Category: Review

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

 
Apes together strong. Humans not so much.
 

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Contrary to what Green Day once sang about, I don’t want to be in the minority. Well, not this kind of minority, anyway. The kind where you don’t think something’s as good as everyone else does. I had my first taste of it this year with How to Train Your Dragon 2 where I gave it an average 3 when some people were showering it with perfect scores and hyperbolic buzzword-y, poster-ready endorsements. Posting an honest opinion of disappointment in that climate feels like I’m excluding myself from the massive joy block party where everyone’s high fiving each other over a shared positive experience. Anyway, I bring all this up because DOTPOTA has put me in a similar situation and I don’t know who to punch to make me feel better about it.

“Apes do not want war!”

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes picks up ten years after Rise of the Planet of the Apes and focuses on what has become of man and apekind alike after a lab-bred virus wiped out most of humanity. We rejoin Caesar (mocapped and voiced by Andy Serkis), alpha ape and leader of an entire ape community in the forest. Caesar has a son, named Blue Eyes, and a new arrival on his mind when a group of humans stumble across several apes, setting wheels in motion that lead to huge tension between the two groups. Whilst the designated leaders for each side (The Big C and some bloke named Malcolm (Jason Clarke)), there are members of both species who want to nudge the precarious situation into all-out war between humans and apes. I will say this about Dawn, it’s not afraid to be a blockbuster with brains. There are some really solid ideas in play and motivations are strong and coherent. The motion capture and the effects work by WETA is awesome stuff. Whilst the apes still aren’t 100% convincing, there are moments where you forget that a huge portion of the cast aren’t really there. The ape cast are great. Andy Serkis is just the fucking don at this stuff and his performance as Caesar is fantastic. Toby Kebbell is brilliant as Koba, Caesar’s aggressive second-in-command. Koba is a truly sinister presence and all credit goes to the CGI people and Kebbell’s unhinged performance. Karin Konoval also returns as the fan favourite Maurice the orangutan, which is brilliant news for fans of the loveable flat-faced fella like me. All of the main apes have distinct features and interesting personalities.

Same can’t be said for the humans, unfortunately. Jason Clarke is annoyingly earnest as Malcolm, a “nice guy” with shit-all personality. Not to be mean, but Clarke has no screen presence. I’d honestly forgotten his name was Malcolm about half an hour after leaving the cinema. Not a good sign. It doesn’t help that his family are boring too. His wife is barely part of it and he has some vaguely sad backstory that’s meant to stand in the stead of giving her something to actually do. His teenage son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) rivals him in the no-personality stakes by having only having one defining thing- he draws stuff. That’s it in regards to character. He doodles in a sketchpad. (Cough) Gary Oldman elevates things just by being him, but it all added up to me being impatient to get back to the monkey business.

OK. Like with How to Train Your Dragon 2, I didn’t hate Dawn. However, I still walked away disappointed. Perhaps it’s just the hype generated by my love of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but I don’t think so. The writing’s certainly not as sharp, for sure. It’s thematically rich and full of interesting philosophies, but I was ahead of the film every step of the way- a phenomenon not experienced whilst watching Rise. It’s not because I’ve wasted more time watching films than most people either. This is some really basic and generic stuff. I kept wanting to be surprised or for it to display at least a bit of narrative sleight of hand to distract me from the fact that I knew how everything was going to play out. There’s one character, Carver (Kirk Acevedo) who starts everything off by shooting at a young ape. Despite seeming to exist purely to fuck things up and having created conflict out of nothing, Malcolm decides to take him to a disputed hydroelectric dam because “he’s the only one who worked there” or some crap. That’s just clunky writing and contrived as anything. When they decide that he can tag along the second time, it’s obvious that he’s going to cause more trouble. Not because we know the character, but because we know his function to the story. Would it have made any difference if it was one of the other people who shot at the ape? Not at all and that’s what bugs me. I can see the seams rather than being too lost in proceedings. Rise was flawed too, but it spent more time making the characters seem like real people, rather than plot-convenient pawns to slide into place when needed.

It’s frustrating because despite the bland-as-balls subplots, the main thrust of the story works incredibly well. The film is nicely morally ambiguous, with both sides having valid reasons for acting the way they do and avoids providing an easy goodies vs baddies scenario. The building conflict between apes and humans is by far the most interesting thing to me and there are some awesome tension-filled scenes where characters are trying to talk their way out of violence and find a diplomatic solution, which is a lesson that our actual, shitty non ape planet doesn’t seem to be interested in heeding of late. When guns are whipped out, everything gets ten times worse. It’s not all talking though. When the action does occur, it’s expertly done. The sight of a snarling ape dual wielding LMGs whilst riding on horseback is worth the price of admission alone. In fact, Koba steals the show for me. He’s a proper villain (spoilers, but Rise and Dawn make it abundantly clear that his defection was only a matter of time) and he’s in my favourite scene. You may have seen the bit I’m about to talk about in trailers and clips (thanks trailer people, I was almost surprised for a moment) but in one scene Koba is caught by a couple of armed guards and he goes all-out pet ape, posing, rolling around and recreating his favourite scenes from Dunstan Checks In. Whilst they’re caught up in the show, Koba grabs one of their guns and blows them both away. It was fucking brilliant and an easy contender for my now world-famous Scenes of the Year list.

“We’ve been through hell together! We spent four years, FOUR YEARS fighting that virus, and then another four fighting each other! It was chaos!… But you all know what we’re up against! And I want you to know, it’s not just about power! It’s about giving us the hope to rebuild, to reclaim the world we lost!”

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is good, but not great. It’s worth a watch, certainly. I just wasn’t as involved as I was with Rise and too many things kept diverting my attention from the solid choices and amazing effects. The whole thing feels slightly undercooked. I’m fine with the amount of praise it’s getting, especially considering the current blockbuster climate. However, when more than a few are saying it’s better than Rise, I feel completely alienated. I genuinely wish I could join your apetastic Fuck Yes DOTPOTA! party everyone, but I’m going to have to sit this one out. I hope we can catch up at the Guardians of the Galaxy Fuckin’ Rules bash.

Transformers: Age of Extinction

 
Robots in disgrace
 

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

There aren’t many franchises that could make me feel compelled to see the fourth instalment after the previous films were so completely awful that they seem less like entertainment and more like clandestine scientific studies into the limits of the human gag reflex. Still, I felt I needed to see this one, because the Bayformers sequels are fascinatingly bad and because they’re handy yardsticks in measuring how dumb Hollywood thinks people are. It would be gauche of me to not mention the fact that despite all this, I still kinda like Michael Bay, or at least several of his previous films, and want him to make things like The Rock and Bad Boys again.

