Ancient Grudge Brings New Mutiny
June 2, 2016
X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).
D: Bryan Singer. DP: Newton Thomas Sigel. W: Simon Kinberg. Starring: James McAvoy/Michael Fassbender/Jennifer Lawrence/Oscar Isaac/Nicholas Hoult/Evan Peters/Rose Byrne/Sophie Turner/Tye Sheridan/Kodi Smit-McPhee/Lucas Till/Olivia Munn/Ben Hardy/Alexandra Shipp/Josh Helman.
Where does one begin? X-Men: Apocalypse is the sixth installment in 20th Century Fox’s ownership of the Marvel comic book rights to the characters of X-Men. It is also the third film in the re-vamped group of films that follow the younger selves of characters like Professor Xavier and Magneto first played by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan. This move back in time was further complicated with the previous film, X-Men: Days of Future Past, where younger and older selves meet. The timeline is difficult to follow at best now and even with Hugh Jackman’s ageless Logan/Wolverine popping up you will still be rubbing your head in confusion.
X-Men: Apocalypse enlists Bryan Singer again who directed X-Men (2000), X-Men 2 (2003), and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). Singer stepped away from the franchise to direct the abysmal Superman Returns (2006), but remained involved in the world. The first of this group, X-Men: First Class, was directed by Matthew Vaughn of Kick-Ass fame. Singer’s return in Days of Future Past was helped by a more direct objective within a timeline structure that allowed the older group to interact with their younger selves. Unfortunately, here in a more messy structured story the direction loses its way and cannot create any emotional resonance to compete with its suspense-less action.
The film explores the original mutant back in ancient Egypt who accumulated powers from other mutants over the years, transferring his consciousness and powers into new human bodies. This finally goes array and he is buried for thousands of years only to be awoken Indiana Jones style by radical followers witnessed by CIA Agent Mactaggert (Rose Byrne). Apocalypse / En Sabah Nur is played here by a heavily made up and blue Oscar Isaac. His first mutant begins to explore his new world and recruit four mutants as his disciples. His awakening earthquake causes Magento’s (Michael Fassbender) isolation to be disrupted. Magneto’s resurfacing brings the x-men back together.
Frustratingly, Isaac is lost within his costume and make-up. His magnetic face mostly looks like its melting under a blue shine and head coils that make him look more Predator-esq than anything. Fassbender must continue to deliver the plight of sad Magneto’s personal life which has been dredged up so much it feels like a melodramatic crutch for the film. Lawrence’s Mystique has far less to do here than in 70s set Days of Future Past and she clearly limited her time in her blue suit out of disdain for it. Time has supposed to have past, nearly a decade, but the film cannot pull it off. Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones) is a good addition as a young Jean Grey, but she is just lost amid noise and destruction that lacks punch. Her kinship with James McAvoy’s Professor X is sweet and McAvoy remains the emotional center of the newer half of the franchise. The film is all seriousness which makes me crave Jackman’s Wolverine. Yet Evan Peters returns as Quicksilver and is given another slowed down sequence set to ‘Sweet Dreams’ by Eurythmics. This might be the only time I have enjoyed this tune.
Peters appearance as Quicksilver is complicated as the character Quicksilver also appears in the Avengers franchise. The rights to the character are thus owned by 20th Century Fox and Disney was only allowed to use Quicksilver in the second Avengers film if he was played by a different actor. So in fact Quicksilver’s fate has played out there, but he lives on here. Tricky stuff. Peters is the superior actor for the character, but his quirk also helps dissipate the drama of this film like he did in Days of Future Past. He gets a bit of help from Kodi Smitt-McPhee as a young Nightcrawler, sweetly played by Alan Cummings in the first group of films. Olivia Munn wasted her time on silly scantily clad Psylocke, but the ending of the film alludes to her potential importance. Scene stealer Tómas Lemarquis as underworlder Caliban was more memorable that her few lines.
X-Men: Apocalypse cannot bear the weight of its confusing timeline. The film wants to reunite the X-men originally created in First Class, but is not able to do so without literally burning down the school in the process. It looks and feels more comic-booky than its predecessors and I blame the boots Isaac is forced to wear. His ancient being moves less like a Jedi and more like a spray painted 1960s era astronaut. The fate of the X-men has yet to be announced and we shall see if its poor box office performance will deter its stars from signing on for more. The next Wolverine film is Jackman’s last so it might be time for a rest.
