Take 2 Review: Elysium

 

TAKE TWO REVIEW: 'Elysium' loses punch from never-ending fight scenes

By David Bjorkgren
Managing editor

Life on Elysium is pretty sweet. Sun-bathed gardens and swimming pools lead to palatial mansion homes. Money, influence and technology reign. Everyone looks great, and no wonder. They’re in perfect health, thanks to the crowning achievement of Elysium society—medical bays in every home that can cure anything.

The fact that it’s all on a space station orbiting a less-than desirable planet Earth completes the scene in Director Neilll Blomkamp’s futuristic film “Elysium.” Blomkamp previously brought us “District 9,” a delightful and quirky film about aliens as second class citizens in South Africa. “Elysium” continues this exploration of the downtrodden. Apparently, the wealthy have abandoned the Earth for the space station, and they’ve taken all their toys with them. Elysium society rules the overpopulated, resource-deprived residents of the Earth with the help of a police force of drone robots. People living on Earth are non-citizens, have no rights, are considered expendable and are tolerated merely as laborers.

Any similarity between the film and the widening gap seen today between the rich and the poor is purely intentional. Blomkamp does not hide his political views but puts it all on the screen, even referring to Elysium’s security forces as “homeland security.” The film extrapolates what could happen if the middle class disappears and the wealthy continue to isolate themselves from the rest of us.

Unfortunately,” Elysium “ is also a love fest to cartoonish fight scenes that seriously slow down the pace of the film. Blomkamp loses control of the story for a time, as extended gun fights and hand-to-hand combat muddle the flow of the film (People of Earth may lack everything else, but they seem to have plenty of fire power).

Driving the action in the film is the unquenchable desire of Earth’s people to go to Elysium and get that swell medical care they offer. (Earth’s medicine is still at the primitive 21st Century level, with hospitals and doctors and pills and things.) Occasionally, a crafty group of peasants are able to commandeer a shuttle and fly to the space station.

And so, Elysium has an immigration problem. They don’t want any. Elysium ‘s defense secretary, Delacourt (Jodie Foster) is particularly hell-bent on keeping unwanted folks off her station. Along with a missile defense system, she also has at her disposal sleeper agents on Earth who help put down any insurgents. She’s at odds with Elysium’s president, who doesn’t appreciate her heavy-handed tactics.

Enter Max (Matt Damon). He’s dreamed of going to Elysium since he was a small boy. An ex-convict, Max has tried to fly right, working at a factory that makes those police drone robots. Unfortunately for Max, everything suddenly goes wrong. An industrial accident exposes him to lethal radiation, giving him a five-day death sentence. Suddenly his quest to get to Elysium takes on new urgency.

He’s treated, coincidently, by his boyhood friend Frey (Alice Braga) , now a nurse with a daughter who has leukemia. A trip to Elysium might be good for what ails her, too. Max approaches a criminal acquaintance, Spider ( Wagner Moura), who has wanted to launch an assault on Elysium for some time now. Max agrees to a plot to kidnap an Elysium executive (Max’s boss, actually) in exchange for a ride to the space station. Part of the deal is that he has to download information from the executive’s head into his own head that contains all kinds of passcodes and such that will help them land on the station.

Unknown to them, this executive has conspired with Delacourt to create a reboot code for Elysium’s operating systems so she can input the name of a new president and end the current president’s reign.

Max acquires the information and now has the potential knowledge to rewrite Elysium’s priorities to improve the life of everyone on Earth. He becomes enemy number one as Delacourt’s agent, Kruger (Sharito Copley), is ordered by Delacourt to track him down.

The fates are with Max, who manages to not only finagle a trip to Elysium, but to take his girlfriend and her leukemia-ridden daughter with him.

The action accelerates to the point where I asked myself, “What the hell is going on?” before It screeches to an abrupt halt as Kruger gets into a protracted fight with Max. People get killed, a face explodes and the story eventually winds down to a satisfactory conclusion.

The film boasts some fantastic visuals, particularly during scenes at the space station. Blomkamp makes a valiant effort to explore issues of inequality and brings a gritty sense of reality to the film, but he paints in broad strokes. High concept ideas aren’t adequately explored but get trashed in favor of violence, gun fire and explosions.

Still, there are aspects of the film that evoke the magic Blomkamp brought to “District 9.” While not quite as satisfying, “Elysium” delivers most of what it promises. I give “Elysium” 7.5 luxury space stations out of 10.

