ELYSIUM (2013)

"What's in it for the hippo?"

Elysium is a film that seeks to answer that question... sort of.

In 2009, some no-name nobody launched a crazy, effects-laden, heartfelt, action-packed, futuristic dystopia movie upon theaters called District 9 - a film that brilliantly tackled social issues of our modern society through the art and language of science fiction cinema. That film's writer/director, Neill Blomkamp, successfully infiltrated Hollywood and was, imaginably, given the key to the city (or at least to the studios). He returns now, 4 years later, not with some cheesy Tom Cruise or Will Smith vehicle (we've already had those films shoved down our throats this summer) that aims to rip off some Isaac Asimov short story and turn it into a 5- or 6-part franchise, as he easily could have done... (many inspiring young directors have taken that route after their initial successes, selling out their creativity for big cash and a soulless product...) but, instead, he gives us one of the best sci-fi "thinkers" this side of 2001.  (The year, not the movie.)

Elysium, starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, gives us a glimpse at a possible future: Earth, in the year 2154, is polluted, over-crowded and just a horrible place to live.  That's why the planet's richest and most elite humans have escaped to their own private nearby halo satellite system dubbed "Elysium" (named after the ancient Greek concept of the land of the afterlife; a paradise where "admission was reserved for mortals related to the gods and other heroes" - in other words, "the special people." The metaphor for many American viewers of the film will ring not so subtly as "Earth = All 3rd World Countries, Elysium = America").

In a flashback, we first meet young Max (played by a perfect 8-year old clone of Matt Damon named Maxwell Perry Cotton) who dreams of a better life on the distant satellite world.  But when we flash to his present, (in 2154... I think,) we see he's a former legendary car thief, now reformed (slightly), living in a ghetto, working a shitty factory job, and still saving up for the day he can afford to become a citizen of Elysium.  Then he has an accident at his shitty factory job and is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation that will essentially kill him in 5 days.  He panics and decides he has to get off-world, into Elysium, and into one of their awesome, magical "MedBay" machines (previously seen in Ridley Scott's "Prometheus"), which basically just instantly heals everything from a paper cut to bone marrow cancer (and all sorts of gory dismemberments in between), and seem to exist in virtually every home on Elysium (but are apparently non-existent on Earth for some reason).  Max throws away everything he has - which isn't much - to find a way to smuggle himself onto the satellite and crash a MedBay and get all better, but the clock is ticking.  And this is when they action starts and pretty much never stops.  Oh, also, Max gets a mecha make-over that kinda makes him super strong.  That helps.

Elysium is not the greatest summer sci-fi action flick since Terminator 2 or anything like that; its special visual effects are virtually invisible with such realistic CGI.  It may not even be as good as "District 9" in many ways, though it is much bigger in scope.  Some of the characters seem one-dimensional and lack a bit of relatable motivation. (One wonders why Max's character doesn't just chose to lay down and die after his accident at the factory, deciding, "Screw it... better to die than to live in this hell-hole," but he answers that question with five powerful little words of over-simplified dialog: "I don't want to die.")

What the film lacks in character development and depth of environment over the course of its 100-minute run-time, however, it makes up for with relevant metaphor.  If we are to completely ignore the obvious themes in this film about our current immigration problems, we'll see that the story more specifically mirrors our modern-day health care crisis, where we have the technology to improve health and mortality rates, not only in our own country for both the rich and the poor, but for the world over.  And unfortunately, just like today, there are systems in place to ensure only the most wealthy and well-connected people get access to such services.  This is precisely what makes a great sci-fi/fantasy story so powerful; it's an out-of-this-world adventure movie that disguises the morality tale underneath.  Sure, in our world, it's a much more complicated issue than "We should open our boarders to everyone in the world give them all free health care."  But, essentially, since humanity has the ability to heal the sick all over the world, do we not have a moral responsibility to find a way to make it happen?

In a metaphorical bedtime story told by a little girl to our hero, Max, there is a meerkat in Africa who wants to get across the river to where he can live safely and happily, but he only way he can get across is on the back of a big and dangerous hippopotamus.  "Stop," he tells the girl. "Just stop.  It doesn't end well for the meerkat."  The girl, who represents the "perfect good" in all humanity says, "Yes it does.  The hippo carries him across the river on his back."

