Dark Phoenix
June 24, 2019 at 1:09 pm | Posted in 2019 | Leave a commentTags: Action Film, Alexandra Shipp, Ato Essandoh, Comic Book, Evan Peters, Halston Sage, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Movie Review, Nicholas Hoult, Scott Shepherd, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan
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I must say that this film was a lot better than I thought it would be. My expectations were partly shaped by the overall reviews for the film (26% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and my experience with every other X-Men movie (except “Logan”), but especially the last one (review here). I collected the original Dark Phoenix X-men comics when they first came out. That has always been one of my favorite story lines in comics, and I hated what “X-Men Last Stand” did with it. So, I suppose, it was hard not to be pleasantly surprised by this film. At least Phoenix was the core story here. We did have a silly subplot about aliens that I could have done without, but that plot did generate some fun fight scenes. In fact, the fight scene on the train may be my favorite from an X-Men movie, allowing every character there to contribute meaningfully to the battle; something that is often difficult with a large, ensemble cast. Also, a note about Sophie Turner- I did not give her enough credit in the last film. Through watching her on “Game of Thrones,” I have realized what a strong actor she is. Here, I think she shows Jean Grey’s struggle effectively. Now, I’m going to talk about the ending for a bit (so spoilers, etc.). I do not like how either X-Men film has handled her death, though “Last Stand” got closer to the spirit of the comics. Here her sacrifice was not at all clear. In fact, you could reasonably think that, after killing the bad guy, she just didn’t return to Earth. That ending was disappointing; it lacked the power her sacrifice deserved. Also, just as a side note, why on earth would they name the school after her? Why not Raven? She was there longer, more integral to the school’s development, and she was murdered by Jean. So…? That cute ending felt very disingenuous. In fact, the ending overall was a big let down. They built Jean up over the course of the entire movie and then settled for a soft; safe ending. What a shame. This was a good film, but it was a far cry from a great one. Maybe Marvel can do it right, whenever they choose to take this story line on.
Alien: Covenant
May 21, 2017 at 7:42 pm | Posted in 2017 | Leave a commentTags: Action Film, Amy Seimetz, Billy Crudup, Callie Hernandez, Carmen Ejogo, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Horror, Jussie Smollett, Katherine Waterston, Michael Fassbender, Ridley Scott, Sci-Fi
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The genius’s curse. A filmmaker redefines the industry with a groundbreaking film. The second in the series is as good as, or better than, the first. And then it all goes down hill… And we end up with “The Godfather, Part III,” ewoks and Jar Jar Binks, and now “Prometheus” and “Covenant.” In fact, it seems that Ridley Scott has fallen into the same trap that George Lucas did– the need to over explain, and therefore over complicate. Everything was fine when the Force was just the Force and evil aliens wreaked havoc on unsuspecting crew members. But now we have midichlorians and an unbelievably complicated backstory about how humans and the aliens came into being. It is all so ponderous and complex that it cannot help but slow the story down. When this film is focused on the aliens, it works. Scott has faithfully captured HR Giger’s imagery beautifully. We spin through disorientingly similar passageways on spaceships and in dead alien cities. There are some great scary moments and several good jumps to be had, just not nearly enough of them. These scenes, which helped to make the first movies such classics, are painfully few and far between. The rest of the time, we get Michael Fassbender talking to himself about life, morality and who cares what else. Too much of this film was tedious and sometimes baffling. There was an air of weightyness that hung over the whole story, as though Scott has something important he wants to say. Unfortunately, that becomes the focus of the film. The audience would have been better served had he simply made another really good horror film. It seems that, as soon as a director understands that they have created something important, they shouldn’t be allowed to keep working on it. The line between importance and self-importance seems to be an awfully thin one that is just too easy to cross.
