X-Men: Days of Future Past review

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

The most astoundingly okay movie so far this year – which is apparently all it takes to earn high praise these days

If you want to thrill to the excitement of an astoundingly, supremely, stupendously okay movie, then run – don’t walk – to a theatre showing X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. This film truly has it all: profoundly okay plot; jaw-droppingly okay action sequences; eye-poppingly okay 3D; superbly okay special effects; and amazingly okay acting. It truly is the most finely tuned okay movie of the summer season so far, and it’s hard to imagine any other film surpassing its okay-ness. On the other hand, if you prefer something more than okay, you should stay home and read the film’s reviews instead; there, you will encounter a staggering validation of director Bryan Singer’s return to the X-Men universe, an almost universal paen to the best that fantasy cinema has to offer. It seems that, in this case, being okay was not merely enough; it was far more than enough, earning accolades normally reserved for something good, or even great.
Why this should be so is a bit of a mystery. It’s not as if the annual build-up to a season’s worth of summer blockbusters has been fraught with terrible disappointments. Sure, there was THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2, but also there was CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, which was also okay. Even better was GODZILLA, which avoided the overblown bombast of most blockbuster fare. So why is X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST being fanatically embraced for being merely okay?
I suspect the answer can be summed up in two words: Brett Ratner. The X-Men tribe has never forgiven Ratner for directing X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (2006), or more precisely, the tribe has never forgiven the film for having been directed by Ratner, who is perceived as an outsider, a hack, who hijacked the franchise and ruined it. By embracing X-MEN DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, the tribe is embracing the return of their tribal elder, Singer, whose helming of the first two X-MEN films (2000’s X-MEN and 2003’s X-2: X-MEN UNITED) – helped elevate the movie franchise somewhat above the standard we had come to expect from cinematic comic book adaptations. (Anybody remember TANK GIRL? No? How about STEEL?).
The problem with film as tribal identifier is that actual quality is often overlooked; flaws that would have been scorned in X-MEN: THE LAST STAND are blithely overlooked in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. So let’s examine just how okay the new film is, flaws and all.

X-Men: Days of Future Past - Halle Berry as Storm
Great thing about alternate timeline stories is that you can kill of characters with impunity.

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST gets off to an okay start with an okay action sequence, set in a murky future when the X-Men are hunted down by Sentinels (essentially robots). There are some mutants who will be familiar to fans of the comic book, but their presence means little to anyone else, except insofar as we get to glimpse a variety of different superpowers.  The most visually impressive of these is Blink (Fan Bingbing), who can open portals in space through which she and her fellow warriors can leap.
I say “visually impressive,” because in terms of actual strategy, the power is rather useless. Rather than being transported to safety or some strategically appropriate place, leaping through a portal places someone only a few feet from where they were, and it becomes very quickly clear – to the audience, at least – that any blow struck, weapon thrown, or shot fired will simply follow the fleeing mutant through the portal and strike its target – which is what finally happens when these super-smart Sentinels finally figure out the obvious.
For a man who died recently, Dr. Xavier (Patrick Stewart) looks remarkably like his old self.
For a man who died recently, Dr. Xavier (Patrick Stewart) looks remarkably like his old self.

Sharp-eyed viewers with brain cells that can access memories back to 2006 will marvel at the novelty of seeing Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen once again playing Charles Xaviar and Ian McKellen,  former friends turned rival mutant leaders – one peaceful, the other militant. What’s marvelous here is that Xaviar died in X-MEN: THE LAST STAND. We knew he would return because, in a post-credits sequence, we heard his disembodied voice emanating from a comatose body in a hospital; however, it was a bit of a surprise to see the same old Xaviar back in the surprise post-credits sequence of THE WOLVERINE – a surprise that, we expected, would be explained in this film. But no, we just have to assume that when Xaviar beamed his mind into that body it took on all the physical characteristics of his old self, including both his mutant powers and his spinal cord injury. It’s a horrible continuity lapse, but that’s okay because it’s perceived as a bit of an f.u. to the events of Ratner’s film.
The next bit of okay-ness involves the plot of X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. In order to prevent this terrible future from taking place, the surviving X-Men need to send someone into the past. That someone turns out to be Logan (a.k.a., Wolverine), ostensibly because the character’s healing powers will allow him to make the life-threatening journey, which would kill anyone else, but mostly because everyone knows that Hugh Jackman is the real star of this franchise, and no one wants to sit through another X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, without him. Kitty Pride (Ellen Page) will send Logan back in time – which is pretty impressive when you consider that this was not previously  Kitty Page’s mutant power. But that’s okay, because Bryan Singer directed this film.
Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique
Jennifer Lawrence as would-be assassin Mystique

