The Top 10 Empire Strikes Back Musical Moments

In the wake of my most recent semimonthly rewatch of the Star Wars trilogy (that’s the Original variety, naturally), and in anticipation of The Force Awakens this December, I present another Top Ten list.  No, not a Top Ten ranking of the films in existence – the correct answer, by the way, is 5, 4, 6, 3, 2, Clone Wars, 1 – but a more musically minded listing.

The task was arduous, though, and I couldn’t bear to throw that many children to the wolves. Rather than rank the ten best tracks from 797 minutes of movies, I’m going to break this down by film. Here we present the second in an ongoing series of lists, “The Top 10 Empire Strikes Back Musical Moments!” (Look at it this way, you’re getting more posts – one for each movie!)

A note on sources:  we’re talking, of course, about the music composed by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. For source/cue division, I’m using both the 1993 four-disc “Anthology” box set and the 2004 two-disc “Special Edition” reissue editions, so track listings may vary for those playing the home game.

10. “The Magic Tree”
 While I’m scratching my head at the name of this track – it’s a cave, not a tree – there’s no denying that it’s a subtly effective piece that communicates the eerie nature of Luke’s Dagobah experience without overplaying it. Williams wisely refrains from deploying “The Imperial March” in this moment, going instead for a creepy synthesizer that nicely complements the mystery and atmosphere conjured by director Irvin Kershner’s ominous cinematic vision.

9. “Lando’s Palace”
 This light and breezy track does so much for the film that I almost think it’s the most underrated piece in the film. You may have been taken in by Billy Dee Williams’s charisma (and really, how could you not?), but the bouncing majesty of this piece as he gives his grand tour of Cloud City lulls you into that false sense of security – just before Williams pulls the musical rug out from under your ears and reveals the menace lurking in Cloud City. It recurs in the film’s final segment to remind us of Lando’s true allegiance, an effective refrain.

8. “Luke’s Rescue”
 Another very short piece, and I confess I have very fond memories of hearing it in many Star Wars video games as a youngling (most memorably in the opening scene of Star Wars: Dark Forces II). But it’s a nice bit of musical reassurance that Luke Skywalker is indeed going to be okay, a jaunty 90 seconds or so that communicates the lifted spirits of the snowspeeder pilots at finding their generals alive.

7. “Yoda’s Theme”
 One of a number of original themes Williams composed for Empire, “Yoda’s Theme” makes it this high on the list for being longer than the others thus far, and second, for its versatility in the way Williams uses it throughout this film and the next one. But it also discloses the idea that “wars not make one great” – where Darth Vader gets a brassy bombastic anthem, the great Jedi Master Yoda gets a more contemplative, more melodic piece that bespeaks his great wisdom.

6. “Yoda and the Force”
 And speaking of ways that Williams weaves “Yoda’s Theme” into the film, I get chills thinking about this moment, and it’s due almost exclusively to the way Williams’s score builds as Luke tries, then fails, to lift his X-Wing from the swamps of Dagobah before Yoda’s theme rises triumphantly over the score, with a dramatic fanfare (which you may have recently heard in trailers for The Force Awakens) closing out as Luke and the audience stand agape at Yoda’s power.

5. “The Battle of Hoth”
 This is one of my go-to tracks for pumping myself up, getting myself in gear – all the clichés entailing motivation are addressed by this track. It begins with the Rebels rallying their forces before the Imperials attack, and then it’s ten minutes that just don’t stop. If you think a track of this length is cheating, I can distill “The Battle of Hoth” to the five-note ba-dum ba-dum-bum percussion that scores the march of the AT-AT walkers and that really says what the battle is all about: a hopelessly outgunned force fighting with all they’ve got against a relentless enemy.

4. “Han Solo and the Princess”
 I could never understand why, when “Across the Stars” was released on the Attack of the Clones soundtrack, it was hailed as the first great love theme in the Star Wars franchise when “Han Solo and the Princess” so clearly fits that bill. The best use of it comes when Han and Leia have their romantic “My hands are dirty too” rendezvous, but it’s one of those pieces that conjures up the entirety of the relationship in about three minutes. If we don’t hear this piece in The Force Awakens, we riot.

3. “The Asteroid Field”
 Would you believe that Han Solo doesn’t have his own theme? “The Asteroid Field” is the closest we come, and fortunately it’s a doozy of a track and in any other film would probably be the standout musical sequence. (However... check out the rest of the list!) It’s a grand sweeping action track that begins with a wonderful variation on “The Imperial March” but quickly segues into a frenetic collision of ideas as Han struggles to repair the Falcon before launching his audacious escape attempt with a track that positively soars.

