I was wondering why the tone of the trailers reminded me so much of Gattaca. Aside that the premise obviously is along the same lines as it. I'm looking forward to seeing this now.
Escape to the Movies: In Time
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This movie is not a proper sci-fi. There is simply no coherent explanation of how the tech came about and no exploration of what the consequences of it's use might be (I mean other than rich people turning into EVIL overlords). It would not be bad really to disregard all that and go for the societal struggle, if the movie didn't suck at that by being too anvilicious and total lack of imagination.Aureliano said:
P.S. What next, a Dirac equation in CAPTCHA?
Sounds interesting. Except, you know, evil rich people. That's about as common a bad guy now as "evil communists" some twenty - thirty years ago. Oh well. Rich people are easy to villainize, so what the heck.
Gattaca and Lord of War were both that rare breed of animal, the smart movie that is actually smart--as opposed to "smart" movies that are actually dumb: Vanilla Sky, Limitless, Surrogates, Minority Report, etc. So I'm a bit more hopeful that this film will favour its directorial DNA instead of the latter trends.
The premise actually reminded me of a mid-80s West German film I saw years ago: Morgengrauen [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089621/] (released as "Time Troopers" in North America). They also used lifespan as currency, with the difference being those who lived lavish, decadent lifestyles were guaranteed an early death while those who lived extremely frugally would live well into their senior years. Either way, when your credit was up, the agents called Exit Men showed up to shuffle you off this mortal coil. That's all I really remember about it.
The premise actually reminded me of a mid-80s West German film I saw years ago: Morgengrauen [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089621/] (released as "Time Troopers" in North America). They also used lifespan as currency, with the difference being those who lived lavish, decadent lifestyles were guaranteed an early death while those who lived extremely frugally would live well into their senior years. Either way, when your credit was up, the agents called Exit Men showed up to shuffle you off this mortal coil. That's all I really remember about it.
Well I'll be damned, so they did. This does not say anything good about my memory.Gunnyboy said:
Lord of War and Gattaca were the same guy? Huh. Now I know why I love them. And, if this is like Gattaca, then it's only a matter of time before I see it. Loved that movie, and if this is even pulling some of the same strings, then I'm there. Would have totally missed this otherwise, so thanks, Bob.
I can't believe some of you guys haven't seen Gattaca. It's a must watch. Lord of War was pure gold. I think I will see this movie. 
I actually liked Simone... sure it wasn't the most groundbreaking film but it was inventive and interesting at least.
I saw a trailer/heard about this movie at some point over the summer, and kind of forgot about it. But after this review i will be making a point to go check it out.
Side note: i really like it when Bob reviews the lesser known movies. I pretty much already know where he's going to stand on 90% of the big releases. (every now and then he surprises me), but getting his perspective on movies i otherwise may have missed is nice. Like this movie i'm not sure if it'll hit wide release and be in my local megaplex, but i feel like its a little too mainstream to be playing at one of the indie theaters, so i likely would have missed it altogether.
Sidenote 2: Bob did you ever see Bellflower? I kept meaning to ask but i kept forgetting lol.
I saw a trailer/heard about this movie at some point over the summer, and kind of forgot about it. But after this review i will be making a point to go check it out.
Side note: i really like it when Bob reviews the lesser known movies. I pretty much already know where he's going to stand on 90% of the big releases. (every now and then he surprises me), but getting his perspective on movies i otherwise may have missed is nice. Like this movie i'm not sure if it'll hit wide release and be in my local megaplex, but i feel like its a little too mainstream to be playing at one of the indie theaters, so i likely would have missed it altogether.
Sidenote 2: Bob did you ever see Bellflower? I kept meaning to ask but i kept forgetting lol.
Considering how heavy-handed Lord of War was with its message, I think I'll give this one a miss. What made the message worse in Lord of War was that it was extremely uncontroversial and obvious, so it seemed all the more heavy-handed - YES, war is bad and dealing in arms shouldn't be anyone's chosen profession and YES, the rich generally like being rich often at the expense of the poor...
TLDR: both movies should be taken as metaphors for the way society is now, because the scenarios they present are really implausible.solidstatemind said:
GATTACA was a good movie but it was philosophically stupid. The science behind it was relatively solid, embryonic selection as I recall, not outright genetic engineering which is still probably a century away or more from being used on human beings. But even with embryonic selection there could be long term affects on population genetics, pleiotropy makes everything tricky. The main problem was with the way society was portrayed.