“Fuck this film”

Inventor and robotics enthusiast Cade Yaeger (Mark Wahlberg) brings home a dilapidated truck for scrap and on closer inspection finds out it’s actually Autobot leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). The CIA, under the command of Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) storm the Yaegers’ home and threaten Cade and his daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz), having a zero tolerance policy on alien robots since Chicago got totalled, causing mass civilian fatalities. Initially, Age of Extinction is probably the most coherent of the films since the original. The first 20 minutes or so were borderline OK. The story they were sketching out was dumb as fuck, but still decent enough to be forgiveable. Then it snowballs. Characters switch motivations and ideologies on a whim, practically everyone is a sociopathic arsehole and it became hugely unpleasant to sit through. Acting ranges from flat to actively bad. Marky Mark gives a weirdly earnest performance, but delivers his lines like he’s back in The Happening.  The only decent presences are Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammer who are that damn good at acting they make the insane nonsensical shit they have to say seem legitimate.

I hate to sound like a bored, fusty old retiree writing into the Daily Mail, but this film is morally reprehensible. My expectations weren’t high. I’ve seen all the previous films and am aware that the very best it could be is a dumb action film based on a line of action figures. This film has racism, sexism and all the other kinds of “isms” peppered throughout. I’m not sure whether it’s down to Bay or writer Ehren Kruger or both, but there is some ugly shit below the surface. So, Cade has a daughter, a character we’re introduced to via a low angle crotch shot getting out of a car. She is kept on a tight leash by her dad, not allowed to date or express herself in any way. The script is at great pains to state that she is a minor at 17 years old and that all Cade wants to do is “protect” her. In fact, I’d say a good 30% of Yaeger’s dialogue contains the word “protect” or a variation. When shit hits the fan, Cade and Tessa are rescued by Tessa’s secret boyfriend, Shane (Jack Reynor) and cue lots of awkward moments. Thing is, the way the characters are written, it feels like Cade is in love with his daughter, spending most of the runtime competing for her affection with Shane. It’s a fucking creepy love triangle. It’s not as if it’s subtle, either. There is one part where they’re talking about her being underage and Cade being tempted to call the police on Shane for having sex with a minor (there’s all sorts of icky shit in here, especially concerning the Madonna/whore complex) and- I shit you not- Shane pulls out documentation on the Romeo & Juliet laws in his defence. This is meant to be a dumb, for the masses CGI abusing blockbuster- why the fuck are we even talking about statutory rape and underage sex, especially since the writing is so fucking stupid it can’t handle basic human characters, let alone a pointy and complex issue like that?

That aside, how does the rest fare? Not well. The humans are creepy and the Autobots are kill-happy jerks. They can’t shut up about how much they enjoy killing. It hardly makes you want to cheer for them. Basically, Kelsey Grammer’s character is right in wanting to destroy all the Transformers, regardless of allegiance. Too many people die when they’re around. They’re not heroes. The whole film is gravid with shit like this and it’s exhausting to watch. It’s nearly three hours long and it’s basically done with the simple story it wanted to tell halfway in. How about the Dinobots, eh? Yeah, they’re not in it much. Think of the ghost army in Return of the King. Few token scenes then show up in the final battle, only to fuck off afterwards.

I’m aware that not all people care about narrative, they want to see ‘splosions and lots of them. The arguments are always the same. “But I just want to turn my brain off and have fun” or “I just want to see giant robots beating the shit out of each other” etc. Thing is, even the action’s not great. Whilst it is possible to distinguish one robot from another this time, it’s just the same old shit with an over-reliance on slow motion shots to show off how “cool” everything is. The action doesn’t mean anything. There are no stakes. It’s just noise. I think even the most forgiving of violence junkies will be pissed off at how flat the action is and how much time the film spends on the incestuous love triangle instead.

Critics have said that by naming his play “As You Like It”, Shakespeare was taking a jab at his audience, frustrated that they just wanted knockabout comedies instead of his more serious work. I think Age of Extinction is Bay’s As You Like It. The Transformers franchise is way too much of a money juggernaut for Paramount to lose Bay. He’s a selling point. We know Bay has never had any qualms about “selling out” considering his background in advertising and the shameless product placement in his films. My guess is that they keep offering him embarrassing amounts of money to stick around and this is him accepting his fate. This film is a soft reboot and there are a further two films planned. He’s stuck. So, here he is, packing the film with all sorts of shit because he can and nobody is going to stop him. The worst part is that people are eating it all up and clamouring for more. That’s seriously depressing.

“Seriously though, fuck this film”

So yeah, Age of Extinction is pretty much the worst. It’s a cynical, hateful, loud film with absolute contempt for its audience.

How to Train Your Dragon 2

 

How to Drain Your Passion

 

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

How to Train Your Dragon is a film that doesn’t need a sequel. It’s a complete story and ties things off nicely. However, the first film was a huge hit, so money again wins over artistry. That’s not to say a sequel couldn’t work, it’s just unnecessary. I was on the fence until I saw this awesome teaser:

Just watch it. It sold me on everything. It captures the joy of the first film whilst promising new things like Hiccup’s wing suit and best of all, it gives fuck all away. So of course they ruined it by releasing a second trailer that gives away 90% of the entire film. Luckily, I managed to avoid seeing it after being forewarned, but damn. You’re making me not want to watch trailers, you film douchebags. That’s the opposite of what you want. Anyway, back to the review.

“You have the heart of a chief and the soul of a dragon.”

HTTYD 2 picks up five years after the original. Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is now a 20 year old man, struggling to balance his duty to his village and his father with exploring the wider world with his trusty dragon pal Toothless. It soon transpires that an old enemy of Stoick’s (Gerard Butler) a villain named Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou) is alive and hellbent on amassing a dragon army to take over the world. Things get more complicated for Hiccup when the mysterious dragon rider Valka (Cate Blanchett) shows up and kidnaps him. The basic story is decent enough to justify its own existence. In a genre where keeping the status quo when it comes to sequels is the norm, the decision to age the characters is a smart one.  It gives the characters new purposes and ensures that the film isn’t just a retread of what’s come before, at least in theory. The cast are good, but additions like Jon Snuh actor Kit Harington and the aforementioned Cate Blanchett and Djimon Hounsou  aren’t given particularly meaty roles to really shine. On that topic, fuck knows what is up with Blanchett’s accent in this. It veers from Scottish to European to an accent never before heard by human ears.

