Category: Reviews

Giant Days, Vol. 1 by John Allison and Lissa Treiman

This series does not necessarily have to be connected to Allison’s webcomics, if the reader doesn’t know of that connection. One of the three main characters — gothy center-of-all-drama Esther De Groot — was a major character in Allison’s strip Scarygoround, but Giant Days is a mildly alternate version of that Esther, who went off to college in about 2004 from that strip and landed in college in about 2013 in these comics stories. (That’s one long road trip on the way to school!) And this comic is set entirely at college so far, with no excursions back to the Tackleford of Allison’s webcomics, and I don’t expect there to be any.

Giant Days is about three female friends: Esther, tightly wound Susan, and happy-go-lucky Daisy. Allison is amazingly good (particularly for a man) at writing about young women and their friendships and daily life — Giant Days is all about the small moments in life that don’t feel small at the time. These three freshmen at an unnamed UK university study (or don’t), have crushes and dates and boyfriends and friends who are boys, get angry and happy, and just talk to each other. It’s the moments they’ll remember fondly ten or forty years from now, presented cleanly and with truth, the story of three specific women and their lives.

Allison is joined here by Lissa Treiman on art — he draws his own webcomics — and she has a great energy and vigor that works well with his story. (But don’t get too used to her; she’s only on this series for these stories and the first two issues of the next collection.) Look, I’m clearly in the tank for Allison, but this series is a lot of fun — particularly for young women, who don’t get to see people like themselves in comics all that much.

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Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Box Office Democracy: Independence Day: Resurgence

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Independence Day: Resurgence is inexcusably boring, the kind of movie script I would expect if you went to one of those experimental Google A.I. routines and asked them to make a summer blockbuster. None of the ideas feel clever or new but instead a naïve attempt to maximize potential profits.  It’s a disaster movie mixtape with a couple alien cliché deep cuts thrown in to appear hip. Resurgence tries so hard to traffic in the positive memories we have of the original Independence Day and while it’s occasionally evocative enough to stir that up, it so much more often completely fails to not only carry the weight of the first movie but to even be a coherent film.

The original Independence Day was particularly relatable because we were offered so many different slices of life. We saw the goofy scientist and his nebbishy father, we saw the air force pilot and his exotic dancer wife, and, yes, we saw the President of the United States and his family but we also saw the trailer parks and the end of the world parties. We got a world that felt lived in. Every principal character in Resurgence is either a holdover character from the first film, now renowned for their work saving the earth, one of their children who are uniformly top fighter pilots, or a spectacularly important global political figure. There’s no relating to any of these people because so few people actually travel in these circles. The problem seems to come from the world being way more science-fiction-y than the original film and there seems to be no desire to explore how things have changed in any respect besides anti-alien war machines. The world feels so much less lived in and so it’s much harder to care when they start wrecking things.

Along with being unrelatable, none of the characters have narrative arcs at all. With the exception of being sad about loved ones being killed or mad that alien invaders are back, none of the characters have any kind of emotional growth. None of them have to change the way they interact with the world to solve the problem of the alien invasion, they just sort of do the same things over and over again and eventually it works and the day is saved. There’s a certain catharsis to seeing a bunch of alien ships explode and everything but there’s no meaningful character work happening here so there’s nothing but hollow victories.

Independence Day: Resurgence is set in a world where all of humanity has come together in harmony after the monumental alien attacks of 20 years ago. This new one world government is composed mainly of American and Chinese people and I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence that these are the two largest markets for movies these days. No other nations are represented in any significant way at all unless you count the African warlord of a nameless country who seems to exist only to provide a vague sense of menace and have a kind of racist interaction with a minor character toward the end of the film. One of the three big disaster sequences also takes place in China, which is either an attempt to underscore the stakes for all of the main players (including the Chinese fighter pilot) or more transparent pandering to the Chinese market, and I’m betting heavily on the latter.

I could go on and on with things that were boring or lazy about Independence Day: Resurgence. The alien queen looks suspiciously like the one in Alien vs. Predator. Two different plotlines have separate bumbling nerdy guy characters, I assume because they couldn’t figure out a way to combine them, and they both get external validation of their masculinity to close out their stories. Jeff Goldblum is carted around from place to place to react to things in his inimitable way and they rely on his charm being so strong that we don’t notice that he doesn’t ever do anything in the film; he could be replaced by a handsome coat rack. The mysterious object that can save the world is stunningly poorly designed and could quite accurately be described as a mecha-Pac-Man. The third movie basically announced in the closing moments of this one is a hundred times more compelling conceptually but still isn’t a movie I want to go see after this wretched chapter. The original Independence Day was an iconic disaster film that shaped a decade of blockbusters, but Resurgence is an emotionless husk, an exoskeleton with no alien pilot, gracelessly going through the motions.

