Tag: Patrick Stewart

Movie Review – ‘Logan’ – Who Wants To Live Forever

Alright, break’s over.  Time to start reviewing new movies in a timely manner again (and, yes, the title of this review is another Queen reference).

Directed by James Mangold
Written by James Mangold (story and screenplay), Scott Frank (screenplay), and Michael Green (screenplay)
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Richard E. Grant, Eriq La Salle, Daniel Bernhardt
Soundtrack: Marco Beltrami

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been wearied by the fact that there have been eight X-Men films previous to Logan and a total of six of them have been Wolverine movies (regardless of whether or not they actually have “Wolverine” in the title), not to mention he’s got cameos in the other two (First Class and Apocalypse) that aren’t about him.

Frankly, I’ll be happy to see a future X-Men movie that has no Wolverine whatsoever (much like how I’m waiting for a Star Wars movie with no lightsabers).

However, there’s always been that one exceptional idea.  You know the one I mean: “Well, if they actually did justice to the character by making an rated-R movie…”

So, when rumors began circulating that the next (and hopefully last) Wolverine movie was going to feature Old Man Logan, and that it might actually be rated-R, I got a little bit excited.

And I was right to feel that way.

It’s hard to quantify exactly what Logan is, because it works on so many levels, but it’s definitely more emotionally substantive than I was expecting (and I was expecting something fairly mature to begin with).  Other than a based-on-a-true-story type war movie, I can’t remember the last thing I’ve seen that I could describe as fantastically violent and utterly beautiful at the same time, but Logan earns such a description.

Honestly though, the movie works as a mildly futuristic science fiction film, it works as a violent-as-all-get-out action movie (although, frankly, there might not be enough action to satisfy certain audiences), it works as something of a family drama, there are some western elements at play (not a surprise given writer/director James Mangold’s obvious love of that particular genre), and it works as a comic book movie (again, why this didn’t come out Valentine’s Day weekend, following in Fox’s own footsteps of Kingsman and Deadpool, is a mystery).  I won’t claim to be able to recognize every wink and nod to all of the various source materials (plus I think this is largely an original story from Mangold), but I know they’re in there (there’s even one shot that’s straight out of Cop Land).

It would be all too easy for a movie attempting to accomplish so much to just devolve into utter garbage, but thankfully Logan is anchored by a number of good performances.  Obviously Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart have been well-versed in their respective characters for many years, but I’d say they both do an admirable job of bringing something new to the table for this movie specifically.  Also, I was impressed with Stephen Merchant in a very much outside-the-box role for him, and, it must be said, Dafne Keen is a young star on the rise.  She can say so much without saying anything at all, and at certain points you can’t help but share in her child-like wonder (despite her darker side).

I guess if I were to sum up Logan as one particular thing, it would be a pleasant surprise, because I was not expecting this violent, R-rated mutant romp to be so heartfelt and beautiful in exploring themes of life and family.

Story-wise, I’m not sure exactly how well it will play with people totally unfamiliar with the characters, but it’s certainly more forgiving towards the uninitiated than, say, Rogue One.  I actually went into Logan pretty fresh (no research for this one, surprisingly) and was able to pick up the story just fine as it went along (although I did leave with a few questions, but nothing central to the plot).

If I have one particular criticism of Logan, it’s that certain elements become predictable as you get further along into it (and also not every performance is on the same level), but that’s a small chink in the armor of what may very well go down as one of the year’s best.

It’s brutal, it’s beautiful, it’s got just enough levity when it needs it, and it’s a fitting last ride for an iconic actor in an iconic role.

Even for non-X-Men fans, I highly recommend it.

Go see Logan.

Rating: ★★★★½ (out of five)

P.S.
As usual, shout-out to Alamo Drafthouse for getting into the spirit of the thing, including this month’s “Old Man Logan” special cocktail (it’s strong).

