In Time (2011 – 12, 109 min
Director: Andrew Niccol
Starring: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried and Olivia Wilde
Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller
In a future where people stop aging at 25, but are engineered to live only one more year, having the means to buy your way out of the situation is a shot at immortal youth.
Welcome to a world where time has become the ultimate currency. You stop aging at 25, but there’s a catch: you’re genetically-engineered to live only one more year, unless you can buy your way out of it. The rich “earn” decades at a time (remaining at age 25), becoming essentially immortal, while the rest beg, borrow or steal enough hours to make it through the day. When a man from the wrong side of the tracks is falsely accused of murder, he is forced to go on the run with a beautiful hostage. Living minute to minute, the duo’s love becomes a powerful tool in their war against the system.
Review by Henry Barnes The Guardian, Friday 4 November 2011
This elaborately imagined sci-fi thriller from the Gattaca director is a fun ride, even if its message is a bit obvious
TRON: Legacy (2010) – PG – 125 min
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde
The son of a virtual world designer goes looking for his father and ends up inside the digital world that his father designed. He meets his father’s creation turned bad and a unique ally who was born inside the digital domain of The Grid.
Sam Flynn, the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn, looks into his father’s disappearance and finds himself pulled into the same world of fierce programs and gladiatorial games where his father has been living for 20 years. Along with Kevin’s loyal confidant, father and son embark on a life-and-death journey across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.
Tron Legacy – review Steve Rose guardian.co.uk, Sunday 5 December 2010
Any sequel to Tron was always going to be a tricky task but Disney may just have pulled it off – if you don’t think too much
Tron Legacy is best enjoyed as a showreel of cutting-edge visuals – an extended Daft Punk video, perhaps, or a computer simulation of Bridges’ inner turmoil since he won his Oscar last year. He won’t win any for this but the visual effects departments might.
It is often beautiful to look at, and could come to represent the fashion tropes of its era as faithfully as its predecessor did. And the silliness somehow adds to the enjoyment rather than detracting from it. It’s the best kind of bonkers.