On the surface, everything is fine. Hiccup is still a good lead, the friendship between him and Toothless still charming and the flight sequences still great. It totally looks the part as well with beautiful, colourful vistas and fluid animation. However, I found myself really underwhelmed by it all. Look, I know I’m in the minority here as this thing has had crazy praise laid at its doorstep by critics, but when they’re saying it’s better than the original, it makes my head hurt. It’s a clusterfuck of ideas and scenarios, with the film feeling aimless at times, not sure how to stitch together scenes of Toothless being adorable. Despite having the leg up on who these characters were, I found them to be unengaging and at times, boring. One of the main reasons is how generic it all feels in comparison to the first. The main villain, Drago Bludvist, is a cookie cutter baddie with no real goal. In my little blurb above, I was trying to remember what his ultimate plan was and couldn’t- eventually settling for a vague “world domination” thing. He does get more interesting later on, but like Zod in Man of Steel, the revelation and backstory come way too late in the film and just before the climactic fight, a part where you specifically don’t want to sympathise with the bad guy because he’s about to get stomped by the hero. There are too many moments that just don’t ring true for it to be a minor problem. For all the lovely colours and dragon antics on screen, the kids sitting in the row in front of me seemed bored, with one of them resorting to punching his brother in the face with a popcorn box over his fist. They weren’t laughing much either. Food for thought. Also, that whole teaser sequence does appear in the film, but they’ve slapped some sugary pop song over the top, robbing the scene of most of its majesty. Fucking sigh.

It’s not bad by any standard. A lot of the film is quite good with some neat ideas played with. There’s one scene for instance where Hiccup, Stoick and the Vikings have to protect a dragon nest and its alpha dragon from attackers, the exact opposite of the climax of the first film. That’s a nice touch and there are several others like it scattered throughout the film. It’s just not enough. I felt disconnected from the film, like I was watching snatches of it through a neighbour’s window. Despite now being an adult, Hiccup’s motivation is pretty much the same as in the first one- change how people think about dragons and to become a responsible adult. He doesn’t want to be who his father wants him to be. Same exact skeleton of a conceit with different bells and whistles. The motivations for all the characters are fairly weak and ill-defined. As a result, don’t be surprised if you don’t care about anything happening on screen.

“C’mon, bud. There’s a whole other world of dragons out there!”

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is a slide in quality. It still has clever ideas, wit and charm, but it’s harder to recognise them amongst the stilted storytelling and often painfully unambitious bits. The trailers for the god-awful looking genre stablemates Planes 2 and The Nut Job before the screening reaffirmed that the HTTYD franchise is still leagues above the pandering bullshit they’re clogging up multiplexes with, but judged by its own standards it’s a step back, not a stride forward. The worst thing is that I wanted to be caught up in it all and I was left on the sidelines. I’m legitimately disappointed. Still, there are plenty of worse ways to spend 90 minutes. Plenty of better ways too though *wink*. Seriously though- ladies, hit me up.

How to Train Your Dragon

 

Toothless is more

 

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

OK, deep breath. I kinda thought HTTYD was average as all hell when it first came out. In fact, I wrote a review four years ago saying as much. That’s not to say I didn’t like it, it’s just for the longest time I couldn’t see anything more in it other than a distracting electric babysitter for spoiled little shits. However, time has softened my judgement and when I decided to rewatch the original in preparation for the sequel and found myself reacting to it very differently. I’m a proud man, but willing to admit I was wrong. It’s chuffing brilliant. Sorry it took me so long to join the party.

“Either we finish them, or they’ll finish us! It’s the only way we’ll be rid of them! If we find the nest and destroy it, the dragons will leave.”

How to Train Your Dragon follows awkward Viking teenager Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel). As the son of the aptly named chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) there are a great many things expected of him, although the town regards him as a screw up. They live in the village of Berk, a very old place with suspiciously new buildings. Turns out Berk is a hostile dragon hotspot and is regularly raided by the fire-breathing monsters. After he wings an attacking dragon with a net and grounds it, Hiccup names it “Toothless” and starts bonding with the creature and starts to question whether dragons are the fearsome killers they’re made out to be.  It’s a simple tale, but it’s incredibly well executed. Dreamworks’ film before this point tended to feel like snarky joke-delivery vehicles, but HTTYD is a “proper” film. It’s beautifully animated and it has a really appealing art style, similar to Asterix, with the big, burly Vikings clearly attending the same buffets as Obelix. It shares a lot of Disney DNA, especially with Lilo & Stitch, which also has a human/creature relationship at the centre of things. Jay Baruchel’s reedy, perpetually breaking Hiccup voice is perfect for the part. Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson Scot things up a bit as Stoick and Gobber, although the mystery of how Vikings ended up with Scottish accents when the kids speak with American tones is never solved. The voice cast is decent with several reliable comedians like Jonah Hill and Kristen Wiig popping up.

The film is charming. It focuses on the symbiotic relationship between Hiccup and Toothless. The slow process of two fearful beings slowly trusting each other and liking each other is seriously well done. When Hiccup does finally fly with Toothless, it’s exhilarating. The music, the gorgeous visuals and everything else blend together into something genuinely special. The film isn’t all whiz-bang dragon flying though. It has time for human characters too. Stoick’s relationship with Hiccup is relatable and touching. They may be talking about dragon slaying, but the emotions are believable. Same with Astrid (America Ferrera). The film pays great attention to giving her an actual personality, rather than just being the stock “love interest”. There are some really decent messages contained within. Be kind to animals, brain over brawn etc. Crucially, it never feels preachy. The motivations, theming and all that good behind the scenes stuff is top quality too. I won’t say that the film deals with surprisingly dark stuff as most kids’ film worth anything do, but it handles mature ideas with a deft touch and it makes the film all the more enjoyable to know that the film isn’t just content with being flashy colours and shapes to sedate its young audience.

