Directed by Keishi Otomo
Based on the manga by Nobuhiro Watsuki
I have never been more than a casual fan of the anime called Samurai X which is properly titled Rurouni Kenshin in its native Japan, and is based on a popular manga. I have, however seen enough episodes, including a feature length special that came out on Home Box Office many years ago, to appreciate the story of an ex-assassin with unparalleled swordsmanship skill wandering around 19th century Japan seeking to redeem himself from a life of bloodshed. I missed the first live-action adaptation of this series, which came out two years ago and I was sorry I did, which was why I was only to happy to join the long queue to watch the first of two sequels: Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno.
While Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satoh) is living peacefully after the events of the last film, trouble is brewing in Kyoto as a warlord named Makoto Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara) surfaces. Like Himura, Shishio was one of the imperial government's top assassins, whom they attempted to liquidate after winning the Bakumatsu war. He proves to be a royal headache for the government, and when several of their officers fail to take him down, the government turns to Kenshin for help.
This movie, quite honestly, is quite unlike anything I have ever seen before. I have seen comic book adaptations by the boatload, including those told using an Asian sensibility, specifically Bong-Joon Ho's Snowpiercer, and I have enjoyed a great many of them, but I have also noted that with few exceptions, none of them really focused that much on the importance of really gripping fight scenes. A few months ago I was celebrating Captain America: The Winter Soldier for having the best choreographed fight scenes in any comic book-based movie I had ever seen, not quite realizing at the time that just what I was missing.
Basically, the fight scenes in Rurouni Kenshin are a wondrous marriage of everything that's been learned from swordplay and martial arts movies over the last century. There's a mix of the balletic grace of the Hong Kong action film and the Chinese wuxia epic as well as the bone-crunching, rough and tumble feel of films like The Raid. Of course, all of this is still tempered with a comic book sensibility that, from time to time, reminds the audience that this is all fantasy, but that does not detract in any way from the utterly engaging action sequences.
The story isn't really that much to write home about, truth be told. The movie still carries the animated series' somewhat heavy handed, purportedly pacifist message, but is still about a guy who beats up people with the flat part of his sword (though he does a magnificent job of it). I don't speak Japanese, so I can't really say how well people acted, but to my mind the performances were convincing enough, even if the guy who played Sanosuke, one of the more prominent supporting characters in the anime, kind of portrayed him as a buffoon. Apart from him, though, the actors, in so far as recreating the cartoon characters from whom their roles were derived, turned in performances that were pretty much spot on, and that was a treat to watch. Still, I get the sense that someone unfamiliar with this world and the characters that move in it would have a hard time understanding why an ex-samurai with flaming red hair would be walking around Meiji-era Japan, or why he would fight people like a blond goon with hair that's four inches high. In short, this film isn't exactly for anime novices, which could be a little jarring to the casual viewer.
To me, though, it was still a lot of fun, and I am definitely looking forward to the sequel, which will be coming out in a little over a month.
7.5/10
Saturday, August 23, 2014
How Robin Williams Died Long Before He Killed Himself
When I found out that actor and comedian Robin Williams took his own life earlier this week I was in no position to post on this blog; I was out of town and hard at work. Even as I write this post, however I find myself grappling with what I want to say.
Two years ago I wrote a blog post lamenting the fact that Robin Williams career appeared to have been in the toilet well before he took his life two weeks ago. Basically, I was already mourning the fact that the guy's career was, for all intents and purposes, dead. I mean, this man was an Academy Award winner and starred in several movies that grossed well over $100 million at the American box office, back when those numbers actually meant something, and his most high profile role post-2000 was a bit part in a Ben Stiller movie? Ben Stiller would be lucky to even be a fraction of the comedian that Williams was in his heyday, especially considering he could never really expand his roles beyond that of the insecure short guy, though I suppose I should be glad that he at least threw Robin that bone. It was wrong to me on so many levels that audiences could basically turn their back on someone who had brought so much joy to so many people.
For me, the saddest thing is that the role which, it seems now, most closely approximated the loneliness Robin Williams felt inside, that of Sy Parrish, the shy, secretly obsessive photobooth attendant in One Hour Photo, was largely ignored by audiences, even though it was arguably one of his very best. People just didn't want to see a creepy Robin Williams, even if it's a story he clearly really wanted to tell. After that, it was as if they didn't want to see him at all.
The thing that pained me about seeing Robin Williams' career just peter off was the thought that there wasn't any sex scandal or any single movie that really "did him in" (the disastrous 2009 film Old Dogs notwithstanding). It wasn't even that he stopped getting work; iMDB lists him as having projects all the way through the end of 2014. The problem was just that people really didn't pay him that much attention anymore, whether it was the studios giving out roles or the audiences watching them. The guy made studio execs rich and made audiences laugh for years, and in the end they rewarded him with cold indifference while Adam Sandler's negative-I.Q., man-child movies made big money year after year. Let's see Adam Sandler pull off roles like the ones that Williams did in Awakenings, Dead Poets Society, or Good Will Hunting. Oh wait, that's right, he can't.
I won't launch into a treatise on depression, a topic I am not at all qualified to discuss, or list my "top ten Robin Williams performances" or anything like that.
If people had continued to watch Robin Williams' movies, would it have stopped him from killing himself? Probably not, but he would have arguably have had less to be depressed about near the end. Maybe he was just sad he couldn't make people laugh anymore, at least not with any new material.
I just wish, to be honest, that the Hollywood moneymaking machine hadn't killed Williams' career long before he killed himself, whether or not that was the actual cause of his depression.
I guess the closest thing that can approximate a "moral of the story" is that if audiences cherish their favorite actors, they should keep watching their movies in theaters rather than patronizing garbage like Adam Sandler's movies, or something like that.
Oh well, I did say I was struggling with what I wanted to say...
Two years ago I wrote a blog post lamenting the fact that Robin Williams career appeared to have been in the toilet well before he took his life two weeks ago. Basically, I was already mourning the fact that the guy's career was, for all intents and purposes, dead. I mean, this man was an Academy Award winner and starred in several movies that grossed well over $100 million at the American box office, back when those numbers actually meant something, and his most high profile role post-2000 was a bit part in a Ben Stiller movie? Ben Stiller would be lucky to even be a fraction of the comedian that Williams was in his heyday, especially considering he could never really expand his roles beyond that of the insecure short guy, though I suppose I should be glad that he at least threw Robin that bone. It was wrong to me on so many levels that audiences could basically turn their back on someone who had brought so much joy to so many people.
For me, the saddest thing is that the role which, it seems now, most closely approximated the loneliness Robin Williams felt inside, that of Sy Parrish, the shy, secretly obsessive photobooth attendant in One Hour Photo, was largely ignored by audiences, even though it was arguably one of his very best. People just didn't want to see a creepy Robin Williams, even if it's a story he clearly really wanted to tell. After that, it was as if they didn't want to see him at all.
The thing that pained me about seeing Robin Williams' career just peter off was the thought that there wasn't any sex scandal or any single movie that really "did him in" (the disastrous 2009 film Old Dogs notwithstanding). It wasn't even that he stopped getting work; iMDB lists him as having projects all the way through the end of 2014. The problem was just that people really didn't pay him that much attention anymore, whether it was the studios giving out roles or the audiences watching them. The guy made studio execs rich and made audiences laugh for years, and in the end they rewarded him with cold indifference while Adam Sandler's negative-I.Q., man-child movies made big money year after year. Let's see Adam Sandler pull off roles like the ones that Williams did in Awakenings, Dead Poets Society, or Good Will Hunting. Oh wait, that's right, he can't.
