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Tron (1982)

  Tron (1982)   It is sometimes a strange experience re-watching a film decades later. You realize missed some vital point being made. I remembered “Tron” as being about a Video Game Designer who was angered that his Intellectual Property was stolen by a Corporate Baddie, and in his attempt to get his stolen work back, he accidentally gets trapped inside the Game he designed. That’s not entirely inaccurate, but I forgot several vital points. I’d argue that I missed the vital argument because the film mostly did also.   The film starts out boldly; the Filmmakers trusted the inventive spectacle would carry the Audience along and were not afraid to create disorientation for the first ten-minutes-or-so. Critic Roger Ebert observed, “‘Tron’ has been conceived and written with a knowledge of computers that it mercifully assumes the audience shares. That doesn’t mean we do share it, but that we’re bright enough to pick it up, and don’t have to sit through long, boring ex...
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Attack the Block (2011)

  Attack the Block (2011)   I didn’t expect to love this film as much as I did. Its central conceit promises something narrow and dumb: Aliens attack the Ghetto and it’s up to the Gangbangers to push them back. It appeared to be a one joke movie, and that joke was borrowed from another movie, “Cockneys vs Zombies” (2012), which was entertaining, but entirely forgettable.   Now, note the dates: “Attack the Block,” actually came out first, but I became aware of it second. Though this movie received surprisingly rave reviews, it failed in the box-office. Because of “Attack the Block’s” undeserved obscurity, I had thought it borrowed from “Cockneys vs Zombies” but it was actually the other way around. I’m not exactly sure how a low-budget, well-reviewed, comedic, Monster Movie with lots of action, fails to properly recoup, but this isn’t the first time it has happened (example: “Slither” (2006)).   One of the film’s greatest achievements was how it negotiated...
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District 9 (2009)

  Top of Form Bottom of Form District 9 (2009)   This is a wholly remarkable film, Politically Charged, speaking of Global Issues, but potent because it kept a narrowly Local Focus. Unlike most fictions about the Chaos of much of sub-Saharan Africa that are supposed to speak of the News of the World, it isn’t set in some Fictional Country but a very specific Time-and-Place. The nation is South Africa, the town, though unnamed, was likely Soweto mixed with another town, Alexandera (it was filmed in Soweto, as Alexandra was more violent at-that-time). It’s a subtle Alternate History buttressing and un-subtle narrative, starting with Aliens arriving on Earth in 1982, and their presence in South Africa may have preserved the Apartheid system (officially dismantled in the Real World in 1994), but the film makes a point that the mess laid out before us is as much post-Apartheid as it was Apartheid-inspired.   The film is about Xenophobia, Segregati...
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