap or something when Jodie Foster ordered him to do it?

Terrible ADR on Jodie Foster

― Sick Rave and the Bad Speed (S-), Wednesday, 11 September 2013 05:30 (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wait... i wasnt the first??!?!?!

Sorry, didn't mean to be a dick about it, morelike I too want answers to this ridiculous setup.

I can accept that this movie isn't good but Sharlto Copley and the bazooka defense system are great and fuiud

Also really liked Foster's bizarre accent.

i actually liked sharlto copley in this, he had a bit of life to im

sharto's crazy bogan was definitely the best thing about it, also weirdly the worst thing about spike lee's oldboy

I am kind of glad that I had such low expectations after this thread and reviews. I enjoyed it, but there wasn't a whole lot going on.

the thread?

lol at me just finding out that sharlto copley is apparently in that completely unnecessary spike lee oldboy remake

that, too xp

not digging the visuals here, movie is filmed like a socialist nokia commercial....also, foster is just LOL

just concentrate on Sharlto Copley

She was laughably bad, and in retrospect I kind of wish the movie pushed more in that direction. Would have been a lot more interesting if they made it more ridiculous. D9 had way more fun with itself than this.

this was ... incredibly terrible

and apparently informed by a teenage-level understanding of economics

new film really seems like Blomkamp sat down with a focus group and found that people like exploding robots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyy7y0QOK-0

If they are going to name the first sentient life-form after a dog's breakfast they might as well just call it Pedigree Chum. It looks fucking horrid.

AI life-form

Johnny 5 is alive!

this guy is the new shyamalan, isn't he? start off with a critically acclaimed, massively successful film (although in this case one that wasn't actually very good) then squander more and more of your good will with each successive, increasingly terrible film until you're less a filmmaker than a punchline.

of course if that were true in a very specific sense, this next film would be his "signs"—a mediocre film that makes tons of money. i'm kind of doubting "chappie" is going to hit that bullseye.

Maybe more like ... Andrew Nicoll?

But yeah, this looks like Short Circuit plus RoboCop. Plus, didn't District 9 end with some rock 'em, sock 'em exosuits?

oh man, andrew nicoll. :(

District 9 still better than Sixth Sense. But yeah Elysium was not very good and this looks weak.

Niccoll does seem like a good comparison.

oof i hadn't even realized niccol (still struggling to spell his name) did that would-be franchise film with saoirse ronan.

From the Stephanie Myers book! What could go wrong?

Elysium still looks nice, has Sharlto Copely and Jodie Foster (tho Blomkamp is probably quite excited that he's upgraded to Sigourney Weaver), and he is still a decent action director - he has his co-writer from District 9 back for Chappie, which is something.

ha, both members of die antwoord are in this - the guy was actually supposed to be the lead in elysium, but the execs insisted on a big name to get financing i guess, which is how matt damon ended up in it.

district 9 was fantastic, fuiud.

they really bogan-ized wolverine for this movie

his mullet really is exquisite