There’s been a lot of criticism over the idea that HTTYD is derivative. Yeah, I’m sure you could find countless films that share the same basic story. However, HTTYD doesn’t feel like a cynical, rip-off cashgrab. It takes basic storytelling elements and runs with them, giving us a unique setting and colourful characters. Here’s the thing. It’s one thing to stuff your film with a bunch of clichés, but it’s a completely different thing to understand their purpose and function. HTTYD knows these things and uses them to create a solid framework. Most of the time it’s when tropes are handled badly that it really becomes noticeable and you can see the stitches barely holding all of it together. The script is slick and efficient. Notice I didn’t say “great” because the dialogue is the only real thing that needs to be punched up. It’s not as funny as it should be and the lack of jokes outside of dumb kid pandering stuff is noticeable, but not a problem when taken as a whole.

“This is Berk. It snows nine months of the year, and hails the other three. Any food that grows here is tough and tasteless. The people that grow here are even more so. “

How to Train Your Dragon is fantastic. I can see why it’s resonated with so many people. Strong characterisation, a lovely central friendship between a boy and his dragon and some thrilling flight scenes coupled with an epic scale finale make it a modern classic of the genre. It’s a joy.

22 Jump Street

 

Sun’s out, puns out
 
 

22 Jump Street (2014)

Comedy sequels are, on the whole, pretty terrible. Something about the “same but different” just doesn’t mesh well with comedy, as it boils down to repeating the same tired gags in the hopes of getting the same reaction. This film is going to be the shining example of how to do comedy sequels i.e. “Well, it’s no 22 Jump Street, but it’s not an Anchorman 2 level disaster either”.

“Remember me? I’m your best nightm… I’m your worst nightmare!”

After a botched arrest (sound familar?), we reteam with Jenko (Channing Tatum) and Schmidt (Jonah Hill) who are assigned the same basic job as before- to pose as students and go undercover, but this time at college and find whoever is selling a new synthetic drug called Work Hard Yes Play Hard Yes (WHYPHY), which enables the user to be laser focused for several hours and then party hard for several hours after that. Much like with the first one, the script is sharp and incredibly meta and self-referential. This is a sequel making fun of sequels without it being too knowing or smug. It’s found a way to make the “same but different” approach work and should really be commended for that. Beat for beat, it’s practically the same film as the first. However, it doesn’t feel like it. It’s fantastic being in the company of Hill and Tatum again. They work incredibly well together and this film has cemented them on my all-time favourite buddy cops list that includes Gibson/Glover, Smith/Lawrence and Pegg/Frost. Ice Cube again gives a scene-stealing performance as Captain Dickson and has a lot more to do this time round. Peter Stormare doesn’t really get to do much as the villain and Jillian Bell proves she’s the best deadpanner since Aubrey Plaza.  The supporting cast is really decent. Kurt’s son Wyatt Russell is fun as the meatheaded Zook and comedy greats like Patton Oswalt and Archer actor H. Jon Benjamin show up for limited roles. It’s nice to see Queen Latifah again too, playing Dickson’s wife. We don’t see much of her, but she does get given a sneaky “Straight Outta Compton” line before her screentime is up.

So, the main question: is it funny? Damn right it is. I chuckled throughout and there are some scenes that had me gasping for air. Most of the film revolves around the knowing joke of the first Jump Street operation being a surprise success. The film flips the roles so now it’s Jenko’s turn to fit in and rediscover a yearning to play American football. Jenko falls in with a bunch of dumb jock friends and Schmidt is left on the outskirts. It’s a clever way to incorporate a “will this work a second time?” theme without coming across as too knowing and clever-clever. Whilst Jonah Hill is the one with the comedy background, and does well as the straight man, it’s Tatum that really comes into his own. There’s one scene where Jenko comes to a realisation that is easily the funniest thing I’ve seen this year. The decision to give Ice Cube more of a role is also a sound one. His interactions with Schmidt at an awkward family meeting are genius. Put simply, there’s bound to be something that makes you laugh. There are big slapstick moments as well as subtler gags, such as Jenko, fresh from attending a Human Sexuality class, realising he’s used gay slurs in the past and may be a “homophone”. I’m not a huge fan of mere references, but the film also has a genuinely funny White House Down nod and a great Annie Hall parody going for it.

Actually, since we’re talking about it, of the very few negative reviews and articles about this film, they tend to be focusing on the “gay jokes”, especially the bromance elements between Schmidt and Jenko. I must admit, the film does bang that particular drum pretty consistently. However, I see it as a meta joke rather than just a “LOL gay!” cheap yuk. Maybe it’s because the film is smart in other areas. If anything, I see it as the film burying that particular trope, Cabin in the Woods style. Having said that, there was scene that was desperately unfunny in the form of Jenko and Schmidt visiting the imprisoned Mr. Walters (Rob Riggle) and Eric (Dave Franco). Something is really off in this scene. It’s tone deaf and contains the sort of weak shit I’d expect from a Seth MacFarlane film.

Apparently, Lord and Miller were so busy with Lego shenanigans that they didn’t have time to do any script revisions before filming this film. I would say it shows a little bit. Whilst the gag rate is high, it often feels like it’s needlessly repetitive at times, especially with Jillian Bell’s “old jokes” which become just that after the first few. It also feels like there are a few scenes missing, especially when it comes to Schmidt dating a student and the whole Spring Break finale, which I’d forgotten all about, despite it featuring heavily in the posters and trailers. I reckon another pass would have tightened these scenes right up and we could have been talking about an instant comedy classic. However, we’re talking about a very good film instead.

“He has one class in Human Sexuality, and now he’s Harvey Milk.”

I suppose secondary question is: is it as good as the first? In my opinion no, but it’s a very close run thing. I may need to rewatch it, as there were some jokes that passed me by in the first one that have become laugh out loud moments on a second go-around. It’s funny as hell and a hugely enjoyable experience. They make a lot of jokes about sequels in the film, but if they decide to do 23 Jump Street, I’ll be all for it, as long as they keep the same creative team. Hell, I’d watch all the way up to 2121 Jump Street if they did that.

21 Jump Street

 

“We’re reviving a cancelled undercover police program from the ’80s and revamping it for modern times. You see the guys in charge of this stuff lack creativity and are completely out of ideas, so all they do now is recycle shit from the past and expect us all not to notice.”
 

21 Jump Street (2012)

The whole concept of 21 Jump Street is unappealing. A slick big-budgeted comedy based on a vaguely well remembered ’80s TV series is just one of those ideas that makes you want to grab a sleazy greenlighting exec and shake them by their cocaine-dusted lapels. However, it’s so much better than it has any right to be and, at least in my opinion, is one of the funniest all-out comedies in recent years.

“You are here because you some Justin ‘Beaver’, Miley Cyrus lookin’ motherfuckers.”

