Cinemutants - X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

At a time when superhero movies are starting to lose their stranglehold on pop culture, there are really only two options: go back and watch old movies, or kill off an entire cinematic universe in spectacular fashion. This July, Marvel’s taking the latter approach with Deadpool & Wolverine, which seems primed to seal off the 20th Century Fox film universe. And while director Shawn Levy promises, “This movie is built [...] with no obligation to come prepared with prior research,” skipping the research has never really been my strong suit when it comes to franchises. It’s a perfect excuse, then, to go through the last 24 years (and 13 movies) with everyone’s favorite mutants, the X-Men.
 

This week, from 2009, it’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Learn the secret origin of James “Logan” Howlett, the Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), as he enlists in a special military group reporting to William Stryker (Danny Huston). When Logan’s brother Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber) begins hunting their teammates, Logan leaves behind a peaceful life with Kayla (Lynn Collins) and submits to an experimental procedure that gives him metallic claws.

1. The best there is at what he does. I almost never rewatch Origins unless I’m doing a thorough rewatch, and it’s not exactly because this is a bad movie. It has a few things going for it, but by and large Origins is a colossal bore. Hugh Jackman is trying, he really is, and he’s got the persona of Logan down perfectly – certainly better than in The Last Stand, at least. But it turns out that the mysterious past of Wolverine is much more interesting when we don’t have all the answers; Origins takes the most boilerplate backstory and grafts it onto Wolverine like so much adamantium. Parental issues? Check. Tragic love story? Check. Hamfisted prequel references? See below. And as for those special effects, it’s hard to think of a movie with effects that have aged worse than this one; Logan’s claws are like floating cartoons, all the wrong size, and the third act is dodgy at best.
2. The kitchen sink. Prequels shouldn’t feel like bullet points, and Act Two of this film reveals that nearly everything distinctive about Wolverine started on essentially the same day: he gets his claws, his dogtags, his motorcycle, and his leather jacket within the same 24-hour period. None of it’s very exciting, and Logan walks into the frame at one point carrying a literal sink in his hands, as if to say they’ve covered it all. But the storytellers have taken the path of least interest to get there, lining the cast with C- and D-list comic book characters as if to trick fanboys into liking the film because of its deep-cut casting. Folks took Solo to task for doing much the same thing, but the key difference was that Solo was fun; it turns out that X2 did Logan’s origins better by refusing to answer all the questions.
3. Koo-koo-ka-choo got screwed. I’ve seen Origins a few times, but I still couldn’t remember all the mutants – their names or their powers. To be fair, this mish-mosh of characters feels like the detritus of who Fox had the rights to use. Kestrel, Bolt, Silver Fox, The Blob, and Agent Zero... were these never-rans selected to save the interesting mutants for non-prequel films? Perhaps not, given that the film also phenomenally squanders the character of Gambit (played by an uncharismatic Taylor Kitsch) who, let’s be real, you and I both forgot was in this movie. He’s mere set decoration in a third act that also throws Cyclops, Professor Xavier, and maybe/maybe not Emma Frost into the mix for what I can only assume to be their availability for the marketing. (We’ll start thinking about messy timelines next week, but despite playing fast and loose with its cast, Origins doesn’t actually break too many eggs.)
4. We’re not like them! The one thing Origins has going for it is its casting. Jackman, naturally, isn’t making any missteps, but Liev Schreiber and Danny Huston are playing much better villains than this picture deserves. The film begins with an arresting credits sequence that shows Logan and Victor fighting in every war, the kind of time-skipping montage that Zack Snyder does so well, but that war sequence is the film I would rather have seen. Schreiber is having so much fun as Sabretooth, genuinely scary but also addictively fascinating to watch; it’s a genuine shame that we never saw this Sabretooth again (unless, fingers crossed, he turns up in Deadpool & Wolverine). Meanwhile, Huston plays a young(er) Stryker as the apex of sinister government banality, never quite trying to do a Brian Cox impression but still carrying that same weighty menace. Any time either one of these guys is on screen, Origins very nearly sings.
5. Take a dip in the ’Pool. Since we’re gearing up for a new Deadpool movie, it’s worth thinking about how the Merc with a Mouth comes off in Origins... and the answer is, really quite badly. In the first act, it’s astonishing how fully formed Ryan Reynolds was as Wade Wilson, how recognizable his snarky charm remained seven years before his solo film proper. But as that third act ramps up, we find that Wade’s mouth has been sewn shut, his swords have been grafted into his arms, and he’s able to teleport and shoot laser beams out of his eyes. Deadpool, this ain’t, and it has a whiff of that mid-2000s self-loathing that comic book adaptations often indulged, pretending that the source material was much too silly for the big screen. Fans hated it, Reynolds kept pushing to do it right, and now fifteen years later Deadpool isn’t a punchline. Well, not like that, at least, but it does become a memorable gag in Deadpool 2, when our Deadpool travels back in time to shoot this Deadpool in the head (and a few other places).