By Arthur C. Ryan

NEWS Movie Critic

The concept is simple, it’s the year 2154, and the wealthy live on Elysium, a space station orbiting the Earth. The residents there are mostly white, wealthy and powerful, living a life of luxury void of disease or hunger. On the planet below, poverty, crime and disease dominate all those who live there, including the film’s protagonist, Max, played by Matt Damon.

And for about an hour or so, Elysium, released in movie theaters this past weekend, is engrossing and conjures up memories of 1970s sci-fi action films, Soylent Green and THX-1138, but soon after digresses into standard action film fare, with one too many fight scenes which become flat, predictable and boring.

At the film’s start, we are introduced to Max as a child, living in an orphanage run by nuns, where he dreams of one day living on Elysium with his childhood sweetheart, Frey.

Soon after Damon appears as the grown-up Max, a paroled car thief trying to go straight while working for a Haliburton-like weapons manufacture, where following an accident he must now find a way to Elysium in order to live.

Standing in Max’s way of obtaining health-care only available to those who live on Elysium, is its defense secretary, Mrs. Delacourt, played horribly by Jodie Foster. Foster’s defense secretary is heartless and cares for no one but herself. It’s a broad performance that doesn’t quite jive with the rest of the film’s performances, and I still can’t figure out what Foster was trying to achieve with her odd, “maybe it was French” accent.

Foster’s dirty work on Earth is carried out by a grunt named Kruger, a psycho-pathic secret agent who is charged with preventing Max from leaving Earth. Kruger is played by Sharlto Copley, who starred in District 9 back in 2009, which was also written and directed by Neill Blomkamp.

Blomkamp, fills his Elysium with similar themes as District 9, many of them inspired by his childhood growing up during Apartheid in South Africa. Elysium is political in nature, immigration, health care, and class warfare are at its core, but unlike District 9, most of it becomes muddled, when Blomkamp switches gears and highlights fight scene after fight scene in place of plotline. I’m sure these violent battles will make the film popular with the video-game crowd, but most sci-fi fans will be disappointed.

By film’s end, the story recovered, but it was too-little too-late, for what started out as a great idea, was squandered by a director who should have trusted his own instincts, rather than simply rely on what is popular.

Take Two review: Wizard loses some power in new ‘Oz, the Great and Powerful’

By Arthur Ryan

Correspondent


"Who rang that bell?” screeched Frank Morgan as the guardian of the Emerald City Gates in the original 1939 MGM classic, “The Wizard of Oz!” Morgan played “Oz” of course as well as a few others in that 74 year old film, and it took a veteran character-actor of his caliber to pull it off. Of course, Morgan’s legendary performance was one of many in that film, and his work and the work of his cast-mates were heavy on my mind while watching, “Oz, The Great and Powerful” which opened in movie theaters nationwide last weekend.

Directed by Sam Raimi of “Spiderman” and “Evil Dead” fame, and written by Mitchell Kapner, David Lindsay-Abaire and based on the works of L. Frank Baum, this new “Oz” outing is a loving tribute to that 1939 classic, whose only misstep is the miscasting of it’s star. James Franco is an Oscar-nominated actor with many talents, but passing himself off as a carnival charlatan from Kansas, is not one of them. The problem here is that Franco, unlike Morgan is too 21st century in his demeanor, speech and mannerisms. What was needed here was an actor with the same charm, and ability as Frank Morgan to carry an entire film and be believable as the character he’s trying to play.

Having said that, what remains is a delightful homage to the classic MGM film, only this time Walt Disney Pictures, who owns the rights to all the other L. Frank Baum “Oz” Books except the original, is behind this new movie. The film starts out in Kansas, a generation or two before Dorothy was born, where the former Professor Marvel (as he was called in the original film) is now Oscar Diggs, a traveling carnival magician who goes by the name of “OZ: The Great and Powerful!” 

Shot in black and white and in the same square screen ratio as the original film’s opening, it’s only after another tornado transports Oscar to the magical land of “Oz” do we switch to color, widescreen and in stereo. It’s here in Oz that Oscar meets Theodora, a good witch who’s part of a trio of witches all vying for control of their late father’s kingdom including the famed Emerald city. Theodora is played by the busty Mila Kunis, who later turns into the Wicked Witch, played so perfectly in 1939 by Margaret Hamilton. Kunis gives it her best, and is bound to produce nightmares in children for years to come, but like Franco, suffers from the outstanding work of her predecessor who put her mark on a character that still lasts almost 75 years later.