I won't launch into a treatise on depression, a topic I am not at all qualified to discuss, or list my "top ten Robin Williams performances" or anything like that.
If people had continued to watch Robin Williams' movies, would it have stopped him from killing himself? Probably not, but he would have arguably have had less to be depressed about near the end. Maybe he was just sad he couldn't make people laugh anymore, at least not with any new material.
I just wish, to be honest, that the Hollywood moneymaking machine hadn't killed Williams' career long before he killed himself, whether or not that was the actual cause of his depression.
I guess the closest thing that can approximate a "moral of the story" is that if audiences cherish their favorite actors, they should keep watching their movies in theaters rather than patronizing garbage like Adam Sandler's movies, or something like that.
Oh well, I did say I was struggling with what I wanted to say...
Monday, August 4, 2014
Space Opera, Marvel Style: A Review of Guardians of the Galaxy
directed by James Gunn
written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman
I'll be honest; I thought that Guardians of the Galaxy would mark the end of Marvel Studios' winning streak at the box-office that began with 2008's Iron Man and which has continued unabated ever since. Sure, some of their movies have been more successful than others, but they had never failed to land a movie at #1 on opening weekend. Given that GOTG was based on a relatively obscure and recent comic book property and therefore didn't enjoy the goodwill that enabled characters like Spider-man and Captain America to connect with audiences, and given that the first few images released by Marvel over a year ago didn't suggest much more than a generic sci-fi adventure in world that has already had fifty years of Star Trek, Star Wars and legions of other science fiction copycats, it was easy to dismiss the film.
While I suppose it was no real surprise that Marvel proved me wrong, considering that they seem to have gotten the art of successfully launching franchises down to a science, what really surprised me was just how much I enjoyed this movie. The trailer had impressed me, but nothing I had seen really prepared me for the enjoyment that the movie eventually delivered.
The story begins on earth, in 1988, where young Peter Quill (Wyatt Oleff) watches his mother succumb to cancer just after she tells him she loves him and gives him a farewell present. Distraught, he runs out of the hospital and into an empty field, only to be zapped up into a mysterious spaceship. Twenty-six years later, the adult Quill (Chris Pratt), who now calls himself "Star-Lord" travels across space stealing and fencing artifacts and dancing to 70s and 80s tunes while doing it. His latest heist, of a mysterious orb, sees him cross paths with the heavily armed Korath (Djimon Hounsou), a minion of the Kree warrior Ronan (Lee Pace), who plans to use the orb to destroy planet of Xandar. Ronan dispatches one of his top assassins, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to retrieve the orb from Quill, while Yondu (Michael Rooker), leader of the Ravagers, or the bounty hunters who kidnapped Quill in the first place, is mad as hell at him for breaking their agreement and getting the orb on his own, and in short order puts out a hefty bounty on his head, which in turn brings him within the crosshairs of bounty hunters Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper) a talking cyber-raccoon, and Groot (Vin Diesel), a walking, talking tree that only says "I am Groot." Things get crazy when Gamora, Rocket and Groot converge on Quill, in a confrontation that manages to land all of them, including the orb in Quill's possession, in prison. While there, they agree that they need each other to break out and to cash in on the score that the orb promises to deliver. To break out, they recruit a tattooed, overly literal homicidal maniac named Drax (Dave Bautista) who has it in for Ronan for killing his family. Soon, they come to realize that there is a lot more to the orb than a payday, and the fate of the galaxy itself may be at stake.
This is, to my mind at least, the best action-comedy I've seen since 1998's The Mask of Zorro, and the best sci-fi action comedy I've seen since...well...forever.
The single best part of this movie is how it feels like Marvel's first "clean slate" since the very first Iron Man. It is possible to walk into this movie without having seen anything that Marvel has produced before it and still enjoy it thoroughly. Yes, there are Easter Eggs, and references to other Marvel properties, but none of them requires any knowledge of previous Marvel films to understand what's going on. If anything, they're a little shout-out to the inevitable throngs of Marvel nerds in the audience, who will be rewarded for their loyalty even as the average viewer soaks in the fun while missing all of the winks and nods.
Besides, it's easy for the Marvel references to get lost in the shuffle of the numerous sci-fi references with which director Gunn peppers this film.
To my mind this film is, at the same time, a love letter to the science fiction films of the 1980s and a breath of fresh air much needed by a genre whose standard bearers are either riddled with cliche (e.g. Avatar), or are the merest shadows of the what their forbears were (Star Trek: Into Darkness, and every one of the Star Wars prequels), with a lot of them putting premium in flashy, slick visual effects, often at the expense of good old-fashioned storytelling. The movie is just so much giddy fun, and it isn't afraid to poke fun at sci-fi story tropes over and over again. Pratt is clearly having a blast as Quill/Star-lord, and his energy and comic timing are infectious. In the hands of a less capable actor, Peter Quill could just as easily have been Han Solo lite, but Pratt's talent elevates Quill past that, at least when it really matters. Sci-fi veteran Saldana, who now has three major sci-fi franchises in her resume, truly kicks ass as Gamora, and to audiences rolling their eyes at the thought that she's only there for the leading man to land in the sack, I'm happy to say there's no lip-locking here and that the only action Gamora gets is the girl-on-girl kind, when she goes toe-to-toe with her equally badass sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) a cybernetic psychopath also working for Ronan, one whom we may well see in future GOTG installments. Dave Bautista, as a man incapable of grasping linguistic nuance, is an unexpected treat, though considering he's already practically a stand-up comedian by virtue of his lengthy tenure as a professional wrestler I suppose there should have been some indication of what he could bring to the role besides his rather imposing physicality.
Of course, much of the talking will be done about the computer-generated characters voiced by A-list movie stars Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, namely, Rocket Raccoon and Groot, respectively. The good news is that neither of them is slumming it for a paycheck; Cooper packs his diminutive onscreen avatar with just as much character and spunk as he has any of his live action portrayals, and Rocket, as strange as this may sound, actually gets some of the more poignant moments in the film. As for Diesel, the towering walking tree that is Groot actually provides him to exact sweet revenge on his critics who have accused him of wooden acting. With a three-word vocabulary, Diesel manages to imbue the character with so much nuance that he actually manages to outshine a lot of the live-action performances in the film.
Acting veterans like Glenn Close and John C. Reilly got some fairly meaty but small roles as Nova Prime and Nova Corpsman Dey, though I sense that some of their scenes may have ended up on the cutting room floor. Given that Xandar, the planet they're from, figures prominently in the cosmic Marvel universe I hope to see them again in future installments.
Getting notably short shrift, however, are Pace's Ronan and Gillan's Nebula, who get the chance to look badass and to hurt people in the film but precious little else. It's not quite as bad as the utterly bland Malekith from last year's Thor: The Dark World, but there's still quite a bit of wasted potential here. Nebula, in particular, could be a potentially iconic villain in the vein of Loki, and I honestly hope to see more of her in the future. Thanos, the big league Marvel bad guy of whom fans got a peek during the post-credits scene of The Avengers, makes an appearance here, voiced by Josh Brolin , but he's little more than a tease of things to come. So maybe the movie falls a little short in the bad guy department, but for some reason it doesn't feel like that big a loss. It is, first and foremost, about the journey of the Guardians, and it is a doozy.