Sound off in the comments, true believers: did we need this Origins? Which X-Men deserved a prequel film? If you thought 1979 was a barrel of laughs, join us next week for 1962, when the whole franchise gets a prequel/reboot with X-Men: First Class.

Wonder Woman (2017)

In a word, wow.

Diana, princess of Themyscira (Gal Gadot), has trained her whole life – against the wishes of her mother, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons (Connie Nielsen) – to defeat the god of war should Ares return centuries after his defeat at the hands of his father Zeus. When man’s world, in the form of downed fighter pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), comes to her island home, Diana has the chance to fight the war to end all wars, joining the First World War as Wonder Woman. As she crosses the trenches of no man’s land, she faces Erich Ludendorff (Danny Huston), the German general intent on avoiding an armistice, and his chemist, Dr. Isabel Maru, alias Doctor Poison (Elena Anaya).

Let’s get the preliminary out of the way up front: I’m perpetually aghast at the fact that it took more than 75 years for Wonder Woman to headline her own live-action feature film, but if that’s time we spent “Waiting for Gadot” I’m almost inclined to say it was worth the wait. Gal Gadot is frankly definitive as Wonder Woman, and I’m relieved that audiences are embracing her as much as she has embraced the role; I look forward to many more films with her as Wonder Woman because it’s almost as if she’s stepped out of a comic book and onto the silver screen. The moments when she’s unleashing her warrior’s fury, backed by Tina Guo’s electric cello theme (thankfully maintained from Batman v Superman), are at once fist-pumpingly thrilling and simultaneously genuinely awe-inspiring.

There’s certainly a meta-level reading here, with Steve Trevor telling Wonder Woman that no one can cross a no man’s land before watching her accomplish just that. In many ways, that’s an echo of all the bigwigs and even audience members who sniffed at the notion that a female-led superhero film could do big business, and here we are, $100 million later. But even on its own merits, the moments when Wonder Woman charges into battle are legitimately inspirational, as is her continual emphasis on personal acts of heroism; for all that Wonder Woman is looking to defeat Ares, she never neglects the personal cost of war, as in the deeply touching moment when she heals a traumatized soldier by asking him to sing. Gadot embodies the character’s unique blend of compassion and ferocity, as well as her welcome sense of humor amid the absurdities of man’s world.

Wonder Woman is unquestionably Gal Gadot’s show, but she’s surrounded by strong supporting characters. Chris Pine is a well-nuanced Steve Trevor, funny and somewhat dunderheaded but never incompetent; previous incarnations have struggled with whether Steve is a patronizing patriarch or an empty-headed buffoon, but Pine finds a way to make Steve capable yet human. The Amazons who dominate the first act are wonderful enough that I’d have gladly taken a ticket for a movie just about them, particularly Robin Wright’s fierce Antiope, and I do hope we’ll see more of Themyscira, perhaps as soon as Justice League in November. And our villains are clearly having a good time playing evil to the hilt; there’s a fascinating backstory to be told about Dr. Maru, while Danny Huston’s Ludendorff takes the occasional chomp out of the scenery in a snarling, vamping performance that manages also to be scary.

What I loved the most about Wonder Woman – aside from the mere fact of its existence and the notion that, finally, others love a DC movie as much as I do – is that it takes subtext from Batman v Superman and literalizes it. We have had to imagine and defer the promise of Jor-El’s prophecy to his son – “They will stumble, they will fall, but in time they will join you in the sun” – but Wonder Woman shows us what that looks like in the real world. The audience who joined me for Wonder Woman was probably the most diverse audience (in terms of age, gender, and race) I’ve seen at a superhero movie, at least in recent memory, and that alone is something to celebrate, that finally everyone understands the power of the superhero, that we see what they can do, and that we’re standing behind them.