"What's in it for the hippo?" he asks rhetorically.  But the little girl has an answer for his rhetoric.

"He wants a friend."

Elysium was a good movie that looked amazing and moved along at a decent (sometimes a little slow) clip.  There are a few moments of extreme violence and gore, but they are brief and, once, serve well to illustrate the amazing power of the magical MedBay devices.  Matt Damon is as great as ever, but, let's face it: as great as he is in films like this and the Bourne trilogy, we love him best when he's being broken down by a wise, old, bearded therapist and leaving Southie forever to chase after the girl of his dreams.  That's the best Matty Damon there is.

It's always good to see Jodie Foster, too, who plays the ruthless politician, Secretary Delacourt.  But, to be honest, her character was only one head of the Cerberus antagonist of the film, representing the system itself as the villain.  Plus, her fake accent (I'm guessing it was supposed to be some mishmash of various accents evolved together after hundreds of years) was just atrocious.  It almost looked like her voice was being dubbed in at times.  (What happened there!?) 

And then, previously seen as our hero in the aforementioned "District 9", Sharlto Copley is a delight to watch here as Kruger, the buffed-up, murderous leader of a small band of mercenaries serving as Max's most immediate threat throughout the film. I had no idea it was the same actor until I got home.  Quite a transformation!

But, in the end, the Rotten Tomato scores are about right on this one - this movie gets a solid B or so.  Worth seeing, maybe even in the theater.  And keep an eye out for young Mr. Blomkamp.  At a mere 33 years of age, we have lots of good and great films yet to come from him.

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (2013)

Our favorite Monstropolis Scare-team, James "Sulley" Sullivan and Mike Wazowski, returns to the big screen in their origin story as told in the prequel to the highly successful "Monsters Inc.", this year's Pixar outing, "Monsters University," and - good news! - it's just as good as the first go-round!

Pixar is an animation studio who's secret weapon has, traditionally, been 'story'.  For example, 1995's 'Toy Story' would probably have been a decent kids movie with just the great animation, the talented voice actors and amazing character design, but it would not have been the phenomenon it was (nor would it have become a trilogy beloved by young and old alike as it has) if not for the deeply funny, heart-wrenchingly emotional and truly touching storyline, as written by the likes of John Lassetter, Pete Doctor, Andrew Stanton, Joss Whedon and several more script doctors who really understood what moves an audience.  This tradition continued successfully until about the time of 2011's "Cars 2" feature, which felt much more like an old-school Hollywood money-grab (Thanks, parent company Disney!) than the usual high-quality gem of a story we'd grown used to over the previous 15 years.

But it was a mere hiccup, it seems, as the next two films - 2012's "Brave," and now, "Monsters University" - have again put 'story' back on the throne where it belongs.

The voice actors of all the main characters have returned, including Billy Chrystal and John Goodman as Mike Wazowski and his best friend, Sulley, respectively.  Steve Buscemi returns to reprise the role of the previously-villainous "Randall", the squirmy, shifty-eyed salamander-type monster with a unique ability to disappear, who starts out with a much more friendly demeanor as his youthful "Randy" persona, but we will here bare witness to his inevitable fall from grace and discover why, in the original film, he already has quite a distaste for both Sulley and Mike.  We also are introduced to the instantly classic (and classicly creepy) character of the school's headmistress, Dean Hardscrabble, voiced effortlessly by America's current most-beloved British actress, Dame Helen Mirren. She kills it.

And then there's a whole plethora of very cool voice actors filling out the cast, including Sean Hayes, Dave Foley, Charlie Day, Alfred Molina, Tyler Labine, Nathon Fillion, Aubrey Plaza, Bobby Moynihan, (just to name a few celebs), and one very impressive young voice talent, Noah Johnston, (who, in this video, looks to be all of about 9 years old) as the young Mike Wazowski in an incredibly heartfelt and humorous prologue to the film.