2. “The Imperial March”
 Do I need to justify this one? It’s a track that has very nearly supplanted the “Main Theme” in terms of recognizable association with the film franchise, and it’s so iconic that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t part of Darth Vader’s cinematic DNA from the very beginning.

1. The entire last half-hour of the movie.
Before the masses rally up in arms at my #1 choice, consider the following: I will put the last thirty minutes of Empire against any consecutive half-hour of film score out there, because nothing can be more epic, more comprehensive, more engaging than what John Williams gives us for the finale of Empire. In a musical landscape of love, loss, struggle, and revelation, Williams manages to weave all the film’s signature motifs together in a powerhouse suite of sorts which works just as well detached from the film as it does in context. It’s become my default music lately, perfect for study sessions, long drives, cleaning the house, or strolling around the block. If you want to know why John Williams is the maestro, the last half hour of Empire has your answer.

Hit the comments section to tell me your favorite Empire Strikes Back musical moment! And be sure to subscribe up above to make sure you don’t miss my “Top 10 Return of the Jedi Musical Moments!”

Monday at the Movies - September 21, 2015

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.”

Nightcrawler (2014) – Nightcrawler is one of those critically acclaimed films that I missed during last year’s Oscar season, something that never registered high on my radar but always felt like I’d get around to it eventually. I finally did, on a very small television in the middle of the night, and I’d venture to say that that’s the perfect way to view this film. As Louis Bloom, Jake Gyllenhaal is supremely creepy as a videographer turned ambulance chaser who sells his footage to morning news programs. Think Taxi Driver meets Blow-Up by way of American Psycho; it’s a captivating performance, Gyllenhaal with his lean wolfish appearance and relentlessly unsettling efforts at charisma, that doesn’t quite let you forget who’s underneath the character but allows you to look at him askance as you ponder just how bad it’s going to get. And oh my, does it get bad – bad in the sense of morally transgressive, never unwatchable but ethically uncomfortable for how compelling the movie ends up being. You’d be forgiven for not knowing this was director Dan Gilroy’s first outing behind the camera, for the tension he creates as Louis slips further into amorality is absolutely palpable, literally placing me on the edge of my seat as Louis’s master stroke unfolds. Indeed, the metaphor of a car crash is particularly apt, since Louis frequently films those, but it’s also gripping in the way that a moment of brutality is, prompting the viewer to wonder just how complicit we are in these actions. We watch the news, but how often do we turn away when that salivating teaser of “graphic footage” is intoned? How much guilt can be placed solely at the feet of Louis and his ambitions? And what’s Gilroy going to direct next? This is one to watch, folks.

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

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)

With three directors over the course of four films, the one thing the Harry Potter films haven’t had is visual continuity. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong – the thing I really appreciate about the films is how they render the same world from different vantage points. With Order of the Phoenix, director David Yates climbs aboard the Hogwarts Express, and he’ll be with us for the rest of the journey (four films down, four to go). And while we’ll have consistency of vision, I’m not terrifically excited by that because Order of the Phoenix is my least favorite Harry Potter film – not just by dint of comparison, but because I’m genuinely underwhelmed by this one.

Though the wizarding world carries on in a state of denial, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) knows the truth – the dark lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has returned. The Ministry of Magic installs the stern Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) at Hogwarts, amid the vehement disapproval of headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), and Harry is elected to supplement the education of his fellow students with some practical Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons.

The older I get, I seem to have less patience for the old argument “the book was better.” It seems there’s a latent old media prejudice in there, for a film can be as thoughtful as a book (albeit in a different way). And so I don’t lament the excision of particular subplots; indeed, I didn’t notice the film had cut Quidditch until it was pointed out to me. What I do lament is the excision of depth. J.K. Rowling’s prose style is very smart, very contemplative, giving us a very powerful omniscient narrator who can tell us quite a bit about the characters and their motivations.

On film, however, Yates doesn’t seem able to capture that narrative depth. Instead, we have a lot of characters, including many new ones, who all seem terribly interesting but who don’t have the opportunity on screen to prove it. Take for example the titular Order of the Phoenix, a collection of powerful witches and wizards who hide out in a magical house doing... well, it’s not actually that clear. It’s obvious to the readers of the book, and that’s a problem, because the film and the book ought to be tangentially complementary experiences. There are so many intriguing characters in the order – the werewolf Remus Lupin, back from Prisoner of Azkaban; his shape-changing paramour Nymphadora Tonks, and the criminally underused Gary Oldman in his third role as Sirius Black.  But the film touches these only briefly, and moviegoers may find themselves wondering why book-readers have grown so attached to characters who appear on screen with minimal weight.

