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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

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Tag Archives: Hugh Jackman

The Front Runner (2018)

12 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Affair, Drama, Gary Hart, Hugh Jackman, J.K. Simmons, Jason Reitman, Literary adaptation, Miami Herald, Politics, Review, True story, Vera Farmiga

D: Jason Reitman / 113m

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons, Alfred Molina, Mamoudou Athie, Bill Burr, Oliver Cooper, Chris Coy, Kaitlyn Dever, Molly Ephraim, Ari Graynor, Mike Judge, John Bedford Lloyd, Mark O’Brien, Sara Paxton, Kevin Pollak, Steve Zissis

1984. Senator Gary Hart (Jackman) of Colorado loses the Democratic presidential nomination to Walter Mondale. Four years later, Hart is the front runner in the race for the presidency, ahead in the polls against Republican candidate George H.W. Bush, and on course to put a Democrat back in the Oval Office after Ronald Reagan’s eight-year tenure. While campaigning in Florida, Hart attends a party held by a political associate of his, and there he meets Donna Rice (Paxton), a university graduate who is interested in working for Hart’s campaign as a fundraiser. Later, a reporter at the Miami Herald, Tom Fiedler (Zissis), receives an anonymous call informing him that Hart is meeting Rice at his home in Washington. Deciding to follow Rice to Washington, she is seen in Hart’s company at his home, and appears to have stayed there overnight. The Herald publishes an article exposing Hart’s “affair”, and in the ensuing days, the senator has to decide whether he should fight the accusation and continue with his campaign, or abandon his hopes of becoming President altogether…

Based on the book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid by Matt Bai (who also co-wrote the screenplay along with Reitman and Jay Carson), The Front Runner is an odd mix of political drama, cautionary tale, and media morality discourse, but it’s also a mix that doesn’t entirely work because it doesn’t examine these aspects in any meaningful or deliberate way. It’s true, Hart targets the media as the authors of his downfall, and makes several pointed remarks about how intrusive they’ve become in order to break a story, but rather than providing a precise examination of the way in which newspaper reporting was beginning to morph into what we’re familiar with nowadays, the movie instead opts to have several reporters look sheepish when challenged, and bleating about the public’s right to know when polls clearly showed they weren’t that interested. The movie also has a problem with the nature of Hart’s relationship with Rice. As both parties stated then (and since) that they weren’t having an affair, and no conclusive proof was ever found, the whole issue is inferred in much the same way that the Miami Herald originally reported it. As a result, the movie has a gaping narrative hole in it, one that it never overcomes.

But with all this, what truly matters is whether or not Hart’s story is actually worth telling… and on this evidence, the answer has to be No. Despite an impressive performance from Jackman that paints Hart as a man whose surface charm hides an arrogant, self-righteous personality, the movie struggles to make his downfall anything like the tragedy it’s aiming for. When he’s not putting all the blame on the media, he’s pitiful and apologetic to his long-suffering wife, Lee (Farmiga), admitting his culpability to her but not to anyone else; this makes it hard to feel sympathy for someone whose sense of personal morality is so badly compromised. Elsewhere, the movie shifts and turns uneasily in its attempts to make itself politically and socially relevant to today’s climate (feminist issues form the basis for a subplot involving Rice’s treatment by Hart’s campaign team), and Reitman shapes too many scenes that are meant to be impactful, but which fall short because they lack the necessary energy or power. Judged against the current political climate in America, the “details” of Hart’s fall from grace seem almost whimsical now in their simplicity, and The Front Runner doesn’t offer the required insights to make it more compelling or effective.

Rating: 6/10 – to paraphrase Bob Dylan, “the times they were a-changin'”, but though this is touched on in The Front Runner, like much else it touches on, the movie raises many more questions than it can answer, and often feels like a beginner’s guide to Eighties political naïvete; with a large supporting cast that’s given little to do that might improve matters – Athie and Ephraim are the exceptions – the movie casts a wide net but its catch isn’t as substantial as it should have been, and it’s only occasionally absorbing.