Put another way, you go, Gal.

Wonder Woman is rated PG-13 for “sequences of violence and action, and some suggestive content.” Directed by Patty Jenkins. Written by Allan Heinberg, Zack Snyder, and Jason Fuchs. Starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, Elena Anaya, and David Thewlis.

Monday at the Movies - June 3, 2013

In honor of last month's stellar first season finale of Bates Motel, the A&E show I ended up loving more than I ever thought I would, we take a look at the myth behind the filming of Psycho before turning to the film itself.

Hitchcock (2012) – One of our finest actors portrays one of the greatest directors of all time, yet somehow the results leave something to be desired.  Sacha Gervasi’s directorial debut follows the corpulent Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) during the making of his ostensible masterpiece, Psycho.  It sounds like a recipe for success, but something’s missing; my vote is that, engaging though they all are, there are far too many subplots going on in the film.  We’ve got Helen Mirren doing fab work as Alma Reville, but it’s a performance dulled by a lifeless tease of adulteries (Danny Huston, usually equally compelling, is uninteresting here).  The bits where Hitch hallucinates encounters with Ed Gein are wacky in a Tim Burton kind of way, but these scenes are mere sidebars to other narratives.  And the making of Psycho itself, which was the major draw for me, gets short shrift – a shame, since it’s Hitch/Hopkins at his liveliest, and we have solid turns from Scarlett Johansson and James D’Arcy (as Janet Leigh and an uncanny doppelganger of Anthony Perkins, respectively).  On top of all that, though Hopkins is divine as always, his own star power sometimes overshadows the role, so it’s difficult to see him just at surface level; his Hitch voice is killer and his mannerisms accurate, but Hopkins still bleeds through.  All told, there’s nothing wrong with the movie, but it teases so many fascinating movies within itself that nothing feels fully fleshed out.  If nothing else, you’ll be itching to rewatch Psycho when all’s said and done.

Psycho (1960) – What do you say about a movie which the universe has already agreed is a landmark classic?  Alfred Hitchcock, the undisputed master of suspense, directs the hell out of Robert Bloch’s pulpy novel about the shady Bates Motel and its troubled proprietor Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), burdened with his own unique brand of mother issues when Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) arrives with a bundle of stolen cash.  Though it’s part of the air we breathe, the rest is criminal to spoil just in case, and I can only say that what Hitch does with the material is nothing short of golden.  He’s helped by a more than able score by the legendary Bernard Herrmann, who crafts no less than three unforgettable themes for the film (including those unmistakable violin screeches); indeed, Herrmann’s compositions are almost characters in themselves, governing the mood almost as much as Hitch’s own deliberate direction.  But oh, those directorial decisions:  the black and white, the montage (Eisenstein’s idea of montage as violence never felt so appropriate), the angles, the shadows, even the color of Janet Leigh’s underwear – all are the marks of an obsessive genius lending all his skill to a real project of passion.  Each visual is a treat unto itself, the shots of Norman’s taxidermy lending a beautiful horror to his calm conversation.  And from an industry standpoint, much about the film is delightfully innovative, making twist endings and arriving on time part of the moviegoing lexicon.  In short, it’s not crazy to love Psycho.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here on Friday for the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month!

Monday at the Movies - August 13, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty of “Monday at the Movies.”  Following last week’s coverage of the X-Men trilogy, this week we’re taking a look at the two prequels that have been released thus far.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) – As indisputably the most famous X-Man, it’s no surprise Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine got his own spin-off, and the prequel treatment sheds light on his mysterious past, unknown even to himself.  The film goes all the way back to his childhood with his brother Victor “Sabretooth” Creed (Liev Schreiber) through his time as an experiment at the hands of William Stryker (Danny Huston) and concluding with a visit to Three Mile Island and a confrontation with Weapon XI (alias Deadpool, here played by Ryan Reynolds).  Wolverine is something of a mixed bag; while there are truly great moments in the film, even fans of the franchise will find this movie overstaffed.  Jackman proves himself Wolverine incarnate once more, Huston is a fine stand-in for a young Brian Cox, and Schreiber is another in a long line of great comic book performances, lending his Oscar-worthy chops to an ambiguous antagonist who’s quite literally able to chew the scenery.  The story’s very interesting too, fleshing out a complicated backstory with a deft credits montage (which could be its own movie) and a fill-in-the-blanks attitude that resolves some of the unsolved flashbacks of X2.  But while the heart of the film is gold, it’s padded out with an overfull cast of characters and too many undeveloped sideplots.  It’s fun for insiders to see The Blob or Gambit show up, but the film is so focused on Wolverine (and rightly so) that it barely scratches the surface of these characters; consequently, so many characters do so little that many of the supporting actors do little more than phone in their performances (see Taylor Kitsch’s groan-worthy “accent” as Gambit).  The film rushes to its conclusion, no doubt because of its many side trips, but the news that a sequel will take the newly-amnesiac Wolverine to Japan is promising, even if only to see Jackman romp as Wolverine once more.

