Archive 1997-2016
With self-conscious humour permeating the comedy genre, and an unquenchable Hollywood thirsting for ever more bombast and reflexivity, the only place left to go from riffing on cinematic forebears – a practice which lost all appeal somewhere between Kill Bill and this month’s Disaster Movie – is satirizing the industry itself.
Centretown Movies bounced back with a strong turnout for the Ecology Ottawa-hosted screening of Who Killed the Electric Car? July 25, after inclement weather forced the cancellation of the first film screening, Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, the previous week.
From its opening shot, an aerial view of Chicago – a.k.a., Gotham – which sets in motion a daring bank heist, The Dark Knight sets itself emphatically in the real world instead of a fantastical universe accustomed to superheroes and hokey comic book mysticism.
Eight hundred years into the future, a tiny waste disposal robot named WALL-E (for Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-class) is the only sentient being left on Earth. Scavenging replacement parts from his fellow, inactive, WALL-E units when he suffers damage, he continues to follow his directive to compact and organize the refuse left behind by the human exodus which took place in the 2100s, when mega-corporation Buy ‘n Large essentially took over the planet and the consumerist apotheosis became a terrestrial apocalypse.