'Zoo' Partially Embraces a Heartfelt Wild Side

Some people say they live in a zoo, but very few can literally back that claim up.

Buying any piece of real estate typically wears a person down for quite some time, dealing with the endless red tape and practically selling your name and your life away in order to committing to stay there for however many years down the line. Normally, it isn’t something that done on a whim, especially when it’s for something more than you bargained for. That is, unless you’re a single father of two who decides to start anew and buy a zoo in the country. Matt Damon happens to be that single father of two in We Bought a Zoo. 

We Bought a Zoo is based on a true story, helmed by acclaimed director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous), of a family from England, who bought a dilapidated zoo and subsequently reopened the facility to the public. Crowe’s adaptation Americanizes the story, transplanting the narrative across the ocean to the bright California countryside.

Babysitting Takes a Wild Ride in 'Sitter'

What started out as an ordinary night quickly became another adventure in babysitting.

I’m almost glad I was never expected to babysit. Kids are more than little handfuls when around their parents, but even greater terrors when grown-ups are nowhere to be seen. Of course, not all kids are like that, but just one little terror is more than enough. In his husky swan song, Jonah Hill deals with not double, but triple the trouble in David Gordon Green’s The Sitter. 

In his typical twenty-something slacker persona, Hill’s character, Noah, is coerced into babysitting his neighbor’s trio of “darling” for what should be a quiet evening. Expectedly, that is not the case when Noah’s girlfriend calls wanting him to pick up some drugs and come to a party and he accepts. With the three kids in tow, what started as a quiet night turns into chaos in New York City.

Retro-Futuristic 'In Time' Clocks Forward to Immortality

Will (Justin Timberlake) and Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried) steal from the rich and give to the poor.

The future is never as brighter as it today. Technology might create a simpler lifestyle and immortality may be closer in reach than before, but fate will deal that dystrophic future seen countless times before. Director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca), examines the near future from In Time where the rich live forever and the poor die young. 

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives in that particular future where wealth segments society. People physically age until twenty-five and are branded with a time clock on the arm. The rich squander decades and centuries in casinos and other luxuries; the poor struggle to their final seconds in the ghetto before timing out. Time is everything. It can be earned, gifted or stolen. Whether it be a simple cup of coffee, a wager on the betting table or the monthly mortgage payment, everything has a mortal price worth a particular amount of time.