Virtual Reality Through Death
May 12, 2016
The first trailer has arrived from 20th Century Fox for their adaptation of the video game Assassin’s Creed. Directed by Australian Justin Kurzel the film stars his Macbeth team of Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Hitting theaters in December of this year, the trailer gets a pulsing overcoat of sound that includes a track from Kanye West. Check it out!
Assassin’s Creed
One Man Compass
November 19, 2015
Steve Jobs (2015).
D: Danny Boyle. DP: Alwin H. Küchler. W: Aaron Sorkin. Starring: Michael Fassbender/Kate Winslet/Seth Rogen/Jeff Daniels/Michael Stuhlbarg/Katherine Waterston/Sarah Snook/John Oritz. (NOTE: Based on Walter Isaacson’s book ‘Steve Jobs’)
Forgive me for never making time for the Ashton Kutcher staring 2013 film, Jobs. Now with this newer, fancier, somewhat biopic film, Steve Jobs, I am curious about how bad the other might be. Or if they manage a different side of this character study entirely. I shall make a date with netflix to discover.
Cut into three different chapters based around different product launches in 1984, 1988, and 1998 Aaron Sorkin’s script is precise. Sorkin is the famed creator of the TV series The West Wing as well as an Oscar winner for his screenplay of The Social Network. The Sorkin pace and quick dialogue is on the nose tonally with this characterization of the non-emotional asshole and eventual CEO of Apple. Everything we learn is in the dialogue despite this film being about the selling of home computing and Jobs’ own obsession with the look of his products.
Michael Fassbender whose slimmed down considerably since Macbeth is fraught and scheming here, but cannot abandon his looks for the character entirely. His Jobs is a bit Howard Hughes for me. The main emotional arc of the story is centered on his relationship with his daughter Lisa whom he vehemently denies is not his for most of the film. This strained relationship is the backboard for Sorkin to explore Jobs’ history, which is dolled out, as I said, only in dialogue. A refreshing device, leaning the film away from biopic tendencies, but nevertheless does not provide clarity to anything.
One of the weirdest aspects of the film is Kate Winslet. She gives a good performance as Joanna Hoffman, being the emotional compass for Jobs’ stunted antics. However, after the first chapter of the film she suddenly acquires an Eastern European accent. It is frankly jarring and nothing in the film can really explain it. I spent the majority of the 1988 section confused and pitching myself as if I must have been asleep before to have missed this accent. Trust me, I was not. Seth Rogen and Michael Stuhlbarg give solid supporting performances and are great screen partners for Fassbender.
Ultimately, director Danny Boyle is not able to entrance you. Steve Jobs runs too long especially as it is the same crop of characters who just reemerge at different launches. We see very little of the creative process behind any of the products so there is little satisfaction in what reveal we do see. As Jobs hardly changes throughout the film Boyle’s focus of the camera on his face merely acts to remind us that this character is not on a journey, even if he has softer moments. The discussion of the closed versus open systems of the computers is probably the most fascinating technical element explained, why apple products are they way they are. But this is lost in a film obsessed with one man’s compass and not the ship’s voyage.
Savage Beauty
October 10, 2015
Macbeth (2015).
D: Justin Kurzel. DP: Adam Arkapaw. W: Jacob Kosoff, Todd Louiso & Michael Lesslie. Starring: Michael Fassbender/Marion Cotillard/David Thewlis/Sean Harris/Jack Reynor/Paddy Considine/Elizabeth Debicki.
Macbeth or The Scottish Play as it is referred to in theatres is one of Shakespeare’s plays rarely adapted for the screen. This new version, directed by Australian Justin Kurzel, is a ravenously intense adaption that embraces all the cinematic elements and delivers.
Shooting in the UK including the Isle of Skye the film digs its hands into the landscape of Scotland. Vast countryside and oppressive rain and cold anchor the Macbeth couple in a community built on violence and death. Surrounded by children, the film emphasizes the barrenness of the couple who is attempting to reconnect while being reminded of their lack of a legacy. The kingship they conspire to create will not be passed on. A fascinating angle for the play, this Macbeth brings new depth and scope to a work over five hundred years old.
Across the board the actors use Scottish accents with the exception of Marion Cotillard whose French accent has a hint of English, but allows her Lady Macbeth to have an otherness about her. Simply in her image Cotillard appears to represent the clash between Christianity and Paganism the play grapples with. She appears robed like the Virgin Mary yet in other sequences looks more like a witch upon the heath. Macbeth, played by Michael Fassbender, and his lady have an estranged chemistry that is both lustful and complex. Fassbender’s Macbeth is a P.T.S.D. warrior here whose mad fits are deftly handled. Macbeth demands you to listen closely and never relax.
