Elysium explores the same old socio-metaphorical trope of the rich living above and the poor living below that has been traipsed throughout the history of science fiction in works ranging from H.G. Wells The Time Machine, and Fritz Lang's Metropolis to that one episode of the original Star Trek. The exact meaning of the films name, which in context refers to an 22nd century Earth orbiting space station which houses this planets refugee wealthy, I had to look up, according to Wikipedia:
Elysium or the Elysian Fields (Ancient Greek: Ἠλύσιον πεδίον, Ēlýsion pedíon) is a conception of the afterlife that evolved over time and was maintained by certain Greek religious and philosophical sects and cults. Initially separate from the realm of Hades, admission was initially reserved for mortals related to the gods and other heroes. Later, it expanded to include those chosen by the gods, the righteous, and the heroic, where they would remain after death, to live a blessed and happy life, and indulging in whatever employment they had enjoyed in life.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
So in short, and drawing a pronounced though not explicitly stated reference to contemporary economic discourse, the 1% enjoy a life of idealic pleasure calling the shots for the rest of humanity up on Elysium, while the other 99% toil out a meek subsistence on the overpopulated, polluted Hades that is the Earth circa 2154. Our hero is Max Da Costa (played as an adult by Matt Damon), an orphan raised by a group of Catholic sisters in a third world ghetto of Los Angelis, who goes on to have a criminal career as a thief and spend some time in prison, before deciding to go straight and landing a job at a factory that produces law enforcement robots.
In the course of the film Damon is accidently exposed to a lethal level or radiation at work and given some very effective pain suppressing medication and five days to live. He then decides to take up the offer of some old criminal associates to work with them on the planed kidnapping of a visiting executive from Elysium, who happens to be Max's old boss at that the plant (William Fichtner). The crooks intend to steal some valuable information that has been downloaded into Fichtner's brain, and in exchange promise to smuggle Max onto Elysium where there advanced medical technology, which they cynically withhold from the poor people of Earth, could actually cure him.
Thrown in for complication are Max's childhood sweetheart Frey (Alice Braga) whose Leukemia stricken young daughter could certainly use some of that Elysiuon healing technology, and the space stations French Secretary of Defense Jessica Delacourt (Jodie Foster) who is plotting a cue against Elysiums pseudo-liberal (but really doesn't care about people much) President Petal (Faran Tahir), and oh Sharlto Copley as a crazy mean South African sleeper agent Delacourt assigns to retrieve Fichtner's super-secret brain information from Damon. A good, serviceable action movie, it doesn't ask too much of you, and delivers about what you'd expect.
One of the things that surprised me about the film, though I didn't really fully realize it until after seeing the film and doing some reading about it online, is that the film can be considered a critique of open boarders and cultural 'invasion'
from the south. The LA of the film is in essence a Latin American slum, and Damon one of a very few white characters you see there. The wealthy are concerned about preserving there way of life, and by extension culture, so the Caucasian and Asian characters have built themselves a sort of gated community in space, complete with spacious villas under a sort of Dysoinion bio-sphere. So liberals and conservatives both have cultural critiques they can potentially applaud in this film, though I wonder how intentional the later is. ***
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Repulson (1965)
Directed and co-written by Roman Polanski and released three years before his better known horror masterpiece Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion is a very original, finely crafted, effective, and even landmark physiological horror film in its own right. The story is centered on the character of Carole/Carol Ledoux (very effectively portrayed by Catherine Deneuve) a native of Belgium who lives in a London flat with her older sister Hélène/Helen (Yvonne Furneaux), we are never given much background information on the sisters and why they are in London, but it is implied that their family was once well off but is not now. Carol works in a high end beauty salon doing nails and such for rich older women, Helen's job is never made explicitly clear but seems to be more professional in nature.
Carole, being played as she is by miss Deneuve is a breathtaking beautiful women, yet her character is very shy, keeps to her self, and seems very uncomfortable with anything involving the male sex. Carole is pursed by a nice guy would be suitor named Colin (John Fraser), we never learn how they met (any kind of background information is kept at a minim in this movie, which really works for it), but Colin is very taken with her and tries to see her whenever he can, he acts very patient with Carole but inwardly is quite frustrated by his seeming inability to make real headway with the young lass. Carole doesn't like physically contact, she is repulsed by anything sexual is nature, and is openly cold and disapproving of her sisters boyfriend Michael (Ian Henrdy). Yet Carole does have sexual desire, she just bottles it up, unable for some unexplained reason to deal with it. Deneuve's performance is littered with the tiny, personal ticks and quarks of her character, she constantly plays with her hair, touches her lips, rubs her arms, and does other things to simulate a physical contacts she craves, yet can not truly abide.
