I feel like the premise of this movie was created from a couple of guys sitting at a pitch meeting and one of them said ‘Let’s create a movie about people becoming small and living a miniature paradise’. After almost a decade in development hell, by the time this idea was greenlit, the idea was watered it down to include condescending liberal commentary spoken through the avatar of an Asian immigrant stereotype that would have been deemed racist written by anyone right of Bernie Sanders and said “Let’s give it to Matt Damon!”. And this is how we got Downsizing. Downsizing is a film about ‘scientists’ creating an irreversible procedure called well…Downsizing, which is used as a tool to fight ‘overpopulation’ *cough* Climate Change *cough*. Matt Damon stars as a middle age married man who is miserable because his life has no fulfillment and somehow can’t survive on $150,000 equity in Nebraska of all places. So he decides to become small to start over again and almost immediately his life as a small person is worse than his life at normal size which destroys the purpose of being small in the first place. …show more content…
There is no gripping story here to keep you interested because once you have rejected the stupidity of this storyline, you are watching Matt Damon go through the most emotionless midlife crisis in cinema history and BTW the runtime here…2 hours and 15 minutes. 135 minutes of Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor thinking that shoving in messaging of global warming, white privilege, and failures of Capitalism proves they are way smarter than they actually are. By the time, you have given up on this film, they have enough time to make you spend the last 20 minutes questioning what are you even watching and what any of this has to do with the original concept which opened the film in the first
The first connection is the idea of environmental injustice. As we learned earlier in class, a lot of times people of color or lower economic backgrounds get the brunt of environmental unfriendly practices. This is clearly seen in the film, the people that Fox interviewed lived in what looked like poorer communities and in some cases rundown houses and they were the ones who had the wells in their yards. This is similar to the article on environmental injustice in Warren County by Eileen McGurthy where lower class African Americans are fighting against having a toxic waste dump put in their back yards. This is the idea of “I don’t want it in my backyard” that is seen with many different instances. If you are wealthy, you can buy your way out of a situation like a natural gas well in your area, but when you are poor and have no monetary power there is not much you can do. Another way that this film connects to concepts we have talked about in class is the idea that America is always wanting to produce more, more and much more. Many times in the film you see miles upon miles of different drilling sites just covering the landscape. Throughout the course we have read articles that have talked about how America is constantly wanting to produce more, a good example of this is the dust bowl. One of the reasons the dust bowl happened was because we did not know when to
This demonstrates to us that no matter how much your legal or moral laws are violated, what matters is how you as an individual react to the situation, justly or unjustly. This movie is centered around the notion that if you are a person of ethnic background, that alone is reason for others to forsake your rights, although in the long run justice will prevail
The main stereotype in this movie is that Asian men only care about their jobs and their careers and little else. That the Asian man will go through great sacrifice to get to the top of the business that they work for. From beginning to end, many white families are portrayed in the movie showing that the American people have family values. Yet absent through the whole course of the picture is any Asian man with his family. This signifies that the Asian group does not have time, nor wants to make time to have a family life because they are trying to succeed in business. The Asian boss in the film wanted the results to his li...
Throughout the movie, Michael Moore wants the audience to feel the emotion that he, as the director, has put into the film. Michael Moore puts his life work into this movie because this, for him, was not just a new movie subject, this affected his family directly. His father lost his job at an assembly line after thirty-seven loyal years of service because the company thought they could make more money cutting the workers. He has spent countless hours and years on the film because he was able to see that the economy was self destructing with greed. Moore uses Aristotle’s persuasive appeals to show the corruption throughout America that has come from a capitalistic economy.
The movie starts with the story of Rubin Carter and his fight for the middleweight championship. He lost the match in a rigged bout to a weaker opponent. Although, Rubin dominated the ring, he lost the title. The fight foreshadows the racial discrimination that will be played throughout the movie. Later in the movie in the Lafayette Grill two African-American males of middle build murdered three people at the all white establishment. Rubin Carter and John Artis were accused of being those two men. Carter and Artis went to prison for three life sentences. The future looks slim for Carter, however, a pivotal change comes when Lezra Martin discovers Carter's book.
Although the film offers no obvious dramatic plotline, one of the most compelling aspects is the emotional honesty of the characters throughout, especially Forrest. As the storyline progresses to reveal themes of friendship, loyalty, courage, and luck, the audience grows to genuin...
