Elysium [4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital] [4K UHD]

Neil Blomkamp has done it again and shown us that "District 9" was not a one-trick pony. His part-dystopian, part-visionary look into a futuristic Earth set in the 22nd century is a fantastic spectacle laced with some social commentary.Matt Damon plays the hero of this action-drama set in a future in which human society on Earth has suffered significant decay. Those with wealth and means have escaped the planetary bounds to live in an artificial ring-world habitat called Elysium in orbit about the planet. As the story unfolds, it soon becomes clear that those who live in Elysium are in power and have the best that modern science and technology has to offer to support their lives, while the masses on Earth live in squalor in a police-state society.Damon's character is a factory worker with a criminal past that is just scraping by when misfortune enters his life. The only way out for him is to reach Elysium, but citizens from Earth are apparently almost never allowed to go there. His journey to try to get there requires desperate measures that set up an action-driven plotline laced with elements of drama and a bit of political intrigue.I love both the look and intensity of this film. Neil Blomkamp shows us a future that is technologically-advanced in a plausible way , but that also contains some sobering and somewhat terrifying elements. The story is accessible and easy to relate to without unnecessary complication, and yet the society we are shown has a depth and complexity that makes it compelling and all too real. Although we are not given much of the history that leads to this future, it is not hard to extrapolate from certain elements of current human society and accept this as one plausible outcome.I would have loved to have spent more time being immersed in this world, but what's there is a self-contained story that should leave most viewers satisfied with time well spent. Our solace for having to leave is that Blomkamp is still early in his career as a writer and director, and we can hope to see much more of his creativity and storytelling in years to come.

Blonkamp's vision is soo original and developed in extreme depth, it's hard not to be completely fascinated by the world he proposes. Even for brief scenes, enormous amounts of prop development and preproduction are brought to bear. This movie is very well edited, and very economic in it's character development. The memory scenes of Max and a small boy are so critical to our understanding of the antagonist. I have watched this movie over 20 times, and I still love the pace. There is no movie structured like this. There are some huge leaps that are easy to accept once you understand that they each move the action forward at a hectic rate. This movie starts off at 100% and there is not a single moment to rest until the end. One thing I like about Blonkamp's aesthetic is how character death is never the result of a bullet being fired, though there are many fired. He likes to display the cheapness and uselessness of bullets, preferring a sword, a fist fight, or some exotic explosive to be the killing blow. This is a stand alone movie, it begins and ends very conclusively. I wish it could have been universally popular enough for a company to make toys, because the robots and airships are soo awesome. The scene of Damon getting roughed up by the street cop robots is some of the best cinema of all time.

Entertaining

IMHO, An excellent film. Great to see real heroes who are genuine people. Here is my critique.Nice to see that the main actor speaks languages other than American English in the film. It was also nice to see that sentiment ,humanism, and morality have reappeared in a very good epic. They even dared to show the influence of a Catholic nun on the young hero's upbringing. How many writers and movie producers have marginalized ethics and religion these days? It seems that there is a strong bias against anything smacking of spirituality and/or religion appearing in films. (With the exception of movies that are called strictly spiritual or religious or fantastic movies about the supernatural. Not that these are bad movies, the point is that we have forgotten our past and the ethical traditions that built Western Civilization.) We need to look at the history of ethics and remember that many brave men and women of the past have derived their faith and inspiration from religion/spirituality. There is a strong secular bias in our culture against showing characters in movies who are really human and hold humanistic values. Most action heroes focus on violence, revenge, egotism, money, glory.This hero (flawed in the sense that he was once a thief) changed his behaviour and focused on those he loved and on humanity in general-in fact he willingly gave up his life for those he loved ( a very Christian way of looking at life and an example of practicing your beliefs to the point of death.)