Elysium

For an original sci-fi blockbuster, you absolutely cannot go past Neill Blomkamp's sophomore flick Elysium.

Set roughly 150 years in the future, Earth has turned into a big smelly dust hole. The natural resources have been used up, there's massive overcrowding, and the poverty line is so high that the only people living above it are in space.

Max (Matt Damon) lives in Los Angeles and dreams of getting into Elysium, the giant orbital station on which the world's elite live.

Problem is, he's an ex-crim who works a factory job, which probably doesn't pay particularly well. Also, he ends up getting a full blast of radiation, which as you know, can seriously put a dent in your five-year plan.

Pacific Rim...for real this time

Guillermo del Toro's giant robots vs giant monsters film, Pacific Rim, is a BDM - a Big Dumb Movie.

Let me preface this review by saying I desperately wanted to like Pacific Rim. I avoided promo materials, interviews, and even trailers where I could. I wanted to go in as clean and without expectation as I could.

It didn't help.

It's a couple of decades in the future and an interdimensional portal has opened up at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Through said portal come huge beasts, which proceed to do what huge celluloid beasts do and go to town on the puny humans'...towns.

Pacific Rim Review

My parents always told me that if I didn't have anything nice to say, I should say nothing.

... so yeah.