Carole in short is a women on the edge, but seems to have been that way for so long that the people who know her, to the extent that anyone in this film can be said to truly know her, just kind of deal with it, and don't make a fuss. They don't realize just how close she is to a psychic break, and she starts to really go over the edge when her sister leaves with her boyfriend for a 10 day vacation in Italy. Carole is morose, doesn't clean up the apartment, misses work, becomes paranoid, starts having visual hallucinations of walls cracking, auditory ones of people in the outside hall at night, and eventually seemingly physical ones of a man she'd seen on the street rapping her. Alone most of the time she retreats more and more into herself, and starts acting increasingly child like, hiding under the bed, reciting singsongy nonsense words to herself, ironing cloths wit the iron unplugged. The few people she interacts with don't know how to help her, or even how to interact with her, and that in the end will prove very dangerous for at least one of the them.
Repulsion is a horror film, but its also a psychological case study, and is grounded in a sense of the real world that makes what happens all the more terrifying. A quite, brilliant piece of writing, acting, and directing, Repulsion still stands as a truly unique and unsettling, piece of innovative, even daring film making. ****
Carole, being played as she is by miss Deneuve is a breathtaking beautiful women, yet her character is very shy, keeps to her self, and seems very uncomfortable with anything involving the male sex. Carole is pursed by a nice guy would be suitor named Colin (John Fraser), we never learn how they met (any kind of background information is kept at a minim in this movie, which really works for it), but Colin is very taken with her and tries to see her whenever he can, he acts very patient with Carole but inwardly is quite frustrated by his seeming inability to make real headway with the young lass. Carole doesn't like physically contact, she is repulsed by anything sexual is nature, and is openly cold and disapproving of her sisters boyfriend Michael (Ian Henrdy). Yet Carole does have sexual desire, she just bottles it up, unable for some unexplained reason to deal with it. Deneuve's performance is littered with the tiny, personal ticks and quarks of her character, she constantly plays with her hair, touches her lips, rubs her arms, and does other things to simulate a physical contacts she craves, yet can not truly abide.
Carole in short is a women on the edge, but seems to have been that way for so long that the people who know her, to the extent that anyone in this film can be said to truly know her, just kind of deal with it, and don't make a fuss. They don't realize just how close she is to a psychic break, and she starts to really go over the edge when her sister leaves with her boyfriend for a 10 day vacation in Italy. Carole is morose, doesn't clean up the apartment, misses work, becomes paranoid, starts having visual hallucinations of walls cracking, auditory ones of people in the outside hall at night, and eventually seemingly physical ones of a man she'd seen on the street rapping her. Alone most of the time she retreats more and more into herself, and starts acting increasingly child like, hiding under the bed, reciting singsongy nonsense words to herself, ironing cloths wit the iron unplugged. The few people she interacts with don't know how to help her, or even how to interact with her, and that in the end will prove very dangerous for at least one of the them.
Repulsion is a horror film, but its also a psychological case study, and is grounded in a sense of the real world that makes what happens all the more terrifying. A quite, brilliant piece of writing, acting, and directing, Repulsion still stands as a truly unique and unsettling, piece of innovative, even daring film making. ****
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Lured (1947), Ted (2012), Man Hunt (1941)
Lured
A serial killer of young women taunts the London police with cryptic poems, inspector Henry Temple (Charles Coburn) of Scotland Yard recruits an American dance hall girl (Lucille Ball) to serve as bait, after her best friend is murdered by the killer. This noir mystery is not the kind of film we usually associate with Ms. Ball, and its also not the kind of film you generally think of when you think of its director Douglas Sirk, who is best known for a series of beautifully colored 1950's melodramas (Lured is in black and white as fits its genera). The film is uneven, Lucille Ball's Sandra Carpenter appears to be the main character for much of the film, but disappears for most of the movies final third which concentrates instead on Henry Temple, Sandra's love interest Robert Flemming (George Sanders, yea!) and of course the killer. For a good chunk of the film Sandra's search for the killer leads her to a number of red hearings, one of which is a mentally unhinged former dress designer played (or rather mugged) by Boris Karloff, which feels rather tacked on (Studio Boss: You know we haven't used Boris in a while...) Still its an entertaining, and enjoyably unique film. **1/2
Ted
This Seth McFarlane directed comedy boasts an enviably brilliant comic premise, a lonely little boy in 1980's Boston wishes the stuffed teddy bear he got for Christmas would come alive, and he does. Needless to say this was a big deal when it happened, warranting international media coverage and a guest appearance for the bear on Johnny Carson (well done video tomfoolery using an "ALF" guest appearance to insert the diminutive Ted on the classic late night program). But as the films easily distracted narrator Patrick Stewart reminds us, 'no matter how big a deal you may become, sooner of later nobody's going to give a shit'. So flash forward nearly 30 years and Ted (voiced by McFarlane) is still living with a now grown John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) and the latters girl friend Lori (Mila Kunis). What was cute when they were children is now just odd that they are adults, and both John and Ted are very much adults.