 

Twofer Movie Review: ‘Green Room’ and ‘The Huntsman: Winter’s War’ – Dark & Stormy

So, we’ve got two movies this weekend, one not quite yet going wide and the other going full spread; both look like they could use a little boost.

Green Room

Written and Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
Cast: Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Mark Webber, Imogen Poots, Taylor Tunes, Macon Blair, Eric Edelstein, David W. Thompson, and Sir Patrick Stewart
Soundtrack: Brooke Blair and Will Blair

I know this movie’s really good because I already want to go see it again.

Let it be said that writer/directer Jeremy Saulnier likes what he knows and knows what he likes, namely hardcore punk, grisly violence, and ratcheting up tension.

This was true in his sophomore effort, ‘Blue Ruin‘, and it’s even more true for ‘Green Room’.

Everybody knows that horror is not exactly my bailiwick, but ‘Green Room’ is my kind of serious bloody thriller: no stupid jump-scares, no dumb CGI monsters, and no torture porn.  It’s just a simple story about a punk band in the wrong place at the wrong time.  As much as I enjoy big movies with big struggles (gotta save the earth, again), I also enjoy movies where small things become dramatic elements (like in ‘A Most Wanted Man‘, I never knew how important someone merely signing a piece of paper could feel).  ‘Green Room’ revels in the small details.  There are no waves of nameless, faceless drones; everything is personal.

Now, it’s not like we haven’t seen this kind of movie before (‘Assault on Precinct 13‘ comes to mind), but what makes ‘Green Room’ unique is the cultural setting (hardcore punk scene), and the performances, namely of one Sir Patrick Stewart as a neo-Nazi club owner.  He has such presence in general whenever he appears on screen, but in this case he’s that villain you love to hate.  I think he truly relished the role and it shines through in every frame he appears.

Order of the British Empire aside, I’d be remiss if I didn’t praise the efforts of our band of survivors, Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, and Imogen Poots.  I’m not saying there’s anything Oscar-worthy happening here, but they all put in solid performances as, punk aesthetics aside, otherwise ordinary people in an extraordinary situation.

Ultimately, I like ‘Green Room’ because it’s a movie that punches above its weight class.  It’s small and not too flashy, but it delivers big.  Whether you’re into more slasher type horror or traditional Hitchcockian thrillers, or if you just like hardcore punk, you should definitely see it, although I bet it’ll make you think twice about stepping foot in a skinhead club ever again.

Rating: ★★★★☆

 

The Huntsman: Winter’s War

Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Written by Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin, based on characters created by Evan Daugherty
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron, Jessica Chastain, Emily Blunt, Nick Frost, Rob Brydon, Sam Hazeldine, Sam Claflin, Ralph Ineson
Soundtrack: James Newton Howard

I’m not sure what’s up with all these fairy tale movies and TV shows the past few years, other than the usual trope of Hollywood selling literally anything people recognize (including but not limited to board games), but at least ‘Snow White and The Huntsman‘ tried to interject some original ideas.  The biggest problem with that film, despite how great it looked (way better looking than that ridiculous ‘Hobbit’ trilogy), was it was pretty much just dark and brooding the entire time.

In comparison to its predecessor, ‘Winter’s War’ (which is both a prequel and a sequel; for good measure, I suppose) is bloodier, sexier, and, most importantly, has more humor.  Most of the laughs come from the natural comedic chemistry of Rob Brydon and Nick Frost, but plenty of other characters have moments as well.  This is not to say that ‘Winter’s War’ is a comedy, but it’s nice to have a chuckle once and a while to ease the tension (even Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ Trilogy had moments of levity for the audience).  After all, this is by and large a general audience movie, not some kind of horror film.

Now, I’m not going to put ‘Winter’s War’ in the must-see category, but if you just feel like going to the movies sometime in the next month, it’s an acceptable choice, and even if you haven’t seen the prior film, I’m sure you’ll follow along just fine.  It’s got a good cast, fairly state-of-the-art visuals, and provides enough entertainment to take a flyer on.  Plus, it’s a rare sequel that trumps the first movie.