There are other details I absolutely dug as well, like the meticulously realized galaxy the titular Guardians (who got their name in a moment of sneering contempt) bounced around in, which included a planet that was actually once the head of a giant celestial being. Sure the physics of it probably don't make any sense, but the thought of beings so big that their heads can be miniature planets recalls the sense of wonder that Jack Kirby evoked with his wonderfully weird art back in the 1960s. And yes, fans of the cosmic Marvel Universe can rejoice at the thought that one of Kirby's iconic Celestials does make an appearance on the screen. The visual effects put to work here are incredibly imaginative.
On the other hand, however, I was disappointed by the lack of variety of alien species walking around. Apart from Rocket and Groot, the rest of the alien population seemed limited to humans and people whose skin were pastel colors, like Gamora's green, Ronan's and Nebula's blue, and the pink that a lot of the minor characters sported. I guess that was where Marvel's budget constraints kicked in, but for my part, I would have wanted to see the kind of unhinged weirdness that Guillermo del Toro poured into films like Pan's Labyrinth or Hellboy: the Golden Army. We're talking about a whole other galaxy, after all, surely there's more to people looking different than just skin color? Maybe Gunn will let his hair down in the inevitable sequel and give us some real visual craziness.
Missteps aside, however, I am a big fan of what Gunn has done here. Guardians of the Galaxy may have a lot of Marvel's virtually patented blend of action and humor, but it is a significant departure from the superhero film that has become their wheelhouse. Marvel have allowed Gunn to present to the audience an honest-to-goodness space opera, and by golly, has he delivered. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the rather cheeky cameo from a somewhat infamous Marvel character right at the end of the credits is as much a salute to this film's real creative influence as it is some good-natured ribbing.
I'm looking forward to blasting off with this film's inevitable sequel in two or three years!
9/10
written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman
I'll be honest; I thought that Guardians of the Galaxy would mark the end of Marvel Studios' winning streak at the box-office that began with 2008's Iron Man and which has continued unabated ever since. Sure, some of their movies have been more successful than others, but they had never failed to land a movie at #1 on opening weekend. Given that GOTG was based on a relatively obscure and recent comic book property and therefore didn't enjoy the goodwill that enabled characters like Spider-man and Captain America to connect with audiences, and given that the first few images released by Marvel over a year ago didn't suggest much more than a generic sci-fi adventure in world that has already had fifty years of Star Trek, Star Wars and legions of other science fiction copycats, it was easy to dismiss the film.
While I suppose it was no real surprise that Marvel proved me wrong, considering that they seem to have gotten the art of successfully launching franchises down to a science, what really surprised me was just how much I enjoyed this movie. The trailer had impressed me, but nothing I had seen really prepared me for the enjoyment that the movie eventually delivered.
The story begins on earth, in 1988, where young Peter Quill (Wyatt Oleff) watches his mother succumb to cancer just after she tells him she loves him and gives him a farewell present. Distraught, he runs out of the hospital and into an empty field, only to be zapped up into a mysterious spaceship. Twenty-six years later, the adult Quill (Chris Pratt), who now calls himself "Star-Lord" travels across space stealing and fencing artifacts and dancing to 70s and 80s tunes while doing it. His latest heist, of a mysterious orb, sees him cross paths with the heavily armed Korath (Djimon Hounsou), a minion of the Kree warrior Ronan (Lee Pace), who plans to use the orb to destroy planet of Xandar. Ronan dispatches one of his top assassins, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to retrieve the orb from Quill, while Yondu (Michael Rooker), leader of the Ravagers, or the bounty hunters who kidnapped Quill in the first place, is mad as hell at him for breaking their agreement and getting the orb on his own, and in short order puts out a hefty bounty on his head, which in turn brings him within the crosshairs of bounty hunters Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper) a talking cyber-raccoon, and Groot (Vin Diesel), a walking, talking tree that only says "I am Groot." Things get crazy when Gamora, Rocket and Groot converge on Quill, in a confrontation that manages to land all of them, including the orb in Quill's possession, in prison. While there, they agree that they need each other to break out and to cash in on the score that the orb promises to deliver. To break out, they recruit a tattooed, overly literal homicidal maniac named Drax (Dave Bautista) who has it in for Ronan for killing his family. Soon, they come to realize that there is a lot more to the orb than a payday, and the fate of the galaxy itself may be at stake.
This is, to my mind at least, the best action-comedy I've seen since 1998's The Mask of Zorro, and the best sci-fi action comedy I've seen since...well...forever.
The single best part of this movie is how it feels like Marvel's first "clean slate" since the very first Iron Man. It is possible to walk into this movie without having seen anything that Marvel has produced before it and still enjoy it thoroughly. Yes, there are Easter Eggs, and references to other Marvel properties, but none of them requires any knowledge of previous Marvel films to understand what's going on. If anything, they're a little shout-out to the inevitable throngs of Marvel nerds in the audience, who will be rewarded for their loyalty even as the average viewer soaks in the fun while missing all of the winks and nods.
Besides, it's easy for the Marvel references to get lost in the shuffle of the numerous sci-fi references with which director Gunn peppers this film.
To my mind this film is, at the same time, a love letter to the science fiction films of the 1980s and a breath of fresh air much needed by a genre whose standard bearers are either riddled with cliche (e.g. Avatar), or are the merest shadows of the what their forbears were (Star Trek: Into Darkness, and every one of the Star Wars prequels), with a lot of them putting premium in flashy, slick visual effects, often at the expense of good old-fashioned storytelling. The movie is just so much giddy fun, and it isn't afraid to poke fun at sci-fi story tropes over and over again. Pratt is clearly having a blast as Quill/Star-lord, and his energy and comic timing are infectious. In the hands of a less capable actor, Peter Quill could just as easily have been Han Solo lite, but Pratt's talent elevates Quill past that, at least when it really matters. Sci-fi veteran Saldana, who now has three major sci-fi franchises in her resume, truly kicks ass as Gamora, and to audiences rolling their eyes at the thought that she's only there for the leading man to land in the sack, I'm happy to say there's no lip-locking here and that the only action Gamora gets is the girl-on-girl kind, when she goes toe-to-toe with her equally badass sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) a cybernetic psychopath also working for Ronan, one whom we may well see in future GOTG installments. Dave Bautista, as a man incapable of grasping linguistic nuance, is an unexpected treat, though considering he's already practically a stand-up comedian by virtue of his lengthy tenure as a professional wrestler I suppose there should have been some indication of what he could bring to the role besides his rather imposing physicality.
Of course, much of the talking will be done about the computer-generated characters voiced by A-list movie stars Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, namely, Rocket Raccoon and Groot, respectively. The good news is that neither of them is slumming it for a paycheck; Cooper packs his diminutive onscreen avatar with just as much character and spunk as he has any of his live action portrayals, and Rocket, as strange as this may sound, actually gets some of the more poignant moments in the film. As for Diesel, the towering walking tree that is Groot actually provides him to exact sweet revenge on his critics who have accused him of wooden acting. With a three-word vocabulary, Diesel manages to imbue the character with so much nuance that he actually manages to outshine a lot of the live-action performances in the film.
Acting veterans like Glenn Close and John C. Reilly got some fairly meaty but small roles as Nova Prime and Nova Corpsman Dey, though I sense that some of their scenes may have ended up on the cutting room floor. Given that Xandar, the planet they're from, figures prominently in the cosmic Marvel universe I hope to see them again in future installments.
Getting notably short shrift, however, are Pace's Ronan and Gillan's Nebula, who get the chance to look badass and to hurt people in the film but precious little else. It's not quite as bad as the utterly bland Malekith from last year's Thor: The Dark World, but there's still quite a bit of wasted potential here. Nebula, in particular, could be a potentially iconic villain in the vein of Loki, and I honestly hope to see more of her in the future. Thanos, the big league Marvel bad guy of whom fans got a peek during the post-credits scene of The Avengers, makes an appearance here, voiced by Josh Brolin , but he's little more than a tease of things to come. So maybe the movie falls a little short in the bad guy department, but for some reason it doesn't feel like that big a loss. It is, first and foremost, about the journey of the Guardians, and it is a doozy.
