Cinemutants - X-Men (2000)

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.
 

First up, from 2000, it’s X-Men. Caught in a war between Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and the villainous Magneto (Ian McKellen), Logan (Hugh Jackman) joins the side of the X-Men, a group of mutants dedicated to saving a world that fears and hates them. Meanwhile, Marie (Anna Paquin) discovers her own unique abilities before joining Professor Xavier’s academy. 

1. One hundred minutes and counting. I’ve seen this movie more times than I can count, but I was floored this time to realize/remember that the film is under two hours long. At 01:44, X-Men is incredibly lean and astonishingly well-paced. Some of the expositional dialogue is a little didactic, but the bevy of (uncredited) screenwriters balance a cast of no fewer than ten named mutants with a plot that forces all of them together fairly swiftly. Whatever Marvel does next with the mutants, it’s hard to imagine the storytelling being as efficient and economical as it is here.
2. What a cast of characters. Last time I did one of these, I mused that Raiders of the Lost Ark had one of the all-time best casts in movie history. X-Men, quietly, might also be in that running. From their first scene together, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen positively crackle, and I’d even argue that the whole thing succeeds on their lofty pedigrees. The rest of the mutants are no slouch; Hugh Jackman might be a foot too tall for Wolverine, but he’s got the attitude and the walk. This time out, I was impressed by James Marsden as Cyclops, playing the unenviable straight man but nailing the boy-scout leadership that makes the comics character such a stalwart soldier. Even Bruce Davison as the smarmy Senator Kelly feels uncomfortably prescient in his role as a fear-mongering politician.
3. Evolution leaps forward. Even back in 2000, I was aware that X-Men felt like a sea change in superhero cinema. It felt serious, but more importantly it was earnest – it didn’t treat the source material with suspicion or derision. Instead, it mined nearly forty years of rich storytelling for an equally pointed take on issues that have never really left us. Prejudice, political mobilization, and the kinship of found families: these elements have been present in X-Men comics since the beginning, and a one-two punch with Spider-Man two years solidified the new superhero milieu. Put another way, these movies walked so the MCU could run.
4. What would you prefer, yellow spandex? While X-Men taught us the virtues of treating the source material with reverence, the film had a little less patience for the superficial trappings of superhero comics. Having just gotten over the Day-Glo disaster that was Batman & Robin, perhaps moviegoers weren’t ready for comics-accurate costuming from the X-Men, who notoriously don’t always look like they all belong in the same book. The 1992 animated series crystallized the Jim Lee costumes for a generation, but the movies went for a more subdued black leather palette, leaning into the post-Matrix cool aesthetic. (The comics, as ever, would follow suit the next year, with Grant Morrison’s New X-Men positing a fashion-forward vision of mutantkind.) Having said that, the leather suits are perhaps trying a little too hard, but darned if they don’t look cool, and it’s no wonder that I hoarded the action figures (and still do).
5. The war is still coming. I remember sitting in a theater in 2000 feeling like everything had changed, but also that everything was just beginning. Part of the success of X-Men must have been its terrific ending, which cues up a number of really interesting ideas for the franchise to come. Best of all, unlike most superhero movies, it leaves its chief villain (and his shapeshifting lieutenant) alive for the sequel, and that image of Magneto jailed in a plastic prison is such a resplendent final tableau. We also get teases regarding Logan’s mysterious past and Rogue’s new life at the mansion, and we’ll see each of those blown into one of the best superhero sequels ever.

Sound off in the comments, true believers: where does X-Men fit into your superhero canon? And where does this one in particular land in your X-Rankings? Join us over the next twelve weeks; we’ll be back next time with X2: X-Men United.

2 Guns (2013)

It’s hard to say just which of the many guns – both literal and colloquial – are referenced in the title of 2 Guns, but there should be no doubt that Denzel Washington accounts for at least one of them (and if only one, then at least a double-barreled one).  Indeed, without Denzel, I can safely say that 2 Guns would lose a lot of its fun and thereby expose its own flaws.