After a botched arrest attempt, rookie cops Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are put onto a recently revived police program that takes young-looking officers and plants them in undercover roles in high schools. Jenko and Schmidt are tasked with finding and stopping the people responsible for flooding a local school with a dangerous, potentially lethal synthetic drug called Holy Fucking Shit (HFS). The script is smart. Much like many others aspects of the film, it takes something eye-rolling and generic and makes something great out of it. It takes the meta approach, nudging and winking along with the audience and it works. It knows how unappealing the premise of an ’80s reboot is and focuses on making the best of it. If more films did this, I’d find very little to complain about. It’s partly a parody of action film conventions, but doesn’t get hung up on references and tells its own story. It’s pretty much the American Hot Fuzz. Jonah Hill is on form, but it’s Channing Tatum who turns out to be the surprise MVP. The guy has on point comedic timing and can deadpan with the best of them. This film, coupled with Magic Mike, is the reason why I began to like Channing Tatum and refer to him as “Chan the Man”. Ice Cube is also surprisingly funny as the standard “angry black captain”, Captain Dickson. Brie Larson and Dave Franco are also welcome faces and both do well with what could have been limited supporting roles.

On the surface, 21 Jump Street looks like any number of other modern comedies. It’s got base, vulgar gags, it’s edited in a frenetic, stylish way etc, but it just proves that a good script can overcome most obstacles. I think the thing that sets it apart for me is the attention to character. A lot of comedies nowadays revolve around a prick being a prick to other pricks. Much like horror, comedy works better when you have an emotional reaction to the characters. Funnily enough, screenwriter Michael Bacall also wrote the abhorrent Project X, a theoretical “comedy” that encapsulates everything wrong with films of its ilk. I hated every single character in that film, which yes, is an emotional response, but there’s no payoff to it. There’s no knife-wielding maniac picking them off or anything. Even by the film’s own narrative, they have no comeuppance. We’re meant to like them and that very fact alone was enough to make me hate it. 21 Jump Street, on the other hand, knows that character is important in driving story. Let’s not get carried away here though, it’s not groundbreaking stuff, but it’s enough to draw you in that little bit closer.

It’s got the same crude humour as other contemporary films, but I found myself more willing to laugh at the knob gags because it had more to offer than simply that. It’s got some neat observations of how high school has changed since Jenko and Schmidt attended. There’s some clever role reversal as the nerdy Schmidt finds a niche with the new breed of popular kids and the former popular Jenko finds himself lumped in with the dweebs. Schmidt soon starts buying into his cover and starts treating the whole thing as a second shot for a less lonely and dismal experience. It’s smart stuff. It doesn’t feel like just a bunch of things happening for the sake of being funny. The duo of Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum is also a big part of why the film succeeds. It’s an oddball pairing but they play off each other well.

You know a film is doing something right when you genuinely laugh at the apparently obligatory “drug trip” sequence. This is just it- the entire film takes shit that is so played out and somehow makes it funny again. Phil Lord and Chris Miller are the absolute kings of this, as proved by the brilliant Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the awesome Lego Movie. It’s quite comforting to know that I’m capable of laughing at crude humour and that it was the modern bollocks featuring it that was at fault, not the other way around. I probably sound like a right snooty twat with that statement, but it can’t be just me sitting stony-faced through most contemporary comedies. I’m a pretty lowbrow guy, but something like A Million Ways to Die in the West makes me feel like I’m above coarse innuendo and the like. Not all the gags are winners. Don’t get me wrong, the joke hit rate is damn high, but Rob Riggle’s sports coach didn’t get many laughs from me. His humour is a little “standard” for my liking and found it strangely ill fitting. Still, the film wisely focuses on Hill and Tatum, so a mere minor niggle with Riggle.

“Chemistry’s the one with the shapes and shit, right?”

You’ll have noticed that I’ve spent quite a bit of this review talking about other films and not focusing on this one. Y’know- the hallmark of a terrible reviewer. The reason for this is that I can’t say much more about the film without just repeating jokes and funny scenes. I’ve watched 21 Jump Street a bunch of times now and it doesn’t lose its charm. It’s become a real favourite for just slapping on and enjoying whenever I feel cat-kickingly grumpy.

A Million Ways to Die in the West

 
A million sighs.
 

A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)

The seemingly binary nature of the Internet pisses me off sometimes. If you want your voice heard on the Net, you either have to unconditionally love a thing or hate it from the very core of your being. People seek out opinions that agree with their own and it all becomes a massive, self-sustaining circlejerk. Having said that, I suppose there is a third category of people who are pussies and calling for a happy medium, one which I’m very aware I belong to in this instance. So, Seth MacFarlane. I don’t mind him. I think he’s a talented voice actor and singer. Family Guy is alright occasionally and I genuinely like American Dad. Ted was alright too. It didn’t make me laugh that much, but it worked in other ways. Anyway, I feel it necessary to qualify what I think of him, because this is his film. He stars, he co-wrote it and he directed it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the soundtrack is based on melodies originally whistled by MacFarlane. Also, it’s fucking terrible and I hate it from the very core of my being.

“Hey, dude, you really shouldn’t drink and horse.”

MacFarlane plays Albert Stark, a sheep farmer who hates living in the Old West. He’s dumped by his girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) in favour of the moustachioed Foy (Neil Patrick Harris) and is struggling to find something to live for. Enter Anna (Charlize Theron) a new arrival to the town with a secret connection to the deadly outlaw Clinch (Liam Neeson). After Albert foolishly challenges Foy to a duel, having never fired a gun before, Anna takes it upon herself to train Albert to give him a fighting chance and to win back Louise’s favour. Then words are said, nearly all of them unfunny. The basic premise is Albert going round and talking about how unsafe and horrible the West is. That’s the joke. It’s played out by the 10 minute mark and just keeps going. Albert is a know-it-all, almost omniscient character who seems to be the only one who realises the shitty time he lives in. MacFarlane is not a good leading man. He’s oddly stiff in the role. There’s one scene where Albert is incredibly drunk. MacFarlane can do a funny, slurred voice, but there was a disconnect between the on-point voice and his acting drunk. The cast around MacFarlane are great, just not really given anything funny to say. Charlize Theron is good, Liam Neeson is fun and Neil Patrick Harris is having a ball hamming it up as Foy.

