Three Films Make A Post: There is a cat in the brain

Elysium (2013): One shouldn't be surprised about the critical drubbing Neill Blomkamp's neo-cyberpunk movie received by mainstream critics. It's a film far too angry about the state of the world for the bourgeois set to stomach. Particularly since it's not at all graceful about its rage and would clearly love to punch you (and possibly me, too) in the face - for good reasons.
That feeling of well-grounded yet quite consuming rage the film shares with its protagonist Matt Damon (in one of his good outings) does of course also cause its final act to turn into a full-grown violent wish fulfilment fantasy with a dash of deus ex machina but then, how else could Elysium not end in absolute bitterness? Generally, even in the real world, power doesn't sit down with the people it crushes under its boots to build a better world, so I don't know how else the film could have ended. Unless you'd argue for bitter and pessimistic, in which case you could of course kiss the money Blomkamp needed for all the pretty SF stuff on screen goodbye.

Maneater (2007): Gary Yates's SyFy Channel movie is a perfectly entertaining little film about a tiger making its new home in the woods belonging to your typical US small town, eating hunters, joggers, and other undesirables. Thanks to a very entertaining performance of Gary Busey as one of the nicest and more competent sheriffs in this sort of movie, the inclusion of a tiger-telepathic little boy sub-plot, as well as of a great white British hunter with excellent facial hair (one supposes for the screenwriter British colonial India is still a thing) it's really rather pleasant to watch. Of course, originality, etc. etc.


Ritual (2013): Original isn’t what Mickey Keating’s Ritual is about either but this quite low budget piece about an estranged couple’s troubles with some Texan cultists highly recommends itself with as clever a use of seemingly low res footage as one could wish for, an idea of Americana bordering on David Lynch, and a highly effective approach to showing its doomed protagonists stumbling ever deeper into trouble. It’s a very simple story but Keating tells his tale so well and with such a fine hand for pacing only the most churlish would mind. In fact, the simplicity of the plot and the archetypal form the film’s threats take on only help make its best scenes (and there are many) all the more nightmarish.