This blog has existed in a few different forms but what I’ve settled on, the version you are reading now, can be best summed up with the question ‘have you seen?’  This is because I want to write about films in the same way that I chat about them, with enthusiasm and interest.  I just didn’t want to be sat here ranting like a brat about things that are not to my own particular taste.  But that’s not to say that I’m not going to write about films that frustrate me, because they also make me want to chat… have you seen Elysium?

Elysium is one of those films that I can’t help but feel I should like a whole lot more than I do.  It pushed all the right buttons (the one marked sci-fi geek, the pastel coloured one with the words ‘insufferable liberal’ printed on it and the red gore covered switch in the corner etc) but, following District 9, a smarter film about the mistreatment of the poor, it all seems a bit underwhelming and, at the same time, overcooked.  This is most notable in the portrayal of the antagonists, a right-wing politician and a ruthless soldier, who are both overwritten and underdeveloped until they are meaningless.  The give away, as ever, is the rather tediously cheap inclusion of rape threat.

…but I’ll watch it again because in a couple of years I’ll still be intrigued.  I’ll enjoy William Fichtner and the data robbery, I’ll marvel at Elysium itself as it reminds me of my Dad’s old copies of Science Now and the scene where Max is shown an image of Earth from space will still get me but, by the end, I’ll still be left feeling that I should like it more and soon afterwards I’ll turn to a friend and say ‘have you seen Elysium?’