QUICK REVIEWS - 'Elysium', 'Butler' and 'World's End'

Once again, I'm a little bit behind in these, so I bunched them together and just put them all on one post.


'Elysium' (R) **3/4
The year is 2154.  The Earth as we know it is way overpopulated.  The very wealthy live on a man-made space station called Elysium, which allows them to have clean air, nice housing, no crime, and free access to health care that can cure any ailment or disability.  After an accident at work gives him days to live, Max (Matt Damon) takes on a seemingly suicidal mission to go to Elysium.  Meanwhile Elysium Secretary of Defense Jessica Delacourt (Jodie Foster) has plans of her own, with a very sketchy sleeper agent on Earth (Sharlto Copley) doing her bidding.  The director of this also made 'District 9' (great movie by the way) and both movies aren't exactly subtle with what they're trying to say about society.  Most of the acting, action, special effects and music is great.  For most of the movie I was thinking that this was going to be a four-star movie.  However, the excessive shaky cam during the fight scenes (especially the final fight) makes it hard to tell who is doing what.  I know most other critics panned Jodie Foster's performance, but I thought she was fine.  The one I didn't like was Sharlto Copley as a murderer/rapist/kidnapper/sleeper agent.  His performance and accent was so distracting, over the top, and at times he was hard to understand.  That was a disappointment.  He was great in 'District 9', and he was great as Mad Eye Murdock in the 'A-Team' movie.  Overall, 'Elysium' is a good movie that borders on being a great movie. 


'Lee Daniel's The Butler' (PG-13) ****
Now this is a great movie, and honestly it's the best movie I've seen so far this year.  'The Butler' follows the life of Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), from his days working on a cotton field in his youth to his 30+ years of working as a butler at the White House.  It also delves into his life at home, dealing with his relationships with his alcoholic wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey), son Louis (David Oyelowo) who gets caught up in various civil rights movements including the Freedom Riders and the Black Panthers, and well behaved son Charlie (Elijah Kelley).  The cast also includes Robin Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower, James Marsden as JFK, Liev Schreiber as LBJ, John Cusack as Richard Nixon, Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan, and Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan.  It is very well acted by everyone involved, and very well shot.  It's powerful, it's sad, but it does have it's moments of humor provided by Gaine's coworkers at the White House Carter Wilson (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and James Holloway (Lenny Kravitz).  The only thing I can say negatively about the movie is that the final 10 minutes of the movie felt very political and biased.  I can understand perfectly why it was in the movie, but let's just say considering how liberal Hollywood already as and the fact that Oprah is in the movie makes the final 10 minutes of it feel political.  Still a great movie that I highly recommend people see.


'The World's End' (R) ***
The third and final installment in the so-called "Cornetto Trilogy" (the other two installments being 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz'),'World's End' finds Gary King (Simon Pegg, who also co-wrote the movie) recruiting his best friends from high school Peter (Eddie Marsan), Oliver (Martin Freeman), Steven (Paddy Considine) and Andy (Nick Frost) to head back home to Newton Haven to once again attempt the pub crawl know as "The Golden Mile".  12 pubs in one night.  All appears to be going all right until all of a sudden the reunited friends unwittingly stumble upon a plan to take over the human race.  It is funny (in that British humor sort of way) and it takes some unexpected twists and turns as they go from pub to pub and we all discover more of the plot to takeover the human race and how the friends had previously become estranged.  As far as the "Cornetto Trilogy" goes, I liked this better than 'Shaun of the Dead' but didn't like it as much as 'Hot Fuzz' but at the same time 'World's End' is different than both of those.  'Shaun of the Dead' satirizes and references zombie movie cliches and 'Hot Fuzz' satirizes and references action movies.  'The World's End' isn't really a satire nor does it reference other things.  It's simply about people that go drinking and stumble upon a plot to destroy humanity.  And for what it's worth, I liked it.