Elysium IMAX ***

If "District 9" was about apartheid, "Elysium" is about the 99%. Director/writer Neill Blomkamp has given us another metaphor for our society, a science fiction lens to take a look at where we're heading.

The Elysium of the title is the luxurious and highly advanced abode of the rulers, spinning in space above Earth, where want and disease are unknown. The planet below is a fetid wasteland, a jumble of factories organized by brutal bosses with order enforced by the very robot police that hapless workers, like Max (Matt Damon) construct in very dangerous conditions.

When a factory accident leaves him with days to live unless he can get to the technology of Elysium, Max connects with the techno underworld who smuggle immigrants and are involved in an Elysian plot who can use his help. Along the way in his dangerous quest he connects with a beautiful childhood friend (Alice Braga) who has a dying daughter who also needs the magic machines of Elysium.

Blomkamp succeeds in creating the disparate worlds for his story: the beautiful almost sterile land of Elysium, and the gritty, second-hand technology of Earth. In this regard Max's exoskeleton that keeps him going, and the unexplained lack of airlocks and shields up above, are inspired. The cold calculation of the powerful in Elysium, led by an icy, amalgam-accented Jody Foster as Secretary of Defense, and the power politics there are also convincing.

Ultimately the movie stays true to its action genre, and veers off into a chase/fight between Max and the henchman Kruger (a relentless Sharlto Copley). The ultimate resolution is welcome, but seems too facile, even for a movie.

I'm So Excited ***

A rare miss by Pedro Almodóvar, "I'm So Excited" doesn't get its story off the ground. It looks promising enough at the beginning: the aircraft is in trouble and must return to Madrid, so the flight attendants put most of the passengers to sleep and party with the pilots and the first class passengers, where pills, liquor, and secrets abound.

I liked the three main attendants, an energetic gay trio given to lip-synching drag style and bitchy put-downs. And the passengers headed to Mexico City are an interesting collection of entertainers, businessmen, and mysterious entrepreneurs. Surely there's a funny, sad, and true movie in there somewhere.

Alas, the magic of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,""Talk to Her," and "Volver" never appears. There are interesting characters, incredible coincidences, and true confessions, but it's finally just a jumble of stories and over the top choreography by the enchanted fly boys that never comes together as a coherent movie.

20 Feet from Stardom ****

A fascinating look behinds the scenes at the singers who back up the stars in our favorite songs, including iconic voices you never put a name to, "20 Feet from Stardom" sketches the lives of some of the great backup talents, plus interviews with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Bette Midler, Luther Vandross and more. It's a massive undertaking and masterfully done.

By focusing on three singers, Merry Clayton, Darlene Love, and Lisa Fischer, director Morgan Neville shows us the lives behind the voices, the dreams and aspirations, or just contentment in a role that represent so many voices we all enjoy but may never have appreciated. And there are several aha moments. For me it was the story behind the soaring descant in "Gimme Shelter." You'll have one, too.

Les Misérables ****

Musicals with this much sung dialogue are exceedingly rare, and if you're not accustomed to opera or haven't seen Lay Miz before, it may take some time to adjust. Once into the rhythm, however, it's a richly rewarding experience. The performances, with the notable exception of Russell Crowe, are quite good, and some, like those of Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, are award-worthy. Director Tom Hooper ("The King's Speech") had his cast sing and act at the same time for most of the movie, rather than lip synch after recording, and for me, it works. There's an immediacy to the action that miming cannot produce. I'm pleased to see such a lush and close-up version of musical theater with the occasional soaring camera high above the streets; it's very far from a filmed stage production.

This is 40 ***

An L.A. couple with two daughters reach their 40th birthdays and deal with the disappointments, struggles, and squabbles of life in their upper 5% world.  He's a struggling music distributor, she has a struggling women's wear shop, and their young adolescent and precocious pre-teen struggle with this American life. It has some fascination as a humorous look at life in a certain strata - that they both have fathers with young families is telling - but the drama lies in the fears, hidden resentments, silences that have been building up over the last 14 years. The pot is about to boil over.

The Guilt Trip **

An inventor (Seth Rogen) and his mom (Barbra Streisand), each concerned about the other being single, embark on a cross-country road trip where he hopes to sell his product to distributors. There's history here, and they both have quirks and secrets, which are revealed in due time. But it's a slight work that would have been more at home as a made-for-TV movie, or in a shorter format. Rogen and Streisand are fine, and the banter suits them both, but a fussy mom and a nerdy organic chemist make for a very sedate comedy.

Life of Pi 3D *****

Stunningly beautiful, exquisitely composed, with the most artistic use of 3D that I have every seen, "Life of Pi" is a philosophy lesson masquerading as an adventure story. Rife with spectacular disasters, both great and small, and largely spent on a lifeboat occupied by a young man and a Bengal tiger, it would seem to be a film that couldn't be made. But in the hands of Ang Lee and his CGI magicians, it's impossible to tell where live action ends and computer graphics begin, or where, for that matter, where reality ends and fiction begins.

And that's the point, in a way. Young Pi has always been a searcher, a believer in several religions and a devotee of many gods. In his shipwreck and survival he is finally able to answer the big questions he has asked all his life. The movie becomes a parable, and I dare say no audience has ever seen a more visually compelling argument.