There are other details I absolutely dug as well, like the meticulously realized galaxy the titular Guardians (who got their name in a moment of sneering contempt) bounced around in, which included a planet that was actually once the head of a giant celestial being. Sure the physics of it probably don't make any sense, but the thought of beings so big that their heads can be miniature planets recalls the sense of wonder that Jack Kirby evoked with his wonderfully weird art back in the 1960s. And yes, fans of the cosmic Marvel Universe can rejoice at the thought that one of Kirby's iconic Celestials does make an appearance on the screen. The visual effects put to work here are incredibly imaginative.
On the other hand, however, I was disappointed by the lack of variety of alien species walking around. Apart from Rocket and Groot, the rest of the alien population seemed limited to humans and people whose skin were pastel colors, like Gamora's green, Ronan's and Nebula's blue, and the pink that a lot of the minor characters sported. I guess that was where Marvel's budget constraints kicked in, but for my part, I would have wanted to see the kind of unhinged weirdness that Guillermo del Toro poured into films like Pan's Labyrinth or Hellboy: the Golden Army. We're talking about a whole other galaxy, after all, surely there's more to people looking different than just skin color? Maybe Gunn will let his hair down in the inevitable sequel and give us some real visual craziness.
Missteps aside, however, I am a big fan of what Gunn has done here. Guardians of the Galaxy may have a lot of Marvel's virtually patented blend of action and humor, but it is a significant departure from the superhero film that has become their wheelhouse. Marvel have allowed Gunn to present to the audience an honest-to-goodness space opera, and by golly, has he delivered. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the rather cheeky cameo from a somewhat infamous Marvel character right at the end of the credits is as much a salute to this film's real creative influence as it is some good-natured ribbing.
I'm looking forward to blasting off with this film's inevitable sequel in two or three years!
9/10
Saturday, June 21, 2014
The Guilty Pleasure That's Back for More: A Review of 22 Jump Street
written by Michael Bacall and Oren Uziel
directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
In 2012, the buddy cop comedy that was very loosely adapted from a popular 1980s police procedural drama called 21 Jump Street took me almost completely by surprise. It was utterly idiotic, and yet so funny in its envelope-pushing crude humor that it was downright intoxicating at some points.
Hollywood being Hollywood, two years later, Sony Pictures and MGM have brought the gang back together for a sequel to that surprisingly lucrative enterprise, this time titled 22 Jump Street.
At the end of the last movie, undercover police officers Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) busted a drug running operation that had been set up in a high school by a teacher and a student. This time around, the film starts with them performing more "conventional" police work (at least, as far as movie police work goes) and failing spectacularly at collaring a notorious smuggler known only as "the Ghost" (Peter Stormare). As a result, they are put back on the Jump Street program, which has, this time moved across the street from the old Korean Church to a Vietnamese Church (hence the change in title). They have more money, but the same mission: to bust up a drug operation that has set up in a local college. This time around, there is no mix-up in their identities, and as a result Jenko (a.k.a. Brad) ends up impressing the local athletic set, among whom may or may not be the pusher, while Schmidt (a.k.a. Doug) starts schmoozing among the "artistic" types with whom the deceased victim whose death sparked the investigation spent much of her time. As in the last film, their different paths pull them apart from each other, but in the end, they will need each other to solve the case.
Anyone looking for meaningful reflections on the human condition or even mind-blowing displays of computer-generated imagery will be better off saving their money, but people looking for two hours chock-full of gay double entendres, mindless slapstick humor, more metafiction than one can keep track of, and a whole lot of belly laughs, will get exactly what they're looking for in this film, if not even more.
This movie really sings to someone like me, who grew up with the low-budget screwball comedies of the 80s and early 90s. The movie is loaded to the gills with that brand of comedy, but with a distinctly 21st century sensibility. Last time around, the narrative twist was having Tatum's macho Jenko paired up with the nerds by mistake, and the "bromance" angle was only touched on tangentially for a few jokes. This time around, though, it's at the heart of the film, and the filmmakers milk the jokes and double entendres for just about everything they're worth. Also, the various "meta" references that range from the tradition of beefing up the budget of sequels, to Tatum's 2013 box-office dud White House Down, are spot-on. As in the last film, there are a couple of rocking cameos here too, none of which I will spoil, though the less perceptive might want to see if they can recognize the guy who plays Vietnamese Jesus during Jenko's drug trip.
One of my quibbles with this movie was the fact that Hill looked absolutely awful. There's a running joke throughout the film about how old he looks, just as there was in the last movie, only this time they hit the nail right on the head. Either Hill ages unnaturally fast, or he'd better lay off the drugs. Tatum, as before, looks like he's in great shape, and in fact, managed to look even more credible as a college student than Kurt Russell's 27-year-old son Wyatt, who plays the football god that becomes Jenko's BFF throughout the film, much to Schmidt's annoyance. The good news, though, is that Hill's and Tatum's chemistry from the first film is still very much intact. There's something interesting about how Hill is able to portray compelling onscreen odd-couple pairings with heartthrobs; he was able to achieve similar comedic synergy with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, though not quite on the level of his rapport with Tatum.
The end credits, which stretch on quite a bit, tend to make an emphatic statement on how the production team feels about making yet another sequel to this film (and in fact, many of them have declared they won't) but considering how this film looks like it will end up making even more money than its predecessor, and the dearth of Sony's bankable franchises (with even their formerly bulletproof Spider-Man series showing signs of serious wear and tear earlier this year) I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with an excuse for Hill and Tatum to strap on their guns at least one more time. If they do, though, they're going to need CGI to keep Hill from looking at least five years too old.
8.5/10
directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
In 2012, the buddy cop comedy that was very loosely adapted from a popular 1980s police procedural drama called 21 Jump Street took me almost completely by surprise. It was utterly idiotic, and yet so funny in its envelope-pushing crude humor that it was downright intoxicating at some points.
Hollywood being Hollywood, two years later, Sony Pictures and MGM have brought the gang back together for a sequel to that surprisingly lucrative enterprise, this time titled 22 Jump Street.
At the end of the last movie, undercover police officers Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) busted a drug running operation that had been set up in a high school by a teacher and a student. This time around, the film starts with them performing more "conventional" police work (at least, as far as movie police work goes) and failing spectacularly at collaring a notorious smuggler known only as "the Ghost" (Peter Stormare). As a result, they are put back on the Jump Street program, which has, this time moved across the street from the old Korean Church to a Vietnamese Church (hence the change in title). They have more money, but the same mission: to bust up a drug operation that has set up in a local college. This time around, there is no mix-up in their identities, and as a result Jenko (a.k.a. Brad) ends up impressing the local athletic set, among whom may or may not be the pusher, while Schmidt (a.k.a. Doug) starts schmoozing among the "artistic" types with whom the deceased victim whose death sparked the investigation spent much of her time. As in the last film, their different paths pull them apart from each other, but in the end, they will need each other to solve the case.
Anyone looking for meaningful reflections on the human condition or even mind-blowing displays of computer-generated imagery will be better off saving their money, but people looking for two hours chock-full of gay double entendres, mindless slapstick humor, more metafiction than one can keep track of, and a whole lot of belly laughs, will get exactly what they're looking for in this film, if not even more.