Per pressure from friends causes Lori to put pressure on John to "stop spending so much time with Ted", so the walking, talking stuffed bear moves out on his own and gets a job at a grocery store. But John continues to spend more time with Ted (often getting stoned) then Lori would like and this puts pressure and her and John's relationship, also Lori's arrogant boss (Joel McHale in the Joel McHale part) has designs on Lori and hopes to break her and John up. In addition there is a kidnapping sub plot and a guest appearance by the star of the 1980 film Flash Gordon Sam J. Jones.
The film is often crude but mostly good natured and pretty darn funny. I loved the general acceptance of the characters that there would be this talking stuffed bear walking around, and how he's kind of a b-grade celebrity with people occasionally stopping him to get pictures taken with him, and how Ted seems fine with this. The movie fits perfectly in the slightly crude, man child, gene-X pop culture infused, children's programing for adults niche that director star McFarlane has carved out for himself, and one wonders what on Earth kind of movie he's going to make next. ***
Man Hunt
The journey from page to screen for the story of Man Hunt was an unusually quick one. Author Geoffrey Households 1939 topical thriller Rouge Male went from serial magazine publication, to novel, to major motion picture in just two years. The story is about a legendary but retired English big game hunter Captain Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) who a few months before the outbreak of the second world war travels to Germany with his rifle to see if it would be possible for him to take out Adolph Hitler. Now the question of whether Thorndike was doing this as just a vanity exercise to prove to himself that he could do it, or if he really intended to kill the German dictator is debated throughout the film, with Thorndike himself appearing psychology unsure about his own motivations. Well whatever the intent was Thorndike is captured by the Germans on the property of Der Fuhrers mountain retreat, and a German officer who goes by the name of Quive-Smith (George Sanders again, yea) who himself is an amateur big game hunter, seems sure that Thorndike was acting as an assassin for the British government, (Thorndike's brother Lord Risborough (Frederick Worlock) is in fact a British diplomat).
Quive-Smith tries to get Thorndike to sign a confession implicating his government in an assassination plot agents Hitler, which the Germans in turn intend to use as propaganda fodder for the war with the UK they are already planning. Thorndike refuses, the Nazi's torture him for a while, and then decide to push him off a cliff in the mountains and make like his death was a hunting accident, only they miscalculate and throw Thorndike into a marsh, and he survives and gets away. The wounded hunter eventually makes it to a port where an English cabin boy (Roddy McDowall) aboard a Danish freighter helps hide him an smuggle him back to England. But the Nazi's, now lead by John Carradine, follow him determined to use him for propaganda purposes. Now in London a desperate Thorndike takes refuge with a beautiful British girl named Jerry (Joan Bennett), who depending on how you read the film is either a prostitute or a seamstress, who takes quite a shinning to him. Thorndike's a little big oblivious to Jerrys obvious affections but still doesn't want to see the girl hurt, and turns her away when she insists on accompanying him to the English countryside where intends on hiding until things 'blow over'. Things don't turn out as Thorndike had hopped.
Man Hunt is a call to arms and very obviously anti Nazi film that was made in the US, with a largely British cast and an ex-patriot German director (Fritz Lang) months before American involvement in the war. This movie very clearly skirted, all right violated the neutrality act then in effect in its blatant advocacy for US involvement against the Nazi's, in fact it was slated to be a subject of congressional hearings on 'alleged' Hollywood violations of the neutrality act, but those hearings were canceled after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and American entire into both theaters of the war. A solid, norish chase film with good performances, the story is more them somewhat contrived, but reasonably effective as the propaganda that it is. This was also the start of a long standing working, personal, and rumor has it romantic relationship between director Fritz Lang and actress Joan Bennett, who would do much of her best work under the directors supervision. ***1/2
A serial killer of young women taunts the London police with cryptic poems, inspector Henry Temple (Charles Coburn) of Scotland Yard recruits an American dance hall girl (Lucille Ball) to serve as bait, after her best friend is murdered by the killer. This noir mystery is not the kind of film we usually associate with Ms. Ball, and its also not the kind of film you generally think of when you think of its director Douglas Sirk, who is best known for a series of beautifully colored 1950's melodramas (Lured is in black and white as fits its genera). The film is uneven, Lucille Ball's Sandra Carpenter appears to be the main character for much of the film, but disappears for most of the movies final third which concentrates instead on Henry Temple, Sandra's love interest Robert Flemming (George Sanders, yea!) and of course the killer. For a good chunk of the film Sandra's search for the killer leads her to a number of red hearings, one of which is a mentally unhinged former dress designer played (or rather mugged) by Boris Karloff, which feels rather tacked on (Studio Boss: You know we haven't used Boris in a while...) Still its an entertaining, and enjoyably unique film. **1/2
Ted
This Seth McFarlane directed comedy boasts an enviably brilliant comic premise, a lonely little boy in 1980's Boston wishes the stuffed teddy bear he got for Christmas would come alive, and he does. Needless to say this was a big deal when it happened, warranting international media coverage and a guest appearance for the bear on Johnny Carson (well done video tomfoolery using an "ALF" guest appearance to insert the diminutive Ted on the classic late night program). But as the films easily distracted narrator Patrick Stewart reminds us, 'no matter how big a deal you may become, sooner of later nobody's going to give a shit'. So flash forward nearly 30 years and Ted (voiced by McFarlane) is still living with a now grown John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) and the latters girl friend Lori (Mila Kunis). What was cute when they were children is now just odd that they are adults, and both John and Ted are very much adults.