(I mean, seriously; when are Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, and Jessica Chastain ever going to be in the same movie again?)

Rating: ★★★½

Twofer Movie Review: ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ and ‘Godzilla’ (2014) – Why So Boring?

I never anticipated that I’d be formally reviewing these two movies, as I’m trying to stick to ground less traveled here, but I had the…experience…of seeing both this past week, and they coaxed almost the exact same reaction out of me: disappointment.

X-Men: Days of Future Past and the new Godzilla are the latest members of a growing and increasingly wearisome club of “big” summer movies whose trailers make them look fantastic, but the movies themselves leave much to be desired (perhaps the most notable example of this from 2013 is Man of Steel, though at least the first half is worth watching).  I understand movies are a business, but at this point I’m just tired of all the lies.

So, here I am, reviewing these films that many, many people have seen already, but I want to warn others while they’re still at risk of wasting their time and money.

 

Directed by Bryan Singer
Written by Simon Kinberg (Screenplay and Story), Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (Story)
Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Lucas Till, Daniel Cudmore, Booboo Stewart, Michael Lerner
Soundtrack: John Ottman

I had such high hopes…

Before I get too ahead of myself here, I will point out two scenes in this movie that are quite well done, without spoiling too much (not that it really matters):
1. An action scene that takes place in a famous government building where our heroes have to break someone out.  It is the best scene in the film (though not worth the price of admission), and makes great use of Quicksilver (Marvel’s version of The Flash, if you don’t know).
2. A more poignant scene where the two Xaviers (past and future) are talking to one another.  It’s the only scene that really connects on an emotional level to any significant degree.

That’s about it.  Two scenes.

The basic premise of this movie (we need to fix the past in order to save the future) is interesting enough to keep you going for the lengthy running time; I was never so bored that I just wanted to go to sleep, but there’s a substantial gap between being passively interested and actively invested, and this movie consistently fails to fill it.  If I was so inclined, I could complain about lots of things like plot holes, anachronisms, and various other X-Men problems that I know nothing about, but even before all of that, this movie constantly fails to be compelling.  I was expecting Days of Future Past to be big and emotional; it is neither of those.

Whatever needs to happen to advance the story happens in short order, leaving very little room for dramatic tension.  We need to find the professor?  We find the professor.  We need to find Eric?  We find Eric.  We need them to reconcile?  They reconcile in two minutes (even though “they’ve never been further apart”).  And so on and so forth.  Not only that, but they couldn’t seem to figure out an interesting way of delivering mass exposition, which leads to more tedium as a viewer.

Now, again, I know very little about X-Men, and I’ve certainly never read the Days of Future Past storyline in the comics, so I can’t tell you how good of an adaptation the movie is, but, you know what?  I know very little about Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D., and I really enjoyed The Winter Soldier.  I know very little about Iron Man, and all three of those movies are fantastic (Iron Man 2 is actually my favorite of the trilogy).  All four of the movies I just mentioned work as movies first and worry about the other comic book stuff later, therefore I recommend all of them, but I cannot recommend this new X-Men film (outside of a Netflix/Redbox sort of viewing if you’re that curious).  X-Men: First Class had its problems, and I did not recommend seeing it in a theater when it came out, but there are at least some compelling storylines and interesting cinematic goings-on to get you moderately invested; it’s not a total flop.  I can’t say the same for Days of Future Past.  Ordinarily I’d offer up some sort of suggestion on how to improve the film, but I honestly don’t know about this one outside of having a completely different creative team leading the charge.

Frankly, and this will sound harsh, I think Bryan Singer himself might be the biggest problem here.  Now, he did write and direct the first two X-Men films, and they’re solid, I guess (it’s been a while since I’ve watched them), but on the whole I think his career path is much closer to M. Night Shyamalan than his hero, Richard Donner.  I suppose based on his original X-Men work he was able to wrangle a lot of creative control for Superman Returns, and that movie suffers many of the same problems as Days of Future Past.  Granted, I really enjoyed it when I first saw it in theaters, but I was a younger man, and highly nostalgic for Superman I and II; watching it again though, that movie’s a mess (Lex Luthor wants real estate again, really?), and a good chunk of the running time simply isn’t compelling.  I can understand the studio’s desire to return to the guy that put X-Men on the cinematic map, but, at this point, it seems that Bryan Singer is damaged goods, at least for superhero movies.