This movie really sings to someone like me, who grew up with the low-budget screwball comedies of the 80s and early 90s. The movie is loaded to the gills with that brand of comedy, but with a distinctly 21st century sensibility. Last time around, the narrative twist was having Tatum's macho Jenko paired up with the nerds by mistake, and the "bromance" angle was only touched on tangentially for a few jokes. This time around, though, it's at the heart of the film, and the filmmakers milk the jokes and double entendres for just about everything they're worth. Also, the various "meta" references that range from the tradition of beefing up the budget of sequels, to Tatum's 2013 box-office dud White House Down, are spot-on. As in the last film, there are a couple of rocking cameos here too, none of which I will spoil, though the less perceptive might want to see if they can recognize the guy who plays Vietnamese Jesus during Jenko's drug trip.
One of my quibbles with this movie was the fact that Hill looked absolutely awful. There's a running joke throughout the film about how old he looks, just as there was in the last movie, only this time they hit the nail right on the head. Either Hill ages unnaturally fast, or he'd better lay off the drugs. Tatum, as before, looks like he's in great shape, and in fact, managed to look even more credible as a college student than Kurt Russell's 27-year-old son Wyatt, who plays the football god that becomes Jenko's BFF throughout the film, much to Schmidt's annoyance. The good news, though, is that Hill's and Tatum's chemistry from the first film is still very much intact. There's something interesting about how Hill is able to portray compelling onscreen odd-couple pairings with heartthrobs; he was able to achieve similar comedic synergy with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, though not quite on the level of his rapport with Tatum.
The end credits, which stretch on quite a bit, tend to make an emphatic statement on how the production team feels about making yet another sequel to this film (and in fact, many of them have declared they won't) but considering how this film looks like it will end up making even more money than its predecessor, and the dearth of Sony's bankable franchises (with even their formerly bulletproof Spider-Man series showing signs of serious wear and tear earlier this year) I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with an excuse for Hill and Tatum to strap on their guns at least one more time. If they do, though, they're going to need CGI to keep Hill from looking at least five years too old.
8.5/10
Friday, June 20, 2014
Dreamworks' Most Mature Movie to Date: A Review of How to Train Your Dragon 2
written and directed by Dean DeBlois
The first How to Train Your Dragon movie back in 2010 wasn't quite groundbreaking, what with various plot devices borrowed from other movies from coming-of-age awkwardness to the hero learning the truth about his supposed enemy that has been featured in various movies like Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai and Avatar, but it was definitely entertaining in a way that few animated movies before it had ever been. It was, to my mind as well as to those of many viewers and critics, among Dreamworks Animation Studios' best efforts, and it even compares well to some of the better movies of the studio that set the gold standard in computer-generated animated feature films, Pixar. That film had a great deal of heart, arguably more than anything that Pixar has produced after Toy Story 3.
What surprised me about this year's sequel, simply titled How to Train Your Dragon 2, was not that it was as good as, if not even slightly better than the first movie, but that the filmmakers were willing to have their story take a slightly dark, if not entirely unpredictable turn this time around.
Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), the hero of the first film, is grown up now and having the time of his life with his pet dragon Toothless; thanks to his flying companion his world has expanded far beyond the boundaries of his small island of Berk, the inhabitants of which have come to embrace the dragons they feared and hated in the last movie, including Hiccup's own father and the village Chief, Stoick (Gerard Butler). Stoick, who is getting on in years, wants Hiccup to succeed him as the chief of Berk, much to Hiccup's displeasure. While off exploring (and escaping his father), Hiccup makes a startling, life-changing discovery that changes everything he thought he knew about his past, and not a moment too soon, for looming on the horizon is a threat that could spell big trouble for Berk, it inhabitants, and its dragons. Berk's dragon riders Hiccup, Astrid (America Ferrara), Snotlout (Jonah Hill), Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and twins Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig) and Tuffnut (T.J. Miller), and their dragons will need every ounce of skill they have to save their community from a menace that is unlike anything they've ever faced before.
Without wading into spoiler territory, I have to say that this film quite easily has the most heart of any Dreamworks movie since Kung Fu Panda, which is possibly down to the fact that the two films share, to a small extent, the theme of unlikely heroes rising to the occasion. This film actually tackles pretty heady themes like responsibility, and reconciling one's desires with one's duty, and while, again, they aren't exactly reinventing the wheel, writer/director Dean DeBlois and his cast and crew manage to turn in a story that is genuine and heartfelt, so much so that when things take a turn for the tragic late in the film, the impact is quite meaningful. Some reviewers have declared this film to The Empire Strikes Back, obviously for its darker tone in relation to the lighter-than-air feel of the first film, and in that sense at least, the movie is groundbreaking in its willingness to leave what is likely its audience's comfort zone to tell a compelling story.
The animation and rendering are, as they were before, simply astonishing, and it was gratifying to see that, with the expansion of Hiccup's world, several new dragon designs were also introduced. I do admit, however, to being vaguely disappointed by the design of one very important new dragon; apart from its size, it simply doesn't come off as imposing as it should be. Still, this didn't detract all that much from the overall narrative effectiveness.
I am happy to report that there's plenty to like here for the young and the young at heart.
8.5/10
The first How to Train Your Dragon movie back in 2010 wasn't quite groundbreaking, what with various plot devices borrowed from other movies from coming-of-age awkwardness to the hero learning the truth about his supposed enemy that has been featured in various movies like Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai and Avatar, but it was definitely entertaining in a way that few animated movies before it had ever been. It was, to my mind as well as to those of many viewers and critics, among Dreamworks Animation Studios' best efforts, and it even compares well to some of the better movies of the studio that set the gold standard in computer-generated animated feature films, Pixar. That film had a great deal of heart, arguably more than anything that Pixar has produced after Toy Story 3.
What surprised me about this year's sequel, simply titled How to Train Your Dragon 2, was not that it was as good as, if not even slightly better than the first movie, but that the filmmakers were willing to have their story take a slightly dark, if not entirely unpredictable turn this time around.
Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), the hero of the first film, is grown up now and having the time of his life with his pet dragon Toothless; thanks to his flying companion his world has expanded far beyond the boundaries of his small island of Berk, the inhabitants of which have come to embrace the dragons they feared and hated in the last movie, including Hiccup's own father and the village Chief, Stoick (Gerard Butler). Stoick, who is getting on in years, wants Hiccup to succeed him as the chief of Berk, much to Hiccup's displeasure. While off exploring (and escaping his father), Hiccup makes a startling, life-changing discovery that changes everything he thought he knew about his past, and not a moment too soon, for looming on the horizon is a threat that could spell big trouble for Berk, it inhabitants, and its dragons. Berk's dragon riders Hiccup, Astrid (America Ferrara), Snotlout (Jonah Hill), Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and twins Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig) and Tuffnut (T.J. Miller), and their dragons will need every ounce of skill they have to save their community from a menace that is unlike anything they've ever faced before.
Without wading into spoiler territory, I have to say that this film quite easily has the most heart of any Dreamworks movie since Kung Fu Panda, which is possibly down to the fact that the two films share, to a small extent, the theme of unlikely heroes rising to the occasion. This film actually tackles pretty heady themes like responsibility, and reconciling one's desires with one's duty, and while, again, they aren't exactly reinventing the wheel, writer/director Dean DeBlois and his cast and crew manage to turn in a story that is genuine and heartfelt, so much so that when things take a turn for the tragic late in the film, the impact is quite meaningful. Some reviewers have declared this film to The Empire Strikes Back, obviously for its darker tone in relation to the lighter-than-air feel of the first film, and in that sense at least, the movie is groundbreaking in its willingness to leave what is likely its audience's comfort zone to tell a compelling story.