Like the original Oz film, Oscar in place of Dorothy discovers some magical friends along the way, two of which are as every bit as charming and magical as the Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow were in 1939. Zach Braff voices Finley, a flying monkey in a bellhop suit who after being saved by Oscar, pledges his loyalty to him as well as a promise not to reveal the truth about Oscar not really being a Wizard! Braff, like some others in the cast doubles up as Frank, Oscar’s assistant in the black and white opening sequence, again an homage to the earlier film. Finley is charmingly animated by computer imagery along with China Girl, a small broken porcelain doll who Oscar repairs thanks to some glue, which goes a long way in convincing all that Oscar is the great Wizard who has been prophesized to come. 

All of this combined with Glinda the good witch portrayed here by Michelle Williams, makes for a magical outing that although is in no danger of replacing the original films classic status, is sure to delight generations to come. Had the makers of “Oz the Great and Powerful” managed to cast Robert Downey, Jr. in the title role as originally planned, or an actor of his comedic charm and ability, this film may have reached a higher status. But Franco’s less-than-stellar work combined with maybe one too many endings keeps this “Oz” outing from being the great and powerful film it could be




By DAVID BJORKGREN

Managing Editor


A woman scorned. A weak man in search of his nobler self and a battle between magic and an illusionist whose only tools are a bag of tricks and turn of the century technology. These are the elements that make up a prequel of sorts to the classic 1939 MGM film “The Wizard of Oz.”But Disney’s “Oz the Great and Powerful” also dishes up plenty of 3D eye candy and fanciful scene painting that will keep the kids entertained, earning its place as a family film, despite some darker moments.

Fans of the original (and who isn’t?) will appreciate this visit to Oz and a storyline that explains how things came to be the way they are when Dorothy eventually takes her first step on to the yellow brick road. James Franco plays the starring role as the manipulative and unscrupulous carnival con man Oscar Diggs. Diggs dreams of being a great man, but his own fears, selfishness and weaknesses block that path to greatness. His limitations are revealed when he tries to convince the crowd at a carnival side show that he is a powerful wizard, yet he is unable and unwilling to heal a girl confined to a wheelchair. 

Diggs is quite the ladies’ man, which gets him in trouble in 1905 Kansas where the film begins (in black and white) and later in Oz (shown in fantasyland color). He takes to a hot air balloon to escape an angry strong man and gets swept up in a twister that dumps him unceremoniously in Oz (one has to wonder, is there any other way to get to Oz, clicking heels notwithstanding?). The Land of Oz is somewhat more textured in this digitally-enhanced version than the one depicted in “The Wizard of Oz.” The yellow brick road is there, so is the Emerald City, the dark forest and the witch’s castle. But we’re also treated to some mountain scenery, a raging river and a visit to Chinatown (where, you guessed it, everyone and everything is made out of china). 

Diggs befriends one of Oz’s three witches, Theodora (played with an interesting mix of innocence and sensuousness by Mila Kunis). Somewhat naïve, but possessing true magic, Theodora believes Diggs is the powerful wizard come to Oz to rule, as foretold by prophecy, and so she bows to his whims. Diggs, in his pursuit of wealth and power, pretends that he is the powerful wizard they’ve all been waiting for, though not everyone is taken in by his bag of tricks. Theodora’s sister, Evanora (Rachel Weisz), hiding her true identity as the Wicked Witch of the East while hanging out at the Emerald City, is skeptical that he’s the right guy. So is Glinda (Michelle Willaims), who has been keeping the people of Oz (broken down into three classes - famers, tinkerers and munchkins) safe. Despite some doubts, Glinda puts her faith in Diggs that he can vanquish the Wicked Witch of the East and save the people of Oz.Theodora, meanwhile, has been spurned by Diggs and, with some help from Evanora, turns all those negative feelings into a package of powerful evilness, complete with green makeup. 

Enter the Wicked Witch of the West.It’s a bad time for Oz as the two evil witches team up to rule the land. With the help of Glinda, Frank, a friendly flying monkey (Zach Braff) and a china doll (Joey King), Diggs turns away from his selfish tendencies, learns the value of friendship and comes up with a plan to save Oz, using his tricks of the trade. This film had a bit of an uphill battle, since the characters and the land they live in are so well known. Franco is a younger, more hip Oz, which may upset some traditionalist, but I connected with his character, particularly after he had lived in Oz for a while.Kunis does a nice job as the Wicked Witch of the West but we know it’s not Margaret Hamilton under the makeup and that’s always going to be a little disappointing.