Posing as small-time crooks with big league connections, DEA Agent Bobby “Beans” Trench (Denzel Washington) and NCIS Agent Michael Stigman (Mark Wahlberg) pull off a surprisingly solid bank robbery and boost $40 million more than they were expecting.  But the two quickly learn that not only have they double-crossed each other by working for rival federal agencies but that they’ve also been double-crossed themselves by their own superiors.  Worse yet, the drug lord they thought they were robbing (Edward James Olmos) and the money’s true owner (Bill Paxton) are both gunning for our heroes.

I’ll say something I almost never say for a movie that I ultimately liked:  2 Guns is a little more complicated than it needs to be.  I know, I know; I’m almost always the guy who wants films to be more complex (cf. Pacific Rim).  But during the film there were moments where the intricate plot meanderings left me behind for a breath, even though the end results were a bit predictable.  Spoiler free translation:  I knew that certain characters would do things, but I wasn’t quite clear on why.  (It’s mostly a question of sequence, of when exactly in the past a few third-act revelations of past misdeeds actually occurred.  Again, without spoiling anything, when did people decide to do certain things?)

But the barest skeleton of the plot – double agents double-crossed – is enough on which to hang an otherwise engaging film, and 2 Guns is at its best when it shows Trench and Stigman putting their plans into action, in scenes that are as fun as they are explosive.  Director Baltasar Kormákur wisely keeps a sense of humor about the proceedings, allowing the elevated absurdity to come to life amid a series of incredibly charismatic performances.

As the villains of the piece, Olmos and Paxton are scenery-noshers in the highest degree, doing “comic book baddie” (yes, adapted from a graphic novel!) without the negative connotations of the term.  Olmos’s is the stronger of the two, in part because I’m already biased (loved him since Stand and Deliver) and also because I would have preferred something a little less showy than Paxton’s tough Texan turned up to eleven.  Peeking in as the handlers, Paula Patton and James Marsden do well enough, though the script doesn’t ask much from them; Marsden does, however, step far enough out of his squeaky-clean stereotype (literalized in both Hairspray and Enchanted) to impress.

But the film really and truly succeeds, even conceals some of its shortcomings that are visible more in retrospect than in the moment, by virtue of the exceptionally disarming performances of Wahlberg and especially Washington.  Wahlberg is still playing a strong mostly-wise guy (a la The Other Guys, minus the comedic broad strokes), though his greatest strength is in keeping pace with Washington, who’s made a career out of stealing movies through sheer power of ethos.  Washington remains fresh, fun, and fascinating, bringing new life to another version of the quintessential Denzel Washington character (that quick-talking guaranteeing charmer straddling the line of the law).

Look, I tried to write a review of this film but really all I wanted to do was write a love letter to Denzel Washington.  So I’ll close by saying that Denzel is, here as always, far and away worth the price of admission, elevating what might have been a C-grade film into at least a high B solely by his presence – which, unlike most actors with so-called “presence,” actually counts for a whole lot.

2 Guns is rated R for “violence throughout, language and brief nudity.”  There’s a lot of bloody gunplay and a generous amount of profanity which includes a good helping of F-bombs.  Additionally, we briefly see a topless woman early in the film (between this and Flight, is that a new rider in Denzel’s contract?).

Don’t change that dial, loyal readers, because Wednesday is the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month... and you all know what that means by now!

Monday at the Movies - August 6, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-Nine of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week I’ll be covering the original X-Men trilogy.  (The prequels will be getting their own post further down the line.)