Yates, it seems, is not terribly interested in the Order, even if I am. What intrigues him more about the plot is its political statements about governance in a time of fear and the place of centralized authority in education. These are weighty issues, and Order of the Phoenix is the most political of the Harry Potter movies because of them. The analogy to Neville Chamberlain is perhaps less obvious to American audiences, but it’s quite clear that Yates dismisses the right of any government to interfere in a student’s education, and he does so with the wonderful casting of Imelda Staunton. As Professor Umbridge, Staunton is delightfully detestable and a fine adversary for Harry and his friends. Though she never rises to the level of Voldemort in terms of pure evil or clear motivations (other than reveling in literally torturing her students), she’s a fine fill-in while the Dark Lord schemes off-screen.

Order of the Phoenix introduces two more new characters, Ravenclaw classmate Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch) and mad mass murderess Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter). Of the latter, little need be said – if ever perfect casting existed, it’s HBC as a killer lunatic with Tim Burton’s hair. Lynch’s Luna, though, is the real find of the film, enchanting in a deliriously dreamy sort of way. Sadly, the film doesn’t give her much of an arc (nor does the franchise, as I recall), but her scenes with Radcliffe are so good, the chemistry between them so strong as the two bond over the losses they’ve endured, that I believe – and here I’m about to say something book readers will judge heretical – the films should have departed from the books and had Harry end up with Luna and not Ginny Weasley, who’s been undercooked since Chamber of Secrets.

At the end of the day, a disappointing Harry Potter movie is still a step more interesting than a lot of what’s out there. Yates has an interesting visual style, and I especially like the way he crafts the Ministry as this austere brick building with inverted colors, illuminated primarily by magic wands. But the storytelling on display in Order of the Phoenix is nowhere near as strong as it’s been in previous installments, and the film does a disservice to most of its characters by narratively shortchanging them. Put another way, Order of the Phoenix treads too much water where it ought to be gliding, losing too much momentum by attempting to tell us what’s important when it ought to be showing us.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is rated PG-13 for “sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images.” You have a lot of scenes of wizards silently casting spells, propelling each other across the room, and flying around in smoky forms. One character is killed by magic, while another is tortured.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

Although it takes a veritable meat-cleaver to its source material, pruning more than 700 pages into 150-some minutes of film, Mike Newell’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a strong contender for my new favorite Harry Potter film. I’d always maintained that Alfonso Cuarón’s Prisoner of Azkaban held that rank, and although Goblet of Fire isn’t as moody or as visually striking it’s a tight and engaging film that gives us the most spectacular (emphasis on “spectacle”) Harry Potter film yet.

When the fabled and dangerous Triwizard Tournament unites three wizarding schools at Hogwarts, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) inexplicably finds himself the fourth contestant for the Triwizard Cup. While his friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) work to keep him alive during the perilous games, Harry learns that the Dark Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is once again plotting his return.

Goblet of Fire is, in a way, the Willy Wonka of the Harry Potter world, in that it consists of a very episodic movement from event to event while a grander story is being told. But where a Willy Wonka adaptation runs the risk of feeling somewhat obligatory, shuffling its audience from set piece to set piece, Goblet of Fire manages to maintain a level of tension throughout, compounded by the fact that Harry isn’t necessarily the best competitor in the Triwizard Tournament. He might lose this thing, and it might kill him before Voldemort can.

Here I’ve got to step aside and breathe a sigh of “Finally...!” at the arrival of Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort. Finally, the series has its Darth Vader, its Sauron, its inimitable force of evil to match the inherent goodness of the Potter gang. While Newell does a fine job humanizing the Hogwarts crew, giving them opportunities for a range of very human emotions and quintessential teenage experiences, Goblet of Fire really ought to be remembered as Harry Potter and the Amazing Fifteen Minutes with Voldemort. While we’ve heard tales of Voldemort’s evil and seen incarnations of his ghostly lingerings, it’s something else entirely to behold Fiennes in all his glory, offering a master class in malice and demonstrating for the viewer exactly why the very thought of his name terrifies the wizarding world. If the rest of the films can capture the character as well as Goblet does, we’re looking at the franchise’s Empire Strikes Back moment.

