Elysium

dvd of the week

Somehow, I missed Elysium, Neill Blomkamp’s follow up to the now-classic District 9. It’s about a future humanity where the rich and powerful live in a paradisiacal space station called Elysium, and the poor and desperate are still on Earth, scrounging for scraps and suffering beatings from the rich’s soldiers. Matt Damon needs the healing technology on the space station, so he is outfitted with cybernetic armor and sent up into the sky to fight his way in. Jodie Foster and Sharlto Copley are in his way. Compared to District 9, Elysium is supposed to be a disappointment, but I’m still thrilled to see these three great actors inhabit a brainy, weird, fully realized dystopian future.