X-Men (2000) – In many ways, we comic book movie fans owe a lot to Bryan Singer, who demonstrated in this film that the genre was a viable one beyond the self-parody of the Schumacher era.  Singer wisely opts to throw viewers into the midst of the mythology without a lengthy origin sequence; we join Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Rogue (Anna Paquin) as they meet the X-Men, a group of powerful mutants led by Professor X (Patrick Stewart) in opposition to the evil Magneto (Ian McKellen).  Using Wolverine and Rogue as entry points is genius; diehard fans already love Wolverine, and newcomers will find Jackman one of the more engaging comics-to-film translations.  But the film is populated by fantastic actors – including Halle Berry, who doesn’t do much but does it well – and none are more brilliant than Stewart and McKellen, who as dueling foes are more Shakespeare than Stan Lee (who cameos, by the way – his first in a Marvel movie).  Even James Marsden, who’s usual more milquetoast than Patrick Wilson, proves a good fit as the stick-in-the-mud Cyclops.  As director, Singer does a great job making the soap opera source material accessible and streamlined without sacrificing the emotional complexity of the characters; there are hundreds of X-Men, but Singer picks the big ones and never loses sight of the fact that their interactions are more interesting than the giant machine Magneto builds for the surreal climax of the film.  Above all, this is a film that feels real, that winks not ironically but lovingly at its source material, acknowledging its depth without overloading its audience.

X2:  X-Men United (2003) – Singer proves the rule here with a comic book sequel that is leaps and bounds better than its predecessor (which, if you’ll recall, was no slouch).  Unfettered by the necessity to introduce the characters and their world, Singer dives headlong into the central problem of acceptance by pitting the X-Men against military bureaucrat William Stryker (Brian Cox), whose policy of indiscriminate mutant genocide unites heroes and villains.  Everything successful about the original stands here, as well, turned up to 11; the acting excels, from McKellen as caged animal Magneto to newcomer Cox, whose performance drips sadistic menace with each drawled consonant.  The cast of characters is beefed up a little, but never disproportionately beyond what the film can handle and never without significant narrative and thematic purpose; each addition deepens rather than overfills.  X2, perhaps more than its antecedent, operates on the level of metaphor, something I really want my superhero films to do.  Here the metaphor is on the nature of intolerance, which Singer carries off without being overbearing; in one standout scene, among my favorites in the trilogy, a mutant’s mother asks, “Have you tried not being a mutant?”  It’s an oddly quiet moment in a summer blockbuster, but it’s one that reminds us what’s at stake behind the flash of optic blasts and the snikt of razor claws.  Bonus points for its clever link with Stryker’s abuse of his own mutant son, which reminds us that bigotry isn’t a spectrum.  Even the previous film’s villain recognizes this, and McKellen’s nuanced return is a more than welcome one.

X-Men 3:  The Last Stand (2006) – When Singer stepped aside from his pet franchise to direct Superman Returns, Brett Ratner stepped in.  It’s a series of bad decisions that led to a pair of lackluster films (more on Superman Returns later), which is a shame because there are obvious moments where X-Men 3 is on the right track and other moments when it obviously goes awry.  The introduction of the “mutant cure” is in many ways a perfect end to a trilogy about what to do about heterogeneity, but Ratner seems to overcompensate for getting a shot at the X-Men toy box by cramming the film with scores of new characters who don’t do much at all.  (Ask yourself how many of their names you can remember.)  Worse, the film kills off some of the more interesting characters very early on, presumably to make room for the new faces, but for my money the film never really recovers from (spoiler warning) the death of Professor X.  The film trades in clichés, as when a military drill sergeant is played by R. Lee Ermey or when a character repeats, dead serious, the bromide about a woman scorned.  The climax is among the better action sequences in the trilogy, if only on a purely visceral level; Magneto’s manipulation of the Golden Gate Bridge is a brilliant visual, and the execution of the “fastball special” is as fun on film as it is on panel.  But the film fumbles so much before that point – and butchers the “Dark Phoenix” plotline almost beyond recognition – that X-Men 3 tries to be too much and ultimately never succeeds at being much at all.  The trilogy deserved better.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

The Box (2009)

In spite of a B-list acting cast and an overwhelming slate of negative reviews, I had such high hopes for The Box. As it stands, I'm never watching another Richard Kelly movie so long as I live. The film isn't entirely bad, but the filmmaker is.