X-Men: Apocalypse
May 29, 2016 at 7:22 pm | Posted in 2016 | 1 CommentTags: Action Film, Alexandra Shipp, Ben Hardy, Bryan Singer, Comic Book, Evan Peters, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Movie Review, Nicholas Hoult, Olivia Munn, Oscar Isaac, Rose Byrne, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, X-Men
∅
“Everyone knows that the third movie is always the worst,” says Jean Grey (Sophie Turner from “Game of Thrones” fame) to her friends after they have just seen “Return of the Jedi.” It would be a funnier inside joke if it weren’t so bitterly true of this, the 3rd in the new incarnation of X-Men films. If there is any silver lining to having sat through 2 1/2 hours of a mind-numbingly self-important B-movie, it is that I can finally end my long streak (almost 15 months) of not hating a movie. When there are so very many things wrong with a film, it can be hard to know where to start or what to include. But, I think I have to start with what felt like the biggest sin of all: turning good actors into bad ones. Nobody can honestly question the skills of the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Oscar Isaac or Rose Byrne. Even lesser known actors like Evan Peters (“American Horror Story”), Tye Sheridan (“Mud”) or Kodi Smit-McPhee (“The Road”) have shown they know their craft. Yet, if there is a truism in Hollywood it is that you cannot always get a good performance out of a bad actor but you can always get a bad performance out of a good one. Melodramatic, emotionally-disingenuous dialogue and ham-fisted direction will result in moments like Fassbender’s painful, “is this what you want, God?” speech. Director Bryan Singer, who once was capable of the genius of “The Usual Suspects,” has shown a recent perverse glee at trading emotional honesty for the illusion of it. He doesn’t try to make simple, fun comic book escapism, like Marvel Studios does so well. Nor are his films dark, brooding and atmospheric the way the current DC films are. He seems happy to create films that think they are saying something important about life but are just dull, emotionless and self-important. This one plods along with a storyline that is not worth explaining and full of contradictions, both big and small. In an attempt to reboot the series, Singer and Fox Pictures decided not to simply recast and start over (as so many superhero films have done). Rather, they decided to go with an altered timeline (a la the “Star Trek” franchise reboot). However, unlike JJ Abrams’s carefully constructed re-envisioning, this one has been an increasingly lazy attempt. Characters are reintroduced in radically different ways that could not have been created by the timeline reset as envisioned in the last movie. That said, the one positive here is that some of these reimagined characters (Cyclops, Jean Grey, Angel and, especially, Storm) are real improvements over past incarnations. This movie was both vapid and pretentious, impossibly convoluted and dreadfully dull. But, maybe… just maybe… it doesn’t deserve a ∅ because it introduces the characters that might make for some interesting films in the future. No, wait. I changed my mind. It does deserve a ∅.
Macbeth
January 4, 2016 at 6:58 pm | Posted in 2015 | Leave a commentTags: Drama, Justin Kurzel, Macbeth, Marion Cotillard, Michael Fassbender, Movie Review, Paddy Considine, Period Piece, Shakespeare
◊ ◊ ½
I must confess, at the start, that I do not know this play as well as some of Shakespeare’s. I have only read it once and seen two films versions (neither of them traditional) and have never seen it on stage. That makes it hard for me, from the outset, to judge this film for its interpretation of a classic play. However, that may be a good thing, as it means that I can only assess the film as a thing unto itself. To that end, I must say this was a spectacular, moody mess. Director Justin Kurzel, having directed only one full-length feature before (“The Snowtown Murders”), has turned his eye to one of the great masterpieces of literature. His inexperience does not leave him cowed, however, as he seems determined to make this story his own. And, visually he succeeds. As a work of visual art, wholly divorced from story, this film is stunning. Every single image on screen was arresting and beautiful. Painted in grand splashes of primary colors, this film felt phantasmagorical and almost comic-book like at times, reminding me of a Frank Miller – Zack Snyder hybrid. It was beautiful, absolutely gorgeous and rich and… emotionally inert. It felt like all the emotions in the film were on the screen and not in the scenes. The visuals gave the film a murky foreboding and sense of dread in every scene. As thought to match that somberness, the actors seemed to do little more than sulk and mumble through their lines. Often hidden almost entirely in shadows or covered in beards and face paint, it was frequently hard to tell who was who. Likewise, the lethargic stage directions left most of them largely stationary while giving their lines. This meant there were few visual cues for the audience to use to sort through the difficult Elizabethan English. As a result, much of what was happened seemed confusing. Clearly everyone was upset and they were clearly upset at Macbeth. He was doing some bad bad things. But nuance was lost and the beauty of the language was lost. Great lines were given without the sort of clear enunciation and staging to allow the audience to absorb them, leaving them lost in the wash of words against a beautiful backdrop. As such, the Scottish Play seemed less the point here than it was simply an opportunity to show off a particular vision. As arresting as that vision could be, I don’t know if it’s reason enough to see the film. Sullen, dark and with little to say; it would seem that Kurzel has created the newest edition to the canon: emo Macbeth.
Frank
August 27, 2014 at 1:00 pm | Posted in 2014 | Leave a commentTags: Comedy, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Fassbender, Movie Review
◊ ◊ ◊ ½
This odd little gem is hard to describe. It’s based loosely on the true story of Frank Sidebottom, a character played by singer/musician Chris Sievey. In real life, Sievey (who died of throat cancer at 55) stepped in and out of the character of Frank (who wore a giant fiberglass head) all the time. While as Frank, he performed his weirdly perky/disturbing songs all over England, gaining a small amount of fame and an even smaller following, sometimes despite his apparent best efforts to undermine himself. In the film, Frank never removes the head and nobody knows what he looks like (a particularly sly joke, given that we all know he’s played by Michael Fassbender). He and his unpronounceable band sit around being pretentious and making wholly intolerable music together. The film is told from the point of view of Jon, played by Irish actor, Domhnall Gleeson (“Calvary,” “About Time,” best known for Bill Weasley in the “Harry Potter” series and, like every other almost-known in Hollywood, is going to be in the new “Star Wars” film). He represents Jon Ronson, who wrote the screenplay based on his own experience with Sievey and Frank. Jon is the audience’s window into the absurdity and he observes it with a sometimes wry/sometimes naive detachment. Most of the film proceeds from this perspective and is absurdist, silly and oddly funny. But, during the second half, the movie takes on a darker, more menacing tone that creeps in so slowly that, though I can see the exact moment it began in retrospect, I did not notice it until long after it had descended. This tone shifts again toward an unexpected sentimentality for the last quarter of the film. And, while it got dangerously close to becoming a sappy mess at one point, it judiciously pulled back and the final scene, while definitely sentimental, felt well-earned, sweet and effective. In those moments, Frank appeared to be channeling the late Ian Curtis from Joy Division. It was a brilliant touch that helped ground Frank in the real world. Yes, this film is absurd and Frank is absurd but creativity does not come without a price and, for some, that price is their sanity.