There is no Scarecrow, though there are references to scarecrows. There is no Tin Man and the only lion that comes out of the woods is real (or as real as a digital re-creation can be) and not at all cowardly. There’s certainly no Judy Garland, no Dorothy.Even so, I enjoyed traveling on the yellow brick road again with these new companions. There is a charming and funny winged monkey and a sweet but uncompromising china girl and that made the trip worth taking. 

This film works as family entertainment and gives us its own vision of Oz that stands up pretty well. And when it’s not charting its own course, it is a delightful homage to the original Oz movie. It will never be the classic that the first film was, but “Oz the Great and Powerful” works at a few levels and deserves a look. I give “Oz the Great and Powerful” 7.8 bubbles and fire balls out of 10.

Take 2 Review: Jack The Giant Slayer

Action, yes, but "Jack the Giant Slayer" is a little thin

By David Bjorkgren

Managing editor

“Jack the Giant Slayer” has a lot of stuff happening on screen.  We’re talking battlefield Armageddon here between man and giant, filled with flying arrows, flying rocks, a burning moat, burning trees and giants who not only stomp on anything that moves but also snack on terrified humans.  Plus, huge beanstalks are sprouting everywhere.

It almost makes up for a thin and not particularly imaginative storyline and less-than-riveting dialogue.
The source material for the movie, the English folk tale “Jack and the Beanstalk,” isn’t exactly complex so there wasn’t too much to work with from the get go. To the film’s credit, they do a decent job of fleshing out and expanding the well-known tale by adding an ancient war, a princess, knights and a human turncoat that uses magic to dominate the giants in the hopes of taking over the human world.  This “Jack” story shows us more than one giant and his wife. Here, there is a whole army of giants to contend with.

In this version of the story, it’s been a long time since humans and giants faced each other, centuries in fact. The first conflict took place when humans created magic beans so they could climb a giant beanstalk to heaven. Turns out, there were giants in the sky.  Big, tall, terrible giants.  War erupts. The clever humans create a magic crown crafted from a giant’s heart. The person wearing the crown has the power to control the giants and so the humans are able to order the giants  to return to their skyward land. The beanstalk is cut down. Peace is restored.

It’s centuries later and the story of the conflict with the giants has faded into legend, told as a bedtime story to a young Jack and young Princess Isabelle.

Jump ahead a few years and Jack ((Nicholas  Hoult) is selling the family  horse and cart when he comes to the aid of the princess (Eleanor Tomlinson), who has snuck out of the castle incognito and is being accosted by some unsavory gentlemen.

A monk has stolen ancient magic beans from the castle to keep them out of the hands of Roderick (Stanley Tucci), one of the king’s henchman.  Roderick has evil plans of his own for those beans. The monk trades the beans to Jack for a getaway horse.  Meanwhile, Roderick has discovered the magic crown once used to subdue the giants.

The princess shows up at Jack’s house. Jack has tossed the beans to the floor. One takes root and the first of several giant beanstalks starts to grow, taking Jack’s house and the princess with it.

A rescue party of the king’s knights, accompanied by Jack and Roderick (with magic crown in hand) climbs up the stalk and discovers the land of the giants.  They are taken prisoner and offered up as a snack while the giants try and figure out what the heck the humans are doing there. Roderick fulfills his evil scheme, donning the crown and taking charge of the giants.  Jack frees the princess and the head of the king’s guard, Elmont (Ewan McGregor) and they make their escape down the beanstalk.

Roderick, meanwhile, loses his crown to the lead giant, General Fallon (Bill Nighy) and he is killed, making a sudden exit from the film.

With everyone back safely on earth, Jack’s beanstalk is cut down, but several magic beans have been inconveniently left behind with the giants. As they sprout four more additional beanstalks, the giants use them to descend to earth to capture the lands occupied by the humans.  A massive battle ensues, with the giants quickly gaining the upper hand.  Jack ends up taking on General Fallon and, thanks to a rather unusual use of yet another beanstalk, recaptures the crown and wills the giants into submission once again.

The limited, predictable story did have me yawning a few times in the theater.  What saves the film (somewhat) are its action sequences, credited to director Bryan Singer (“The Usual Suspects,” “Superman Returns,” “X  Men”).  There’s not much down time as we move from one scene in motion to the next.

