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December 13, 2005
New sci-fi thriller or just a giant advertisement for Cirque du Soleil?
So how many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb? The answer: watermelon, and for a whole hour and a half this the only thing I could think of as I watched Aeon Flux in all its ridiculous need for unreal art-grad glory.
Set in the dystopian future where people have ultra mod hair cuts and shop at what must be a Banana Republic of the future, the characters spend much of their time ‘silently screaming’ when they’re not walking purposefully on model runways in their minds.
Moreover, who doesn’t love giant rooms with small chairs, a flair for all things asiatic, and large solid colors? I know that I sure do, and either way, the photography in the movie was over done to the point of being sublime.
Set 400 years in the future, as any good mid 90s MTVer knows, the world had been engulfed by a plague that killed 99% of the world’s population. Fortunately, a man by the name Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas) invented a cure that saved the last five million people on earth. Unfortunately, the city which holds this ‘utopian’ society is also controlled by the Goodchild regime which has ruled for 400 years.
Luckily, as with all sci-fi movies, there’s a rebel faction in tight leather called the Monican rebellion who are ready to fight the good fight, Cirque Du Soleil style. That coupled with snipers, guards in knights’ armor, generic soldiers, hands for feet, futuristic fruit and so on makes for a movie that could rival Dune, and that one had a naked Sting.
Besides, this also had Charlize Theron playing Aeon, the hot futuristic rebel assassin. As everyone knows,
Ms. Theron is also the recipient of an Academy Award and with that kind of calibure, you know that this movie couldn’t possibly be lame, not even in a million years. In other news, Angelina Jolie is a U.N. ambassador.
So what didn’t work with this ‘destined to be a classic’? Nothing; the movie was absolutely perfect.
That being said, the only question left to ask is why they didn’t let reviewers see the movie before it released. The only answer this self-proclaimed expert of all things post-hip can give is that they must have known that the man just wouldn’t get a movie. From MTV (the voice of a generation) a-la 90s counter-culture, they couldn’t even hope to understand and they would just tear it down, now wouldn’t that be a drag? Besides, if you want some real 90s nostalgia for when things were crazy but didn’t need to make sense, this is it.
The best part of this movie is that they even give an explaination, albiet offhandedly, as to why Aeon died at the end of almost every episode but was always able to come back. Now if there’s one thing that bothered me all through puberty, it was that, certainly not her extreme anorexia proportions mind you, just that and nothing else.
So come Friday night, if I were you, I think I’d rather go see Walk the Line. Just kidding, I didn’t like that one either.
Posted by msveum at December 13, 2005 12:55 PM
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