REVIEW: Eye in the Sky

eits_bd_3d_o-card-e1466729750311-6947365If it takes a village to raise a child, it seems to require an international village to kill a terrorist.  In the contemporary military thriller Eye in the Sky, the moral and legal issues resulting from the decision to launch a drone strike against three of the most wanted causes discussion,  consternation, and a lot of hand wringing. Out Tuesday from Universal Home Entertainment, the movie is available as a blu-ray combo with Digital HD.

Helen Mirren is the woman in the center of the action, orchestrating the American done opeeators, consulting with Alan Rickman, safe at headquarters,  and desperate to take these enemy combatants out. The problem: they are readying suicide bombers in a residential neighborhood so collateral damage is a given so limiting it becomes the challenge as they race against the clock.

Director Gavin Hood wrings as much tension out of the situation for 92 minutes, but he is hampered by the reality that the key players are never together.  Instead, we watch reaction shots and debates occur and really, editor Megan Gill gets all the credit for sustaining the tension.

Mirren’s desperation grows as every time she is ready to give the kill order, everyone wants to run the risk assessment again and higher up the chain of command.  Aaron Paul and Phoebe Fox are in the bunker, controlling the drone and he actually refuses an order to fire at one point, seeking verification about a little girl selling bread next to the target. According to a consultant who watched with me, he was in the wrong especially in front of a junior officer.

The reliance on technology and law protects hut hampers the efforts and brings up interesting themes for post-viewing discussion, the film itself, though, has lots of the right elements and several solid performances but is less than the sum of its parts. It just doesn’t hold together and sustain interest.

The high definition tansfer is crisp as is the audio.  The film comes with a mere two electronic press kit packages about the themes and totally underwhelms. Considering this is Rickman’s final film, I just wish it was overall a better experience.

 

Box Office Democracy: Finding Dory

I am too big a fan of Pixar to be reasonably objective at this point. On this very website I wrote a rave review of The Good Dinosaur, a movie I seem to be almost completely alone on the island of people who think that was an unqualified masterpiece. I’ve given more than one passionate defense of Cars as a well-intentioned movie with a nice message about the virtue of small town America. I’m even polite enough to pretend that Cars 2 never existed. I’m a Pixar team player all the way. But I’m just not sure I’m a big fan of Finding Dory.

It’s not a bad movie, that’s not what’s wrong here, not by a long shot. It’s funny, it’s momentarily very moving, and the design work is exciting and dynamic. What it doesn’t feel is particularly original. They hit a lot of characters again, not for deeper dives (sorry) into the characters or even for fresh jokes, but to do basically the same joke over again. There’s also a couple sea lions introduced that feel an awful lot like the pelican from the first movie crossed with the seagulls, to say nothing of another luminescent predator in a dark environment coming around. I might be expecting too much from one-note characters in a children’s movie but I expect more from this studio, and I expect more from a successor to such a resounding triumph of filmmaking as Finding Nemo.

The problem I have with Finding Dory would likely be fixed with some higher stakes. Finding Nemo is a movie filled with life and death peril at every turn. Marlin and Dory are crossing the ocean and interacting with sharks and jellyfish and everything else dangerous out there. Nemo is in a fish tank waiting to be taken home by a little girl who murders every fish she gets her hands on. Those are some real life-or-death stakes. Everything feels less important this time around. Dory wants to find her family but she looks for them exclusively in a relatively safe environment. Marlin and Nemo are in pursuit but the biggest peril they ever seem to be in is when they’re trapped in a tank with a particularly boring oyster. It all just feels too breezy and light to ever feel like anyone is in any real danger and at that point, so why are we bothering to hear this story? Writer/director Andrew Stanton has two Oscars for Best Animated Feature and four nominations for screenplays so it’s hard to believe he doesn’t understand all of this much better than I do it’s just strange to see Stanton in particular and Pixar in general put out such a relatively empty film.