X-Men: First Class (2011) – Matthew Vaughn’s period-piece prequel was one of 2011’s surprise hits; after the bloated Wolverine’s disappointing presentation, my expectations were low.  But First Class does so many things right that I’m ready to say it’s the best and most enjoyable of the X-Men films.  James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender turn in A-plus performances as Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr (the man who would be Magneto), channeling but never aping their predecessors.  Their “First Class,” led by Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, is a ragtag group that proved before The Avengers that an ensemble superhero cast was doable, and Kevin Bacon lends an element of well-done camp as the piece’s maniacal villain.  The script is ambitious and plays its Sixties vibe to the hilt, replete with Nazi-hunting, Cold War tension, and groovy clothing.  In the hands of a lesser director, the script would have flopped, but Vaughn owes far more to the able cast who breathe life into the characters, realizing fully their inner struggles and “great responsibility.”  It’s not that comic book movies generally have bad acting; it’s that many of us aren’t expecting Oscar-caliber.  Hence the surprising strength of First Class, especially rising star Fassbender’s heartbreaking turn as a man for whom peace is a waning option.  Only January Jones as the psychic Emma Frost disappoints, drifting lackadaisically through an otherwise top-notch company.  But what First Class wisely remembers ends up being its greatest strength; for all the sturm und drang which usually occupies the genre, superhero films are supposed to be fun, and by the end of the film you’ll agree with Charles – “That’s a groovy mutation.”

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week, but stay tuned for a full review of The Bourne Legacy this Wednesday!

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008)

I'd hate to think that Simon Pegg is a one-hit (with a few near-hits) wonder, but How to Lose Friends & Alienate People just didn't score a home run for me.

Based on Toby Young's memoir about his time on staff at Vanity Fair, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is a cynical look at "making it" with Pegg starring as Sidney Young, an up-and-coming journalist climbing the periodical ladder after being hired by top editor Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges). Coarse and unrefined, Sidney meets the ire of his immediate editors Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst) and Lawrence Maddox (Danny Huston) while trying to court the gorgeous but empty-headed starlet Sophie Maes (Megan Fox).

I haven't yet seen a Simon Pegg vehicle as laugh-out-loud funny as Shaun of the Dead (though Hot Fuzz came close), and after this one I'm still looking. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is funny, but not consistently so and not usually for more than a snicker every five minutes. (Only one scene, in which Sidney's left leg suffers pretty serious injury repeatedly, elicited three consecutive gut-busters.) The script, consequently, is a little weak - especially for a comedy. It's formulaic in its worst places and only mildly charming in its best. Comedic shortcomings aside, the film suffers from what I call "Observe and Report syndrome" - that is, none of its characters are truly compelling, nor do we have good reason to root for any of them. Sidney's lovable, true, but it's a thin sheen covering a crass and predominantly unappealing core. Alison and Clayton are drawn in very broad strokes, with little characterization beyond "girl" and "boss," respectively; only Maddox has any real personality to him, thanks to a solid performance by the always reliable Huston.

Then there's Megan Fox, to whom I devote an entire paragraph because I've seen pretty much every one of her major features. Yet I don't seem to have learned my lesson with it all - Transformers, Jennifer's Body (that's about it, folks) - because she's as talented here as she has been in the other films in her canon. Translation: she looks pretty, but her acting ability is as glassy-eyed as her own striking face. She floats through the movie (well, except for that gratuitous scene where she walks through a swimming pool) without committing to an emotion, an inflection, or a facial expression beyond "vapid." Her delivery is unenthusiastic, her body language is entirely silent, and her emotional range goes from zero to one over the duration of the movie. She's gorgeous, but she's got about as much substance as that transparent dress she wears in her early scenes.

