Elysium (2013)

After South African filmmaker Neil Blomkamp made instant classic “District 9,” he had to go big. So, it’s inevitable that his studio summer flick “Elysium” would disappoint. The hero here is Max (Matt Damon), an do-gooder ex-con in 2154 who suffers an accidental death-sentence radiation dose at work, where he builds the RoboCops that abuse the populace. Max won’t die quiet. He wants to get his ass to Elysium, a glistening, guarded spaceship hovering over Earth like a second moon. Ninety-nine percenters alert: Elysium is home only to the rich, and features medical machines that cure any injury or illness. Earth? It’s crowded, dying. Now oddly armored with an exoskeleton from “Aliens,” Max is out for Elyisum, but has to pass through a bounty hunter (Sharlto Copley of “9”) and a military honcho (Jodie Foster, dishing a whack accent). Bound to Hollywood cliché now, Blomkamp tosses in an angelic childhood sweetheart (Alice Braga) with an adorable Dickens preschooler with end-stage leukemia, who also needs curing. What will Max do? Blomkamp’s visuals thrill, but as the climax grinds too easy and “9” echoed too deeply, his leftist sci-fi throwdown feels a weak second effort. B

Ginger and Rosa (2013)

In 1962 London BFF girls “Ginger and Rosa” (Elle Fanning of “Super 8” and newcomer Alice Englert) do that teen thing that many teens do: Piss on chores and curfew, dabble in romances, and smoke. They also strain under paranoia from the Cuban Missile Crisis and a far closer atomic bomb of the emotional kind involving Ginger’s anarchist dad and fragile mom (Alessandro Nivola and Christina Hendricks). Despite the obvious turn, I won’t spill details, but director/writer Sally Potter (“Orlando”) lights the fuse early. Porter has a beautiful-looking film here, picture-wise, and perfects the myriad details of teens from clothes to petty jealousies. But it’s also top heavy with too many Jiminy Crickets for Ginger. Annette Bening plays a leftist with no purpose in life but to dispel advise to our gal, and the same is true of Ginger’s gay godparents (Timothy Spall and Oliver Platt). More so, the only time a radio plays, it bears only doom and gloom like some Orsen Welles production. (TV, movies, nor newspapers figure at all.) All that said, Fanning is spectacular, a Yank going Brit on screen, and as flawlessly as Streep did Thatcher. B