When there’s that much activity going on, you can’t help but have some fun, distracting you from other important aspects of the film, like character development, imaginative storytelling and the concept of nuance.

The scenery is a nice distraction, too, as we look down upon the earthly kingdom of the humans from a beanstalk perspective and travel the rocky cliffs, woods and village of the skyward giants.

Credit also the animation, particularly when it comes to the look of the giants.  They have a textured look that captures all of their brute ugliness and the blend between computer generated animation and live action works quite well. What doesn’t work quite as well is the now-obligatory 3-D.  It’s OK, but adds very little and the film works fine without it.

If the movie does well, the filmmakers left themselves an open door for a sequel . Giants could once again be in our midst, if the box office receipts are there.  If they are, I hope they bring some better screenwriters with them.

As a somewhat fun, mindless, adrenaline rush, “Jack the Giant Slayer” works.   For all of you “Lincoln” people, you might want to go elsewhere for your movie experience.

I give “Jack the Giant Slayer” six giant sprouting beanstalks out of 10.

By Arthur Ryan

Correspondent

When I was a kid, I used to love to go to the movies and see the films made by Ray Harryhausen, the legendary stop-motion special effects guru. There were the Sinbad films, "Jason and the Argonauts" and Harryhausen's last big screen effort, "Clash of the Titans" in 1981. The stories were mythical adventures that lent themselves to the larger-than-life special effects that those films boasted.

This past weekend, Legendary Films and New Line Cinema, released, "Jack the Giant Slayer", which offers a new spin on the ancient fairytale of Jack and the Beanstalk. It's a timeless tale that brought me back to my youth and those fond days spent sitting in a darkened movie theatre and letting my imagination run wild, all thanks to Ray Harryhausen.

Of course, Harryhausen's stop-motion puppets have been replaced here with modern CGI technology, but the motivation is the same, mythical creatures such as giants are brought to life before our very eyes.

In this telling, Jack, played by Nicholas Hault, is a tenant farmer, who along with a runaway princess, Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) are hurled upwards when a stalk sprouting from some magic beans thrust Jack's house into the sky. 

High up in the sky lives a world of giants exiled there by the power of an ancient King’s magical crown. The new beanstalk offers the race of man-eating giants a chance to return below and devour the humans living there.

What follows is an hour and a half of pure fun and adventure, as Jack tries to rescue Isabelle from the evil giants.  Along the way Jack is also challenged by the evil Prince Roderick, who has his sights set on the magical crown that controls the army of giants. Roderick is played with dry-wit by Stanley Tucci, who despite being set up early as the film’s bad guy, proves no match for the evil giant’s collective powers.

“Jack the Giant Slayer” was based on a story by Darren Lemke and David Dobkin and is of no relation to the 1962 similarly themed, “Jack the Giant Killer.” In that film, Kerwin Matthews (himself a veteran of many Ray Harryhausen films) played a farm boy-turned knight who must protect a princess from the plots of an evil wizard. Matthews’s appearance in that film, often lead to it being confused as being made by Harryhausen, but it was not.

Here screenwriters, Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney, have created a charming world of characters that are not unlike those in 1987’s “The Princess Bride”, although perhaps not as well drawn.

Director, Bryan Singer of  X-Men fame, created a wonderful look to his film, which in itself owes much to the style of those Harrthausen films of old. Singer’s camera captures the feel and dreary look of this mythical world but also matches the high pace of the action brought on by the arrival of the giants.

And it is the giants and the modern special effects geniuses who created them with their computers who deserve much of the credit here. The special effects crew on this film reads like a phone book, and it’s no surprise that it would take such a large team to create such huge imaginary creatures. The sequences featuring the giants are daring and inventive. Whether it’s seeing giants from Jack’s underwater perspective as in one scene or traveling down their insides as they swallow in another, these are giants like we’ve never seen them before.

My only gripe with this fairytale is its poor execution in 3D. Some three dimensional films benefit from the latest technology in enhancing the experience to the fullest. But in this case, the dark and dreary look to the film is made worse by the addition of very old looking 3D technology. I can’t be sure if it was just the theatre where I saw the film, or if the filmmakers are to blame, but I would recommend seeing this film in 2D if possible.

In the end, “Jack and the Giant Slayer” offers an outing of pure joy and adventure for families young and old, and for fans of the Harryhausen films of yesteryear, a fond look back!