In regard to human beings, hard genetic determinism, as any neuroscientist will tell you, is just plain wrong. A human being's most important trait, intelligence, is heavily dependent upon upbringing. A person's genetic makeup could NEVER replace what we already use in our resumes, i.e. our work experience and education. It would definitely give an unfair advantage, but people wouldn't freaking hire you based upon your genome alone, that's just silly.
The most infuriating part was that he was trying to become A FREAKING ASTRONAUT. If you're going to look at someone's genes for any job, astronaut would be it. What's more is that he actually DID have a heart defect, which should have made him ineligible. There's no way that guy should have been an astronaut, if he dies of a heart attack he would endanger the entire mission and the lives of the other crew members.
There's something to be said about the abuse of genetic information when it comes to things like insurance companies denying coverage because of genetic predispositions, and we should certainly be worried about genetic engineering affecting class structures and inequality, but GATTACA was a straw man argument par excellence.
The same thing goes for this movie. If we really did crack aging then the most likely setup would entail something like restarting the process once you've had children, so people can choose whether to live indefinitely or have children. That way you could keep the population balanced. No one would ever agree to the scenario in the movie, there would be instant revolution.
Lord of War is Blow with guns instead of cocaine. That being said was a great movie and last movie that I thought Nicholas Cage was any good. This movie has an interesting concept, also I am a big fan of Cillian Murphy.
I can't wait to check out Lord of War. Gattica is more even and well worth seeing, and just over all better than this movie. I have to wonder if producers interferred with the script and direction of this movie, wanting it to be more mainstream with the rebellion stuff. Up until the rebellion stuff, this movie was excellent. It was the correctly done flipside to "Children of Men". In that movie, they messed up: not enough old people doing the daily work of civilization. This time around, young people are everywhere, fitting for the topic. There are so many surprises in this movie and I think you'll enjoy it, but 1/2 way through, it does radically change gears and become meh.NameIsRobertPaulson said:
Timberlake's character seems to have an interesting plan in mind, and you can't wait to see how he pulls it off. Then, he just doesn't. There apparantly never was a plan.
I'll have to do some surfing to see if I can find the original script to see if they had something better in mind for what was supposed to happen in the 2nd 1/2 of the movie.
But again, 1st 1/2 was on par with Gattica, and one of the more interesting things I've seen in some time.
So...the central message of the movie as far as economics goes seems to be as follows: rich people hoard time (money) and kill poor people because otherwise the economy breaks down. If you let poor people HAVE money, then they all just quit their jobs and move into rich people neighborhoods.
Because somehow, the part of the population that is most likely to spend the greatest part of the money they earn getting more of the money causes the economy, which runs on people spending money, to fail. Clearly somebody here has brain damage. Is there a chunk of glass embedded in the back of my head?
Edit: And just in case you think I'm some kind of magic economist of something, you can get a basic understanding of how the economy works right here:
And yes. This IS a Disney cartoon.
Because somehow, the part of the population that is most likely to spend the greatest part of the money they earn getting more of the money causes the economy, which runs on people spending money, to fail. Clearly somebody here has brain damage. Is there a chunk of glass embedded in the back of my head?
Edit: And just in case you think I'm some kind of magic economist of something, you can get a basic understanding of how the economy works right here:
And yes. This IS a Disney cartoon.
I just saw this movie today and thought it was pretty terrible. Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting concept, but the script was shallow, the acting wasn't anything worth talking about (Timberlake in particular never breaks the "I'm suave" demeanor even at what should be emotional high points), there's several plotlines that are just kind of sitting there purely to move the main plot along (Timerlake's Dad and the uderworld gamg), and the biggest metaphor of the movie fails pretty hard in translation towards the end.
It's a movie that hits some notes that resonate with the current Occupy movements, but the way it wraps everything up makes it hard to take it as anything but an elaborate Robin Hood story without a king to return from the crusades to take his rightful place.
Capitalism as the overriding evil don't really mesh well even in the film. When Timberlake gives his friend a decade and he drinks himself to death. As the Bonny and Clyde/Robin Hood pair distribute the "wealth" industrial system grinds to a halt. So they managed to move the poor to the middle class areas without any means of actually dealing with inflation, and thus no measure to keep that from just expanding what is considered poor. And the two just rob happily ever after because the forces at be are so inept they can't catch them or just stop caring because the one cop that believed in the system died.
It's a movie that hits some notes that resonate with the current Occupy movements, but the way it wraps everything up makes it hard to take it as anything but an elaborate Robin Hood story without a king to return from the crusades to take his rightful place.