X-Men: Day of Future Past
May 25, 2014 at 5:54 pm | Posted in 2014 | Leave a commentTags: Action Film, Bryan Singer, Comic Book, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, Movie Review, Nicholas Hoult, Patrick Stewart, Peter Dinklage
◊ ½
I’m not sure who loves this film (though, clearly, there are those who do). I would think it delves too deep into the X-Men universe for the casual film goer and delves into it too poorly for the true fan. The movie is a barrage of characters, some of them played by two different actors, and none of them given any context or back story. So many actors were crowded into this film (Jennifer Lawrence, Patrick Stewart, James McAvoy, Ian McKellen, Michael Fassbender, Peter Dinklage, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Evan Peters, Shawn Ashmore, Ellen Page, Anna Paquin,Kelsey Grammer, Famke Janssen, James Marsden) that there was scarcely any time for any of them, except Hugh Jackman, to spend more than 10 minutes on screen. As such, there is just too little to hold onto here and no one to care about. It’s clear you are expected to have seen every other X-Men movie ever made, how else could you possibly be expected to make sense of the mishmash of flashback references to those films? Yet, the film also cheats on its own story, significantly altering (or outright ignoring) the history it established in those films. How is Professor X still alive in the future when he died in a previous film? How is the villain Stryker a man of about 30 in 1973 and in his late 40s 36 years later? And how did Kitty Pride suddenly acquire a whole new ability? The film is sloppy but it doesn’t care because it assumes we won’t care either, and perhaps we shouldn’t. But I do. The Chris Claremont/John Byrne short story ran in the X-Men comic in 1981. I read it as a kid and loved it’s nihilistic vision of the future and the larger metaphor of how societies treat outcasts (this was the first time it had been so clearly expressed within the X-Men world). However, in cinema today, nihilistic futures and the mutant as outsider metaphor have been done to death, robbing this film of any potential impact. All that is left, is just another action film. But, if “X-Men: Days of Future Past” is just action movie fun, then shouldn’t it be more fun? With the barrage of characters and the jumping back and forth between time periods, it’s hard for any particular scene to gain any traction. In the end, they were just explosive moments of special effects. At one point in time (not that many years ago), cool effects were enough, but not any more. In the end, I was bored more than anything else in this film.
12 Years A Slave
November 3, 2013 at 7:06 pm | Posted in 2013 | Leave a commentTags: 12 Years A Slave, Alfre Woodard, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Drama, Garret Dillahunt, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael Fassbender, Movie Review, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Period Piece, Sarah Paulson, Steve McQueen
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Throughout this film I found it hard not to compare it to Tarantino’s 2012 film, “Django Unchained.” This is that film’s older brother. Far less splashy than “Django” but also, because it’s grounded in the real world, far more disturbing. I left “Django” a bit in awe of the spectacle of it; after “12 Years,” I felt exhausted. This is not an easy film to see. It is truly brutal in parts and has the worst scene of a person being whipped I think I have ever seen. That said, there are powerful performances here. Virtually every little speaking part has somebody of note: Paul Giamatti, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, Alfre Woodard, Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson, Garret Dillahunt. It seems everyone wanted to be in this film and it shows in their performances. Chiwetel Ejiofor, who has been on my radar since 2005’s “Serenity,” has finally gotten the vehicle to show off his talent; I fully expect his star to rise rapidly from here. If director Steve McQueen (who’s first two films were the shockingly brilliant “Hunger” and “Shame”) has a muse, it’s Michael Fassbender. He throws himself into roles in a way few actors do and his intensity is unnerving here; he oozes a sort of ugliness that many actors would be afraid to portray. He will likely get an Oscar nod for this (The Academy loves flashy performances), though I think he was more deserving for his brilliant portrayal of the sex addict in “Shame.” The real star of this movie, and I fear she might slip through the cracks, is Lupita Nyong’o. In her first film role, Nyong’o stole every scene with the raw emotion and vulnerability she put into her role. I have no idea how she was able to become that character, so strong and so broken at the same time; that’s the performance that deserves the awards. This is not an easy film to watch in any way but it is a beautiful one, none-the-less.
Pete
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