The premise of the film is simple: if you've seen "Monsters, Inc." you know that Mike Wazowski and James P. "Sulley" Sullivan are one of many teams of scarers on the "Scare Floor" at a large industrial company, "Monsters, Incorporated", and their job is to sneak into the bedrooms of young children (via magical doors that act as portals to the children's' bedroom closet doors), scare the hell out of them, then collect the resulting screams in special canisters in order to power their alternate "monster world" and the city of Monstropolis in particular.  But the main questions that seem to have inspired this new film prequel are: "How did these guys learn to become such talented 'scarers' and how did they become friends in the first place?"  The answers to both lay in the hallowed halls of the School of Scaring at the prestigious Monsters University!

Mike Wazowski, a small, young, cycloptic, green beach-ball of a monster, has a real fire in the belly.  As a youth, his fascination with the art and business of "scaring" was inspired by a school field trip to the budding new company, Monsters Inc., when he sneaks onto the "Scare Floor" and into the bedroom of a real child to witness, first-hand, a real pro at work.  From that moment, Mike's destiny was written in his own mind and nothing was going to stop him from becoming the monster world's greatest scarer of all time!  Years later, his dreams begin to come true when he is accepted into Monsters University and starts taking classes at the school of scaring.  This is where he first spots a cocky, young Sulley who strides into class late, never takes his studies seriously and intends to ride through school on his father's prestigious name.  Mike and Sulley do not get along.

But after an accident that gets them both kicked out of the school of scaring, Mike decides he won't let his destiny be derailed so easily and joins a fraternity of losers in order to gain entry to the "Scare Games," a campus-run, unofficial talent competition for would-be scarers, and he wagers with Dean Hardscrabble that if his team can win the scare games, she has to re-admit him into the scaring school.  She reluctantly agrees, but informs young Mike that his team is one member short.  Of course, this means Sulley wants in.  And now the two adversaries have to work together.

A great set-up to a great story about friendship forged in a trial by fire, Monsters University also has a very particular lesson to impart in the character of young Mike Wazowski; he is a wonderful role model for the audience (kids and adults alike) as an example of a guy who refuses to give up on his dreams; his love; his passion.  "Never let anyone tell you different!" he instructs his teammates when he tells them they're the scariest bunch of monsters he's ever seen, and this instruction might as well be the theme of the entire story.  It's really a story about how life has a way of kicking you in the ass, beating you into submission and wearing you down along the way, to the point that most people feel silly about ever having a dream for their lives at all.  But Mike is the kind of guy who fearlessly pushes on, who refuses to let society, peers or authority figures define who he is or determine what he will become.  Mike's journey throughout Monsters University is inspirational not because he simply pushes hard enough and wins the day, but because he struggles; he gets his heart broken; he even gives up on himself at one low point.  But, if ever a one-eyed cartoon blob could bring a tear to your eye with his commitment and determination to fulfill his destiny while taking a few friends along with him to the top, Mike Wazowski is that blob. And "Monsters University" is the hilarious, action-packed, fluidly-paced, imaginative and touching animated buddy flick that will make you rethink your office sales job.

If there's anything to complain about, it's that the best part of "Monsters Inc." simply can't pop up in a prequel due to the fact that she wouldn't have been born yet.  That's right... no "Boo".  (Frowny face!)
I'll also say that, as emotional as this flick can be at moments, it's certainly not on the emotional level of, say, "Up" (2009) or "Toy Story 3" (2010) - two Pixar films notorious for bringing tears to the eyes of the adult audiences as well as the children.  But it almost gets to that realm.  It really is a kids movie at its core, so the heavy moments aren't THAT heavy.

Also, Pixar staple, composer Randy Newman, gives us a decently good score, but I loved the great, up-beat jazzy music that seemed to be a nod to the original film.  It's infectious!  (I'm still trying to find out what those songs were - they're not on the Randy Newman score.)

Overall, I give it a B+.  Take the kids!

