Posts tagged Big Disappointment
“Elysium” a Big Disappointment
Aug 17th
“Big Disappointment”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Elysium is a big movie with big ideas that takes place in 2154 and stars Matt Damon as Max, a man stuck on Earth when all the rich and powerful live on an orbiting space station called Elysium.
It is as if the Occupy Wall Street movement became so successful that it spread into Occupy Earth and all the banksters moved out and way up.
In other words, as the inscription for the Statue of Liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free,” that idea, too, has become so successful that now the whole planet is diseased, polluted, and vastly overpopulated.
Not only that, but the people up on Elysium have technology that can cure whatever disease or affliction ails you, but only people who are classified as “citizens” can arrive safely on the space station, which means that there are also attempts by the people on earth to use illegal space shuttles to sneak across space and get onto Elysium.
Anyway, Max is a factory worker who accidentally gets exposed to radiation and will die in five days unless he can do something about it.
So, Max has the contacts to get himself outfitted with a metallic exoskeleton that makes him as strong as the police robots he will have to fight, his brain gets implanted with data that is very important to the government on Elysium, and he plans to take an illegal space shuttle up to the space station and solve all the problems for the huddled masses on earth and himself, as well.
However, Jodie Foster stars as the director of Homeland Security up on Elysium, and she will have none of it.
Unfortunately for the audience, Foster speaks with an annoying and distinctive accent that makes her and her character a joke.
Well, you can imagine that there are big problems, big fights, and big explosions involved in Max’s attempt to save the world and himself, not to mention the lives of his former girlfriend and her daughter, who is suffering from leukemia.
Oh, I didn’t mention that, did I?
Elysium is one big disappointment, starting with the story, continuing with Jodie Foster, and concluding especially with the ending itself, which I guess means that it is at least three big disappointments, if not even more.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Moneyball” No ‘Big Game’
Sep 30th
No ‘Big Game’
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Moneyball takes what some people believe to be the two most boring subjects possible–statistics and baseball–and combines them to make a movie that is disappointing in a way that most movies about a particular sport or team is not.
Starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics who at the start of this century revolutionized the way the teams acquired new players, the movie follows him and his team for the 2002 season and shows the success of his revolutionary method, which has come to be known as “sabermetrics.”
As a matter of fact, that revolutionary method of using statistics to rate players for their effectiveness in the game is probably now being used by all the teams in Major League Baseball, as well as many other teams in the world of sports all over the planet.
According to the movie, Beane met a young employee of the Cleveland Indians named Pete Brand during a visit there to talk about trading players.
Pete is played by Jonah Hill, and Beane notices how during the negotiations the coaches in the room were conferring with Pete, who studied economics at Yale and his first job anywhere was with the Cleveland Indians.
So, recognizing and understanding a good thing when he sees it, Beane later calls Pete and tells him, “Pack your bags, Pete, I just bought you from the Cleveland Indians.”
Back in Oakland, Beane makes Pete the assistant general manager, and now he has to convince the owner and the coaches that this new method of evaluating players will be successful, which is compared with card counting in a gambling casino.
We also see some of Beane’s personal life, the fact that he is divorced and has a 12-year-old daughter, as well as some background on his own career as a baseball player, but these scenes are merely interesting and appear to be put in just to add more time to the movie.
During the course of the season, the A’s do something remarkable in winning 20 straight games, but if you aren’t familiar with recent baseball history and are expecting an emotional “Rocky” finish, you will be disappointed in the overall movie.
Moneyball ends with a “Big Season,” but no “Big Game,” and that leaves the audience with one “Big Disappointment.”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