The conceit, based upon a short story by Richard Matheson of The Twilight Zone fame, is deceptively simple: disfigured stranger Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) arrives on the doorstep of suburban government workers Norma and Arthur Lewis (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, respectively), bearing a mysterious box. Push the button, he invites, promising $1,000,000 and the death of a stranger in return.

Here the trailers conclude. Unfortunately, all that drama unfolds within half an hour of the film's two-hour runtime. What follows is essentially an abduction of an unsuspecting audience, a tour by force and not de force through a tangled plot involving aliens (surprise! Did you miss the heavyhanded foreshadowing?), advanced technology, and human nature (with a major dose of Sartre thrown in apparently to show us how smart the filmmakers are to have read Sartre). I take no pleasure in the evisceration to follow, just as I can tell that the filmmakers found this a joyless experience.

Everything about The Box is slipshod and muddy, unattractive and unappealing. The acting is incredibly lackluster, with Diaz slipping in and out of what might be an attempt at a Southern accent (and the occasional limp) and with Marsden counting paychecks while dreaming of more substantial roles (he was delightful, don't forget, in Hairspray). Though Langella is suitably menacing as the shady Mr. Steward, it's quite obvious he's slumming; his disfigurement causes no apparent speech impediment, and his gravelly monotone bears none of the emotion behind his solid performance as Nixon in Frost/Nixon. Oh, and James Rebhorn is in it. Yeah, that guy.

The larger part of the blame, though, belongs on Richard Kelly's shoulders. I've made no bones about the fact that I absolutely downright hated the (in my eyes) irredeemable Donnie Darko, and had I known that The Box was Kelly's work as well I probably would have left it on the rental shelf. For starters, Kelly's at fault for not pushing his actors harder, particularly when it comes to Ms. Diaz's utterly inconsistent portrayal of Norma Lewis. More problematic is Kelly's inability to rein in the movie itself. The Box is like the television show Lost at its worst - wildly imaginative with overtures toward mythological significance but without any sense of direction, cohesion, or purpose. Oscillating wildly between plot points that only coincide in a "meh" of a climax, the film is big on anticipation and small on bang.

The Box retreads themes from Donnie Darko, so if you liked that clunker (which, if you'll recall, is responsible for introducing Jake Gyllenhaal to Hollywood, so that's strike two for the flick) you'll probably lap this one right up. Kelly's obsession with tortured protagonists at the mercy of forces beyond human understanding - here, "the ones that control the lightning" - bleeds through, as does the irrational and ultimately empty presence of transdimensional portals; though these elements seem to be building to something, they ultimately amount to little more than homages to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Worse, the film is brutally disjointed. Aside from the misleading marketing which drew me in with a plotline the film quickly discarded, The Box snaps back and forth between scenes and vignettes that don't quite make sense; the parts simply don't add up. Characters appear and disappear seemingly at random - a gaffe the movie tries to bandage up with the aforementioned portals - while plot points are introduced via severe suspensions of disbelief, only to be quickly abandoned. The film further invalidates itself by wrapping its mysteries into a giant Gordian knot at the climax; if, for example, the "beings" can override free will, what's the point of testing free will with the red button? Finally, the film suggests a cyclical nature to man's dog-eat-dog attitude toward itself, though the presence of a cycle again makes moot the issue of testing humanity; the button is always going to be pushed, and yet Mr. Steward keeps offering it. The effect is one of uselessness, a frustrating hybrid of "So why did you put me through this?" and "So what did I watch, anyway?"

The film's greatest insult is to Matheson, who was a more than serviceable writer in his day. His original story, and the Twilight Zone episode based upon it, both get shout-outs here, but Kelly seems eager to discard Matheson's original "Monkey's Paw"-esque intent - to question how well we know each other - in favor of slogging through his same old motifs. This is tantamount to a betrayal of the source material, and I would have advocated taking Matheson's name off the picture entirely. Next time, Mr. Kelly, just write your own story. Or better yet, just don't.

Tragically for Matheson and the strong premise, The Box is an unfocused mess, overwhelmingly disjointed and ultimately unfulfilling. Better leave this one unopened.
The Box is rated PG-13 "PG-13 for thematic elements, some violence and disturbing images." Um... there's some shooting, and Frank Langella is missing half of his face.