P.S. The short animated film preceding the feature, entitled "The Blue Umbrella", (the story of a blue umbrella who meets a beautiful red umbrella in the mass of gray umbrellas that line a busy city street on a rainy day,) is well-done stylistically, of course, (sometimes the animation and cinematography are difficult to recognize as anything but absolutely real,) but ultimately lacks the tangible, adorable romance of last year's "Paperman" or the light-hearted comedy of many of the other previous Pixar shorts, and therefore comes across as a wannabe "Paperman".

MAN OF STEEL (2013)

Finally, Superman is back in theaters!  But it's not what you're expecting.  And if you're expecting anything in particular, you may very well be setting yourself up for disappointment.

There is A LOT to discuss about this latest version of the timeless Superman tale.  It's not the one we've come to know after all these years through the various films and cartoons, and I doubt very much (although I don’t know for sure) that any version like this one ever existed in the comic book world.  So, without giving any plot spoilers away, I'll start at the beginning.

Welcome to Krypton - a remote world of caucasian humanoids and gigantic CG bugs and space cows.  This Krypton is an alien world not much unlike the worlds of the Star Wars prequels or James Cameron's Pandora from 2009's Avatar.  We seem to have come into this world at a tumultuous time, when the planet’s foremost scientist, Jor-El (Russell Crowe), argues with the Kryptonian high counsel that drilling for oil and fracking and stuff is bad for the planet. (Tree-hugging Kryptonian hippie!)

Oops!  Too late!  The world is about to explode because of it!  Leader of the Kryptonian military, General Zod (Michael Shannon), agrees with Jor-El but is much angrier at the high counsel about it and stages a coup, even though the world is about to end.  (Smart.)  Well, he gets busted for it, but not before Jor-El and his wife secretly conceive a male child - the first natural birth in generations on Krypton (because now they just do Matrix-style people-farms as a form of population control and efficiency) - and ship their only begotten son off to some distant planet with a much younger sun in a bulbous, metallic, worm-holing space ship (the likes of which could not possibly be used to evacuate millions of adult beings to any other places throughout the universe in case of such a catastrophic disaster; this one's just for newborns) for which Zod gets mad and kills Jor-El.  And before he is sentenced to an "eternity in a black hole" (a contradiction in itself for anyone who understands the very basics of what a black hole is), a.k.a. "The Phantom Zone", Zod vows to hunt the child, Kal-El, down and to reclaim/harvest the genetic code from his dead body in the name of rebuilding Krypton anew.

So, yeah, we spend a lot of time dealing with space politics, eco-conservation, and alien genetics (a'la "Prometheus") before we even get to Kansas.  But then, in the blink of an eye, we see Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) as a man, traveling the world, saving lives anonymously, and then moving on to new identities while he flashes back in time to his childhood and how hard it was to, a) discover he is not human, b) hide his amazing powers from his peers and c) come to terms with his dual identities... as alien/human, immigrant/American, immortal/mortal and natural family/adopted orphan.  All good character development stuff, but... this film lays it all on a bit thick... again and again.  That was a bit tough to keep diving into.

On that note, the melodrama in this film is played too often and not well enough.  The dialog, though mostly insightful and well-written, is performed, in many cases, like in a poorly-rehearsed grade school play.  These scenes are shot and edited with the focus only on capturing the actors saying the lines, regardless of mood, realism or motivation.  Reading the script would reveal much more dynamic scenes in the mind than the film itself does in these moments.  That's a major problem with trying to cram the emotional drama of "Growing Up Kent" - a major storyline of its own - into an already overly-long movie.

Now, here's an interesting twist for which I applaud the filmmakers: There ain't no Kryptonite in this movie.  There's no Jimmy Olsen, no icy Fortress of Solitude, no "mild-mannered reporter" Kent, and the word "Superman" is uttered exactly three times in the film's entire 2-hour-23-minute-runtime.  It's interesting to note that the film is titled "Man Of Steel", which now obviously seems to be more  about 33-year old (Jesus much?) Clark Kent's sense of himself than just his brute strength.  The movie is not about the usual stuff that all of our previous film iterations of Superman have been about.  It's an entirely new take on the character and his lore.  So forget the iconic imagery of the Man/God holding an American flag waving in the breeze and saving the hapless Lois Lane (very well portrayed here by Amy Adams) from certain doom at the last second (which he will do, but... eh, it's not the same).  This is a film that strives to be a character piece at its core, but (like a certain character) that effort is ripped apart in a tornado of special effects.  But certain changes to the lore are respectable ones, like how Lois and "Clark" first meet and the dynamic between their characters is different than ever before but somehow quite believable and appropriate.