The animation and rendering are, as they were before, simply astonishing, and it was gratifying to see that, with the expansion of Hiccup's world, several new dragon designs were also introduced. I do admit, however, to being vaguely disappointed by the design of one very important new dragon; apart from its size, it simply doesn't come off as imposing as it should be. Still, this didn't detract all that much from the overall narrative effectiveness.
I am happy to report that there's plenty to like here for the young and the young at heart.
8.5/10
Thursday, May 22, 2014
The X-Men Movie We've All Been Waiting For: A Review of X-Men: Days of Future Past
directed by Bryan Singer
screenplay by Simon Kinberg
Anyone who has followed Twentieth Century Fox's film franchise adapting the popular X-Men comic books will know that the franchise, which thus far has had five movies and two Wolverine-oriented spinoffs, has seen its ups and downs. After starting off strongly with the first two movies in 2000 and 2003, both directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) the series saw a disheartening dip in quality when Singer left to direct a Superman sequel in 2006, resulting in the awful X-Men: The Last Stand, directed by Brett Ratner, compounded by an even worse Wolverine spinoff in 2009 by Gavin Hood. In 2011, Matthew Vaughn's prequel X-Men: First Class surprised audiences and critics by restoring a pretty high standard of quality to the X-Men franchise. Last year's The Wolverine, directed by James Mangold was not quite in its league but it was a surprisingly decent movie as well.
With X-Men: Days of Future Past, however, Singer finally returns to the franchise he started fourteen years ago, and gives not only the best X-Men movie that has ever been produced, but a movie that easily stands shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the very best films of the Disney-owned Marvel Studios, like the first Iron Man, the global phenomenon The Avengers, and the recent Captain America sequel.
The film opens in the year 2023, when mutants have been nearly wiped out by an unstoppable army of extremely powerful robots called Sentinels, built specifically to destroy them and their supporters and which, apart from unbelievable firepower, also have the ability to adapt to any threat. As a result, not even the combined abilities of the remaining X-Men, such as the ice powers of Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), teleportation powers of Blink (Fan Bingbing), fire powers of Sunpot (Adan Canto), armor and strength of Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), enhanced senses of Warpath (Booboo Stewart) the weather powers of Storm (Halle Berry) or even the metal-manipulating powers of Erik Lensherr a.k.a. Magneto (Ian McKellen) are able to stop them.
So far, the remaining X-Men have been able to stay alive thanks to the power of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to project the consciousness of Bishop (Omar Sy) into the past to warn the other X-Men of the attacks in time for them to evacuate their location, but time is running out fast. Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) then has the idea to send someone's consciousness back in time, all the way to the single event that led to the launch of the Sentinel program by the governments of the world, the assassination of Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) by Raven, a.k.a. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence). Professor Xavier theorizes that by stopping the assassination, they can change the future. However, to send someone's consciousness that far back in time could kill them, which is why Logan a.k.a. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), with his healing factor, is the only person who could survive the process, and as a result Kitty sends him back to 1973, where he must enlist the aid of a much younger Charles (James McAvoy) and Erik (Michael Fassbender). It won't be easy; Charles has become addicted to a serum developed by Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) that enables him to walk but has dulled his telepathy, while Erik is incarcerated underneath the Pentagon for supposedly having killed the President of the United States. Logan, Charles and Hank recruit a young man named Peter (Evan Peters) with the mutant gift of super speed in the hope of busting Magneto out of jail, but the challenges that lie ahead are going to be a lot more difficult than that as Trask, initially turned down by the American congress, starts to get too cozy for comfort with the right people in the U.S. government.
As happy as I was to find out that Bryan Singer was returning to the director's chair for the latest X-Men movie after over a decade away from the franchise, I confess my joy was slightly tempered by the notion that he'd be working from a script written by Simon Kinberg, who also wrote the disastrous X-Men: The Last Stand, and whose resume includes other films I really didn't enjoy, like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes adaptation in 2009. As it turns out, I needn't have worried; Kinberg's script, apart from being surprisingly taut and well-structured, is actually quite reverent to the canon that was established by the previous films, with the exception of the failure to explain why Professor X is in his old body, which got vaporized in The Last Stand while his consciousness was moved into another person's comatose body. The real marvel (pun intended) here is that thanks to the time-travel element, this is easily one of the most complicated stories that has been attempted in any comic-book based movie, and yet with the exception of a few niggles, Kinberg actually pulls it off. If nothing else, such is his and Singer's sleight-of-hand that it's easier to ignore the gaffes, which are inevitable with that kind of storytelling.
Still, even though Kinberg has raised his game, it's still Singer's show, and he extracts electrifying performances from his leads. Jackman's charisma, as expected, is still dialed up to 11 here, but the good news is that he gets to do a lot more than shout and skewer people here; there's some welcome gravitas to his character that was actually hinted at in the last Wolverine solo movie but gets explored a bit more effectively here. The narrative focus, however, is on the newer cast members, in particular McAvoy's younger Xavier, who is a broken man after the events of First Class. McAvoy gets to do more than wear long hair and bell-bottom pants; he does an exemplary job of portraying the younger Xavier as having fallen from grace, a stark contrast from the hopeful young man he was in his first movie. For me, the film's most powerful scene doesn't involve explosions or energy blasts or fisticuffs; it's the scene where, through the magic of telepathy, young and old Charles meet and converse. Fassbender's Magneto was the breakout star of First Class with his overpowering, feral performance, but this time it is McAvoy's turn to shine. Fassbender's Magneto has traveled quite a bit further into full-on bad guy territory this time, though arguably understandably so, but the good news is that his portrayal is no less nuanced than it was the first time around, and his brutality here feels like a natural progression of what came before. Jennifer Lawrence, meanwhile, gets to show off her martial arts skills (when she's not being swapped out with a stunt double) and some pretty impressive linguistic (or at least phonetic) ability when Mystique carries on an extended conversation in Vietnamese and later throws in a smattering of French. She doesn't get quite as much attention from the script as she did in First Class, even though, ironically, Mystique is more central to the plot this time, but the supremely talented Lawrence is able to make the most out of her slightly diminished role. I also enjoyed seeing Nicholas Hoult return to the role of McCoy, also known as the Beast, as well; there was a lot more of his trademark acrobatic fighting this time, and he had a much better makeup job than he did in First Class. Dinklage, as the film's bad guy, turns in a solid, if not particularly remarkable performance, though to my mind that was more down to the writing. He certainly wasn't anything like Brian Cox's somewhat flamboyant bad guy William Stryker in X2: X-Men United, a younger version of whom is played here by Josh Helman. Still, Dinklage's performance is entirely creditable, and it was refreshing that, for a change it did not actually touch on his stature.
Finally, the "future" X-Men get to showcase their powers and little else, though Page's role as Kitty Pryde is fairly substantial even though she plays out more like a plot device than an actual character. I must say, though, that Fan Bingbing is absolutely gorgeous as Blink, and I hope to see more of her in future installments.
For me, however, the breakout star of this movie was Evan Peters, who played Peter Maximoff, also known in the comic books as Quicksilver. A bravura sequence in which he puts his super speed on full display is easily the best action set piece of the entire movie, and lays down a serious marker that I suspect was intended for Fox's rivals over at Marvel studios, who through some curious legal development will also be able to feature Quicksilver in their Avengers sequel next year, to be played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whom I actually found to be insufferably bland in the current hit Godzilla. It was also a stroke of genius for Singer to set the scene to the sound of Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" although that has fooled at least one reviewer into thinking that Quicksilver's power is to stop time. The only thing truly wrong with this iteration of Quicksilver is that he is gone from the movie way, way too soon, and for no good reason, really. I can already see the "How It Should Have Ended" skit on Youtube in which he plays a bigger role and simplifies everyone's problems. Still, even without him around the movie has plenty of highly-impressive action sequences.
