
Elysium
★☆☆☆☆



Directed by
Neill Blomkamp
Produced by Simon Kinberg
Written by Neill Blomkamp
With: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, and William Fichtner
Editing: Lee Smith and Julian Clarke
Music: Ryan Amon
Runtime: 109 min
Release Date: 09 August 2013
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Color
Produced by Simon Kinberg
Written by Neill Blomkamp
With: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, and William Fichtner
Runtime:
109 min
Release Date: 09 August 2013
Color/Aspect: Color / 2.35 : 1
Cinematography:
Trent OpalochRelease Date: 09 August 2013
Color/Aspect: Color / 2.35 : 1
Editing: Lee Smith and Julian Clarke
Music: Ryan Amon
Runtime: 109 min
Release Date: 09 August 2013
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Color

Elysium
★☆☆☆☆


South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp follows up his conceptually impressive but ultimately unsatisfying 2009 début feature, District 9, with this similar, though far less original, sci-fi film about haves and have-nots living in a dystopian future. The film’s strong premise, in which the well-healed live forever in a beautiful orbiting Eden called Elysium while the 99 percent scratch out an existence on the ruined Earth below, could have yielded a compelling entertainment. But the real disparity on display in Elysium is between the wealth of its potential and the poverty of its execution. Blomkamp’s spends far too little time developing the sequences that could really pull an audience into his cinematic world and far too much time on absurd dialogue scenes and boring smash-'em-up fights and chases. His actors play conventions rather than characters, and his potentially fascinating environments never develop into anything more than the computer-generated fly-overs we see at the beginning. This is one of those contemporary films that gets me up on my high horse about how much better genre movie use to be. A film like John Carpenter’s 1981 Escape From New York may look absurdly primitive to today’s moviegoers, but, come on; who would you rather be trapped with on an nearly-impossible futuristic suicide mission--Snake Plissken or whatever the hell Matt Damon’s character’s name is in this forgettable movie?
Directed by
Neill Blomkamp
Produced by Simon Kinberg
Written by Neill Blomkamp
With: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, and William Fichtner
Editing: Lee Smith and Julian Clarke
Music: Ryan Amon
Runtime: 109 min
Release Date: 09 August 2013
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Color
Produced by Simon Kinberg
Written by Neill Blomkamp
With: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, and William Fichtner
Runtime:
109 min
Release Date: 09 August 2013
Color/Aspect: Color / 2.35 : 1
Cinematography:
Trent OpalochRelease Date: 09 August 2013
Color/Aspect: Color / 2.35 : 1
Editing: Lee Smith and Julian Clarke
Music: Ryan Amon
Runtime: 109 min
Release Date: 09 August 2013
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Color
How I Rate Films
★★★★★
One of the 5000 greatest films. Usually only awarded after repeat viewings, so there are more five-star films from decades past than recent years.
★★★★☆
An excellent film. Possibly one of the 5000 and certainly worthy of repeated viewing.
★★★☆☆
A good film well worth seeing. Films listed at the top of this ranking could end up one of the 5000.
★★☆☆☆
A disappointment, an interesting failure, or just a bad movie. Still, maybe worth seeing: I often enjoy the top two-star films in a given list more than the bottom three-star films.
★☆☆☆☆
A bad, rant-worthy film. Should be avoided regardless of hype or talent involved.
☆☆☆☆☆
One of the worst films.
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