1. Downsizing (2017) Movie Review: Honey, What the Hell Happened to Matt Damon?

I'm back and trying to get 365 movies in 365 days for the year of 2018. Hell, I might even try to throw in a book review or two that I'm not reading for the podcasts. We shall see.

    This year started with a total dud, last year's shrinking people movie Downsizing by the normally reliable Alexander Payne, the guy who brought us Election and other things. Matt Damon is in it, you could say, and the plot asks questions. Lots of questions.

    The year is future and people have developed organic shrinking technology in order to battle overpopulation. Sure. Matt Main Character convinces his wife to shrink down, but she fucks off back to her family and friends instead of spending her life with this loser. What follows is the rest of the movie, a standard "white guy finding purpose through poor disenfranchised people" plot. Even the end with a random twist could not save this flick from just being dull.

    Could it have hurt them to do anything with the shrinking idea? Anything at all? We have random consequences of this tech from warlords shrinking enemies, but they live on the side. Besides Hong Chau's manic performance, everyone slept through this except for me because I was waiting for something to happen.

Here Elizabeth and I talk about it at 2am in the airport over on Curious Chats.