As much as I want to spend this review lavishing praise on Fiennes’s Voldemort, there are other things in the film, and the other things are really quite successful. In streamlining the novel’s plot to focus less on the academic calendar (Hogwarts is, lest we forget, first and foremost a school), Newell instead focuses on the spectacle of the Tournament and all its task-based adventuring. We have colossal dragons, ephemeral mer-people, and a spooky maze populated with fewer horrors than in the book but with an impeccable visual style that makes the sequence a compelling lead-up to the graveyard climax. Much as I loved Cuarón’s Burton-lite visuals, Newell has a flair for the visual that is less stylized than affective. Goblet is full of small successes, moments when the film surprises you by how well it’s working. (Take, for example, the occasion of the death of a character; the plaintive wail that accompanies said character’s passing is more moving than half of any given year’s Oscar nominations, a powerful moment from a bit performer that sells the film’s pathos.)

I started this rewatch-and-review for the Harry Potter films because of how fun the Lego video games have been, but I’m sticking with them because of how well-crafted these movies have been. Removed as we are from the hype surrounding the books when they debuted, it’s comforting – and refreshing – to see thoughtful and well-made adaptations that offer something cinematically engaging for devotees and dilettantes alike.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is rated PG-13 for “sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images.” You have your run of the mill magical hijinks, although this one amps up the tension by including dragons and beastly mer-people, as well as the arrival of Lord Voldemort and the on-screen abrupt (but bloodless) killing of a fairly important character.

The Terminator (1984)

When I announced in my review of Terminator Genisys that I’d never seen the original Terminator, you’d think I was confessing that I hadn’t had my requisite vaccinations. Such was the public outcry that I pushed James Cameron’s 1984 original to the top of my list. My immediate reaction was one of surprise (at the subsequent direction of the franchise) and then satisfaction. I liked it, but then I hadn’t expected I wouldn’t.

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the eponymous Terminator, sent from 2029 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in 1984 before she can become the mother of future resistance leader John Connor. Her best defense is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a soldier with John Connor, also sent back in time, albeit to save Sarah from the Terminator.

There is something quite graceful about the simplicity of the plot, an art lost, I think, on today’s bigger-is-better cinematic culture. Having seen all the other installments in the franchise, there weren’t a lot of surprises to be had from The Terminator, but I was struck by the nimbleness of the film. I almost wish I’d seen this one first! It throws you into the plot without much exposition, allowing for a few nifty twists (like the presumed assumption that Kyle Reese is also a Terminator, until the film reveals that he’s not). Instead, the backstory comes in whispers and gaps, where Kyle gains Sarah’s trust during brief respites from the chase narrative.

This structure of the film led me to a feeling of surprise that The Terminator gave rise to a multi-picture science fiction franchise. In fact, I wouldn’t have expected that at all; I would have sooner assumed that The Terminator was a horror film than science fiction. Aside from the time travel element, which isn’t foregrounded at all, The Terminator has much more in common with John Carpenter’s Halloween than Terminator Genisys. There are all the tropes that were satirized in Wes Craven’s Scream – the relentless killer, the death of the sexually active, the one-last-scare in which said killer gets back up... all of which Cameron executes quite effectively. Indeed, as bored as I have been with Cameron’s more recent bloated material (e.g., Titanic, Avatar), I’m fascinated by what he can do with a much smaller scope/budget.

Going forward, it’s hard for me not to compare The Terminator to the recent Terminator Genisys, and I think the former certainly offers a few lessons as the franchise continues. First, keep it simple: the plotline of the original introduces only as many timelines as it needs to tell a coherent story. Next, keep it focused: the Terminator is terrifying because it’s relentless, not because there are a lot of them. Finally, keep it real: the Stan Winston robotics are much more chilling because they have weight, and there’s something genuinely creepy about the stilted movements as opposed to a smooth computer-generated Terminator. (This from a guy who thought the Cybermen were scarier before they could run.)

There is something very engaging about seeing Sarah Connor’s plot arc develop during the film, and Linda Hamilton does a compelling job going from naïve to tough. But maybe that’s the problem with the most recent films – we’ve covered this ground already, and it wasn’t bad the first few times. It might be sacrilege at this point (or just out of the question, depending on how many contracts have been signed), but maybe it’s time to be done with the Connors. Can the Terminators go after someone else? Can they go further back, maybe to the Old West? (Can there be a joke about Westworld in there somewhere?) Heck, I know they’ve faced Superman at least once.

Whatever the future of the Terminator franchise, it isn’t written yet, and we’d do well to look to the past for inspiration. But let it be a thematic inspiration, not a narrative one. This one was done well enough the first time around, and there are only so many diminishing returns until the well runs dry (and only so many clichés one can fit into a single sentence). As I remember, the second one entertained the heck out of my preteen self; stay tuned to see if it holds up on a rewatch.