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Logan (2017)

03 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Action, Adamantium, Boyd Holbrook, Caliban, Dafne Keen, Drama, Hugh Jackman, James Mangold, Marvel, Patrick Stewart, Professor X, Richard E. Grant, Road movie, Sequel, Stephen Merchant, Superheroes, Thriller, Transigen, Wolverine, X-23

logan-2017-poster

D: James Mangold / 137m

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Richard E. Grant, Eriq LaSalle, Elise Neal, Quincy Fouse

It’s 2029, and mutants are pretty thin on the ground, with those that remain hiding from the rest of humanity, hoping to be overlooked. They’re almost extinct thanks to a virus created by the Transigen Project, led by Dr Zander Rice (Grant). More able than most to blend in, Logan aka Wolverine (Jackman), is working as a limo driver while also looking after – secretly – Professor Charles Xavier (Stewart), now in his nineties and suffering from senile dementia. Hidden away in Mexico, Logan is helped in this by another mutant, Caliban (Merchant). Xavier’s psychic abilities are now inherently dangerous; if he has a seizure it triggers a psychic attack that could mean the death of anyone around him. In one of his more lucid moments he talks of a mutant who will need Logan’s help, but Logan doesn’t want to know anything about it.

An encounter with a woman, Gabriela (Rodriguez) and a young girl, Laura (Keen), brings Logan and the mutant Xavier has been talking about together. Laura is a mutant, but with a difference: she was created in a Transigen lab, along with twenty-two other “children”. Bred to be weapons, the creation of a twenty-fourth mutant means Laura and all the other children are expendable. Gabriela has helped Laura and the other children escape, but now they need to rendezvous at a place called Eden in North Dakota. When Transigen come a-calling at Logan’s hideout – in the form of Donald Pierce (Holbrook) and his team of genetically enhanced Reavers – previous events dictate that Logan, Xavier and Laura make a run for it, and against Logan’s better judgment, they head for North Dakota. But Caliban is captured by Pierce and coerced into using his tracking abilities to find Logan and the girl.

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As the trio journey to Eden, Logan learns more about the activities of Transigen and their attempts to create mutants they can control, while Pierce comes close a couple of times to catching them. A chance encounter outside of Oklahoma City with a local family, the Munsons (LaSalle, Neal, Fouse) has unexpected consequences, as well as revealing the identity of X24, Transigen’s latest creation. Logan does eventually get Laura to Eden, which proves to be real and not the comic book-inspired destination that Logan has believed Gabriela made up. There the other children are planning to make a break for the Canadian border, and Laura plans to go with them. But Pierce, now accompanied by Dr Rice, is soon on their heels, and it will need Logan’s alter ego, the Wolverine, to ensure they reach safety instead of being captured and killed.

Fans of Logan/Wolverine have been clamouring to see the character that they’ve read and seen in the comics, brought to life in the same violent, berserker fashion that he’s portrayed on the page. A brief moment towards the end of X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) gave everyone a chance to see what that would look like, but it was just a moment, however well-received. Now, in his third solo outing, Logan’s rage has finally been given its due, and this is the ultra-violent/borderline sadistic outing that the fans have been waiting for. The tone is set right at the start, with a scene that pits Logan against a quartet of gangbangers. Blasted in the chest, he still gets up and proceeds to use his adamantium claws to slice, dice and eviscerate all four of them. But at the same time it’s clear that his healing powers aren’t as effective as they used to be, and though his trademark rage is still there, it appears that the use of his claws is as painful for him as it is for anyone on their receiving end.