It might seem hollow after all those complaints, but I quite enjoyed getting to spend a little more time with Dory and Marlin. The original film was a favorite of mine and is singlehandedly responsible for my general appreciation of Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks. Both are really good in this movie, DeGeneres is obviously fantastic, her performance both resembles her real world comedic style and is so in tune with the character she can really nail the quieter moments. Brooks gives a more subtle performance, Marlin says something early in the film and having him try and minimize what he said while clearly being filled with regret and needing to make amends is so subtle and so relatable. I got a little crabby with the plot but the performances and the direction are second to none.

Finding Dory is a B+/A- movie from a company I have grown accustomed to giving an easy A every time. There’s nothing wrong with it, I walked out of the theater completely delighted with the movie— but it doesn’t feel like it’s entirely living up to the standard that Disney and Pixar have set over the last few years. It would be hard to make the case that Finding Dory is a better movie than Frozen, or Inside Out, or Zootopia. Finding Dory is a far sight better than The Angry Birds movie, but that’s like saying that the worst team in the NBA would probably wreck your local college team: true, but not really the point.

REVIEW: Shrek Anniversary Edition

Shrek 25thHard to believe it was just fifteen years ago that DreamWorks introduced us to Shrek. In an attempt to further distance itself from Disney’s fairy tale-driven output, they came up with a contemporary satire that used the very same fairy tales and nursery rhymes but turned them all on their heads with equal doses of charm and cheek.

The first film earned an astonishing $484.4 million worldwide and have us three more films and numerous spinoffs. It helped make gross cool and gave us a delightful soundtrack album with memorable renditions of pop tunes, notably “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen.

20th Century Home Entertainment is celebrating with the release of Shrek Anniversary Edition, a single Blu-ray disc containing the film and a bunch of bonus features. There is also the four-film box set with even more green-skinned grossness.

But it all comes down to this first feature, which earned the premiere Academy Award given in the new Best Animated Feature category. All Shrek the ogre (Mike Myers) wants is to be left alone and seems content with his life, until he finds himself dragged into a musical adventure to retain his home, seized by Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow). Along the way he is adopted by Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and falls in love with Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz).

The film, of course, holds up delightfully with clever asides and sight gags, puns, and twists on expected plot turns. The 93 minutes zips right by and you still smile from beginning to end. The high definition transfer is the same as the last Blu-ray release and holds up just fine, as does the Dolby Digital sound.

This set comes with Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD code. The Blu-ray offers up many of the previously released features such as the commentary track with co-directors Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jensen and producer Aron Warner, deleted scenes, Shrek’s Interactive Journey, Animators Corner, Karaoke Dance Party, Secrets of Shrek, Spotlight on Donkey, and The Best of Shrek Shorts.

It’s a shame there is no anniversary feature looking back but that’s the only black mark on the release.

With Comcast Universal buying DreamWorks, one of their top goals is to revive Shrek, who has quickly faded from sight, and restore him to pop culture’s pantheon of wonderful family fare.

 

Tweeks Review Lucky Penny from Oni Press

If Penny Brighton didn’t have bad luck, she’d have no luck at all…well, Maddy & Anya have the BEST LUCK EVER because Oni Press sent us this amazing book.  It’s about a girl named Penny who gets fired because of her tattoo, loses her apartment, and gets hired working for a 12-year old.  But then she meets a guy at the Community Center where she uses the bathroom and….well if you want to know if Penny starts to adult-up, then get the book!  You won’t regret it. This is the kind of graphic novel with the kind of characters (and a cute a cat) that make you want to read and re-read it and tell everyone you know about it.  We won’t gush too much, but just watch the review and then go buy this for every one you know who needs some good luck or loves rom coms or is a quirky girl. We recommend this for ages 10 & up!

Box Office Democracy: The Conjuring 2

There’s a lot of charm in The Conjuring 2, maybe more than it should considering it takes place in a grey house, on a grey street, in a part of London that seemingly thunderstorms every night. For some reason this family felt more natural, more caring than the families one typically sees in these horror movies— everyone is believed, everyone tries their best to maximize each other’s safety. There’s a sing-along number and a dance and that might just be about maximizing the value of paying for an Elvis song but it’s very sweet in a genre that sometimes feels as if it is just trying to maximize the unpleasantness it can dish out. I’m still far too easily scared by horror movies to consider myself a real fan but this was a nice movie, a movie I don’t regret sitting through.