The rules of time travel are laid out well enough, but the logic conforms to standard screenplay myopia: in order to prevent Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating Dr. Boliver Trask (Peter Dinklage) – an event that will spur the Sentinel project into reality – Wolverine travels back to a time just before the assassination. Not, you know, to a time decades before, when he might prevent Mystique from turning to the Dark Side in the first place, because that would derail the whole time-lock plot device of desperately trying to reach her just before she can pull the trigger.
There is one nicely okay quality to Wolverine’s time-jump: selected for his physical resiliency, he really isn’t the right man for the job, which consists of convincing the younger versions of Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr) to put aside the enmity and join forces to prevent the catastrophic consequences that will result from the assassination. A man of action rather than words, Wolverine struggle to play diplomat provide a few nice moments before the character is sidelined – because even though the filmmakers knew they needed to put him in the story, the story isn’t really about him.
It’s also well and truly okay seeing Xavier walking around and feeling sorry for himself, wallowing in self pity over the way things ended between him and Lehnsherr and Mystique.* Xavier’s disillusioned condition echoes the opening of THE WOLVERINE (2013), except that sequence set Logan on a character arc that the rest of the film would follow; in this case, Xavier’s state is just a temporary distraction, a plot device to give him something to do and to explain why he might be initially too weak to face off with Lehnsherr when the inevitable betrayal comes.
Oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. You know that, as the franchise’s icon villain, Lehnsherr (a.k.a. Magneto) will inevitably betray Xavier’s new-found trust in him, right? What you didn’t know was how soon it would happen and how stupid it would make Xavier and Logan look. But let’s set that aside and ignore it, because the film certainly does. But that’s okay, because X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is directed by Bryan Singer
In a scene that gives new meaning to Bullet-Time, Quicksilver does the impossible - upstages Wolverine.
In a scene that gives new meaning to Bullet-Time, Quicksilver does the impossible - upstages Wolverine.

Before friends-turned-enemies Xavier and Lehnsherr can become friends again, Wolverine and company need to break Lehnsherr out of prison. This leads to one of the few, exceptional scenes in which X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST exceeds being okay: Quicksilver (Evan Peters) breaks Lehnsherr out of the bowels of the Pentagon in an amazingly photographed sequence that conveys super-speed by, ironically, slowing everything down. Giving new meaning to the phrase “bullet-time,” the scene plays from the fast-paced mutant’s point of view as he calmly weaves in between guards, dodging and deflecting bullets. In fact, the movements of everyone else are so slow that Quicksilver can barely be said to be dodging anything; it’s more like someone stepping off the sidewalk while noting a car headed in his direction from a block away. Why the sequence is almost as good as Hammy’s hilarious jump to hyper-drive in OVER THE HEDGE.
The only problem with this scene is that it establishes Quicksilver as a potentially invaluable asset to Logan and Xavier – he’s so fast he’s invisible to everyone else, including the dangerous Magneto – and yet they leave him behind because…well, just because they don’t want him around to solve the inevitable crisis we know is coming. If he can just flit around unseen and fix everything, where’s the drama? So script contrivance wins out. But that’s okay because Bryan Singer directed this film.
X-Men: Days of Future Past - Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr, a.k.a. Magneto
To stamp out fear of mutants that leads to an apocalyptic future, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) attempts to assassinate the President on national TV. Um, how was this supposed to help?