Per pressure from friends causes Lori to put pressure on John to "stop spending so much time with Ted", so the walking, talking stuffed bear moves out on his own and gets a job at a grocery store. But John continues to spend more time with Ted (often getting stoned) then Lori would like and this puts pressure and her and John's relationship, also Lori's arrogant boss (Joel McHale in the Joel McHale part) has designs on Lori and hopes to break her and John up. In addition there is a kidnapping sub plot and a guest appearance by the star of the 1980 film Flash Gordon Sam J. Jones.
The film is often crude but mostly good natured and pretty darn funny. I loved the general acceptance of the characters that there would be this talking stuffed bear walking around, and how he's kind of a b-grade celebrity with people occasionally stopping him to get pictures taken with him, and how Ted seems fine with this. The movie fits perfectly in the slightly crude, man child, gene-X pop culture infused, children's programing for adults niche that director star McFarlane has carved out for himself, and one wonders what on Earth kind of movie he's going to make next. ***
Man Hunt
The journey from page to screen for the story of Man Hunt was an unusually quick one. Author Geoffrey Households 1939 topical thriller Rouge Male went from serial magazine publication, to novel, to major motion picture in just two years. The story is about a legendary but retired English big game hunter Captain Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) who a few months before the outbreak of the second world war travels to Germany with his rifle to see if it would be possible for him to take out Adolph Hitler. Now the question of whether Thorndike was doing this as just a vanity exercise to prove to himself that he could do it, or if he really intended to kill the German dictator is debated throughout the film, with Thorndike himself appearing psychology unsure about his own motivations. Well whatever the intent was Thorndike is captured by the Germans on the property of Der Fuhrers mountain retreat, and a German officer who goes by the name of Quive-Smith (George Sanders again, yea) who himself is an amateur big game hunter, seems sure that Thorndike was acting as an assassin for the British government, (Thorndike's brother Lord Risborough (Frederick Worlock) is in fact a British diplomat).
Quive-Smith tries to get Thorndike to sign a confession implicating his government in an assassination plot agents Hitler, which the Germans in turn intend to use as propaganda fodder for the war with the UK they are already planning. Thorndike refuses, the Nazi's torture him for a while, and then decide to push him off a cliff in the mountains and make like his death was a hunting accident, only they miscalculate and throw Thorndike into a marsh, and he survives and gets away. The wounded hunter eventually makes it to a port where an English cabin boy (Roddy McDowall) aboard a Danish freighter helps hide him an smuggle him back to England. But the Nazi's, now lead by John Carradine, follow him determined to use him for propaganda purposes. Now in London a desperate Thorndike takes refuge with a beautiful British girl named Jerry (Joan Bennett), who depending on how you read the film is either a prostitute or a seamstress, who takes quite a shinning to him. Thorndike's a little big oblivious to Jerrys obvious affections but still doesn't want to see the girl hurt, and turns her away when she insists on accompanying him to the English countryside where intends on hiding until things 'blow over'. Things don't turn out as Thorndike had hopped.
Man Hunt is a call to arms and very obviously anti Nazi film that was made in the US, with a largely British cast and an ex-patriot German director (Fritz Lang) months before American involvement in the war. This movie very clearly skirted, all right violated the neutrality act then in effect in its blatant advocacy for US involvement against the Nazi's, in fact it was slated to be a subject of congressional hearings on 'alleged' Hollywood violations of the neutrality act, but those hearings were canceled after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and American entire into both theaters of the war. A solid, norish chase film with good performances, the story is more them somewhat contrived, but reasonably effective as the propaganda that it is. This was also the start of a long standing working, personal, and rumor has it romantic relationship between director Fritz Lang and actress Joan Bennett, who would do much of her best work under the directors supervision. ***1/2
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)