★★☆☆☆

 

Directed by Gareth Edwards
Written by Max Borenstein (Screenplay), Dave Callaham (Story)
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, CJ Adams, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Richard T. Jones, Victor Rasuk, Jared Keeso
Soundtrack: Alexandre Desplat

The most common comment (and I uttered it myself many a time) I heard in anticipation of Godzilla was, “Bryan Cranston’s in it,” and that is a true statement; Bryan Cranston is in the new Godzilla, and he’s really good in it when he’s in it, but he’s not in it nearly enough to save it.

This movie started off with a lot of promise.  In the first 15 minutes or so, we see that Bryan Cranston plays an engineer at a nuclear power plant in Japan who’s concerned about a repeating pattern of seismic tremors (whose origins we as the audience already know something about) that might cause his plant some trouble.  Sure enough, he’s right, and the plant suffers a terrible accident as a result of a mysterious earthquake, and, of course, this comes at a great personal cost to our beloved engineer.

BOOM.  That’s a great intro, and a great way to get your audience invested into your movie.  BUT, they then proceed to almost immediately scrap that for a shift in perspective to a different character.  Bryan Cranston’s engineer comes back for a little bit, and you find out what he’s been doing for the past 15 years and it leads to the next plot point, but after that he’s done.  See ya never.

This is my first big problem with this film.  They get you emotionally invested, but then throw it away and give you characters that you just don’t care about; you can’t care about them, at least not in the same way.  The engineer’s character’s arc coulda/shoulda/woulda made up the whole movie, or at least the first half of it.  But jettisoning it so quickly into the run time (no matter who was playing him, really) was a huge mistake in the writing; and replacing him with such boring other characters compounds the problem further.  Let him hang around a lot longer, and you’ve instantly got a better movie; hands down.

My second big issue is creature design; not so much for Godzilla, he looks alright, I guess, but the other creatures (this is not a spoiler; they’re in the trailer if you look close).  They just look so generic, like they got focus-grouped to death or something.  I don’t know, they just don’t look interesting or very creative.  This is where maybe a little more liaising with Toho would have reaped huge benefits.  I mean I know this is a ‘murican Godzilla movie, and I appreciate that they moved the story along more so than a standard reboot, but when your film features giant monsters, those monsters need to be engaging, and they almost completely failed in that respect.

My third and final problematic issue with Godzilla is too much tease and not enough payoff.  Say what you want about Pacific Rim (I’m not that high on it myself, but it’s okay), but you can’t deny that they went all out when it came to showing you the monsters.  Now I’m not saying Godzilla has to be that explicit, but the title of the movie is GODZILLA.  A Godzilla movie should have the payoff of seeing Godzilla doing Godzilla things, and he does, eventually, but even when it’s an all-out brawl, they still cut away and tease you in the midst of it.  It doesn’t come as a fully-satisfying payoff; it’s just more frustration at the end of an already frustrating movie.

What’s also frustrating is that they gave this movie to a promising young director, Gareth Edwards (not to be confused with Gareth Evans, who’s making the fantastic Raid series), whose first feature was also a monster movie called Monsters that appears to be much more worthwhile than Godzilla.

Now, is Godzilla a better movie than X-Men: Days of Future Past?  Yes.  It at least gives you an initial emotional connection, and though you’re largely waiting for something to happen, it does draw you back in a couple of times with legitimate suspense (something X-Men particularly fails to do); not to mention the visuals are much better on the whole.  But it’s not good enough to warrant a better rating, unfortunately.

★★☆☆☆