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It’s this vulnerable side to Logan’s character, this curtailment of his powers, that makes Logan such an interesting movie to watch. Based very loosely on the comic book series Old Man Logan (2008-09), this version of Logan, older, even more pragmatic, yet weary of life and living, allows the viewer to look beyond the usual superhero movie traits, and into the mind of a character who’s seen and done too much and doesn’t care to keep living that kind of life. He wants to die, a concept that most – if not all – other superhero movies shy away from. But returning director James Mangold, who made The Wolverine (2013), and along with screenwriters Michael Green and Scott Frank, has made a road movie-cum-Western that adds surprisingly complex emotional layers to its basic storyline, and which doesn’t tiptoe around the issues it brings up. This is an unashamedly adult “superhero” movie, dealing with adult themes in an intelligent, adult way, and at no point does it short change the viewer by glossing over the emotional stakes set up within the narrative.

It’s the Wolverine movie that Hugh Jackman has been waiting to make since his first appearance in the role back in 2000. Still aloof, but weighed down by experiences we can only guess at, Logan is battered and scarred, his features weathered by time, and partly hidden beneath a salt and pepper beard that provides texture in terms of his age and weary resignation at being so old. This is a Logan who is continually in pain, the antithesis of the Logan we’re used to seeing, and it’s ironic that the source of his strength and invincibility (until now), his adamantium skeleton and claws, is the very thing that’s now killing him. There’s an inevitable layer of melancholy attached to this, but Mangold and Jackman make sure that Logan’s gruff demeanour is still in place, derailing any sentimentality that might have arisen otherwise. This isn’t as elegiac as its references to Shane (1953) make it sound; instead, it’s about that other staple narrative of the Old West, the passing of an era.

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Jackman excels in what is easily his best performance in the role, and it’s good to see him finally playing Logan as something more than the cigar-chomping, Elvis-sideburned figure we’ve been used to. But if Jackman’s transformation into a much older Logan is disarming, then he’s more than matched by Stewart’s interpretation of Xavier’s mental disintegration. There are moments when Stewart’s bewildered, beseeching features are too painful to watch, and again it’s the irony of seeing a once proud and powerful man undermined by the very gift that made him stand out from the crowd that makes the movie so emotionally complex and rewarding. There are terrific supporting turns from Holbrook (give this man a leading role, for Pete’s sake), Grant, and Merchant, but inevitably it’s Keen who draws the viewer’s attention for her largely mute, refreshingly feral performance as Laura/X23, a character with a close connection to Logan, and someone you really don’t want to mess with when she furrows her brow.

If this really is Jackman’s swansong in the role then he couldn’t have picked a better storyline with which to hang up the claws and walk away from the X-Men franchise. By stripping back the narrative, and focusing on the relationships of the three main characters, Logan transcends its comic book origins to become a movie that is daring, quietly introspective when necessary, aggressively violent in a shocking, sometimes disturbing way, and able to take its basic set up – the road movie – and twist it far enough out of shape that it feels more nuanced and transgressive than on first impression. Mangold shapes the world around Logan with a keen eye for detail, and avoids doling out excessive sentimentality, keeping everything grounded and credible, despite the fantastic nature of the material. It’s an artistic triumph, and one that shows that Marvel superhero movies don’t have to follow the same template all the time, a message that Kevin Feige will hopefully take on board.

Rating: 9/10 – an intense, gritty, superbly realised and mature outing for its title character, Logan is perhaps the first “superhero” movie that wouldn’t feel out of place as a Best Film Oscar nominee (though it’s still unlikely to happen); gripping for long stretches, with the quieter moments proving just as engrossing as the action sequences (which are very well staged indeed, if a little hyper-edited), Mangold and Jackman’s determination to give the Wolverine a proper send-off is apparent from start to end.

 

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Pan (2015) or: One More Unnecessary Origin Movie

16 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Amanda Seyfried, Blackbeard, Captain Hook, Drama, Fairies, Fantasy, Garrett Hedlund, Hugh Jackman, J.M. Barrie, Joe Wright, Lambert Home for Boys, Levi Miller, Neverland, Peter Pan, Pirates, Review, Rooney Mara, Tiger Lily, World War II

Pan

D: Joe Wright / 111m

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Levi Miller, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Amanda Seyfried, Adeel Akhtar, Nonso Anozie, Kathy Burke, Lewis MacDougall, Cara Delevingne

Let’s cut to the chase: Pan, by itself, is a disappointment, an uneven children’s fantasy movie that is disjointed, awkwardly humorous, suffers from production overkill, and makes very little sense throughout. But unfortunately, Pan isn’t just a movie by itself, it’s an origin story for a beloved children’s tale that didn’t need it in the first place.