The Conjuring 2 is based on a true story. They very much want you to know that. They tell you before the movie, they tell you again after and then they spend the first section of the credits showing pictures of the real life people and events next to pictures from the movie. The real life incident is widely considered to be a hoax and learning that really diminished the movie for me. (That feels a little strange to say. I know that nothing in most movies has really happened. Crimson Peak is complete hogwash.) Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers bear no real resemblance to any actual people. The realities of fiction never impede on my enjoyment there, but I think there’s something about being sold very hard on the idea that this is a true story, that this ghost is real that to find out that it’s fairly documented as not real kind of leaves me with a sense of “what did we do all that for then?” that’s pervasive and inescapable.

Between Saw, Insidious, and now The Conjuring, James Wan is responsible for three of the biggest horror franchises of the 21st century, and he’s an undoubted master of his craft. The main demon is a fantastic piece of design work, but what stands out is this stunning sequence early in the film where the demon is a shadow and then manifests through a painting of itself and it sounds kind of basic in text but it’s a series of arresting visuals, the true work of a master. The flip side of this is I am so familiar with Wan’s work at this point that his less ambitious sequences are starting to feel a little paint-by-number. I know that the fire truck is coming back out of the tent. I know that the zoetrope is going to be used to set up a larger scare. I know the ways Wan likes to be scary and when he plays with it it’s amazing, but when he falls back on it it’s starting to feel tired.

I’ve never seen a modern demonic possession movie that I thought had a stand out performance and this is no exception. Madison Wolfe does a good job playing a creepy possessed child, but I’ve seen that so many times that I’m starting to suspect it might be easy. Isn’t every child in the world a little creepy? And the effects seem to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting (heavy levitating?) these days anyway. James Wan horror movies seem to be Patrick Wilson’s entire career at this point, and he’s gotten good at blustery confidence followed by sheer terror in the third act but there’s nothing new in this performance. There’s nothing cringe-y or terrible— it’s just kind of there. The actors feel like they’re just part of the set, the real star is the camera work, the editing, and the sound design.

I’m often unhappy seeing horror movies for work but I didn’t get that this time. We’re probably reaching the end of this phase of James Wan’s career, he wasn’t permanently lured away from horror with Furious 7 but Aquaman is calling… and I have to imagine at some point the prestige of more “mainstream” films will pull him away forever. The Conjuring 2 feels a lot like what I imagine seeing The Rolling Stones is like; they play the hits and while there are probably moments of unexpected delight, what you’re mostly there for is a sense of comfort and familiarity. I feel that nostalgia for Wan’s horror movies at this point and while I didn’t particularly like them, I respect the level of craft and the place in the horror canon. I lost this particular war but I don’t particularly mind the peace.

REVIEW: Vinyl: The Complete First Season

vinyl-sd-slipcase-3d-e1464213714252-1135288My uncle works in the music business and his heyday was back in the 1970s, so when he recognized the music industry portrayed in HBO’s Vinyl, I took that as an endorsement. Back then, I was buying a new album almost every week (or so it seemed) and was expanding my tastes thanks to the discovery of FM radio. At the time, I never really thought about the business side of music but that came later.

Viewers today can watch people struggle for a career thanks to American Idol and more recently Fox’s Empire. Vinyl, though, takes a look back when sex, drugs, and rock & roll was a lifestyle, not a catchphrase. This was an era that saw popular music splinter every few years so rock begat heavy metal, California rock, and god help us, disco. All of which got rejected simultaneously with the rise of punk and independent artists that redefined the era at decade’s end. There were stars in the making while others were one-hit wonders or aging performers as American Graffiti reintroduced fans to the early days of rock, giving new life to Chuck Berry and others.

Arguably a star in the 1960s and superstar of the 1970s was Mick Jagger so having him co-produce this means it feels right while co-producer Martin Scorsese makes sure it looks right. Our visual memories of the 1970s were brilliantly captured by Scorsese for decades so it’s nice having him give us a weekly dose here. Adding to the gravity such a show needs is the presence of Bobby Canavale, here playing Richie Finestra, founder of American Century Records. His glory days behind him, he’s struggling to keep up with the changing fads and is distracted by his cocaine habit.