I thought this movie was a good example of a community going from mechanical to organic solidarity. In the beginning, the people in the community were mirror images
... supremacist gang, to rioting in an Asian owned grocery store, to finally brutally murdering someone. We observe as family ties become increasingly strained in every way, the viewer can easily conclude that Derek’s racism as well as his eventual influence on his younger brother ultimately contributed to their own downfall. As controversial as this movie maybe for the offensive language and brutal violence, it is a movie that deserves to be seen, and even discussed. It really provides insight into some factors within society that cannot be contained by the law or even deterred by even the harshest punishments. Even though American society is becoming more modernized as time goes by in terms of tolerance, racism will unfortunately always be prevalent in society and inevitably it will also lead some individuals to violently express their distorted mentalities.
This movie is a wonderful production starting from 1960 and ending in 1969 covering all the different things that occurred during this unbelievable decade. The movie takes place in many different areas starring two main families; a very suburban, white family who were excepting of blacks, and a very positive black family trying to push black rights in Mississippi. The movie portrayed many historical events while also including the families and how the two were intertwined. These families were very different, yet so much alike, they both portrayed what to me the whole ‘message’ of the movie was. Although everyone was so different they all faced such drastic decisions and issues that affected everyone in so many different ways. It wasn’t like one person’s pain was easier to handle than another is that’s like saying Vietnam was harder on those men than on the men that stood for black rights or vice versa, everyone faced these equally hard issues. So it seemed everyone was very emotionally involved. In fact our whole country was very involved in president elections and campaigns against the war, it seemed everyone really cared.
... that the film opens with. While the story may be slightly dramatic and pieces of the story “coincidentally” seem to fall into exactly the wrong place at the wrong time causing the tragedies in the film to happen, the events in this film are entirely capable of being a reality. Racism and prejudice continue to be prevalent issues in our society, but like Anthony, we can learn to overcome anything that holds us back from putting unity into practice and making our world a better place for everyone.
I have always believed that all races have their good and bad. Their is never going to be the perfect race. This movie definitely set a powerful message that life is not perfect for any race and that even though people are from different cultures, they are all interconnected somehow. The filmmakers did a great job at showing us that individuals should not be based on first impressions such as skin color or the social status.
It is evident the amount of work director David Fincher put into the creation of this masterpiece of a film, from the cast who seemed to almost be born for their roles to a brilliantly written screenplay and very fitting music. From the very beginning, the film is one which is easy to become completely enthralled in, exposing the numerous fallacies of modern day society. It is clear that the fundamental point of the film is to illustrate that consumerism is running rampant in our own society. Thus, this pernicious way of life has transformed masculinity into a brand and turned self-worth into a commodity which people believe can be strengthened through the acquisition of goods. Though much of this movie discusses the detriments of society, the film offers tangible ways to combat these incessant problems.
Although there were many concepts that were present within the movie, I choose to focus on two that I thought to be most important. The first is the realistic conflict theory. Our textbook defines this as, “the view that prejudice...
The films central narrative follows the protagonist, city lawyer; Robert Clayton Dean (Smith) who, after a series of accidental events, finds himself in possession of an incriminating video tape of Thomas Bryan Reynolds (Voight) who is a high ranking (yet slightly rogue) official within the NSA. The video features Reynolds killing a Congressman who refused to support a new legislation that would give the NSA the power to drastically enhance its surveillance capabilities, thus boosting Reynolds career and power. Once they realise that Dean has possession of the tape, the NSA then sets up almost ev...
In many parts of America, people would find it impossible to believe that this film is depicting real events happening in 2008. Yet in other parts, where the under-current of racism is palpable even if not manifested as overtly as at Charleston High in Mississippi, minorities will be able to relate to their own experiences of being made to feel different and unwelcome in many subtle ways every single day. It was shocking to find out this was still happening in this day and age, I rarely witness to any kind of cruelty or racism so to find out that this was a normal thing in Charleston, Mississippi. This was appalling to say the least. Teens are dealing with issues that a teen shouldn’t even be bothered to deal with. The white student were put in a situation where they either defy their parents and do what’s right, or go along with what they said and fall in the line of ignorance. The movie really showed just who was willing to fight for what’s right and who were too scared to break questionable traditions.