The Terminator is rated R. Surprisingly, most of the blood in the film comes from The Terminator, whose flesh coating bleeds like a normal human’s, including a few gruesome moments of self-surgery on his arm and eye. Two men are seen nude from behind, and one of two sex scenes shows a woman topless (the second includes no visible nudity).

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

I think I missed a memo, because in the last few years, Ethan Hunt has managed to become the American James Bond (Jack Ryan might have had that title long ago, but I was one of only a few who liked his most recent appearance). It’s a bit of a surprise that a franchise which began nineteen years ago is having something of a resurgence in the last five years, but if the series continues to be as good as its latest outing, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Tom Cruise may end up giving 007 a run for his money. (He’s already played the part longer than anyone played Bond, besting Roger Moore’s 12 years.)

After a Senate hearing disbands the IMF, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) finds himself cut off in the middle of a global search for the invisible Syndicate, a network of terrorists whose existence is doubted by nearly everyone. With the scantest of leads, Hunt seeks help from his tech-savvy comrade Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) while continually crossing paths with the mysterious Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), whose true allegiance is perpetually in doubt.

The James Bond comparison is really and truly invited by Rogue Nation (perhaps more than its immediate predecessor, Ghost Protocol), which begins with a Bond-style opening sequence in which Ethan boards a plane mid-flight from the outside. This audacious stunt, which Cruise performed himself, sets a tone for the film that roots Rogue Nation in an era where action films tried to show moviegoers something they hadn’t seen before, rather than aim first to outdo the competition or just outthink the audience.

As I said of Ghost Protocol, the joy of these films is that they don’t focus so much on transcending the genre as they do on playing very well within the established conventions of the espionage narrative. What’s even more refreshing is the way the films recall the early Bond films’ one-and-done format, without baiting the audience back for a sequel or relying on their memory of a small detail from movies past. As someone who hasn’t seen the first three (but who now wants to, desperately), it’s striking how well the film introduces its main characters, some of whom have been around since 1996. I hadn’t met Ving Rhames’s Luther before, but I had a good sense of who he was and how he fit into the story because the film has a very acute sense of narrative integrity, respecting its audience enough to give us a complete experience.

Rogue Nation is spectacle cinema doing what it ought to do with neither pretension nor laziness. With each Mission Impossible film directed by a different person, I think there’s less of a burden to outdo oneself or someone else, and more room to focus on the quality of the experience itself. Director Christopher McQuarrie, reuniting with Cruise after the very compelling Jack Reacher, has a knack for stories told well without compromising clarity, and the surprising sense of humor from Edge of Tomorrow (which he cowrote) is present also in Rogue Nation, punctuating moments of tension with unexpected moments of delight.

I had gone to see Rogue Nation because an action film always looks better on the big screen, and I’d had such a good time with Ghost Protocol that I wanted to give the franchise another look. Now that Mission Impossible is two for two, it’s probably time for me to go to the back catalog, because now I have a brand that I trust. If nothing else, I have something to tide me over until Ethan Hunt’s British counterpart returns to theaters, and something to which I can look forward when the inevitable sixth Mission Impossible film debuts. That’s my mission, and I do choose to accept it.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is rated PG-13 for “sequences of action and violence, and brief partial nudity.” There are quite a few action set pieces with chasing and fighting, but it’s mostly bloodless; there’s a somewhat intense scene where a character is deprived of oxygen for minutes at a time. A woman removes her top, but it’s seen from behind with no visible nudity.

Monday at the Movies - August 17, 2015

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.”  We haven’t done one of these since May, but it seems worth commenting on the “director’s cut” of X-Men: Days of Future Past, dubbed “The Rogue Cut” for reasons that will become apparent.

