Even Elysium’s director thinks his film is a mess – but a decade on, it deserves a second chance

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Matt Damon runs around the US in 2154, when civil liberties are eroded, healthcare is for the rich and wealth inequality is soaring. But its sci-fi! Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email When director Neill Blomkamp followed up his acclaimed debut feature, District 9, with the cyberpunk dystopia Elysium in 2013, it was met with a resoundingly mediocre reception. It’s a movie that even Blomkamp has disavowed. “I fucked it up,” he said bluntly in a 2015 interview . But I think he’s too hard on himself: a decade on, Elysium might be worthy of re-appraisal. In 2154, Earth is an overpopulated, polluted dust bowl. The wealthy elite live on the luxurious space station Elysium, where they have access to advanced medical technology and other essentials denied to the surface population. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/W2lbPwj via IFTTT
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James Foley obituary

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American film director best known for Glengarry Glen Ross and At Close Range

The film director James Foley, who has died from brain cancer aged 71, was a self-effacing and shrewd stylist whose camerawork always served the actors and the psychology of the characters. This thespian focus was best showcased in his 1992 adaptation of David Mamet’s stage play Glengarry Glen Ross; its heavyweight cast, which included Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey, might have overwhelmed a less purposeful supervisor.

But in his hands this dissection of American capitalism, set in a beleaguered real-estate office, became an actors’ masterclass; the cast would turn up on their days off to watch each other work. Foley had been convinced to direct it by a new version of Mamet’s script that broke down what on stage had been cerebral monologues into pithy, visceral repartee. Accordingly, the director insisted on casting “great actors, people with movie charisma, to give it watchability, especially since the locations were so restricted”.

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