Movie Reviews: Elysium

Opening in Los Angeles in 2154, Elysium (15A) offers an especially dystopian vision of Earth’s future.

Those who can afford to have abandoned the irreversibly polluted planet to live in an idyllic environment aboard the space station, Elysium; those who can’t are left behind to work themselves to death on behalf of the gilded few. Max (Matt Damon) is a factory worker who constructs the robots that police the planet. When he is poisoned by radiation at work in an accident which leaves him with only days to live, Max vows to do whatever is required to reach Elysium and obtain a cure. Meanwhile, Elysium’s steely head of security, Delacourt (Jodie Foster), has not only declared a secret war against the poverty-stricken refugees who attempt to illegally land on the space station, but is also plotting a coup to oust the liberal politicians who run Elysium. Writer-director Neill Blomkamp shot to fame with the sci-fi hit District 9 (2009), and while Elysium is less inventive and visually arresting than that movie, it’s still an entertaining and imaginative action flick. The plight of illegal immigrants is central to the plot, but Blomkamp is equally fascinated by that quasi-philosophical staple of the sci-fi movie, humanity’s ever-changing relationship with machines. Max, with Damon in his most persuasive action-man persona since the Bourne movies, evolves from building robots to becoming half-man, half-machine when he is wired into a robotic exo-skeleton in order to rescue humanity from its worst excesses. The characters around Max are less fully realised — it may well be intentional that Foster plays the fascistic Delacourt as if she were herself a robot — but their shortcomings are more than compensated for by the pulsating story. After a summer of disappointing blockbusters, Elysium finally delivers the adrenaline rush we’ve been craving.

What Maisie Knew (15A), which is based on the Henry James novel of the same name, is set in contemporary New York, and stars Onata Aprile as seven-year-old Maisie, the daughter of art dealer Beale (Steve Coogan) and former rock star Susanna (Julianne Moore). The story opens with Beale and Susanna in the throes of marital breakdown, but this is very much Maisie’s story, and directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel concentrate on the impact of their falling-out and their post-separation feuding on the perceptive, sensitive child. The film proceeds by way of a series of vignettes, as Maisie is shunted from one parent to the other, developing relationships with Beale’s new wife, Margo (Joanna Vanderham), and Susanna’s new husband, Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård). McGehee and Siegel film many scenes from a child-eye’s view, the camera shooting upwards from low angles, so that we see the world as the innocent Maisie sees it, which results in an obliquely told story of nuanced observation and emotional complexity. A heartbreaking tale about the resilience of children who survive parental neglect, it is also a paean to the kindness of strangers and the power of love. All four adult actors contribute superb performances, but it’s probable that the movie would have been little more than a mawkish parable if it weren’t for the spell-binding turn by Onata Aprile. If her performance isn’t rewarded by an Oscar nomination, there is no justice in Hollywood.

In their aim to appease all demographics, studio comedies can be bland and safe affairs but We’re The Millers (16) has a take-it-or-leave-it air about it. Jason Sudeikis (Horrible Bosses) plays David, your local gentlemanly drug dealer, who finds himself in a a pickle when he’s robbed of his stash. Forced to repay boss Ed Helms (The Hangover) by driving a marijuana across the Mexican border, Sudeikis plans to fool the border police by ramping up the family man image: he rents an RV and employs geeky Will Poulter (Son of Rambow) and prickly Emma Roberts to be his wholesome kids, while stripper Jennifer Aniston is convinced to play the perfect mother and wife. Unlike most comedies that are content to get by on a handful of giggles, there’s a consistency of chuckles in this profanity-laden script. Young Brit Will Poulter steals the movie out from under his Hollywood co-stars.