A Million Ways to Die in the West suffers from a sledgehammer approach. For every vaguely funny gag, there’s a deluge of thudding, anti-hilarious jokes that don’t work. Sometimes, they’ll take something semi-amusing and then overdo it, either by repetition or overexplanation. Whilst not particularly funny, there’s one bit that outlined this for me. OK, so Ruth, Sarah Silverman’s prostitute character has had a booking for anal sex with a client, we cut to later in the evening and she and Giovanni Ribisi’s character are comforting Albert. Albert invites them to sit down on the porch. Ruth goes to, but then opts to stand. I’m sure you can figure out why. Didn’t make me laugh, but it’s an understandable, simple gag. However, the film doesn’t trust you with getting it and so after declining to sit, she says “I need to rest my asshole” or something to that effect. You see how that’s less funny? The film thinks you’re a total fucking moron and has to spell out everything. The entire film is like this. It’s terrified that Joe Pleb isn’t going to laugh at every single joke, so it feels the need to signpost and explain why a thing should be funny.

The script is stale and lazy as fuck. It’s as predictable as a metronome. Love triangle. Person A is helping Person B to get over Person C. B gets to a certain point and realises C isn’t for them and A was “the one” all along. Cue credits and barf. There’s also juvenile wish fufillment element to it. Albert is the classic “nice guy” and Louise has dumped him in favour of an rich asshole. Then the traffic-haltingly beautiful Anna defends Albert and falls in love with him. It’s not hard to see why people are calling this a MacFarlane ego trip.

It feels hastily assembled. In one scene, Albert takes some hallucinogenic drugs with an Indian tribe and goes on a mystic trip, supposedly showing him “the path”. However, before all that, Albert flashes back to his childhood and we see various scenes of him growing up. It really felt like they couldn’t fit these jokes anywhere else so they just bunged them into the vision sequence because drugs=funny, right guys?  MacFarlane’s magnum dopus Family Guy is like 90% pop culture references, and it feels like by choosing the Old West, MacFarlane’s distanced himself from his comedy crutch. That’s not to say the film is completely devoid of them, though. There’s a Back to the Future III reference in the form of Christopher Lloyd appearing as Doc Brown. Whilst it was great to see Lloyd as Doc, there’s no actual joke other than the “random” nature of it. Much like the anal sex joke, the film ruins what could have been a neat little reference (Doc hastily covers up the DeLorean and mutters something about it being a weather experiment) with a nail-on-the-head “Great Scott!” for no real reason. Also Ryan Reynolds is in it for 5 seconds and gets shot. This is apparently a joke.

“I’m not the hero. I’m the guy in the crowd making fun of the hero’s shirt; that’s who I am.”

What makes this all doubly annoying is that it’s shot and made extremely well. It looks like a legit Western and has some awesome shots of Monument Valley. It’s a slick production, which makes it a massive shame that the script is toss on a biscuit. It makes it harder to give the film the one star rating it deserves, but fuck it. I’m sure they were well paid for their work and weren’t paid much less than MacFarlane with his three paycheques as an actor, writer and director (cough). Fuck this film.

Robocop (2014)

 

“Bitches, leave!”
 

Robocop (2014)

What is the point in remaking something like Robocop? Well. money, brand recognition and money. However, for a moment let’s pretend art is the driving force behind filmmaking. The first film is terrific. It’s a sharp satire filled with ultra-violence and sleaze. It works perfectly at what it set out to do. It’s not broken, so there’s no need to fix it. Steven Soderbergh said something about this in his “State of Cinema” speech: “They get simple things wrong sometimes, like remakes. I mean, why are you always remaking the famous movies? Why aren’t you looking back into your catalog and finding some sort of programmer that was made 50 years ago that has a really good idea in it, that if you put some fresh talent on it, it could be really great? Of course, in order to do that you need to have someone at the studio that actually knows those movies.”  Having said that, if done correctly, it could almost justify its own existence by keeping the satirical edge. A lot of the themes and targets in the original are just as, if not more, relevant today. The pervasion of the media, massive immoral corporations, consumer culture etc haven’t gone away and have been amplified beyond Robocop ’87’s wildest dreams. What I’m trying to express is that when it came to this film, I was torn, cold and shamed, lying naked on the floor. After seeing it, I’m still torn, but in a different way. Also fully clothed.

“This, my friends, is the future of American justice. How many like Thomas King will pay for their crimes now that RoboCop is here? Yes, let’s not shy away from what this means, people. Men weren’t up to the task. But Alex Murphy, a robot cop, was.”

2028. Detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is grievously injured by a car bomb. Murphy unwittingly becomes the prime candidate for huge conglomerate Omnicorp’s new marketing push to humanise its line of robots and drones, masterminded by CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton). Sellars uses scientist and robotics expert Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) to give Murphy a new robotic body and represent the future of law enforcement. As you may imagine, things don’t go exactly to plan. Robocop 2K14 takes an interesting inverse angle on the standard Robocop fare. In the ’87 one, it’s all about Murphy remembering he’s human. In this one, Murphy knows who he is from the off and the film instead focuses on the notion of free will, humanity and blah blah blah. It’s a smart idea and certainly the kind of fresh spin that modern by-the-numbers remakes severely lack. However, the satire is dropped almost entirely, which is a shame. Big business and the news are very much presences, but the film seems to be giving passive commentary, rather than taking it somewhere interesting. For instance, it’s revealed Omnicorp have been buying political influence. That’s it. That shit is happening right now. It doesn’t feel particularly necessary to even comment on stuff like that.

The cast are a mixed bag. Joel Kinnaman is damn near robotic before he gets put into the shiny suit. He’s pretty monotonous and is always the worst actor in a scene. To be fair to him, there is stiff competition and the part isn’t particularly well written or defined. There was one bit early on with the brilliant Michael K. Williams and it just highlighted the gulf between the two. Michael Keaton is fun as a smarmy, morally bankrupt Steve Jobs-esque CEO, Jay Baruchel pops up as a slimy exec and Jackie Earle Haley is enjoyable as Mattox. Abbie Cornish is given the thankless task of being “the wife character” and spends 90% of the film crying. I hate to say it, but I think Samuel L. Jackson is miscast here. He plays Pat Novak,  a kind of Bill O’Reilly/Fox News style anchor and something about it doesn’t work. Perhaps it’s because the character seems downright plausible. His impassioned “mah guns an’ libertees” rhetoric could easily slot in with some of Glenn Beck’s psychotic rants. Again, commentary rather than satire. Anyway, Gary Oldman saves it. Whereas I didn’t give a shit about most of the characters, I cared about Dr. Norton. His scenes with various patients including Murphy are legitimately decent. One of the best scenes in the film is when Dr. Norton is encouraging somebody to use their new robotic hands to play the guitar. Norton is so genuinely moved by the whole thing and it’s hard not to warm to him. The CGI used to show the hands playing the guitar was also top notch stuff. The film has quite a few little bits here and there like this where it feels like a surreal art film for a moment and it’s great.