We’re in 1973, as Elton John and Alice Cooper begin climbing the charts and diverse talents as Mott the Hopple and Journey formed. Finding the next big thing fuels part of the plot and he claims he’s closing to signing Led Zeppelin, who released Houses of the Holy that year. Yes, some of the threads sound like Empire but that’s the music business and some of these issues are eternal in the field. But Cannavale is the latest in a line of compellingly flawed leads, dating back to James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano.

He’s supported by a nice cast including Jagger’s son James and more familiar faces in Max Casella, Ray Romano, Juno Temple, and Olivia Wilde (being an HBO series, we see plenty of the latter two).

The scripts from Terence Winter and George Mastras, the show is a finely serialized peek at an interesting time in popular music. A little too much time may be devoted to the soap opera aspects and Richie is a little too much of a loser at times, but overall, this is a satisfying production.

Vinyl: The Complete First Season offers up all ten episodes on three discus and the high definition transfer with an AVC encoded 1080p in 1.78:1 looks great. You get the grunge and the shadows of the recording booth. The rundown feel of the 1970s is nicely replicated here and is matched with the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1.

The special features are far too perfunctory with the previously aired Inside the Episodes. There is some interesting Audio Commentary on “Yesterday Once More” with Canavale, Romano, Winter and Allen Coulter, “Whispered Secrets” with Casella, Temple, Winter, Jack Quaid, and Mark Romanek; “E.A.B.” with  Cannavale, Wilde, Winter, Randall Poster, and Meghan Currier.

Additionally, there is Making Vinyl: Recreating the ’70s (18:32) but nothing about the context of the times which would have been far more interesting.

REVIEW: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Director’s Cut

st_wok_bd-orng_3d-e1460671343368-6159761Home Video fans have a lot to look forward to as Paramount Home Entertainment releases a variety of Star Trek material this year. First up and arriving Tuesday, just days after its 34th anniversary is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Director’s Cut. This is the first time director Nicholas Meyer’s version of the now-classic film is available on Blu-ray.

There’s little left to say about just how good the film is and looking back, we can easily see the affection both cast and crew put into the production. There was a gamble in bringing in Harve Bennett to produce and Meyer to direct only because neither had been a part of Trek previously and Paramount needed the film to be a major success to salvage the franchise.

Thankfully, Bennett understand the genre and Meyer was a gifted novelist and filmmaker so got down to the core elements. He let the characters age and made that a theme of the film along with the story of revenge using Ricardo Montalban’s driven Khan Noonien Singh. Additionally, Meyer moved away from the bright, sterile Enterprise that Robert Wise envisioned in the first feature. It was darker with, as he put it, “more winkie blinkies”, the lights that made the bridge feel purposeful.

We warmed immediately to the film in part because from the outset the ensemble was present, active, and demonstrating the camaraderie we came to love about the original series. James Horner’s nearly pitch perfect score added an emotional depth coupled with ILM’s cutting edge computer effects.

The Director’s Cut restored three minutes of bits of business and reframed some scenes but didn’t include everything and I still miss the exchange between Spock and Saavik that revealed her to be a Romulan-Vulcan hybrid. The pacing and tension remains intact and the film still rivets you to the seat and brings a lump to your throat as you watch Kirk and Spock say goodbye.

The high definition transfer is solid, working from the original negatives. If anything it’s a little dark and you’re conscious of the film stock’s grain but these are minor quibbles for an older film.  The 7.1 Dolby True HD audio track is a fine complement.

star-trek-the-wrath-of-khan-e1465146576321-6376846All the original extras from the DVD edition are intact including Meyer’s Audio Commentary on the Theatrical and Director’s Cut, Meyer and Manny Coto’s commentary on the Theatrical version, and Michael & Denise Okluda’s text commentary on the Director’s Cut. Additionally, you get Captain’s Log (27:00) comprised of Designing Khan, Original Interview with DeForest Kelley, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and Montalban; Where no man has Gone Before, The Visual Effects of Star Trek II, and James Horner: Composing Genesis.

The Star Trek Universe portion contains looks at Collecting Star Trek’s Movie Relics; A Novel Approach as buddies Greg Cox and Julia Ecklar discuss the Pocket Books program; and Starfleet Academy: The Mystery Behind Ceti Alpha V. You also get Farewell, Meyer’s tribute to Montalban who died in 2009; Storyboards, and the Theatrical trailer.