In recent years, Hollywood has given us origin story after origin story in an attempt to expand franchises and add “depth” to existing stories. Last year we had Maleficent, a movie that tried to rewrite the Sleeping Beauty story to make its Wicked Queen a more sympathetic character, as if somebody somewhere had decided that a Wicked Queen couldn’t just be a Wicked Queen; no, there had to be a good reason why she was a Wicked Queen. And now we get to see how a foundling called Peter became the high-flying leader of the Lost Boys, Peter Pan. But did we need to? Perhaps there’s a clue in the fact that J.M. Barrie, who created Peter Pan, never felt the need to go back and provide an origin story for him. And if he didn’t feel the need to, do we really need to know either?

Pan - scene2

But Hollywood knows better (or so they like to think), and now we have an origin story anyway, but one that’s been given so little thought it’s frightening given all the talent involved in making it. You only have to watch the first five minutes of Pan to know that the makers have got it completely, spectacularly wrong. The scene is London, between the two World Wars. An unidentified young woman, clearly scared and frightened that she’s being followed, carries an infant with her until she reaches the doorstep of the Lambert Home for Boys. There she leaves him but not before she’s told him that they’ll meet again, in this world or another. Already there’s a problem: why does the woman abandon her son so recklessly (it’s not the most pleasant-looking of orphanages) and if he’s in as much danger as she seems to think, why take the risk of leaving him in such an awful place?

We fast forward twelve years and find the infant has grown up to be Peter (Miller), and he’s still at the orphanage (surprise, surprise), and he’s a bright, confident child who has no problem challenging authority, in this case Kathy Burke’s snarling, growling, thoroughly unpleasant Sister Barnabas. At this point the movie introduces a superfluous subplot involving Sister Barnabas hoarding goods before Peter and some of the orphans are kidnapped by pirates who descend through the skylights on bungee cords (the dormitory is located conveniently in the roofspace). Now correct me if I’m wrong, but this now makes the woman’s decision to leave Peter there a tad careless, as she’s placed him in the very place that her adversary – who we learn is the pirate Blackbeard (Jackman) – is stealing children from. (What it is to be undone by unforeseen coincidence…)

Pan - scene3

Once in Neverland, the movie takes a left turn by introducing Blackbeard and his merry band of pirates, and what looks like thousands of Lost Boys, as they indulge in a  bit of a sing-song. The song in question turns out to be Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, an anachronistic choice that serves only to remind viewers just how well this sort of thing was done in A Knight’s Tale (2001) (and begs the question, does Blackbeard time travel as well for his Lost Boys?). From then on, and despite the introduction of James Hook (Hedlund) (also trapped by Blackbeard), and Tiger Lily (Mara), the princess of the natives, and a plot involving Blackbeard’s determined efforts to wipe out all the fairies (don’t ask why – the movie doesn’t), Pan becomes the Hugh Jackman larger-than-life performance movie as he struts and rampages and roars his way through things with all the gusto of a pantomime villain. It’s not a bad performance per se, it’s just in the wrong movie.

As you’d expect, Neverland is beautifully, stunningly realised, and is a triumph of art direction, set construction, costume design, and special effects, but ultimately it all makes for a hollow confection, an empty shell that the narrative flits and jumps around without any clear idea of where it’s going or why. With the fairies hidden from Blackbeard’s grasp, and of course with Peter as his unwitting accomplice in getting to them, it comes as no surprise that the script shows the fairies completely able to defend themselves from Blackbeard and his men, thus ending any idea that the pirate’s intentions were in any way a threat. It’s not the first time in the movie that the  viewer is likely to be wondering why something is happening, or if it’s likely to be explained (usually not).