The initial assassination attempt is thwarted, but that does not solve the problem, because Mystique is still out there, planning a second attempt. X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST purports to dramatize the battle for her soul between Xavier and Lehnsherr, but since Lehnsherr’s solution to the problem is to kill Mystique, it’s a bit of a one-sided tug-of-war. But that’s okay because Bryan Singer directed this film.
So the film builds toward a second assassination attempt, this one involving both Trask and  President Nixon (Mark Camacho), which also involves Lehnsherr lifting a baseball stadium and plopping it down around the White House. He’s also taken over the Sentinel prototypes (which were made of non-metal so as not to be subject to his power) by using his magnetic power to insert metal rods into them. The scene suggests Magneto has some previously unacknowledged clairvoyant power, since he is able to perform this metallic surgery at a distance, without being able to see inside the complex technological network inside the Sentinels. Quibbling aside, Lehnsherr’s plan to avoid a horrible future in which human fear of mutants has led to virtual extinction, is to assassinate the president on national television. The logic eludes me (unless the fact that the president happens to be Nixon is supposed to curry favor). But that’s okay because Bryan Singer directed the film.
Continuity with the previous films is a mess (a problem with the previous X-MEN: FIRST CLASS as well), but we’re not supposed to worry, because Logan’s trip back to 1973 will reboot the time line anyway (so that the new, younger cast can take over, a la 2009’s STAR TREK), erasing all of the events seen in the previous X-MEN films. You might think fans would be a bit ticked off about this, but apparently not – because it erases the reviled X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, so fuck you Brett Ratner – and if that means erasing Singer’s X-MEN films and the far superior THE WOLVERINE, so be it. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs; after all; besides, the alternate timeline gives you license to kill off major characters, whom you can then easily resurrect in the new version of the future. But that’s okay because Bryan Signer directed the film.
Anyway, you get the idea. Lots of stuff happens; some of it is fun; most of it is okay; but the tribe loves all of it, regardless. Any why not? It’s an okay movie. But nothing more than that. It’s better than the abysmal X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE and the almost as bad X-MEN: FIRST CLASS. It falls short of X-MEN and X-2: X-MEN UNITED – and far short of THE WOLERVINE. Ironically, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is just about on par with the unjustly reviled X-MEN: THE LAST STAND – another flawed film with enough good stuff in it to be okay.
[rating=3]
A mild recommendation
FOOTNOTE

  • Xavier can walk because he’s taking a drug that inhibits his mutant powers. His mutant powers have nothing to do with his inability to walk – his powers are genetic; his paralysis the result of a bullet wound at the end of X-MEN: FIRST CLASS – but that’s okay, because…well, you know.

X-Men_Days_of_Future_Past_poster
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST.  20th Century Fox and Marvel Entertainment. Directed by Bryan Singer. Written by Simon Kinberg; story by Jane Goldman & Simon Kinberg & Mathew Vaugh, based on the Marvel Comics characters. Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Peter Kinklage, Evan Peters, Patrick Steward, Ian McKellen. 131 minutes. PG-13.
[serialposts]

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE: CFQ Spotlight Podcast 4:45

Jennifer Lawrence (right) and Josh Hutcherson can't help making Elizabeth Banks verrrrry nervous in THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE.
Jennifer Lawrence (right) and Josh Hutcherson can't help making Elizabeth Banks verrrrry nervous in THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE.

So it’s back to the arena, where life is cheap but the production values sure as hell are not. In THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE, defiant champions Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) discover how costly their rebellion actually is, both in terms of human toll as the government moves to crush any signs of rebellion inspired by their victory, and personally, as the ruling elite — represented by the likes of Donald Sutherland and Philip Seymour Hoffman — conspire to force them into a new, even more deadly competition.
beabetterbooktalker.com‘s Andrea Lipinski is back once again to share her knowledge of the original book series with Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons. We’ll look into whether there’s story enough to support two-and-a-half hours of screen time, whether the return to the bloody Hunger Games competition is worth the trip, and whether all the characters have a preternaturally intimate understanding of human nature or are just damn lucky. Then, Dan and Andrea quickly discuss the celebratory DOCTOR WHO 50th anniversary episode, “Day of the Doctor.” Plus: What’s coming to theaters next week.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire review

