New in Theaters (all playing at the Durango Stadium 9)
Planes
(In standard format and digital 3-D with surcharge.)
Not reviewed, but it would appear to be a lot like “Cars” but with planes instead. Rated PG.
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
(In standard and digital 3-D with surcharge.)
Not reviewed, but it’s the next book-to-film installment in this latest mega-gazillion dollar moneymaker. Rated PG.
Elysium
Of all the movie villains we’ve met lately, few are stranger than Delacourt, Jodie Foster’s evil, white-blonde, power-suited and power-hungry defense official in “Elysium,” the much-awaited but ultimately somewhat disappointing new film from director Neill Blomkamp.
From her command post on a ritzy space station high up above 22nd-century Earth, a demitasse of espresso at her side, Delacourt doles out orders in a foreign but unrecognizable accent. “Send them to deportation!” she barks, when “undocumented” ships breach her borders. “Get them off this habitat!”
Blomkamp, whose sci-fi parable “District 9” came out of nowhere four years ago to earn a best-picture Oscar nod, is crystal clear in his intentions here. He’s making obvious statements about immigration and universal health care, and whether the frequent references bother you or not will greatly influence how much you enjoy the film.
One thing you can’t deny, though, is its visual beauty, and, as in “District 9,” his masterful use of special effects. It’s not for nothing that Blomkamp, at the tender age of 33, has been called a visionary artist of the genre.
His “Elysium” – that space station in the sky, looking a lot like present-day Easthampton – is an enormous wheel, on the rim of which its wealthy residents, having left the teeming and polluted Earth, inhabit pristine white homes with bright green manicured lawns. Brilliant sunlight dapples the blue waters of their swimming pools. Classical music and clinking glasses echo in the background. For some reason, people seem to speak French.
Most importantly, Elysium’s inhabitants are eternally healthy, because each home holds a “healing bay,” which looks like a tanning machine, except it cures all illness.
Down on Earth, things are different. Los Angeles in 2154 is grimy, gritty and poor, with minimal medical care. Children look longingly to the sky, dreaming of Elysium. In a flashback, Max, a young boy in an orphanage, promises a young girl named Frey that one day, they’ll go there together.
Frey grows up to be a nurse; Max, a car thief. But Max – portrayed by an earnest, committed and perhaps overly grim Matt Damon – has reformed himself when, one day, at the hands of a heartless boss, he’s exposed to a lethal dose of radiation in the factory where he works. Within five days, he will die.
To get to Elysium and save his life, Max makes a deal with an underground revolutionary (Wagner Moura) who runs a fleet of illegal shuttles. All Max needs to do is kidnap the evil billionaire who runs the factory (a creepy William Fichtner) and, oh yes, export data from his brain.
He gets the data, but up in the sky, Delacourt, desperate for the information now in Max’s brain, has activated an agent on the ground. Suddenly Max is being hunted by the vicious Kruger, a character so over-the-top, he takes over the film. It’s fun to watch the manic Sharlto Copley, who played the hunted man in “District 9,” now play the hunter. “Did you think you could get through me?” he crows, in an extremely heavy South African accent.
Eventually, Max will make it to Elysium, and so will the beautiful Frey (Alice Braga), with the critically ill daughter she’s desperate to save. There, despite the always-smart and crafted action scenes, the movie lets us down a bit with a reliance on action-hero formula and some pretty lame dialogue.
As for Foster, what could have been an interesting character never really gels into anything but an oddity.
If “Elysium” doesn’t nearly live up to “District 9,” it shows enough panache to leave us waiting enthusiastically for his next effort.
“Elysium,” a TriStar Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “strong bloody violence and language throughout.” Running time: 109 minutes. HHH out of four.
JOCELYN NOVECK, AP National Writer
We’re the Millers
“We’re the Millers” is an identity comedy with identity issues.
Jason Sudeikis plays a pot dealer who, as a disguise for smuggling a huge shipment of weed, forms a fake family to drive an RV across the Mexico border. He gathers local stripper Rose (Jennifer Aniston), surly homeless teenager Casey (Emma Roberts) and his young, naive neighbor Kenny (Will Poulter).
