Jodie Foster

Money Monster

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  • Title: Money Monster
  • IMDb: link

Money MonsterDirector Jodie Foster‘s Money Monster is an intriguing set-up that gets lost along the way falling down a rabbit hole of conspiracy and increasingly hard-to-swallow events. The film features George Clooney, as the cable host of a financial program known more for its host’s outrageous behavior than honest stock tips, and Julia Roberts as his disapproving producer. When one of his viewers (Jack O’Connell) shows up with a gun and a bomb vest demanding answers to how a guaranteed stock dropped due to an unexplained “glitch,” cast and crew are held hostage and forced to begin investigating matters.

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Elysium

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Elysium
  • IMDB: link

ElysiumWith District 9 writer/director Neill Blomkamp crafted an original character study of a man (Sharlto Copley) trapped on the wrong side of the Earth’s treatment of alien refugees as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the social segregation in Blomkamp’s home country of South Africa. The result was one of 2009’s best films. Sadly Elysium, Blomkamp’s latest, is no District 9.

While dealing with similar themes of class warfare, inequalities, and a greedy one-percent, Elysium trades in metaphor for far less subtle preaching about the evils of social inequality between the haves and have nots.

The haves include the wealthiest members of the human race who have abandoned their world to live in luxury on the space station Elysium, leaving the polluted planet to the less fortunate. The inequality doesn’t end there, however. Whereas as the rich partake of miraculous medical advancements that can literally cure any affliction in the matter of seconds, the rest of the world is left with nothing more advanced than current medical devices and training.

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Carnage

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  • Title: Carnage
  • IMDB: link

carnage-blu-rayAdapted by director Roman Polanski and writer Yasmina Reza from Reza’s play God of Carnage, Carnage gives us two couples (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet) discussing a recent altercation between their sons when one strikes the other with a stick in the park.

What starts as civil discussion of the events soon leads the couples turn on each other and then their own spouses as all pretense is washed away. Think of it as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf Lite.

The story would probably have worked better for me on stage where the characters are forced to remain on stage in the apartment where the audience can continue to watch the action unfold. The attempts at civility used to keep both couples together don’t work as well on film where we know the camera can follow them out, and there are more than a couple of moments that should bring events to a close.

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Nim’s Island

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Nim’s Island
  • IMDB: link

“Be the hero of your own life story.”
 

nims-island-poster

Abigail Breslin stars as Nim, a headstrong young girl with a good heart who lives on a deserted island with her reclusive scientist of a father (Gerard Butler).  When her father is delayed on an expedition Nim asks for help from the most logical source – the hero of her favorite novels Alex Rover (also played by Gerard Butler).

Nim’s cries for help do not reach Alex Rover adventurer, but Alexandria Rover (Jodie Foster) author.  Alexandria suffers from acute agorophobia, motion sickness, and a host of other issues which makes it impossible for her to help Nim, but she can’t turn the child down.  And so with her make-believe hero in tow (also, quizzically, played by Butler) Alexandria begins a trip by boat, plane, and helicopter, to help.

Nim’s situation if further complicated by a cruise ship who decides to stop on the island and let its passengers enjoy the beach.  Unwilling to allow this encroachment into her home, Nim forms a plan with the help of her animal companions to turn away the invaders.

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