Reviews for this film from our members:
- Beth Accomando @ KPBS Cinema Junkie
- Excerpt: Copley’s scenes (as well as the ones with Finchtner) are the only moments when the film has any fire in its belly and can hold our interest.
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Cali l’oblio su questo orrendo film di fantascienza, ennesimo esempio dello spreco di risorse e di talento a cui la Hollywood del nuovo millennio ci sta sempre più abituando.
- [New – 1/16/14] | Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
- Chris Barsanti @ PopMatters
- Excerpt: Elysium is another allegory, a sharper, more finely honed story than District 9, with less leaden symbolism, still stamped with Neill Blomkamp’s less admirable quirks.
- Luke Bonanno @ DVDizzy.com
- Excerpt: No matter your views and your net worth, you should be appreciative to encounter a summer movie (and a sci-fi action one, at that) with substance and something to say.
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: Like a drunk supermodel, “Elysium” looks pretty but stumbles around too much for its own good.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: [Blomkamp] disappoints with his second outing, rehashing ideas from such films as “Total Recall” (Max’s grimy apartment and factory job are just like Douglas Quaid’s in last year’s remake) with the same dusty, rusty aesthetic as “District 9.”
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Lo que sí que hay que reconocer es que “Elysium” visualmente está muy bien, con escenas de acción muy trepidantes, y que partía de premisas muy buenas. Pero el desarrollo no hay por donde cogerlo.
- Jim Dixon @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: “Elysium” is better made than written, but Blomkamp’s startlingly realized visions of future ghettos are attention-getters, and this gritty thrill ride with a message is going to stand out in the crowd.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: It doesn’t help that Max is an unsympathetic hero who becomes a transparently inconsistent one.
- João Marcos Flores @ Cineviews
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Energetic, if sociologically simplistic – another violent, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi spectacle.
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Neill Blomkamp cements his science-fiction credentials as a filmmaker with a genre vision the likes of which we haven’t seen since the socially conscious SF of the 1970s.
- Oktay Ege Kozak @ Oregon Herald
- Benjamin Kramer @ The Voracious Filmgoer
- Wesley Lovell @ Cinema Sight
- Excerpt: Elysium, while easily inferior to the brilliant District 9, is still a better science fiction film than anything released to wide audiences so far this year.
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: The rich have better insurance in solid but flawed action film
- Jason McKiernan @ Film Racket
- Excerpt: Elysium taps squarely into our desire to be transported to a vivid new world, staggered by what we see and riveted by what we feel.
- Brent McKnight @ Giant Freakin’ Robot
- Excerpt: Elysium comes close to greatness, but is ultimately crushed beneath its own weight.
- Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix
- Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Heaven can’t wait…
- Frank Ochieng @ SFcrowsnest
- Excerpt: In the futuristic socialist saga ‘Elysium’, the audience pretty much are drawn to the similar Blomkamp blueprint — an elaborate and exquisite sci-fi entertainment drenched in visual wonderment with a meditative message about social inequality.
- Locke Peterseim @ Hammer & Thump / Open Letters Monthly
- Excerpt: Twice as big, half as smart, and considerably more muddled, misguided, and flat-out disheartening than District 9.
- Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A acção desenrola-se a bom ritmo, tem um argumento consistente, e não se distrai a explicar o óbvio, mas fica sempre longe de satisfazer. Não só não chega aos calcanhares do antecessor, como não traz nada de novo à ficção-científica. Mesmo assim está acima da média.
- Jamie S. Rich @ DVD Talk
- Excerpt: …forgiving the ham all over Blomkamp’s fists, there’s lots to like about Elysium. The special effects have an old school, 2001 feel, and never suffer the telltale quirks of CGI.
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: Elysium is passable, but just barely. Blomkamp seemed to create an interesting world, but then chose to tell a story within it that just wasn’t very interesting.
- Amir Siregar @ Flick Magazine [Indonesian]
- Josh Spiegel @ Sound on Sight
- Excerpt: District 9 offered the promise of a fresh new talent in writer-director Neill Blomkamp. Elysium doesn’t totally squander that promise, but at least raises the disturbing possibility that District 9 may have been a fluke.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Expertly made but intellectually shallow.
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A disappointing sci-fi film that goes overboard with loud, jerky and repetitive action sequences.
- Sam Turner @ Film Intel
- Excerpt: ‘that some of these scenes happen in horribly dated pastel flashbacks says something to Blomkamp’s style here, which still needs huge amounts of polish’
- Phil Villarreal @ COED.com
- Excerpt: While there’s potential in the setup for some thought-provoking commentary about society, the class divide and humanity’s reckless willingness to cede control to artificial intelligence, Blomkamp pretty much tosses that all the side in order to let Damon rock it in destroyatron mode. It’s all fun and exciting, and I’d rather the filmmaker just go with what’s working rather than try to get all preachy and important, so it works.
- Andrew Wyatt @ Look / Listen (St. Louis Magazine)
- Excerpt: While it occasionally drifts into gory action-movie repetitiveness, Elysium fulfills the core requirements of the genre by showcasing wondrous and unsettling technology with a dose of grim topicality.