Australian cinematographer Adam Arkapaw relies on a few too many close ups between the couple. Although this builds intensity and intimacy it does not allow some of the verse to breathe. Yet fifteenth century Scotland looks as dirty, cold and exhausting as one might imagine. The mists seem to rise and bring the weird sisters out from the land. The landscape itself absorbs Macbeth and the bodies of his victims into its earth. A thrilling adaption, Macbeth leaves out the famous ‘double, double toil and trouble’ scene among others. But what is lost we gain in a beautiful film that begs a steady ear from its audience. I cannot wait to see what Kurzel does next, dare I ask “when shall we three meet again, in thunder, lighting or in rain?”
Second Time Round
July 7, 2015
New trailer for the Steve Jobs project from Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay and director Danny Boyle…
Steve Jobs
Summer Brain Scramble
June 15, 2014
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014).
D: Bryan Singer. DP: Newton Thomas Sigel. W: Simon Kinberg. Starring: Hugh Jackman/James McAvoy/Michael Fassbender/Jennifer Lawrence/Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellan/Peter Dinklage/Nicholas Hoult/Halle Berry/Shawn Ashmore/Ellen Page/Evan Peters/Omar Sy/Bingbing Fan.
One could spend countless afternoons debating the chronology of the last decade of Marvel movies. I myself jump into that wormhole on occasion and must soon climb out of those conversations for fear I will become too determined to sit down and watch all those movies again. This most recent film plays on our very ideas of time and may even crumble that chronology knowledge once and for all.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is a perfect example of a plot conceit that succeeds and simultaneously gives fans exactly what they want. Bridging the older actors with their younger ones transfers the figurative X-Men torch while also continuing the evolution of characters already established in their older years. The film picks up in one block where X-Men: First Class left off, but it exists more as the subplot or B plot to the overarching threat in the mutant apocalyptic story-line. The time traveling, or sense memory traveling really, that happens not only allows both generations of actors to play the same role, but the origin story conceit to be inter-textual and malleable. Patrick Stewart’s Professor X not only changes the course of his own personal evolution through Jackman’s Wolverine, but also reveals the knowledge that potentially exists in other X-Men films.
This interplay of current past and changeable future is well constructed. Simon Kinberg, the writer of X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), the weakest of the three older films, has a much better grasp of construction, pacing, and the time traveling element here. Bryan Singer, who stepped out of directing X-Men: The Last Stand to direct Superman Returns, redeems himself here. McAvoy’s Professor and Fassbender’s Magneto are given just enough breathing room to create their own versions of these characters and add more dimensions to their layered friendship. Jennifer Lawrence is given even more screen time in this film as her Mystique comes between the two men. Lawrence’s physicality is excellent here, looking more like the Mystique she will become. However, the emotional elements felt too black and white and still lacked a bit of fire.
One of the more memorable sequences belongs to Evan Peters and his performance as Quicksilver. Although due to legalities the character will be played by Aaron Taylor Johnson in the next Avengers film, Peters is all a twinkle as the fast moving mutant with ton of flare. Ultimately, a lot of the movie rests on Jackman’s shoulders as he bridges the two timelines. His Logan is consistently entertaining, angry and complex and still has not fallen into gimmicks. Here’s hoping this standard continues and big budget comic book films push their own genre and world into new territory.
The Beginning of the End…
July 2, 2012
Prometheus (2012).
D: Ridley Scott. DP: Dariusz Wolski. W: Damon Lindelof & Jon Spaihts. Starring: Noomi Raplace/Michael Fassbender/Charlize Theron/Idris Elba/ Guy Pearce/Logan Marshall-Green/Sean Harris/Rafe Spall/Benedict Wong/Kate Dickie.
With a film like this it is hard to know where to begin unpacking. Highly anticiapted and theorized about, Prometheus marks Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien stories. Originally conceptualized as a prequel to his illustrious Alien (1979), with Sigourney Weaver, Prometheus was then reworked as more of an exploratory origin story. If you even can call it that. Rather, I would say, the film attempts to put into perspective questions the previous films brought up. It creates a new story that enlarges the original scope, while closing in on specific themes. Ultimately, the film will remind audiences that oftentimes there aren’t direct answers to the questions we seek to answer…or are there?
