Europa Report: Gripping drama of manned mission to Jupiter’s moon
by PATRICK MARTIN
Europa Report is a genuinely gripping and emotionally engaging science fiction film—a description that can only be rarely applied to works in that genre, which in the hands of Hollywood have tended toward empty spectacle, at best ornamental but with little depth.
The film is presented as the after-action report of a mission to explore Europa, one of the four large moons of Jupiter, long believed to be one of a handful of places in the solar system where some form of life could exist. We are told from the beginning that the mission has been difficult, and a sense of foreboding hangs over the entire narrative.
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Will The Hunger Games: Catching Fire “stir up” revolution?
by CHRISTINE SCHOFELT and DAVID WALSH
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games (2012), opened with a weekend box office take of more than $161 million in the US, and approximately $308 million worldwide.
With the trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins, on which the films are based, also selling in the millions of copies, it is clear that some sort of a chord has been struck. Issues raised by The Hunger Games, including social inequality and the build-up of police-state measures, certainly weigh on the minds of many, especially young people, all over the world.
The first book in the science fiction series (The Hunger Games), released in 2008, ignited a controversy as to what exactly was being argued, with both left- and right-wing commentators claiming the stories for their own. Collins has indicated that her outlook is a left-liberal one; she is concerned with the environment, war, and economic deprivation. Her stories inspired a following, however amorphous their message is.
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