Neil Blomkamp has two major movies under his belt, the amazing _District 9_ and the pretty good but visually spectacular _Elysium_. Next year we get his third film, Chappie, also starring Sharlto Copley along with Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel, and Sigourney Weaver.
Details have been locked up tight but today Sony tweeted out this shiny poster giving us look one at Chappie himself (a reject looking robot wearing bling. I like it.) and tomorrow there will be a trailer. No idea what to expect but somehow I think that marking 6th March on the ol’ calendar is a pretty safe bet.
Sharlto Copley stars as a cop who specializes in solving crimes relating to super humans in the new series on the PlayStation Network. Yeah, you read that right. Let’s watch.
So I have to warn you now that this review will contain spoilers after the jump because there’s pretty much no way I can tell you anything about this movie without spoiling it. Short version: Angelina Jolie is good, the subtext is shocking (for a Disney movie), but the movie isn’t very good. If you want to know why keep reading, if you want to go see it without knowing anything then stop reading now.
I’ve had mixed feelings about _Maleficent_ ever since I heard about it because honestly the “re-imagined fairy tale” thing has kind of worn out it’s welcome with me. Then they marketing started happening and it just looked a bit… meh.
So imagine my surprise when parts of this new trailer actually looked kind of cool.
It’s hard to know where to begin with *Europa Report*. Not because it’s bad; it’s really not. More that the measure of what it *might* have been is heavy enough to weigh the final product down. For all the talk of it being a return to real, “hard” science fiction, the film turns out to be just another adequate space thriller.
There’s an official poster for Disney’s _Maleficent_, the story of the evil stepmother from Snow White. Angeline Jolie stars and, let’s face, may be kind of perfect for the role based on the look. Let’s take a look.
Imagine if you will that you’ve just woken up. You’re freezing and you don’t know where you are and you’re surrounded by bodies. Worse yet, you have no memory of who you are or why you’re there. Pretty much you’ve just imagined the opening to _Open Grave_, or at least the opening to the trailer. Let’s watch!
Neill Blompkamp burst on the scene a few years back with District 9, a movie fresh new SciFi action film concerning a group of displaced aliens living in a massive ghetto in Johannesburg South Africa. The film was born out of Blompkamp and Peter Jackson’s attempts to put together a _Halo_ movie and when that fell apart those resources when to expanding Blompkamp’s short film _Alive in Joburg_ into a full fledged movie. The result was a fantastic film with an original approach, story, characters and clear allegory to social and political issues facing us today. I’m not going to spoil it, just go watch it.
I mention this because the follow up, _Elysium_, is another SciFi action film with an interesting and unique approach and some clear allegories to social and political issues of our time. So how does it stack up? Not bad, actually.
Neill Blomkamp’s follow up to District 9 has a cyborg Matt Damon attacking the space station where the rich live from a ruined Earth where the unwashed masses are barely scraping by. Yeah, I am indeed down with that.
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