It's hard to talk about the specific things I enjoyed about the film without spoiling plot points, but I will say that, apart from enjoying the film on its own merits, I was decidedly struck by how faithful Singer and his crew managed to be to the atmosphere of the original comic book series, which was extremely effective in juxtaposing the bleakness of the future and the tumult of the end of the seventies, even though in the movie Singer has turned back the clock a few years. There's even a highly memorable, if decidedly grim moment involving Storm and a sentinel that feels like it's been ripped right out of the comic book, albeit with more visceral impact here.
For me the honor of top Marvel-based movie of the year still goes to Marvel Studios' Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but this comes a very, very close second and only loses out because of some quibbles I have with the script. I will say that of the two, this is definitely the more ambitious film, comparable even to what Marvel did by putting together The Avengers two years ago. One thing the X-Men franchise definitely has going for it is that it is the longest running comic book film franchise whose makers haven't actually pushed the reboot button, although the time travel story device serves a similar purpose.
I can actually foresee nerds in the future debating what the better Marvel movie was: this, or The Avengers. It's that good.
8.9/10
[mild spoiler warning]
Oh, and I am happy to report that people unhappy with certain plot points of X-Men: The Last Stand will be very happy with this film. That is all.
[end spoiler warning]
screenplay by Simon Kinberg
Anyone who has followed Twentieth Century Fox's film franchise adapting the popular X-Men comic books will know that the franchise, which thus far has had five movies and two Wolverine-oriented spinoffs, has seen its ups and downs. After starting off strongly with the first two movies in 2000 and 2003, both directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) the series saw a disheartening dip in quality when Singer left to direct a Superman sequel in 2006, resulting in the awful X-Men: The Last Stand, directed by Brett Ratner, compounded by an even worse Wolverine spinoff in 2009 by Gavin Hood. In 2011, Matthew Vaughn's prequel X-Men: First Class surprised audiences and critics by restoring a pretty high standard of quality to the X-Men franchise. Last year's The Wolverine, directed by James Mangold was not quite in its league but it was a surprisingly decent movie as well.
With X-Men: Days of Future Past, however, Singer finally returns to the franchise he started fourteen years ago, and gives not only the best X-Men movie that has ever been produced, but a movie that easily stands shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the very best films of the Disney-owned Marvel Studios, like the first Iron Man, the global phenomenon The Avengers, and the recent Captain America sequel.
The film opens in the year 2023, when mutants have been nearly wiped out by an unstoppable army of extremely powerful robots called Sentinels, built specifically to destroy them and their supporters and which, apart from unbelievable firepower, also have the ability to adapt to any threat. As a result, not even the combined abilities of the remaining X-Men, such as the ice powers of Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), teleportation powers of Blink (Fan Bingbing), fire powers of Sunpot (Adan Canto), armor and strength of Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), enhanced senses of Warpath (Booboo Stewart) the weather powers of Storm (Halle Berry) or even the metal-manipulating powers of Erik Lensherr a.k.a. Magneto (Ian McKellen) are able to stop them.
So far, the remaining X-Men have been able to stay alive thanks to the power of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to project the consciousness of Bishop (Omar Sy) into the past to warn the other X-Men of the attacks in time for them to evacuate their location, but time is running out fast. Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) then has the idea to send someone's consciousness back in time, all the way to the single event that led to the launch of the Sentinel program by the governments of the world, the assassination of Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) by Raven, a.k.a. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence). Professor Xavier theorizes that by stopping the assassination, they can change the future. However, to send someone's consciousness that far back in time could kill them, which is why Logan a.k.a. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), with his healing factor, is the only person who could survive the process, and as a result Kitty sends him back to 1973, where he must enlist the aid of a much younger Charles (James McAvoy) and Erik (Michael Fassbender). It won't be easy; Charles has become addicted to a serum developed by Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) that enables him to walk but has dulled his telepathy, while Erik is incarcerated underneath the Pentagon for supposedly having killed the President of the United States. Logan, Charles and Hank recruit a young man named Peter (Evan Peters) with the mutant gift of super speed in the hope of busting Magneto out of jail, but the challenges that lie ahead are going to be a lot more difficult than that as Trask, initially turned down by the American congress, starts to get too cozy for comfort with the right people in the U.S. government.
As happy as I was to find out that Bryan Singer was returning to the director's chair for the latest X-Men movie after over a decade away from the franchise, I confess my joy was slightly tempered by the notion that he'd be working from a script written by Simon Kinberg, who also wrote the disastrous X-Men: The Last Stand, and whose resume includes other films I really didn't enjoy, like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes adaptation in 2009. As it turns out, I needn't have worried; Kinberg's script, apart from being surprisingly taut and well-structured, is actually quite reverent to the canon that was established by the previous films, with the exception of the failure to explain why Professor X is in his old body, which got vaporized in The Last Stand while his consciousness was moved into another person's comatose body. The real marvel (pun intended) here is that thanks to the time-travel element, this is easily one of the most complicated stories that has been attempted in any comic-book based movie, and yet with the exception of a few niggles, Kinberg actually pulls it off. If nothing else, such is his and Singer's sleight-of-hand that it's easier to ignore the gaffes, which are inevitable with that kind of storytelling.
Still, even though Kinberg has raised his game, it's still Singer's show, and he extracts electrifying performances from his leads. Jackman's charisma, as expected, is still dialed up to 11 here, but the good news is that he gets to do a lot more than shout and skewer people here; there's some welcome gravitas to his character that was actually hinted at in the last Wolverine solo movie but gets explored a bit more effectively here. The narrative focus, however, is on the newer cast members, in particular McAvoy's younger Xavier, who is a broken man after the events of First Class. McAvoy gets to do more than wear long hair and bell-bottom pants; he does an exemplary job of portraying the younger Xavier as having fallen from grace, a stark contrast from the hopeful young man he was in his first movie. For me, the film's most powerful scene doesn't involve explosions or energy blasts or fisticuffs; it's the scene where, through the magic of telepathy, young and old Charles meet and converse. Fassbender's Magneto was the breakout star of First Class with his overpowering, feral performance, but this time it is McAvoy's turn to shine. Fassbender's Magneto has traveled quite a bit further into full-on bad guy territory this time, though arguably understandably so, but the good news is that his portrayal is no less nuanced than it was the first time around, and his brutality here feels like a natural progression of what came before. Jennifer Lawrence, meanwhile, gets to show off her martial arts skills (when she's not being swapped out with a stunt double) and some pretty impressive linguistic (or at least phonetic) ability when Mystique carries on an extended conversation in Vietnamese and later throws in a smattering of French. She doesn't get quite as much attention from the script as she did in First Class, even though, ironically, Mystique is more central to the plot this time, but the supremely talented Lawrence is able to make the most out of her slightly diminished role. I also enjoyed seeing Nicholas Hoult return to the role of McCoy, also known as the Beast, as well; there was a lot more of his trademark acrobatic fighting this time, and he had a much better makeup job than he did in First Class. Dinklage, as the film's bad guy, turns in a solid, if not particularly remarkable performance, though to my mind that was more down to the writing. He certainly wasn't anything like Brian Cox's somewhat flamboyant bad guy William Stryker in X2: X-Men United, a younger version of whom is played here by Josh Helman. Still, Dinklage's performance is entirely creditable, and it was refreshing that, for a change it did not actually touch on his stature.