New to the disc is a 30 minute featurette, The Genesis Effect: Engineering the Wrath of Khan. Here, Meyer, producer Robert Sallin, producer Ralph Winter, and journalists Mark Altman and Larry Nemecek walk you through a condensed version of how the second film in the series was made. Sadly, this was produced after both Bennett and Nimoy passed away last year although Adam Nimoy briefly fills in for his father and Sallin gives Bennett his due. A handful of others, including The Big Bang Theory’s Bill Prady, discuss repeatedly sitting in the theater and reacting to the film, notably Spock’s death. It’s a nice tribute to a wonderful film.

Is it worth owning for the high definition version and 30 minutes of talking heads? That’s purely your choice but for me, I was transported and delighted, sucked in all over again.

Box Office Democracy: X-Men: Apocalypse

The X-Men movies have a fairly high average quality for a franchise going in to its sixth entry. In fact, with the exception of a Brett Ratner directed monstrosity of bloat and pettiness, there isn’t a truly bad film to be found in the bunch. For a stretch of my college career I would have told you X2 was the best superhero movie ever made. I would have been wrong— Unbreakable was a lot better and Spider-Man 2 has held up better over the years if we’re talking strictly licensed fare. But this is a franchise that means something to me so it’s a shame to see them start to slip a little bit. Not that X-Men: Apocalypse is a bad movie or anything, but it’s a frustrating one in many respects and one that could be pointed to some years down the road as the beginning of the end of X-Men as a quality, bankable, brand.

I’m not certain when it became the decree from on high that every X-Men film had to be a period piece but with three in a row and a fourth on the way that definitely seems to be the way things are going. It felt revolutionary with First Class, these characters are timeless in their way and putting them in some historical context is a great way to show off the multi-faceted nature of the material (it’s also a great way to not have to pay some of your more expensive actors but that’s neither here nor there). Days of Future Past was also fun; the time-travelling Wolverine made it all feel a bit more earned, plus it was a great excuse to retcon away some of the worst bits of X-Men: The Last Stand that no one cared for. Now it’s starting to feel a bit unnecessary with another movie another decade later. I’m no longer feeling like these are timeless characters and instead they’re starting to feel dated; like the X-Men are nothing but a nostalgia act. The best X-Men comics I’ve ever read have felt cutting edge, like they were happening six months from now not thirty years in the past. I get that all storytelling eventually feels dated, but at this point I would much prefer them working and reworking things so that older stories felt new instead of constantly telling me how old and quaint the X-Men are.

I understand that if we accept the premise that every X-Men movie has to be a period piece, that recastings will have to be a constant part of the franchise (although all the people from First Class sure don’t look 20 years older but whatever) and I generally like the new blood. Sophie Turner is a great young Jean Grey, although it’s certainly possible the casting is trading on some good will borrowed from Game of Thrones. My only critique of Tye Sheridan as Cyclops is he’s a bit of an emo stick-in-the-mud, but that’s also my critique of Cyclops the comic book character so maybe he’s actually perfect. My only real beef is with casting Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse. You have one of the most charismatic actors in Hollywood riding a hell of a run and you put him in a big suit under a ton of makeup and have him just recite dialogue that would have felt cliché in comics 15 years ago. It’s a staggering waste of an incredible talent. Even my fiancée, a dyed-in-the-wool Isaac fangirl, didn’t even recognize him in the movie until I pointed him out.

It’s not the kind of thing I like to complain about, but I was quite struck with how much the final battle looked like it was taking place in a studio lot. I know that they can’t actually film in a destroyed Cairo or anything but a bunch of people in costumes with no bystanders and some generic looking rubble looks a bit too much like a SyFy channel original movie for my taste. I don’t even know how to fix it and I’m sure I’ve seen a dozen action sequences shot in lots this year alone, but something about this one had me thinking the tour tram could drive by the background at any moment.

I know I’ve crapped on this movie a bit here but I want to emphasize that the stuff the works works so well. Michael Fassbender is amazing as Magneto, displaying a tortured depth to the character that honestly surpasses Ian McKellen’s wonderful but more scenery-chewing effort. Jennifer Lawrence has made Mystique into a character more interesting than her comic book counterpart, and while I’m not entirely sure it lines up narratively with all her other appearances she carries the film through all its bumpy stretches. All of the stuff that’s been working since the reboot still works… it’s just the connective tissue is getting worse and the formula feels a bit more tired. This series needs a kick in the ass, and not in the way a film set ten more years in the future is going to do. Maybe the next Wolverine will be great though.

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