Browse Tag: dystopia

RECAP: Equilibrium

Equilibrium (2002): Kurt Wimmer

Have you wanted to watch a movie in which emotionless automatons kill each other with guns in a sophisticated, statistically precise gun fighting method, and for that movie to not be a Transformers? Equilibrium is a movie for you.

After the Third World War, humanity decided it could not survive a fourth. A drug was invented that suppressed all emotion, rendering war, crime, and violent outburst nonexistent.

Some people, however, refused to take this drug. They enjoy things like art and music and shit. They are DANGEROUS. To stomp out these people and their aesthetic pleasures, the powers that be created a group of über-police called, I kid you not, Grammaton Clerics.

Using special martial arts and dressed all in black, these clerics are the best at rooting out and destroying emotional content.

ONE SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: In an emotionally repressed future society, war is a thing of the past and the only crime is…to feel.  Continue Reading

RECAP: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014): Matt Reeves

Ten years have passed since the outbreak of the Simian Flu, a disease that killed at least 99.8% of human beings. That makes life pretty good for climatically adapted chimpanzees living atop Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County, California.

An opening montage retraces the spread of the Simian Flu shown at the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, this time using red lines across a map. News reports trace the downfall of civilization, even in America! Gasp! It CAN happen here.

ONE SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: Charged with a virus making them highly intelligent, assorted apes led by Caesar are a genus divided against itself, and they must fight a scrappy band of humans to survive.  gay black dating apps

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Mockingjay (2014 & 2015): Francis Lawrence

Not the first and not the last to try it, studio executives at Lionsgate split the final book of The Hunger Games series into two films.

The movie were hits at the box office, and likely made more as two movies than as one, but each of the two parts of Mockingjay paled to the huge box office and high quality of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.

It probably didn’t help that Katniss Everdeen, the hero, stood on the sidelines for much of the final installment. The driver of her narrative when in the arena, Katniss takes orders from those who’ve fought the war against President Snow for decades.

Much like Aaron Rodgers backing up Brett Favre for three seasons as Green Bay Packers quarterbacks, Katniss waits her turn until the final moments, when one decision changes history.

ONE SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: Newly minted symbol of the resistance, Katniss Everdeen fights President Snow as a propaganda tool in District Thirteen’s war against The Capitol.  Continue Reading

RECAP: Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015): George Miller

Imagine spending thirty years thinking about one creative project. You were ready to make this thing three decades ago, but forces of nature (and Hollywood, and Mel Gibson) conspired against you, always pushing back back back the thing you were trying to create. Imagine now that someone with some power somewhere gave you the green light, allowing you to unleash decades of pent-up ideas and energy, despite your seven decades of life. What would your creative work express? Imagine now that your long-dormant idea was a movie, a movie about the destructive nature of men, and a whole ton of things to blow up. Congratulations, you are George Miller, and you just made Mad Max: Fury Road.

ONE-SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: A renegade general steals an armored truck to ferry fertile females to freedom as her boss pursues her with his glut of gonzo gas guzzlers.  Continue Reading