In a plausible near future, Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is part of the research mission ARES III, part of a five-mission effort to explore Mars. But Mars is a hostile planet and when a massive sandstorm blows up with just a few minutes warning, the entire crew scrambles into the MAV, the Mars Ascent Vehicle, desperate to take off and rendezvous with the orbiting station a few hundred miles above the planet. The short journey from…Read More
Review: The Butler
There have been two major films about the Black American experience released in 2012, 12 Years a Slave and The Butler. The former is about a particularly interesting moment in American history when the North saw blacks as equal citizens while the South still viewed them as slaves, property, second class citizens. It’s a powerful and moving film with an extraordinary performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor as the enslaved Solomon Northup. The Butler is more recent history, focused…Read More
Review: 12 Years a Slave
It’s difficult to imagine a more troubled historical era in American history than the mid 1800s when the Northern states had emancipated former black slaves as free citizens, while Southern states continued the heinous practice of slavery, albeit with the promise of “papers” granting freedom after a certain period of indentured servitude. Lesser known were the bands of slavers who would kidnap free blacks in the Northern states and ship them South, sold into slavery…Read More
Review: 2012
Can you hear that sound? It’s a crack slowly but unceasingly running through the Earth, a crack that will tear buildings apart, leave gaping crevasses where previously there were roads, and rip children out of their parent’s hands, to plummet to their deaths as the world collapses. But all is not lost, a few hundred thousand people have a secret plan to escape the worldwide destruction and start humanity anew, reseeding the Earth post-apocalypse. Or…Read More