The whole concept has two motives: to lampoon the idea of the traditional all-American family, and as an excuse to get Aniston to take off her clothes. Both are worthy endeavors, but everything in “We’re the Millers” feels forced – a hodgepodge of comedic rhythms made to lurch from one crude gag to another.
Despite obvious comedic talents, Sudeikis and Aniston have each had difficulty finding their place in the movies, and neither really fit their parts: small-time Denver pot dealer (dispatched for the pick-up by Ed Helms’ polite but ruthless drug lord) and bitter stripper with a heart of gold, respectively.
The concealed identity shtick would have been more fruitful if the characters’ personalities weren’t just as thin as their charade. But with such stereotype underpinnings, “We’re the Millers” remains the broadest of caricatures.
The film, too, comes from mixed sensibilities. The script was begun by “Wedding Crashers” scribes Bob Fisher and Steve Faber, and finished by “Hot Tub Time Machine” writers Sean Anders and John Morris. “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story” director Rawson Marshall Thurber keeps the tone appropriately breezy, but understandably struggles to find the right sense of timing.
“We’re the Millers” aims for a nuclear family farce, pushing it one step further than its obvious inspiration, “National Lampoon’s Summer Vacation”: Not only are they not the gleaming picture of family life they might seem, they’re not even a real family. This naturally opens up a realm of jokes along the lines of Kenny, in a kissing lesson, smooching his supposed mother and sister.
Every pit stop is a chance for gratuity. There’s a camp out with swingers (Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn) and a run-in with pursuing drug dealers that inanely becomes Aniston’s strip tease. As she did in “Horrible Bosses” (which also co-starred Sudeikis) the actress trades on the thrill of her sexuality, which wouldn’t be necessary if a good romantic comedy script captured her girl-next-door snark. But it’s starting to look unlikely she’ll ever find another “The Good Girl” – or is really seeking it.
Sudeikis’s smart-alleck, Midwest charm, masking a more devious instinct, does a lot to carry the film. The former “Saturday Night Live” player has struggled to transition to leading man roles, though he showed promise in the little seen “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy.”
But he’s straining here to keep the ship righted. When the end-credit bloopers roll, Sudeikis and Aniston, free of the contrived plot, look like they’re finally having fun.
“We’re the Millers,” a Warner Bros. release, is rated R for crude sexual content, passive language, drug material and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 110 minutes. H½ out of four.
JAKE COYLE, AP Entertainment Writer
Still Showing
Durango Stadium 9
(Next to Durango Mall, 247-9799, www.allentheatresinc.com)
Dirty Wars. (Wednesday only.) Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill is pulled into an unexpected journey as he chases down the hidden truth behind America’s expanding covert wars. No MPAA rating.
2 Guns. Denzel and Marky Mark do the buddy cop flick, but they’re not really buddies. Rated R.
Smurfs 2. I almost made a typo which would’ve listed this as rated R. Might be more interesting if it were true. Rated PG
The Wolverine. Hugh Jackman has played Logan/Wolverine six times now. If it ain’t broke ... Rated PG-13.
The Conjuring. A couple who specializes in de-haunting houses bite off more they can chew when they take on the demons possessing a rural farmhouse. Rated R.
Turbo. (In standard format and digital 3-D with surcharge.) Some animated thing about a snail that gets into the racing circuit and wants to go to the Indy 500, but who really cares anyway? Rated PG.
Despicable Me 2. The Steve Carell-voiced Gru completes the transformation from supervillain to good guy when he’s recruited by the Anti-Villain League. Rated PG.
Back Space Theatre
(1120 Main Ave., 259-7940, www.thebackspacetheatre.org)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist. A Pakistani man graduates Princeton and looks forward to pursuing the American dream with his American fiancée (Kate Hudson). Then Sept. 11 happens, and 10 years of prejudice and mistrust drive him back to his homeland and some un-American thinking. Rated R.
Gaslight Cinema
(102 Fifth St. Next to the railroad depot, 247-8133, www.allentheatresinc.com)
Fruitvale Station. A great dramatization of the case of Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old African American man shot in the back by police on an Oakland railway platform in 2009. Rated R.
The Lone Ranger. Johnny Depp is Tonto, who tells the tale of how mild-mannered John Reid (Armie Hammer) became the famous masked man. Rated PG-13.
Ted Holteen and Associated Press
