Film review: In Time (2011)

Director: Andrew Niccol

Cast: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy

Year: 2011

What would you do if you knew when you were going to die? How would you spend your last few days or last few hours?

These are some of the questions at the center of In Time, an existential thriller that takes place in a futuristic California where time is the new currency and bus fares cost 2 hours of your life.

Our protagonist, Will Salas, unevenly played by Justin Timberlake lives in a run-down district named Dayton. On his left arm, and that of everybody else, there is a timer, counting down the days, hours and minutes he has left to live. Through work he survives, day by day, too busy trying to stay alive to have any time to enjoy life and get himself a girlfriend as his mother urges him to.

Architecture & Film: Unfinished Spaces (Cuba, 2011)

Before my friends and significant other bailed on me at the last minute right before the 2nd and 3rd day of the Architecture & Design Film Festival that took place in Chicago almost two months ago, I managed to watch the opening film, the Cuban documentary Unfinished Spaces.

If seen from a completely apolitical perspective, the film accomplishes two things. First, it introduces us to a group of charming and eloquent personalities, most of whom are architects that, at some point in their lives, shared the dream to complete a huge educational complex for the arts in the very young Cuban Revolution. Secondly, the film manages to craft a story about lost opportunities and nostalgia for a special time in the history of a troubled Caribbean island where hope and dreams seemed to be welcome.