[EXPRESSO] Mickey 17 (2025) | Hardspace Shipbreaker Multiplicity

From Bong Joon-Ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer, Okja), we now have Mickey 17, an intriguing original brew of comedy, drama, romance, sci-fi, takin place in the future, where a down on his luck guy, Mickey Barnes, finds himself – due to a huge debt – signing up as an “expendable” for this religious backed colony envoy led by a zealot ex-congressman (Mark Ruffalo), meaning that basically he’s used as a guinea pig to test viruses, be given deadly jobs in the cold of space and then the ice-laden planet they want to colonize, thrown against the wildlife.. doesn’t matter, as they keep back ups of all his memories and just 3D print him a new body when he inevitably kicks the bucket.

One day he’s just left to die in a icy crevice, but miracolously manages to find himself alive and travels back to the outpost, only to notice they didn’t wait around to clone him again…

It’s an interesting film because it can jump to having romantic comedy scenes to serious sci-fi drama, throwing blunt satirical boulders about class warfare, tense thriller scenes, and yet, despite it sounding like it should be a fuckin mess, it all comes together organically, as the star studded cast delivers an incredible range, making the characters believable, even with the wild swings in tone… minus the two main villains, the zealot fascist cult-leader and his fitting wife (Tony Colette), i get why they are so over the top, i do, but they stick out as way too cartoonishly evil (especially when everyone else has some complexity or grounding in this specific sci-fi reality), to the point they become a detriment to what is still a great movie.

It’s still a notable, engaging and interesting film that fully deserves to be seen in cinemas,

[EXPRESSO] After Work (2023) | Automatonic Chomsky Honk

A documentary by Svedish director Erik Gandini (Videocracy) about a potential future where work is even further delegated to machines and automated in some fashion, while discussing the philosophical ramifications of a labor-less society and analizing the various realities around the world, from the Sud Corean culture of overwork as a badge of honor, to the unique case of Kuwait where people are handsomely paid to basically play pretend office work, passing by the testimony of an Amazon delivery driver employee, among others.

Relevant questions are asked, with various figures ranging from foreign ministries to philosophers like Noam Chomsky himself, average people with rents to pay and wealthy heirs alike, and as expect not many answers are given, since the topic at hand encompasses a lot of different realities and views on the subject of labor, how or if providing basic income for everyone without a job is the solution it seem, this documentary never wanted (or wanted to pretend) it could deliver definitive, simplistic solutions to complex problems of our age.

Problem is that despite its intentions and it being a very recent release, at the end it feels kinda slapdash, myopic and kinda outdated, as way too much of this 80 minutes documentary over feature takes from people that are willing to say “Hitler was efficient, can’t deny that away” on camera, rich or privileged in some manner, never properly looks into topic as the NEET percentage in Italy and Greece, ignoring the internet angle all together (so don’t expect mentions of stuff like IA “art”, despite chaggering of how this work-less future would give more time for exploring creative pastimes, etc), sometimes going for gross political indifference, or repeating some vague fears that one could have aired verbatim if this was made 10 years ago.

Bit duff.