Review: The Conjuring

Copyright: Warner Bros.

James Wan reminds me of Stieve Martin. No, not because he also has silvery hair and likes to play a banjo, but because like Martin, Wan made both really great movies, and simultaneously, gave his audience films that were, in the best case, forgettable.

Unlike Martin, Wan works exclusively in the horror genre – he is best known for building the Saw franchise, a series that made a lot of money, but delivered much less in the cinematic sense, especially after the first movie that at least had some twisted ingenuity.

But, in 2011. Wan made Insidious, for me one of the best horror movies in the past decade. In The Conjuring, Wan reuses the classic horror movie formula that worked so well in previously mentioned picture. This time, he used a real life event, a haunting of the Perron family that moved into a isolated farmhouse in Rode Island that allegedly took place in 1970s.

Review: We're the Millers

Copyright: New Line Cinema/Warner Bros.

One happy family, one giant RW, some nice weather and some free time – all adds up to a great vacation in Mexico. But, the family isn’t real, but instead made up from total strangers that have a mission to carry a big shipment of pot across the border. Its creator it Dave, a small time dealer that has a debt to clear, mom a stripper, daughter a homeless girl and son an abandoned teenager that doesn’t fully realise his parents left him.

They don’t like each other, but have to act as a normal family on a road trip that will involve corrupt Mexican police officers that prefer the company of other men, drug lords, nervous border guards and other RV enthusiasts.

We're the Millers is a road trip comedy that didn’t aim very high, but achieved a modest result, mostly through crude, unexpected jokes and the chemistry of the cast.

Review: Elysium

Copyright: Sony Pictures

I didn’t buy Neill Blomkamp's District 9 back in 2009 – I was impressed by the wise use of CGI and the way it was perfectly interwoven in the relatively low budget movie – the rest simply didn’t do it for me, not in the way I suspected it was supposed to do.

Now, I don’t buy Elysium ether. Once again, the same demon haunts his new movie – stating the obvious and presenting it as a deep social commentary.

In his previous movie, segregation that still plagues the South Africa collective conciseness was the main topic. In the world of Elysium, it’s not the separation of people on the basis of their skin color or other biological features; instead, in the 22. century, mankind is divided by money. The ones who have it live on a enormous space station called Elysium, which has its own gravity and government. Citizens of Elysium have almost endless recourses and technology that makes them immune to illness or the regular aging process.