Posts tagged brain
“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.”
“Total Recall” Is Total Overkill
Aug 13th
“Total Overkill”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Total Recall is the 2012 version of the 1990 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and if you have seen the first film, you will keep asking yourself whether you remember it or whether it is a false memory.
One thing is sure, however: Colin Farrell is a better actor than Ah-nold.
Spoiler Alert! The story begins with a dream. Or maybe not.
Doug Quaid has been having a recurring nightmare, and he wakes up in bed with his wife, Lori, played by Kate Beckinsale.
Doug lies to her about the dream–or maybe not–and when she leaves for work, Doug says, “Sleep scares me.”
The time is the future, and there are only two places on Earth left inhabitable: the United Federation of Britain, which is where Great Britain is now, and the Colony, which is where Australia is now.
Doug lives in the Colony, but he works in Britain as an assembly worker, making the commute to and from work in “the Fall,” a super elevator between the two through the center of the earth.
Well, Doug is bored with his life, and after work he goes to a Rekall Lounge where he can have exciting memories implanted in his brain.
However, something goes wrong–or maybe it doesn’t–and the next thing he knows, robotic policemen called “Synthetics” are trying to kill him. So, maybe his choice of memory implant for “secret agent” worked, or maybe it didn’t because he was a secret agent all along with lost memories.
Anyway, a woman named Melina, played by Jessica Biel, shows up to save him, and she is a resistance fighter who claims that he is one, too. Or is he?
Could he be a double agent for the Establishment pretending to be working for the Resistance, could he be pretending to be working for the Establishment but really working for the Resistance, or could everything that is happening to him just be the memory implant from the Rekall Lounge?
What should you believe and what should you disbelieve? When does it stop being interesting and just a screen filled with a confusing story and lots of explosions and special effects, which for this movie are called “visual effects”?
When does the suspension of disbelief become the suspension of belief?
Total Recall is nothing more than total overkill.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Limitless” More Like ‘Overblown’
Mar 29th
LIMITLESS takes its title from the idea of how many opportunities are available to us if we were able to use 100% of our brains instead of the mythological 20% that we use in our everyday lives.
However, scientists say that we already use 100% of our brains, and so the premise of the movie needs a better explanation.
Bradley Cooper plays Eddie Morra, a writer with a book contract, but he looks more like someone with an alcohol or drug problem.
That might be because he doesn’t act like a writer, either, because he is behind on his book, having written only one word, and that word is the first-person, singular pronoun “I.”
Eddie gets even more down on his luck when his girlfriend Lindy breaks up with him, but then his life changes dramatically when he accidentally meets the brother of his ex-wife on the street.
Vernon tells Eddie that he is working for a company that has come out with a new pill called NZT48 that lets you access 100% of your brain, but then he gets interrupted by a phone call and has to leave.
However, Vernon gives Eddie his business card and one of the NZT pills “on the house,” saying that they normally cost $800 apiece.
And the rest, as they say, is this movie.
Special effects show an impression of what happens to Eddie when he takes the pill. “I wasn’t ‘high,’ I was just clear,” he tells us in voice-over narration. “I knew what I wanted to do and how to do it.”
And he does. The next morning, the effects of the pill have worn off, and Eddie gives his book manuscript to his publisher, saying that if she doesn’t like it, he will return the advance.
Then when Vernon doesn’t return Eddie’s calls, Eddie goes to see Vernon with the objective of getting more pills.
And here is where the movie starts leaving the audience with unanswered questions.
Here is also where more characters enter the story, including a Russian loan shark and his hooligans, a financial businessman played by Robert De Niro, a mysterious man who seems to be following Eddie around New York City, and even Eddie’s ex-wife, Melissa.
LIMITLESS makes a thriller out of limitless opportunities, but it is more like “overblown” with unanswered questions.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”