Pan - scene1

Pan is a movie that should be included in the ever-growing number of movies that come under the heading, Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should. Joe Wright’s direction is focused largely on the cast, and while he’s obviously let Jackman do his own thing, he does allow Mara to give a decent performance, and Miller is suitably stout-hearted as Peter, even if he does take everything in his stride a little too easily. And Hedlund acts more by smiling roguishly than actually emoting, but it’s still a likeable portrayal. The only trouble is, Hook is a character who lacks for development, and remains the same from beginning to end.

Pan‘s terrible performance at the box office – so far it’s only grossed $125m against a budget of $150m – will hopefully discourage other studios/production companies from messing with other established, classic stories. These stories are so well-regarded for a reason: they work independently of any others and in many cases are archetypal and don’t need further embellishment or expansion. Such is the case with Barrie’s tale of the boy who never grew up, and Pan serves only to reinforce what a foolhardy idea it is to try.

Rating: 4/10 – lacking a true sense of childlike wonder, or focus in the story it’s telling, Pan is the movie equivalent of pudding: rich, stolid, and if you’ve had too much, weighing too heavily for comfort; another unsatisfactory, unnecessary origin story that shows just how difficult it is to get these things right, and especially when there’s no real need to.

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Monthly Roundup – May 2015

31 Sunday May 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Antonio Banderas, Art heist, Artificial intelligence, Ballard Berkeley, Bat Masterson, Berlin, Boston, Bullying, Burger Beard, Chappie, Christopher Plummer, Clancy Brown, Comet, Conrad Phillips, Crime, Dave Franco, Dead body, Drama, Emmy Rossum, Eric Stonestreet, Father/son relationship, Frank R. Strayer, Gay bar, George Pastell, Glory holes, Hugh Jackman, Impact, Irene Ware, James Marsden, Joel McCrea, John Miljan, John Travolta, Joseph M. Newman, Julie Adams, Justin Long, Karl Urban, Ken Scott, Krabby Patty formula, Matthias Schoenaerts, Monthly roundup, Murder at Glen Athol, Murder mystery, Neill Blomkamp, Peter Maxwell, Philip Martin, Plankton, Review, Romance, Sam Esmail, Sharlto Copley, Sienna Miller, SpongeBob Squarepants, Swarf, The Duke, The Forger, The Gunfight at Dodge City, The Loft, The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Thriller, Tom Denny, Tom Wilkinson, Tye Sheridan, Unfinished Business, Vince Vaughn, Wentworth Miller, Western

There’s a phrase that everyone will be familiar with: “Too many [insert item here], too little time”. When it comes to the number of movies that I watch in any given month, that phrase is apt in relation to the ones that get reviewed here on thedullwoodexperiment. I would love to have the time to post reviews of all the movies I see, but it’s just not practical; and besides which, some movies just don’t merit the attention (Annabelle (2014), for instance). Sometimes it’s a case of choosing one movie over another, sometimes Life gets in the way of blogging and a movie falls by the wayside. To combat this, and to give these “other” movies their due, I’ve decided to present, at the end of each month, a brief “review” of all the other movies I’ve seen. There won’t be any synopsis, or proper full-length analysis, just the title, director, running time, cast, and then the traditional two sentence ratings summation. So, let’s see which movies didn’t quite make the cut in May 2015.

The Forger (2014) / D: Philip Martin / 96m

Cast: John Travolta, Christopher Plummer, Tye Sheridan, Abigail Spencer, Anson Mount, Marcus Thomas, Jennifer Ehle, Travis Aaron Wade

Rating: 5/10 – Travolta’s art forger comes out of prison to spend time with his dying son (Sheridan) and pull off an audacious robbery; a derivative, occasionally unappealing crime drama that tries to do something different with its dying child angle, The Forger is nevertheless a movie whose “one last heist” scenario has been done to death elsewhere, and with far better results.