This is a much darker and noisier Superman movie than the good ol' ones.  Remember 9/11?  Okay, well, Man of Steel illustrates disaster on a scale that increases 9/11 by a factor of 20 or so.  Superman battles villains by rocketing them (or they, him) straight through the skyscrapers of Metropolis and the shops of main street Smallville literally dozens of times, while the villain's evil space ships pulverize dozens more buildings.  Entire buildings topple like dominoes again and again, train engines and moving vans are used as projectiles by villains to bring down aircraft and just to smash people up.  And yet, not a single fatality is admitted to in this film.  Not one death occurs by innocent bystanders.  In fact, the only people we ever actually see in peril are three Daily Planet staffers who get caught in some rubble and expect to be killed imminently until, at the last second, Supes silences the cacophony and destroys the colossal "World Engine" destruction machine.  Oh, good!  Everyone is saved!  (But, of course, because we watched live on television in 2001 as two large buildings toppled to their foundation and 3,000 people were killed, we ALL know that upward of about a million deaths would result from chaos on this level.  It's ridiculous.)

Now, that's not to say that the fight scenes between Superman and the bad guys isn't interesting to watch.  Yes, there's a lot of overuse of CGI to tell this story and it's pretty overwhelming and over stimulating for pretty much all of the last half of the film's second act, it does succeed from time to time to speculate what a fight between such super-humanoid aliens might actually look like; how fast they would move, the destruction such actions would cause to their surroundings and how powerful they would be.  So, that was kind of interesting to watch.

There was a noticeably absent sense of humor to this film.  When attempts were made, most of them failed, but there are a couple chuckles that landed.  Other than that, a story of a man from space disguised as one of us who battles aliens and bald evil geniuses using laser eyes and the power of flight deserves a few more tongue-in-cheek moments for levity and acknowledgment at the absurdity of it all.  A joke made after Clark and Lois first kiss feels so shoehorned-in and bland that you'll wish it existed only on the cutting room floor.

And now for a note to the director, Mr. Zack Snyder: The main problem with the overuse of CGI and "cool shots" to tell the tale of a wanton attack on human civilization is that, as a rule in storytelling, when everything is amazing... nothing is amazing.  The same goes for melodrama; when everything is deep and emotional and heavy, then it loses it's depth, emotion and weight.  Gotta mix it up, there buddy.

But in the end, I didn't hate this movie at all.  It was very entertaining and the writers weren't so lazy as to just reproduce the same old story again.  They strive here to re-imagine a time-honored American myth (based quite overtly on the story of Christ... like, a LOT!) and infuse it with a new spirit of awareness of ourselves and our fears of that we do not understand.  There's plenty of conversation to be had about what ideology this film is preaching, as when Superman brazenly destroys one of the U.S. Military's surveillance drones to secure his own privacy, or when Jor-El protests drilling in the Kryptonian Yukon.

The musical score by legendary film composer Hans Zimmer is elegant and nearly invisible throughout the film as it seamlessly blends into the action and the drama.  The understated theme is a truly beautiuful melody, but - without contrasting it agains John Williams' iconic score for "Superman: The Movie" - it leaves the listener waiting for that bigger, more epic chorus.  But, alas, and much like the film itself, it never climbs to those heights.

Finally, fans will appreciate seeing a young Lana Lang in one scene, catching brief glimpses of evidence that there is a Lex Luthor somewhere in this world, and that there is definitely room to continue the story of THIS Superman in inevitable sequels... and possible Justice League projects.

The biggest disappointment about this film, however: despite the gigantic Gillette razors commercial tie-in with the movie, we still don't get to see how Superman shaves off that beard.

I give it a C-.