This Robocop is frustrating because there are elements and ideas played with that are really good. The first 10 minutes of the film is decently done, doing some solid world building, but it just kind of falls apart after that. It’s kind of meta at times too, with Sellars changing Robocop from silver to tactical black purely for marketing reasons. There are interesting ideas when it comes to Murphy becoming Robocop, being in control until a combat situation arises where an automatic combat system will take over, but do it in such a way that Murphy believes it to be his idea and that he’s in control. That’s a nice, thick vein of gooey sci-fi drama, but it has a few goes at it and then is just done with it, dropping it in favour of more frustratingly threadless plotlines.

Making this film a PG-13 was just as bad as people feared it would be, but for unforeseen reasons. The film seems schizophrenic. I really got the sense that there were a lot of late rewrites to make sure it got the golden rating. For one, Robocop has a taser gun for most of the runtime. It’s odd because some of the people Murphy stuns are then talked about by characters like they’re dead. It smacks of a desperate script job. There’s one scene where Murphy stands on a crook’s hand, grinding it into broken glass which, as it appears in the film, seems really out of character. This is only hypothesis but I reckon there was a lot darker version of Murphy/Robocop originally written and the glass/hand scene is a holdover from that. I reckon Robocop was going to be an R-rated beast until they saw Dredd, featuring the similar character of Judge Dredd, bombing a hole through the bottom of the box office. Suddenly, the only way they can continue working is to maximise the demographic and cut out huge hunks of the script so as to not piss off the MPAA.  It would explain why the film seems to be working a dark revenge angle but never really commits and feels toothless, not just in terms of violence, but in terms of themes as well. It’s really telling in the action which is by far the least interesting part of the movie. It’s just CGI blah, mostly featuring Murphy killing robots, not squishy, blood-filled people. Remember the iconic ED-209 from the original? The one that completely obliterates a businessman and falls down stairs? Yeah, one scene has four of them, devoid of any endearing stop-motion jankiness. That should tell you all you need to know. There is one OK action scene which takes a leaf from Equilibrium and features a gunfight solely lit by muzzle flashes. It’s decent, but then the film has to show us Robocop’s thermal vision as well. There are so many frenetic cuts here that I recoiled and had to look at something else for a few moments. Either one would have been cool, but both together create an effect similar to running a razor blade directly up and down your optic nerves.

“In his everyday life, man rules over the machine. Alex makes his own decisions. Now, when he engages in battle, the visor comes down and the software takes over. Then the machine does everything. Alex is a passenger, just along for the ride.”

So, Robocop 2014. It’s OK. I didn’t hate it as much as I expected to, but unfortunately it just falls into the “frustratingly almost great” pile of films, which is becoming worryingly common.  It’s smarter than I was expecting, but the script rarely follows through. You could do a lot worse, but if you’re looking for some robot cop action, stick to the original, it’s still wicked sharp and features a melting man being turned into slush by a car driven by Red Forman from That ’70s Show.

Edge of Tomorrow

 

Groundhogs of War

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

I like Tom Cruise. I barely hear a positive word about him when talking to people and it’s unfair. The guy’s a decent actor and always brings a certain passion to his roles. His recent output has been solid too, with Oblivion being a cracker of a sci-fi and one of my favourite films of last year. Plus, Emily Blunt.  Anyway, just explaining why I was chomping at the bit to see Edge of Tomorrow.

“What I am about to tell you sounds crazy- but you have to listen to me. Your very lives depend on it. You see, this isn’t the first time. “

Edge of Tomorrow takes place in the near future. Humanity is at war with fast, deadly and tentacle-y aliens known as Mimics. Cruise plays Major William Cage, a military P.R. guy used to appear on various news outlets talking up the war and the allies’ need for new recruits. Cage is called in by General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson) and it soon transpires he’s being whisked away from comfy greenrooms and plonked straight on the front line. After trying to Blackadder his way out of danger, Cage unwisely tries to blackmail Brigham, ensuring his place with the grunts. Predictably, it all goes a bit D-Day landings and carnage ensues. However, during the hellish battle something happens which causes the day to reset, with only Cage aware of the change. He soon learns he’ll have to seek out badass and military posterwoman Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) aka “Full Metal Bitch” to try and make sense of his temporal troubles and possibly a way to finally end the war.

So yeah, it’s basically Groundhog Day with a dash of Aliens. This is in no way a bad thing though. It has its own identity and crucially, knows what made both those films work beyond the superficial. Edge of Tomorrow knows this and spends a lot of time focusing on the evolving relationships between Cage and everyone else. Cruise is on form here. Cage is a smarmy coward and having him thrown headfirst into a terrifying combat situation with fuck-all training is great. I haven’t seen Cruise play a vulnerable character for a long time and it’s fantastic to see here. Emily Blunt is predictably great, being one of the most reliably decent actors around. Rita isn’t the cliched female arse-kicker character usually trotted out in misguided attempts at avoiding cries of sexism. She’s legit. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her get more action roles after this. Perhaps they could remake Domino with her instead of Keira Knightley. Also Brendan Gleeson is awesome. Take that as read for any film I review with him in it. Despite the competition from the aforementioned people and the game Bill Paxton, this is definitely Cruise’s film and, in my opinion at least, he goddamn nails it.

Edge of Tomorrow may just be the best video game film ever. Unfortunately, there is no Edge of Tomorrow game (what the fuck stopped them? The premise is crying out for a tie-in) but it takes the same kind of mechanic and runs with it. It reminded me of the punishing trial-and-error Dark Souls, where you often find yourself getting brutally killed only to respawn humbled, slightly wiser and ready to try a new strategy that doesn’t involve being run through by a massive broadsword. Same thing here. We see Cage slowly learning events and enemy patterns and it’s genuinely fun stuff. Cage’s transformation from quaking piss puddle to genocide distributor is extremely well done, with some legitimately funny moments. The script actually seems to be quite subversive, probably thanks to Christopher McQuarrie who likes to tweak conventions and remix tropes, such as in the hugely underrated The Way of the Gun. William Cage, at least initially, is practically a send-up of the standard Cruise role. Plus, I consider this Doug Liman’s redemption for the fucking terrible Jumper. This is the smart director who kicked off the Bourne franchise. I’ve missed him.

