Walking out of District 9 I knew I had just watched something special; it was more than a simple sci-fi film, it was a technical achievement that would make writer/director Neill Blomkamp a guy to look out for.  It’s been four years since District 9’s release and Blomkamp steps up to the plate with an even more ambitious project with Elysium.  For those who have seen the trailers, I’m sure like myself you were chomping at the bit as the visuals gave us hope for a film that would not only equal what District 9 did but surpass it in quality and scope.

In the late 21^st century the world becomes overrun with sickness.  The world’s wealthiest and influential come together to create a safe haven from disease.  Elysium is the end result.  A place nestled in space where everything is near perfect, a society without sickness and where citizens can simply lie in a machine and be healed by it no matter how serious the injury or sickness.  It’s these very machines that those back on Earth will do whatever it takes and risk (near) certain death to place their loved ones inside to be healed.

For adults with kids, there is a great need for animated films to make the family happy. For movie studios, there is a great need for films that the entire family can go to that are not slapped with an R-rating which cuts down on profits. Two recent films recently made films about races, Planes and Turbo, showed a need for speed. More and more, the glut of these movies shows the need for greed. Greed is what makes studios only think about making money and not good movies.  I actually did like both Planes and Turbo, which is strange because I absolutely hated Cars 2, which was also a race movie.

Planes is a sequel to Cars, which is odd since it wasn't produced by Pixar but Disneytoons which normally produce a heavy slate of straight-to-video fare. Early reception generated plan to make two more Planes films. Planes takes the world wide race that was tried in Cars 2 and makes it more visually entertaining. One of the most interesting things when watching one of these movies is figuring out the vocal talent. Here the names are not A-list stars, but they serve well. They are Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Cedric the Entertainer, John Cleese, Teri Hatcher, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brad Garrett and Carlos Alazraqui. I know. I've never heard of Alazraqui either, but he does a dead-on imitation of Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots. The visuals are the key here. The swooping vistas of flight are always exhilarating. It is still put in the framework of an overly familiar story of a downtrodden underdog.

The line between hilarious raunchy comedy and over-the-top raunchy comedy is very fine, and We’re the Millers tends to dance on both sides of it. In time such action will be revealed to be both a blessing and a curse, I suspect. With the young crowd, I believe the film will fall right into place with such movies as Horrible Bosses (a comedy which coincidently starred Aniston and Sudeikis) and to be more recent, This is the End. With more mature audiences, the raunchiness may prove to be slightly more than they were expecting to see. With me, I find myself on the side of the young.

David (Jason Sudeikis) is a small town pot dealer in Denver, an occupation he has held since college without moving forward or backward. Hesitant to admit it, he has grown stagnant with the life he’s leading and wants more out of life. Those desires are put on hold after he is robbed, with both his stash and all of his cash including the money intended for his supplier Brad (Ed Helms, The Hangover). Deep in debt with no prospect of paying it back, Brad offers David one opportunity to erase his debt: smuggle a smidge and a half (inside joke, have to see the movie to understand) of marijuana from Mexico across the border back to Denver.

Where do I begin? The first Harry Potter movie and the first Percy Jackson movie were both directed by Chris Columbus, but he moved on in both cases. The other similarities are substantial, and the studio producing the new Percy Jackson movie certainly hopes it can produce a similar success that Harry Potter did for its studio. There are a whole lot of books that are part of an ongoing story. In fact, there is a new series that moves on from Greek gods to Egyptians. That's right, Greek gods, but not like in Clash of the Titans which takes place so many years ago in olden days. Percy Jackson is right up to the present, and Percy Jackson is a half- blood prince, son of Poseidon. The first movie, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, brought us into the crazy world of satyrs and cyclops and other creatures not entirely human.

Before I finish with Percy, I should discuss Young Adult books. There are more and more, and they are all trying to cash in on Harry Potter mania, and they are all probably going to be made into movies. The Hunger Games is another YA series that has developed a strong audience filling the gap left by Twilight. Divergent is coming, as is The Mortal Instruments. The problem is that if I tried to list all the YA projects likely to head to a theater near you it would be mind-numbing. In other words, Sea of Monsters better hit big, because the competition is heavy. Some popular series only got one shot like the recent Beautiful Creatures and The Golden Compass and A Series of Unfortunate Events. The first Percy Jackson box office results were only OK, but it has been given another chance.