thehungergams-catchingfire-ukposterThere is a pretty decent 90-minute movie hiding within THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE, but the filmmakers were not going to let that fast-paced thriller escape from the laborious two-and-half-hour running time required to appease a fanbase that wants every major development, nuance, and tidbit from the source material to at least rate a mention on screen. Patient viewers (including not only readers of the Suzanne Collins novels) will still find an enjoyable viewing experience, but only the most forgiving fans will be able to completely overlook the longueurs – which are even longer here than they were in the previous film.
As before, there is a rather length preamble before we get to the good stuff, which is of course the titular Hunger Games. This time, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) reluctantly embark on a government-mandated promotional-propaganda tour of the twelve districts, selling their tale of survival and feigned romance to the populace, who presumably will be pacified and more accepting of their miserable fate while the elites continue to live high on the hog.
What’s that about feigned romance, you ask? Well, you ask if you have not read the book, because nothing in THE HUNGER GAMES suggested Katniss did not fall in love with Peeta, but in order to make the sequel story work, that previously overlooked narrative thread finally finds its way off the page and onto the screen. It makes for a rather sulky first act, with Katniss’s true love Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth) lamenting how genuine Katniss’s feelings for Peeta seem, while Peeta sulks over how artificial they are.
The challenge of acting as if she is acting is a bit of a stretch for Lawrence, whose feigned passion for Peeta registers as no more or less passionate than her allegedly real feelings for Gale. Lawrence is hardly helped by the series of gowns and makeups she is given to wear: one would like to forgive them as intentional attempts to underline the clown-show nature of the victory tour, but at times they look simply like failed attempts to render the actress in an exotic guise, and by the time dress designer CInna (Lenny Kravitz) is ruthlessly beaten, the action seems less like political ploy than aesthetic statement about his work.
Fortunately, President Snow ( Donald Sutherland) puts the sulk-fest at least somewhat to bed when he grows resentful over the popularity of Katniss and Peeta, who success seems to be inspiring hope in a populace that Snow wants permanently quelled. Hoping to nip this development in the bud, Snow and Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) contrive a new version of the Hunger Games, in which twenty-four previous winners will compete, with the goal of eliminating the popular heroes and showing the futility of hoping to rise above one’s station in life.
The “hope” issue contradicts THE HUNGER GAMES, in which Snow specifically stated that hope was the essential reason for having a winner: hope keeps people from succumbing to despair and believing there is nothing left to lose, which in turn can lead to rebellion. Apparently, hope is a Goldilocks kind of thing: you don’t too little or too much, but Snow never clarifies exactly what qualifies as “just right.”
However, none of this matters, as it is just a contrivance to get Katniss and Peeta back on the killing field. Once there, the film generates considerable, if familiar, interest, as alliances are formed and tested, and our heroes ponder the moral dilemma of joining forces with people they may be forced to kill later, in order to survive themselves (a dilemma that, fortunately for mass-market taste, the scenario solves for them). The lethal action on the island where this year’s Hunger Games takes place is captivating – not just viscerally exciting but also emotionally engaging – which is a good thing, because the plot developments are, well…mostly a matter of marking time until the next film.
Snow and Plutarch begin and even more Draconian program of repression against the twelve districts, theoretically in order to suppress that unwanted rising hope. Strangely, the arbitrary nature seems more like to foment an uprising than repress one, and one begins to wonder just how Snow has managed to stay in power.
This question is not directly answered, but a twist ending gives us insight into why the tactics might be been deliberately designed to produce exactly the opposite of their stated result.
SPOILERS:

Plutarch turns out to be part of a resistance movement, in league with Katniss’s mentor Haymitch (Woody Harrelson). This also explains why several competitors on the island seemed willing to sacrifice themselves to save Katniss and Peeta; it’s all part of a plan whose details are to be revealed later.
Unfortunately, this is one of those revelations that raises as many questions as it answers, such as: Why isn’t President Snow smart enough to see that Plutarch’s methods are having the opposite of the desire result? And how did Plutarch and Haymitch know to have their rescue ship poised above the dome on the island at precisely the moment when Katniss, on the spur of the movement, performs an entirely unexpected action that blasts a hole in the dome, allowing the rescue ship to get in? And if Plutarch and Haymitch are so on top of the situation as to be able to pull this off, how is is that (we are told) the President managed to get his hands on Peeta and take him to the capital? We also have to wonder whether we are now supposed to forgive Plutarch for the lethal results of the plans he concocted with Snow – is this a Machiavellian case of the ends justifying the means?