So, the Groundhog Day thing. Like with last year’s Oblivion, I’ve heard several cries of unoriginality. OK, the basic gimmick’s similar but you can’t just rip-off the “time-repeating” schtick and hope it has the same impact. Director Doug Liman and McQuarrie know this and preserve exactly what made it work in Groundhog Day. They take full advantage of the premise. There is insane dramatic potential in having only one character aware of time looping, something which bypassed the “creative” team behind 50 First Dates. We see a one-sided relationship being built. The brunt of this falls on Cruise and he carries it admirable. I honestly think some non-Cruise fans may be won round. If not, you will get the pleasure of seeing Cruise die over and over again. Talk about your win-win situations. HAHA I BET I AM THE FIRST TO MAKE THAT JOKE.

“Come find me when you wake up!”

So yeah, Edge of Tomorrow. Good stuff. It’s a smart sci-fi with heart and humour with a surprisingly subversive turn from Tom Cruise. Highly recommended.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

 

Singer of praises

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. I loved First Class and whilst The Wolverine had its charms, it’s been many long years since we’ve had a “proper” X-Men film. I was cautiously optimistic, but the whole “team-up” aspect of it, meshing the old cast with the younger versions of themselves had me worried that the only reason it was being made was a knee-jerk reaction to The Avengers and Marvel Studios’ universe building, with Fox desperate to put out their own branded version of a Marvel universe to grab several slices of the ridiculous money pie that’s rapidly cooling.

“The future: a bleak desolate, place. Mutants and the humans who helped them, united in defeat by an enemy we could not stop. Is this the fate we have set for ourselves? Could we have done nothing to stop it?”

The Future. Giant, nigh-on unstoppable robots called Sentinels, specifically designed to eradicate mutants, roam the Earth and have brought on an apocalypse, full of ash, rubble and rapidly declining pockets of survivors. Tracing the devastation back to a single moment in the 1970’s involving the assassination of Sentinel inventor, Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) by blue shape-shifter Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), the current remnants of the X-Men, including Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) engineer a way to send a mutant’s consciousness back in time and the ageless Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is the perfect candidate. Logan’s troubles don’t just extend to preventing a murder, however, as whilst their present selves (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen) have put aside their differences, ’70s Prof. X and Magento (James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender) are at loggerheads, meaning Logan will have to convince them to sing from the same hymn book as well.

So, the cast. They’re all brilliant. It’s a genuine thrill to see old and new faces thrown into the mix together.Both versions of Prof. X and Magneto are a joy to watch. DoFP can have its cake and eat it, cutting from the future versions talking to each other with mutual respect and Shakespearian gravitas to the young, angry versions, played fantastically by McAvoy and Fassbender. McAvoy gets a special shoutout as he gives a great performance as a jaded junkie Xavier, complete with a thousand yard stare and addiction to painkillers. Hugh Jackman is always fun to watch as Wolverine and nailed it fucking yonks ago, but still manages to be just as entertaining as he always was. Jennifer Lawrence also gives a nicely nuanced turn as Mystique. Of the new blood, Peter Dinklage is great as Trask and the new mutants are a blast, especially Evan Peters’ Quicksilver. Fans of the series like myself will be delighted with the various character cameos and references.

I’m so glad this didn’t turn out to be the clusterfuck it could have so easily been. When I sat down and the classic X-Men theme started playing, I smiled. I realised that I’d genuinely missed the franchise and was struck by a sudden need for the film to be awesome. Luckily, it is. It’s a well balanced film with just the right amounts of humour, action, suspense and all that good shit. It’s basically a First Class sequel with the “classic” cast serving as a framing device. It just works. Part of the reason for this is Bryan Singer’s direction. The guy gets characters and narrative arcs. All of his films have shown a great understanding of the basics and an insane amount of talent and skill when it comes to throwing it up on a big screen. Thankfully, he’s on form here and keeps the pace quick, but not at the expense of quieter moments. The script is also solid as hell, with the normally shitty Simon Kinberg doing his best work since ever. The story actually has weight and stakes to it. The finale, cutting between the future and past is one of the most exciting things I’ve seen this year. Funnily enough, the film is fairly light on action, but when it hits, it hits solidly. The best sequence in the film by far is a bit at the Pentagon where the super-fast and funny Quicksilver really comes into his own.

My only real problems with the film are more niggles than anything else. My major qualm is with the decision to basically make the film another Wolverine-centric story. Singer does his best to juggle focus, but at its heart it’s still episode #7353 of The Wolverine Show. All of the X-Men films so far have been Wolverine stories, with the exception of First Class, which still includes a small cameo by the Clawed One. I like the character and Jackman, but one of my favourite things about the X-Men is how diverse they are. There are any number of characters that could carry the main narrative successfully. The original comic is told from Kitty Pryde’s point of view and I could see that working. My other problem is with a minor plot point. I’m not a big “movie logic” guy and inevitably problematic time travel stuff didn’t bother me. So, the Sentinels are basically unstoppable thanks to adaptive technology, being able to use a mutant’s weakness against them. So, for instance, one ends up using fire powers against Iceman (Shawn Ashmore). They’re like the ultimate Pokemon. However, the film tells us they got these powers thanks to Mystique. Thing is, she only shapeshifts. She doesn’t gain any powers by turning into someone. Series regular Rogue has that power- surely she would be more fitting? Fuck- there was even that Darwin guy in First Class who could do exactly that. Why not him? My guess is is that they needed to give Lawrence a meatier part,with her having become a megastar inbetween First Class and this one. Funny, as the same thing happened with Halle Berry between the first and second films of the X trilogy.

“All those years wasted fighting each other, Charles.”

Days of Future Past is one of the most satisfying films I’ve seen in a while. It just does everything it needs to with wit, intelligence and style. It’s a fantastic blockbuster that doesn’t forget to tell a good story in amongst the big action setpieces and CGI- something which I’m still incredulous is a real issue in this day and age. It’s also a bold step into the future of the franchise, with various happenings in the film rendering events and entire previous films uncanonical. If the quality is maintained, I’m unbelievably excited about the both the sequel, Age of Apocalypse, and their wider plans for a franchise spanning universe.. It’s going to be a long two years.