X-Men: Days of Future Past - The Rogue Cut (2014/2015) – I’m not doing a full review of The Rogue Cut, which adds about fifteen minutes of unseen footage, because my original sentiment still stands. I called the theatrical release “one of the better outings in the series,” and The Rogue Cut doesn’t change that. If anything, it makes the film a stronger one, filling in what I had perceived to be a stumble before the third act begins, the beat when Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) goes missing. Here, The Rogue Cut fills in the gap by 1) restoring Anna Paquin’s turn as Rogue in the dystopian future of the film, and 2) giving Mystique a wonderful moment with Beast (Nicholas Hoult) in 1973. While I concede that the theatrical cut isn’t less by omitting these sequences, the film is overall richer for having them. In fact, I got more of a sense that I was entering a world during The Rogue Cut, rather than the crossover event the theatrical release felt like. Although the changes are almost universally positive additions to Days of Future Past, I have a small complaint, which might not even be a negative. The Rogue Cut juxtaposes Magneto (Michael Fassbender) retrieving his helmet with Magneto (Ian McKellan) rescuing Rogue, and while I think the cross-cutting is a nifty formal trick, I can’t help but feel the former sequence was better served on its own, building more tension as we got inside the young Magneto’s head. But it’s a moment that only rings hollower if you’re familiar with the original incarnation, and everything else in The Rogue Cut is so well-crafted that it might now be my new favorite X-Men film. PS – Stay tuned for a new mid-credits sequence! (The original post-credits scene is still intact.)

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

Fant4stic (2015)

By now, the critical consensus is in – hovering in the high single digits on Rotten Tomatoes, Fant4stic is a fantastic flop (or, in a pun I wish I’d thought up, a fantastic bore). Entering the critical conversation on a Monday puts me in a weird position, with the benefit of hindsight beside my keyboard. I’ll try to nuance my stance on Fant4stic, but I’m closer to the 90% who didn’t like it than the ten or so who did; it’s an uneven and occasionally bizarre experience that seems to want its audience held at arm’s length.

Look, you know the story – super genius Reed Richards (Miles Teller), his pal Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), and polar opposite siblings Sue and Johnny Storm (Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan) find themselves the bearers of incredible abilities after a teleportation to another dimension goes awry. In this version of the story, the abrasive Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell), their future nemesis, joins them in the experiment but with only his own interests in mind.

Here’s the biggest problem with Fant4stic (and it’s not the clunky stylization of the title): there are the beginnings of enough good ideas in here to power what should have been a very engaging and unique superhero film. Instead, we have a movie that is substantially less than the sum of its parts, a collision of half-baked notions assaulted by an apparent disdain for the very existence of the superhero genre. The traditional superheroics comprise maybe eight minutes of the film, played off unconvincingly when the characters decide to become heroes purely out of generic conventions. That is, the characters only decide to become superheroes because they’re in a superhero film; in any other genre, I can’t believe these characters would have made that choice.

The thing is, I don’t think these characters are actually The Fantastic Four, as much as the movie hopes to convince us that they are by the time the credits roll. Teller is quite good at conveying the awkwardness that comes with Reed’s immense intellect, but I don’t sense the leadership skills that Reed ought to possess. Perhaps the best casting decision is Jordan’s Human Torch, whose natural showmanship suits the character quite well, and perhaps his confidence would have been played up more in the sequel that now may never come to pass.

The other two, Mara and Bell, are actually quite dull, which is really disappointing considering that the orange rock monster ought to be the most interesting part of any Fantastic Four film. (Michael Chiklis, we hardly knew ye.) And let’s not say much about the film’s handling of Doctor Doom because, again, this isn’t Doctor Doom. This Doom is a petulant demi-hacker who only nails the character’s signature ego after a bizarre attempt to explain away the fact that the comic book character wears a head-to-toe metallic suit.

There are, in fact, a few moments that induce whiplash in the audience as our heads collectively boggle at the inexplicable narrative shifts Fant4stic takes. The film actually gets off to a great start, getting it note-perfect when it introduces Reed as a boy genius who’s proud to be labeled “insane” by those who don’t understand him. But the film drags its feet en route to the superpowers, and once the team has acquired their dysmorphic abilities the movie jumps forward a year, presumably so director Josh Trank didn’t have to show us how the four mastered their abilities – in short, what makes them fantastic in the first place.

Even setting aside Trank’s peculiar tweet-then-delete casting shade on Fant4stic, one senses that he really wanted to make a different film here. I detect no passion in the film’s obligatory climactic battle (which seems ripped straight from the vastly superior Big Hero 6), but there’s a wonderful invocation of David Cronenberg’s The Fly during the moments of physical transformation. Kudos to Reg E. Cathey as Franklin Storm for conveying that blend of wonder and revulsion so central to the subgenre of body horror.

The film is at its most content – and most compelling – when it’s focusing on the horrible things that happen to these reclusive scientists. But when it comes to the superhero aspects of the story, the film absolutely fails to introduce Mister Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, and The Thing. In fact, the final scene of the film is a real groaner in which the characters propose their superhero codenames with a perplexing self-loathing, as if Trank and company are legitimately embarrassed to have made a superhero film. If you want to do a body horror superhero film, I say fantastic! The best superhero films seem to be the ones that mash-up preexisting genres with the conventions of a superhero tale. Just don’t pull your punches and then cave in to the genre while wearing your utter contempt on your sleeve. Everyone comes out disappointed there.