Finally, the "future" X-Men get to showcase their powers and little else, though Page's role as Kitty Pryde is fairly substantial even though she plays out more like a plot device than an actual character. I must say, though, that Fan Bingbing is absolutely gorgeous as Blink, and I hope to see more of her in future installments.
For me, however, the breakout star of this movie was Evan Peters, who played Peter Maximoff, also known in the comic books as Quicksilver. A bravura sequence in which he puts his super speed on full display is easily the best action set piece of the entire movie, and lays down a serious marker that I suspect was intended for Fox's rivals over at Marvel studios, who through some curious legal development will also be able to feature Quicksilver in their Avengers sequel next year, to be played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whom I actually found to be insufferably bland in the current hit Godzilla. It was also a stroke of genius for Singer to set the scene to the sound of Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" although that has fooled at least one reviewer into thinking that Quicksilver's power is to stop time. The only thing truly wrong with this iteration of Quicksilver is that he is gone from the movie way, way too soon, and for no good reason, really. I can already see the "How It Should Have Ended" skit on Youtube in which he plays a bigger role and simplifies everyone's problems. Still, even without him around the movie has plenty of highly-impressive action sequences.
It's hard to talk about the specific things I enjoyed about the film without spoiling plot points, but I will say that, apart from enjoying the film on its own merits, I was decidedly struck by how faithful Singer and his crew managed to be to the atmosphere of the original comic book series, which was extremely effective in juxtaposing the bleakness of the future and the tumult of the end of the seventies, even though in the movie Singer has turned back the clock a few years. There's even a highly memorable, if decidedly grim moment involving Storm and a sentinel that feels like it's been ripped right out of the comic book, albeit with more visceral impact here.
For me the honor of top Marvel-based movie of the year still goes to Marvel Studios' Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but this comes a very, very close second and only loses out because of some quibbles I have with the script. I will say that of the two, this is definitely the more ambitious film, comparable even to what Marvel did by putting together The Avengers two years ago. One thing the X-Men franchise definitely has going for it is that it is the longest running comic book film franchise whose makers haven't actually pushed the reboot button, although the time travel story device serves a similar purpose.
I can actually foresee nerds in the future debating what the better Marvel movie was: this, or The Avengers. It's that good.
8.9/10
[mild spoiler warning]
Oh, and I am happy to report that people unhappy with certain plot points of X-Men: The Last Stand will be very happy with this film. That is all.
[end spoiler warning]
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Casting for Cash?
About fifteen years or so ago, a little-known Australian actor named Hugh Jackman was cast to play one of Marvel Comics' most famous characters, the mutant superhero known as Wolverine.
For years before and thereafter, that was basically the rule, with few exceptions: cast low key, not-so-well known (or sometimes completely unknown) actors in superhero roles so that the larger-than-life persona that actual movie stars such as Tom Cruise or Leonardo diCaprio would bring would not overshadow the characters themselves. Sure, fairly well-known actors like George Clooney and Val Kilmer played Batman at one point, but it was when the lesser-known character actor Christian Bale played him that the character really shone. Casting Hollywood stars as comic book characters rarely works out well, with probably the most famous exception being Robert Downey, Jr., the one-time up-and-coming prince of Hollywood laid low by drug abuse who belatedly fulfilled his potential superstardom thanks to a red-and-gold suit of armor.
Things are changing, though. Many of the current generation of young actors currently eyed for superhero roles, even the so-called "A-listers" actually grew up on superhero comic books and loved the adventures of the characters they read. Many of these actors, like Nicolas Cage and Ryan Reynolds, as a result, eagerly court roles in the adaptations of these books to the big screen. The latest such actor to chase, and land such a role is white-hot "A-lister" Channing Tatum, who, in 2012 alone, starred in three movies that grossed $100 million at the North American box office, which, inflation notwithstanding remains both a benchmark of a movie's success, and the bankability of its actors. Tatum had a misstep last year with White House Down, but is still very much regarded as a hot Hollywood property. Arguably as a result of that success, 20th Century Fox and producer Lauren Schuler-Donner have agreed to have Tatum play the mutant Gambit, a popular X-Men character who previously appeared in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as played by Taylor Kitsch.
As far as Tatum's acting talent goes, about the best thing I can say about him is that he isn't a terrible actor or necessarily even a bad one. I can probably think of one of two people I'd rather have in that role.
As far as commercial prospects are concerned, though, I can hardly argue with the logic Fox and behind the decision. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to figure it out; the guy's movies make lots of money. Full stop. Imagine if the Gambit character, by virtue of his X-Men connection, could attract about $240 million worth of fans to the theaters around the world without Channing Tatum. Now add everyone who paid to see Magic Mike who would not be caught dead near a comic-book-based movie, and that's a boost of nearly another $200 million. Boom.
I actually liked Tatum in 21 Jump Street, and I was basically blown away by X-Men: Days of Future Past (review coming next) so I remain cautiously optimistic that Fox will maintain the standard of quality they have rediscovered in 2011 with X-Men: First Class, and have even improved on with their latest movie.
For years before and thereafter, that was basically the rule, with few exceptions: cast low key, not-so-well known (or sometimes completely unknown) actors in superhero roles so that the larger-than-life persona that actual movie stars such as Tom Cruise or Leonardo diCaprio would bring would not overshadow the characters themselves. Sure, fairly well-known actors like George Clooney and Val Kilmer played Batman at one point, but it was when the lesser-known character actor Christian Bale played him that the character really shone. Casting Hollywood stars as comic book characters rarely works out well, with probably the most famous exception being Robert Downey, Jr., the one-time up-and-coming prince of Hollywood laid low by drug abuse who belatedly fulfilled his potential superstardom thanks to a red-and-gold suit of armor.
Things are changing, though. Many of the current generation of young actors currently eyed for superhero roles, even the so-called "A-listers" actually grew up on superhero comic books and loved the adventures of the characters they read. Many of these actors, like Nicolas Cage and Ryan Reynolds, as a result, eagerly court roles in the adaptations of these books to the big screen. The latest such actor to chase, and land such a role is white-hot "A-lister" Channing Tatum, who, in 2012 alone, starred in three movies that grossed $100 million at the North American box office, which, inflation notwithstanding remains both a benchmark of a movie's success, and the bankability of its actors. Tatum had a misstep last year with White House Down, but is still very much regarded as a hot Hollywood property. Arguably as a result of that success, 20th Century Fox and producer Lauren Schuler-Donner have agreed to have Tatum play the mutant Gambit, a popular X-Men character who previously appeared in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as played by Taylor Kitsch.
As far as Tatum's acting talent goes, about the best thing I can say about him is that he isn't a terrible actor or necessarily even a bad one. I can probably think of one of two people I'd rather have in that role.
As far as commercial prospects are concerned, though, I can hardly argue with the logic Fox and behind the decision. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to figure it out; the guy's movies make lots of money. Full stop. Imagine if the Gambit character, by virtue of his X-Men connection, could attract about $240 million worth of fans to the theaters around the world without Channing Tatum. Now add everyone who paid to see Magic Mike who would not be caught dead near a comic-book-based movie, and that's a boost of nearly another $200 million. Boom.
I actually liked Tatum in 21 Jump Street, and I was basically blown away by X-Men: Days of Future Past (review coming next) so I remain cautiously optimistic that Fox will maintain the standard of quality they have rediscovered in 2011 with X-Men: First Class, and have even improved on with their latest movie.
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