Firstly, the film must be applauded for its visual achievements. It was worth wearing the 3D glasses for the opening sequence alone, which not only was pure beauty, but set the tone of how massive a story would be tacked. The beauty is not limited to just the sets, but to the costume and make-up work. Without spoiling anything, it is safe to say audiences will stay impressed throughout the whole film with the level of artistic work put into everything. Prometheus is truly a cinematic experience.
Similar to the previous Alien films, life and society on board the ship is just as integral to the story as what is found off of it. Thankfully this film is well balanced between the two worlds. Although not your typical leading Hollywood lady, Noomi Raplace’s Elizabeth Shaw is believable and memorable. Hailing from the original Swedish versions of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, Raplace is every bit Weaver’s Ripley’s opposite. This works in her advantage as she appears in direct contrast to statuesque ice queen, Charlize Theron, whose company is paying for the expedition. But also, her physicality aids in her character’s determination to explore and discover her own origin as it reflects that of mankind. Michael Fassbender’s robot David nearly steals the show. Which at times truly helps the film as Theron and even Logan Marshall-Green’s Charlie can get a little heavy handed.
What remains heavy handed, in a good way, is Scott’s clear sense of suspense and mood. Prometheus, much like his original Alien, is like one big gear. It needs a certain amount time to heat up and gain momentum, but once its warmed up there’s no stopping it. For someone unfamiliar with these films it might seem slow, but for anyone “in that world” so to speak, it takes off at just the right time. Yet, very similarly to Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), I felt at times I was plopped into the middle of a story that had so many tangents to it, it was hard to stay focused.
Lastly, on a personal note, I did not enter the cinema thinking I’d have all the answers laid out in front of me. But that does not mean there weren’t still moments of frustration. However, overall I feel Prometheus is a platform. The film expects its audience to take a huge leap off into the unknown. So rather then get frustrated, I enjoyed the fall. And quickly went off to chat about all the details I could not write about here, as you should do as well.
The Listening Game
December 14, 2011
A Dangerous Method (2011).
D: David Cronenberg. DP: Peter Suschitzky. W: Christopher Hampton (Based on his play “The Talking Cure,” which was inspired by John Kerr’s book “A Most Dangerous Method.”) Starring: Kiera Knightley/Michael Fassbender/Viggo Mortensen/Vincent Cassel/Sarah Gadon.
As the race to the Oscars commences film buffs everywhere are grinning ear to ear for their favorite season that is ripe with quality films. It is the season of drama everywhere and first on my list was A Dangerous Method.
Following the relationship between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortenson) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) during the development of psychoanalysis, A Dangerous Method is ultimately about Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). Spielrein was a patient of Jung’s, the first patient for him to use psychoanalysis with and to garner a good result. It is safe to say that right from the opening Knightley steals the film. Her part is not only the most challenging physically and has her sport a very convincing Russian accent, but the major story arc and character development lies with her. This is her best performance yet and is one of the major reasons to try and see this film.
It is hard to conceive of the film without Mortensen. The original Freud was to be played by Christoph Waltz who is an amazing actor, but quite different in his physicality. Having dropped out to film Water for Elephants, Waltz’s departure allowed Mortensen to step in. Mortensen’s Freud, with his consistent puffs on his cigars and deep voice provide an excellent foil to the excitability and fever of Fassbender’s Jung. Their professional clashes and tensions are chronicled very well, though much of it remains very subtle. Fassbender does well here, but who would expect him not to.
Christopher Hampton, also responsible for writing the 2007 adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Atonement and won an Oscar for 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons, has impressive credits that without having written the original play material would have made a fine screenwriter choice for this project. What Hampton achieves here is a depth of understanding in his material and a devotion to character that thankfully survives in the cinematic form of his work. One of the few problems is the lack of climax of conflict in the film. Since the screenplay is so dense with speech, and it has to be as it is a film about psychoanalysis, sometimes the cinema form is not used to the fullest extent. So although it is beautifully shot by Peter Suschitzky, as an audience member one feels like you are constantly waiting for a larger clash that never comes. What is so dangerous about the psychoanalytical method? For modern audiences that should have been put in a larger social and political context in my opinion.
That being said, director David Cronenberg’s seems to be tackling the diligence in psychiatry and the silence that psychoanalysis attempted to break. The smaller scope of the film allows it to feel more realistic and hopefully with encourage its audience to focus and listen to the film. However, the performances will probably end up being more memorable than the film as a whole. Ultimately my advice for A Dangerous Method is to listen. And listen closely because you just might be reminded how we all could use a little psychoanalysis in our lives.
Preview I’m PUMPED about…
March 9, 2011
X-Men: First Class
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ccSiH4olo]