In other words, make mine Marvel.

Fant4stic is rated PG-13 for “sci-fi action violence, and language.” Some of the displays of the team’s respective superpowers are played first for fear, but audiences quickly become acclimated to them. Doom telekinetically explodes several heads, with surprisingly bloody results for a PG-13. Language consists mostly of a few uses of “the brown word.”

Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015)

I’ve been a little lukewarm about the recent animated output from DC Comics. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for the world’s greatest superheroes, and it’s very hard to outright disappoint me when you have a film with Batman in it. But I’m somewhere between “devotion” and “obligation” when it comes to direct-to-DVD features like Batman vs. Robin, most recently. News that Bruce Timm, he of Batman: The Animated Series fame, was returning to the animated DC universe brought leaps of glee. I rushed to the store on its debut (shunning as I did its earlier digital release), and...?

It’s okay. It’s not Bruce Timm’s best work, but it is diverting enough; it’s far from DC’s recent disappointing work, but Gods and Monsters is disappointing in a different kind of way.

Imagine if you will a Justice League from a harsher world: Superman (Benjamin Bratt) is the son of General Zod, raised by Mexican laborers; Batman (Michael C. Hall) is actually the vampiric Kirk Langstrom, known to comics devotees as Man-Bat; and this world’s Wonder Woman (Tamara Taylor) is a warrior descended from the gods of New Genesis. The world fears them, and someone is murdering scientists in a bid to frame the Justice League.

I’ve often lamented the loss of Timm’s art style in DC’s animated films – in fact, I called out Flashpoint Paradox for its “choppy and bargain-bin” animation. Timm’s style has always seemed clean, perhaps because it’s quite literally the stuff on which I was raised, but he’s also in possession of an exceptional flair for design. This film’s trinity all have distinctive, original looks that convey difference while maintaining an echo with their counterparts. You’ll hear me throughout this review praise the character of Bekka, Gods and Monsters’ Wonder Woman analogue, but I must also say that I’d buy a vampiric Batman action figure in a heartbeat.

On the subject of Bekka, amid the dismal lack of female superheroes in the current renaissance, she’s far and away the most compelling character in the film. (Cinema King second-rates Batman? Say it ain’t so!) Visuals aside, Bekka’s character is intricately crafted, with a compelling personality, engaging snark in an otherwise gloomy film, and a backstory that’s worthy of Superman: Red Son in terms of alternate takes. But where Red Son had Superman’s rocket landing in Moscow rather than Smallville, Bekka hails from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga, the epic narrative of opposing god-planets. Timm’s visual style borrows from Kirby’s wheelhouse, but it’s Bekka’s flashback that embraces Kirby most directly, much to the glee of this reviewer. Each character gets a flashback sequence to fill out their origins, but it’s Bekka’s that I’ll be flocking to rewatch first.

Illutrating these points of difference is ostensibly a highlight of any divergent-timeline story, and director Sam Liu paces these out quite well, interspersing them throughout the film in a clear manner without frontloading all the backstory. (And don’t worry, you don’t need to have read the tie-in comics or seen the Machinima shorts, though the latter are strongly recommended.) In fact, in some ways, these are more interesting than the main plot itself, which is a bit underwhelming. Let’s say this – anyone who’s read a fair share of comics will crack the mystery almost immediately.

That brings me to my first qualm with the film (of which I have two) – who is this movie for? As all alternate takes usually do, Gods and Monsters fills itself out with a who’s-who of parallel universe versions of DC’s vast tapestry. In place of Lois Lane, we have ace reporter Lana Lang; Amanda Waller is president, Batman was the college roommate of Will Magnus, and micro-scientist Ray Palmer has a lab aide named Ryan. Now, if you’re steeped enough in DC lore to get the references, there’s a chuckle to be had – of course the power-savvy Waller would end up president – but in these moments the film doesn’t depart enough. The names are the same, and so too are the personalities, which makes this alternate-universe exercise seem a little too same old, same old. On the other hand, if you don’t know who Will Magnus is, that subplot doesn’t really go anywhere or do anything for you.

