Elysium

Elysium is far from Neill Blomkamp’s best movie — I’ll even bet money that he made Chappie so that the general public would forget about how much they hated that movie were Matt Damon and Sharlto Copley beat each other up while wearing mechanical exoskeletons on a space station reserved only for rich people. But it’s human nature to want to improve upon your failures, and Blomkamp is, as far as we know, a human, so it’s no surprise that he’d want to have another crack at it.

I haven’t liked all of Neill Blomkamp’s movies, but I like Neill Blomkamp. He’s a filmmaker of bold ideas and obvious visual skills. The success of District 9, both with audiences and critics, speaks for itself. Since then, though, it’s been one stumble after another. His first Hollywood feature, Elysium with Matt Damon, was a disappointment; his follow-up, Chappie with Hugh Jackman, was a straight-up disaster. He moved on to an Alien sequel that sounded interesting (it would have featured the survivors of Aliens while ignoring Alien 3 and Resurrection), but Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant permanently killed any chance of the film getting made.

Following Neill Blomkamp’s impressive debut with District 9, we couldn’t wait to see what the inventive new filmmaker would deliver next. Four years after District 9, Blomkamp gave us Elysium, a visually stunning but ultimately disappointing sci-fi film with bad performances from pretty much everyone except Matt Damon. With Chappie about to hit theaters and all this talk of his new Alien movie, Blomkamp has our full attention, and he’s using this opportunity to discuss what went wrong with Elysium.

With the $30 million opening weekend for 'Elysium,' it looks like audiences are still very much on board the Neill Blomkamp train. It's surely no coincidence that Sony waited until this moment to announce that they've signed on to the director's next film, a science fiction story called 'Chappie.'

This summer has been filled with question marks. We've seen a surprising number of films underperform, even when they looked for all the world like winners on paper. The latest is 'Elysium,' an ambitious, original sci-fi action film, starring bankable actor Matt Damon and directed by 'District 9' maestro Neill Blomkamp. It just debuted to a so-so $30 million, surprising since it appeared that it w

In a weekend with four new major releases but no definitive frontrunners, the Matt Damon sci-fi action flick 'Elysium' snagged the top spot over some seemingly powerful competition. Director Neill Blomkamp's film continues this summer's trend of R-rated fare opening big ('The Purge,' 'The Conjuring,' '2 Guns') and proves that there's plenty of box office success to be had in the typically slow fin

Neill Blomkamp's latest sci-fi action effort, 'Elysium,' hits theaters this weekend. In the film, Matt Damon plays Max, a man living on a future, third-world version of Earth while the wealthy enjoy a utopian life on a luxury space station known as Elysium. When given only a few days to live, Max must become a reluctant hero to save himself -- and possibly the rest of humanity. Damon leads a cast

This Friday, Neill Blomkamp returns with the sci-fi action film 'Elysium', starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. How excited are you about the new movie from the director of 'District 9'?

Here's the thing: in the future, the last thing you want to do is agitate Jodie Foster's secretary of defense Delacourt until she's forced to activate Kruger. What's a Kruger? In this new clip from Neill Blomkamp's 'Elysium,' Kruger is a black-ops-style private contractor played by Sharlto Copley, who also starred in Blomkamp's 'District 9,' and he has missiles. And he will use them indiscriminate

Here's one of my favorite jokes of all time. There's no punchline, it's just a sentence. "I've been rich and miserable, and I've been poor and miserable. And I'll tell ya: rich is better." I don't know if this is what director Neill Blomkamp had in mind as the ultimate message of 'Elysium,' his visually stunning follow-up to 'District 9,' but beneath the dazzling spectacle, there isn't m