Hairspray (2007)

At the risk of sounding horribly dull and cliched, remakes are a tricky subject. A lot of people don't like talking about them. To be fair, we've had two great remakes - John Huston's 1941 film noir masterpiece The Maltese Falcon (a remake of two previous adaptations of Dashiell Hammett's eponymous novel) and Scorsese's 2006 Oscar-winning epic The Departed (a remake of Hong Kong mob story Infernal Affairs).

But for every good remake, we get thirty like Gus Van Sant's Psycho or The Ladykillers (from the Coen Bros. slump of the early 2000s) or - God forgive me for even invoking this film's name - Steve Martin's The Pink Panther. And lest we forget, Nic Cage's version of The Wicker Man, unintentionally hysterical with lines like "Step away from the bike!" and "HOW'D IT GET BURNED?!", was a remake of a British suspense/horror film with Christopher Lee (automatically superior by default).

So you can understand why I typically roll my eyes when word of a remake whispers around IMDb - case in point, the pointless Keanu Reeves starring in a pointless remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. I get even more skeptical when a film purports itself to be a remake of an obscure 80s movie from a midnight movie director with a strong cult following and no possible way of being family friendly.

Then a movie called Hairspray comes along and completely reinvents my concept of what a remake should be. Though technically a second-degree remake (being a filmed version of the Broadway musical based on John Waters's original 1988 film), Adam Shankman's Hairspray is, in my opinion, the third best film of 2007 (landing behind There Will Be Blood and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street).

And, as it turns out, the difference between second and third place is one dud song; where Sweeney had no songs worth fast-forwarding, Hairspray sadly has one right in the middle of the movie. So, since it's a musical and since I fear becoming formulaic, I'll walk through the plot synopsis song by song. "Good Morning Baltimore," a peppy number about the power of dreams and the need to follow them (lest, as Cherry Darling informed us in Planet Terror, "dreams become the thing you talk about instead of the thing you do"), introduces us to pleasantly plump Tracy Turnblad, played to bubbly perfection by newcomer Nikki Blonsky (who seems thus far to have been a one trick pony). Then it's time to meet "The Nicest Kids in Town," the twenty dancers on the Corny Collins Show, a TV dance program hosted by exaggeratedly swanky yet slightly exasperated host Corny Collins (James Marsden). Among the Kids are lead dancer Amber (Brittany Snow, who takes the catty blonde cliche and plays it to the hilt) and top heartthrob Link (Zac Efron, finally getting a chance to spread his wings away from the Mouse).
When Corny announces that Nicest Kid Brenda is taking a leave for "Just nine months," Tracy sees her chance and auditions for the show. But she comes up against Amber's stage-mom matriarch Velma (a delightfully wicked Michelle Pfeiffer), "Miss Baltimore Crabs," who's determined to keep anyone who's different off the show (sensing the message yet?). Later, Tracy's sent to detention, a paradise of dancing and diversity where the races mix and groove - and where Tracy finally meets Link and falls in love. "I Can Hear the Bells" - can you? Finally the "Ladies Choice" gets a song all to himself, giving Efron the opportunity for his vocals to shine and giving Tracy the opportunity to have her dance moves seen.

To the delight of best friend Penny (Amanda Bynes, who [it seems] can actually act!) and Tracy's parents Wilbur (Christopher Walken, a caricature of himself but a lovable one) Edna (John Travolta, who with a Baltimore accent and a LOT of makeup actually passes as slightly feminine), Tracy snags a spot on the Corny Collins Show, to the predicted chagrin of Velma and Amber who both loathe "The New Girl in Town." They also hate Negro Day, Corny's monthly episode featuring African-American dancers and crooners led by Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah) and her son Seaweed (Elijah Kelley, whose talent and resemblance to Sammy Davis Jr. ought to land him a spot in a biopic).