What's disappointing is that all of those involved (Fox excluded) can and have done much better work. Pegg was priceless in his collaborations with Edgar Wright, and I liked Dunst in the Spider-Man franchise. While Huston's good here, he's much better elsewhere (like in 30 Days of Night), and Bridges is criminally underused here; despite numerous allusions to The Big Lebowski (including White Russians, Port Huron, and a reference to Clayton being "the dude"), the film employs none of Bridges's trademark talewnt, though he manages to pull off a good deal of deadpan humor. Even director Robert B. Weide isn't doing his best, having cut his teeth on the uber-funny Curb Your Enthusiasm series.

Despite being mildly fun at moments, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People does not represent the best work of anyone here. Even Megan Fox has looked better.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People carries an R rating "for language, some graphic nudity and brief drug material." Translation: F-bombs galore, a transsexual fully naked from the front (prosthetics doubtless involved), and cocaine presented twice.

30 Days of Night (2007)

This ain't your mama's vampire movie, that's for sure.

Despite temptations to the contrary, I won't be writing the whole review in dialect. I will, for fair warning, be praising director David Slade and the source comic's author Steve Niles for their inventiveness within the vampire genre. I will also be lamenting a paradoxical lack of originality with regard to a few cliche characterizations and lack of decent thrills.

The premise of the film is maddeningly (in a "Why didn't I think of that?" way) simple: in Barrow, Alaska, the sun sets for thirty days of night. Marauding (possibly nomadic?) vampires, led by the vicious Marlow (Danny Huston), take this opportunity to pillage and plunder and all that gory stuff. It's up to Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and his wife Stella (Melissa George) to lead the survivors through the month-long night.

That's one of the major innovations of the movie. Vampire flicks heretofore had felt a little like the George Carlin cliche of westerns - that the whole film showed the cowboys preparing for the Indian assault. Ditto for vampire flicks, where the prime objective was to build up to a vampiric confrontation. Here, though, the object of the game is to survive, to ride out the long night in the hope that the sunlight will kill the vampires. And if we have to fight the vampires... well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Perhaps the most stark twist Niles & Co. have added to the vampire story is the way in which the vampires are fought. No, I'm not referring to the use of ultraviolet lamps to repel the bloodsuckers (creative as that is) but to the climactic confrontation between the humans and the vampires - which, unfortunately for completion's sake, would be criminal to spoil herein.

Though the plot has a lot of twists that lovers of the vampire tradition have never seen before, most of the characterizations of the survivors are as familiar as your father's cologne. Josh Hartnett again plays the tough brooding pseudo-loner, something he's been doing for quite some time. Melissa George (who I've adored since her Season Three stint as Vaughn's wife on Alias) is serviceable as the sheriff's wife, but I wish the writers hadn't dragged us through the "spouses about to separate reunite in the midst of disaster" storyline.

Indeed, the only characterization that really seems to get off the ground is Danny Huston's completely immersed portrayal of head vampire Marlow. Everything from the walk to the facial posturing (a perma-open mouth with fangs dripping blood) down to the language that Huston developed screams "vampire!" There are a few moments where Huston's performance made me sit up a little straighter and even feel a little quiver of terror in my stomach. Recall the way Johnny Depp stepped full-force into the shoes of Captain Jack Sparrow, and you'll be pretty near the mark of Huston's performance (although it's tough to match the Depp=Sparrow formula).

I realize it seems silly to dwell on acting and characterization in a horror movie, since the real stars are jump moments and arterial sprays - the latter of which 30 Days of Night delivers in abundance. Certainly there are few jump moments in the film, disappointing after the pulse-pounding rhythm of The Descent. The gore comes hard and fast, though, especially once the survivors realize the only sure way to kill these bloodthirsty vampires is decapitation. When a little girl wanders into the streets, covered in blood, her physical appearance on an abandoned avenue is more startling than the blood all over her face. Even the film's final battle has a gory moment beyond any "I've never seen that before" sentiment the movie generates.

As vampire movies go, this is a pretty clever take on the old tradition. Consider how Spider-Man changed the comic book genre - 30 Days of Night does the same for the vampire movie (at least, I hope it does). If it's a great work of film you're looking for, this probably isn't the right place to search, but as vampire movies go, you'll have a bloody good time.