END SPOILERS
Worst of all, this half-articulated surprise revelation is supposed to pass for a climax, but it is entirely inadequate. The movie simply stops in mid-sentence, and instead of a real ending, we get a nifty CGI rendition of the mocking bird emblem, in a blaze of firy gold (the closest the film comes to living up to its title). Call it THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK syndrome: who needs a conclusion when you’re watching the middle chapter of a trilogy?
Though it never fully ignites, THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE has its virtues. The sullen leads may lack charisma, but the supporting cast is fine, especially Harrelson; Elizabeth Banks very nearly humanizes the cartoony Effie Trinket, and Donald Sutherland excels so well at villainy that he can rend a simple sip from a glass as a supremely ominous gesture. The satirical depiction of the Capital is amusing if a bit broad (Stanley Tucci’s phony smile as TV celeb announce Caesar Flickerman is still funny but wearing out its welcome). The film takes effective pot shots at the contrived nature of “Reality TV,” which is relentless manipulated behind the scenes to fit narrative requirements. And the propaganda nature of the resulting popular success stories is relentless mocked though the bogus victory tour, in which Katniss and Peeta must seal the deal on their publicly perceived personas by playing out their romance on camera, regardless of Katniss’s actual indifference. (One of the film’s highlights occurs when Peeta, having learned to play the game, announces he would have no regrets about playing another round of the Hunger Games “if it weren’t for the baby” – the phony announcement of Katniss’s non-existent pregnancy predictably delights the decadent crowds.)
THE HUNGER GAMES remains one of the best film adaptations of a young adult novel in recent memory, exceeding expectations for a genre mired in muck like TWLIGHT. Unfortunately, THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE succumbs to twin devils of Sequel Syndrome and Franchise Disorder: it provides more of the same – not bad, but not better – and its main goal is less to be a satisfying work unto itself than a teaser to keep you coming back for more.
[rating=3]
On the CFQ Scale of 0-5 Stars: worth watching if you’re interested
THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (Lionsgate, 2013). Directed by Francis Lawrence. Screenplay by Simon Beuafoy, Michael Arndt, based on the novel by Suzanne Collins. Rated PG-13. 146 minutes. Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrleson, Josh Hutcherson, Donald Sutherland, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, Jeffrey Wright, Amanda Plummer.

The Hunger Games: The Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast – 3:12

The Last Battle?: Jennifer Lawrence struggles for survival in THE HUNGER GAMES.
The Last Battle?: Jennifer Lawrence struggles for survival in THE HUNGER GAMES.

Hunger will compel people to some extreme acts: lie; kill; volunteer your child to appear on TODDLERS & TIARAS. Who knew it could also lead to one of the best movies of the year? The highly anticipated THE HUNGER GAMES takes the first book of the popular young adult series — about a dystopic future where the working masses are kept under control by being forced to sacrifice their children to a high-tech, to-the-death, televised battle — and turns it into a top-notch entertainment. Plus, in the person of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) — a combatant whose behavior amidst the carnage may be a harbinger of change — audiences finally get a more palatable and compelling heroine than a certain, vampire-besotted star of another series.
beabetterbooktalker.com‘s Andrea Lipinski joins Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski and Dan Persons to explore the fine points of the film: What might have been lost in the transition from page to screen; how does director Gary Ross reconcile the carnage of the battle sequences with the more satirical vision of the ruling elite; and what’s scarier, the prospect of being torn to bits by raging, genetically-engineered hell-hounds, or Stanley Tucci’s hair? All this and more will be discussed in the show. Plus: What’s coming to theaters and home video.
REGRETTABLE TECHNICAL NOTE: Conversation about a film this good is hard to contain, which is another way of saying that the running time of show forces us to reduce the audio quality slightly for convenience sake.

[serialposts]

X-Men: First Class: Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast 2:21.1

A Subtle Attraction?: Magneto (Michael Fassbender, left) and Professor X (James McAvoy) join forces in X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.
A Subtle Attraction?: Magneto (Michael Fassbender, left) and Professor X (James McAvoy) join forces in X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.

It isn’t particularly well known, but mutants were with Washington when he crossed the Delaware, with Einstein when he developed the theory of relativity, and with Sarah Palin while she was waiting for Russia to raise its head above Alaska. Most specifically, they were directly engaged in the Cuban Missile Crisis — the world-changing historical event that is the backdrop for the first meeting of the psychic Professor X a.k.a. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and the magnetically-charged Erik Lehnsherr, otherwise known as Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Come join special guest Orenthal V. Hawkins as he sits in with Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons to discuss X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, the latest installment of the Marvel film franchise that uses comic book action to address some potent social issues. Does this chapter live up to the standard established by Bryan Singer? Is the first team-up of mutants — which includes Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), and Darwin (Edi Gathegi) — as impressive as the more famous ensemble of the previous films? And is Moria MacTaggert’s (Rose Byrne) choice of lingerie government-issued, or does Victoria’s Secret sell bullet-proof brassieres? Listen to the show and find out!

[serialposts]