Tracy has hit the big time, even scoring a spokesgirl spot for Mr. Pinky (a marvelous cameo from Jerry Stiller, who played Wilbur in the original movie) during "Welcome to the 60s," in which Edna gets her makeover. In terms of pure fun, it's tough to beat "Run and Tell That," Seaweed's ode to being different. Even Maybelle's "Big, Blonde, and Beautiful" is sweet as chocolate cake, which Maybelle and Edna ingest in mass quantities to make the Coneheads blush. A reprise of "BB&B" features Velma attempting (hysterically fruitlessly) to seduce Wilbur, while Edna gets dolled up for her man, who she catches in an apparently compromising position with Velma. The two women collide, and Edna forces Wilbur to move out.
Wilbur atones with Edna in a catchy duet of romance, "You're Timeless to Me," which couples dated references to the Sixties with slightly insulting professions of love ("You're like a fatal disease, babe / But there's no cure / So let this fever rage"). Then comes the aforementioned dud, "I Know Where I've Been," Maybelle's message of racial integration no matter the price, layered over a march on the racist practices of Velma's station WYZT.

But the best number comes after the protest march, when Tracy is imprisoned in Penny's basement awaiting a trip to "the big house," when Penny is similarly tethered to her bed via jump rope, while Link waits for Tracy to come home, and while Seaweed aims "to rescue the fair maiden" Penny - it's "Without Love," by far the standout song in terms of vocals, lyrics, even direction a la Shankman. The rest would be criminal for me to describe in any detail (even Corny's last number, "Hairspray," is a barrel of fun), but suffice it to say that Tracy succeeds in teaching the whole world that - no matter what repression society places - "You Can't Stop The Beat."

I didn't say much about the perfect casting choices made in this movie, because the real star of the film is the music, including a few new numbers by the songwriting team of Wittman & Shaiman, such as the end credits tune "Come So Far (Got So Far to Go)" which will make you sit through the entire credit sequence, something I hardly ever do. But the cast is perfect, too; from Bynes to Walken, from Snow to Marsden, it's impossible to find someone who isn't spot-on for their specific role. Even Paul Dooley, in a small role as Ultra-Clutch Hairspray's exec, simmers with frustration at "that chubby communist" Tracy. The film is also addicting; it's one of those works that whenever it's on cable I can't resist turning it on just to see where they're at - and then stay until the end.

The dialogue (and occasionally lyrics) is hilarious, allowing the anti-racism medicine to go down with more than a spoonful of sugar. A great deal of the laughs come from the impeccable delivery of campy lines such as "Plastic little spastic" or "I am now a checkerboard chick!" (both delivered by Bynes, a real comedic talent whose roles here and in She's the Man tell me she needs the right vehicle to shine) The problem with Waters's original is the deliberate pandering to an audience seeking camp; as Edna, Divine seemed awkwardly masculine while trying to hard, and the original ending featured a roach bomb in one character's beehive do. This new interpretation of the story is effortless, intentionally yet subtly cheesy without calling attention to itself.

If I had a complaint, it's that two of the stage production's songs, "Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now" and "Cooties," have been cut - the former a foot-stomping temper tantrum shared by Amber, Penny, and Tracy at their overbearing mothers, and the latter serving as Amber's "talent portion" at the Miss Teenage Hairspray Spectactular. Maybe I'm just a Brittany Snow fan (and I have been since her turn as white supremacist Ariel on Nip/Tuck) who wanted to see more of her in the movie, but it seems these two songs might have made up for "I Know Where I've Been" (which really could have been cut). Sure, it'd give the film an almost 2.5 hour runtime, but I'm asking more from Zack Snyder in his Watchmen adaptation. Come on, Shankman; it's not too late to film these scenes and put them in a director's cut! (Versions of the songs appear in the end credits, but they're somehow not as charming without accompanying visuals.)

At one point, Link tells Edna that he was "just at home, practicing my new twist on the twist." All too often, "new twists" don't go over so well; Catwoman, anyone? Thank heavens this movie does so well at polishing a somewhat slipshod original production into a Top Five movie.