My second complaint about Gods and Monsters is that the movie never answers a central question about its team, one which could have made for a fascinating movie altogether – how did this Justice League assemble in the first place? Because Timm (a cowriter, with Alan Burnett) gave us such very engaging points of departure for the trinity, he in turn gave us characters that are monstrous mirrors of the Justice League proper – and by extension their path to collaboration was probably a bit rocky. They are, as the title tells us, both gods and monsters, and what drives three such individuals to work together? Gods and Monsters hops over the second act in favor of an underboiled third-act mystery, when I suspect the real meat was in what we didn’t see.

If it’s all addressed in the rumored sequel, spinoff comics, or second season of Machinima shorts, that’ll be fine when we get there, but as a standalone Gods and Monsters doesn’t stand enough apart to be another home run for Timm. It’s disappointing in a different way; where Son of Batman was disappointing because it never rose above the level of “generic Batman adventure,” Gods and Monsters is a bit of a letdown because it displays enough promise to remind us of what Bruce Timm is actually capable. At the end of the day, though, it is still a Bruce Timm product, which puts it at least shoulder-height above most of the other comics cartoons out there. But it does need to bear that qualifying adverb of “enough” – it is good enough, entertaining enough, and creative enough, but it isn’t transcendent in the way that I suspect most DC disciples expect.

Justice League: Gods and Monsters is rated PG-13 for “violence throughout and suggestive content including nudity.” This is somewhat bloody by DC’s animated standards, particularly because one character is a vampire. The nudity is actually an unclothed silver robot with a female body shape, though Wonder Woman makes several innuendoes as well.

Mr. Holmes (2015)

Amid the recent Sherlock Holmes renaissance – two films and two television shows in six years – there seems to have been something of an effort to find the “more authentic” Holmes by doing something quite different from Basil Rathbone in a deerstalker cap. Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes takes a similar tack, albeit by locating Holmes in his later years, giving us a more sobered and more affective detective than the others, one that succeeds largely on the shoulders of its star performer, Ian McKellen.

Mr. Holmes finds the great detective (McKellen) in exile-by-retirement with his housekeeper Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney) and her son Roger (Milo Parker). While tending his bees and staving off senility, Holmes is haunted by his failing memory of his last case and the need to resolve it before his powers of deductive reasoning falter for good.

First of all, Ian McKellen is absolutely amazing in this film. Among the panoply of talented Sherlocks we’ve had in the past few years, McKellen is, I can safely say, in a league of his own. I confess I haven’t seen much of Jonny Lee Miller’s Elementary performance, but Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch have wildly different though engaging screen presences; both, however, do have a similar superhuman aesthetic about them, detaching them somewhat from the Doyle stories. McKellen’s Holmes, on the other hand, is the definition of grounded, all the more so because of the weight of his past and, he confides in one of the film’s most intriguing turns, the burden of his own fame in the wake of Watson’s publications.

McKellen is mesmerizing, unsurprisingly so given the fact that he apparently can do anything on screen. In another striking debut by a child actor, though, it’s Milo Parker’s scene-stealing turn as young Roger that makes the best impression. As a kind of new Watson to the aging Holmes, Parker plays precocious deftly, reminding one just a little bit of Thomas Brodie-Sangster in Love Actually. (Or maybe I just think all British children are alike.) To make one’s mainstream debut (setting aside Robot Overlords, of which I hadn’t so much as heard) opposite two giants like McKellen and Linney is one thing, but to hold your own is something else entirely. Parker provides the biggest laughs in the film, as well as the most emotional moments when we see what constitutes growing up in a home with Holmes.

Perhaps the thing that surprised me the most was the pronounced lack of action in Mr. Holmes. Obviously, we wouldn’t expect rousing fight choreography from a septuagenarian playing a nonagenarian, but the big screen Sherlock has of late been something of a master martial artist, but Condon’s treatment is much more contemplative, much more sensitive than the casual (or careless) snark of RDJ and Cumberbatch. Consequently, the film has an air not of melancholy but of introspection, mirrored quite well by the film’s balance of three distinct timelines which unfold and interweave to address all the unfinished business of Holmes’s life.

Mr. Holmes is a quieter Sherlock Holmes film than that to which we are accustomed of late, but it’s in the vein of what we might call “traditionally British” – the same as what Eddie Izzard satirized as “room with a view with a pond and a staircase.” I don’t recall a pond, but there is still the same serenity in Mr. Holmes, something very calming amid the otherwise blockbuster summer season. And at the center of it all is a very wonderful performance by Ian McKellen, one which ought to be seen by any self-professed admirers of the great detective.

Mr. Holmes is rated PG for “thematic elements, some disturbing images and incidental smoking.” There is mention of miscarried pregnancy, bee stings, and loneliness; Holmes discusses smoking pipes and cigars.