Forger, The - scene

The Gunfight at Dodge City (1959) / D: Joseph M. Newman / 81m

Cast: Joel McCrea, Julie Adams, John McIntire, Nancy Gates, Richard Anderson, James Westerfield, Walter Coy, Don Haggerty, Wright King, Harry Lauter

Rating: 6/10 – Western legend Bat Masterson (McCrea) tackles corruption supported by Haggerty’s devious sheriff in Dodge City and faces romantic problems as well from minister’s daughter Adams and saloon owner Gates; a middling, mildly diverting Western, The Gunfight at Dodge City benefits from McCrea’s solid, no-nonsense performance and Newman’s underrated abilities behind the camera.

Gunfight at Dodge City, The - scene

Comet (2014) / D: Sam Esmail / 91m

Cast: Justin Long, Emmy Rossum

Rating: 7/10 – Long and Rossum are the soulmates whose on-again-off-again relationship is examined over the course of six years; with the narrative continually fractured and reassembled, Comet is replete with the kind of “serious” romantic musings that sound alternately pretentious and profound, but the two leads have a definite chemistry and this helps immensely in making the movie as enjoyable as it (largely) is.

Comet - scene

Murder at Glen Athol (1936) / D: Frank R. Strayer / 67m

Cast: John Miljan, Irene Ware, Iris Adrian, Noel Madison, Oscar Apfel, Barry Norton, Harry Holman, Betty Blythe, James P. Burtis

Rating: 5/10 – two murders and a dying confession confuse matters for a detective (Miljan) who’s just trying to take a vacation – next door to where the murders have taken place; packed full of seemingly endless exposition and no shortage of suspects, Murder at Glen Athol is a sprightly murder mystery that packs a lot in but not always to its best advantage.

Murder at Glen Athol

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015) / D: Paul Tibbitt / 92m

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Tom Kenny, Clancy Brown, Bill Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass, Mr. Lawrence, Carolyn Lawrence

Rating: 7/10 – when the formula for Krabby Patty is stolen by the notorious Burger Beard (Banderas), SpongeBob (Kenny) is forced to team up with Plankton (Mr. Lawrence) to get it back… and venture above the surface; freewheeling fun with the denizens of Bikini Bottom that features lots of gags and the usual bright visuals, but takes an awfully long time in getting to the “sponge out of water” part.

SpongeBob Movie, The

Chappie (2015) / D: Neill Blomkamp / 120m

Cast: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Ninja, Yo-Landi Visser, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Sigourney Weaver, Brandon Auret, Johnny Selema

Rating: 6/10 – with a robot police force firmly established in Johannesburg, the introduction of artificial intelligence leads to one robot, named Chappie, learning what it’s like to be human; disappointing outing from Blomkamp that never quite gels or seems sure of what it’s trying to do or say, but does feature an excellent performance from Copley.

Chappie

Impact (1963) / D: Peter Maxwell / 61m

Cast: Conrad Phillips, George Pastell, Ballard Berkeley, Linda Marlowe, Richard Klee, Anita West, John Rees

Rating: 5/10 – when newspaper reporter Jack Moir (Phillips) is framed for robbery by arch-nemesis “The Duke” (Pastell), he swears to get even when he gets out of jail; a low-key crime drama that seems busier than it is and which gets bogged down in the mechanics of Moir’s revenge plot, Impact does allow for a welcome appearance by Berkeley aka Fawlty Towers‘ Major, and an above average performance by Pastell.

Impact

The Loft (2014) / D: Erik Van Looy / 103m

Cast: Karl Urban, James Marsden, Wentworth Miller, Eric Stonestreet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Isabel Lucas, Rachael Taylor, Rhona Mitra, Valerie Cruz, Kali Rocha, Elaine Cassidy, Margarita Levieva, Kristin Lehman, Robert Wisdom

Rating: 6/10 – the discovery of a woman’s dead body in the loft apartment shared by five married men for their secret liaisons prompts them to suspect each other of the crime; alternately gripping and implausible, The Loft is a modern day cautionary tale that loses credibility with its solution then recovers with a great twist, but still has the air of a thriller that its writer never quite got to grips with.

Loft, The

Unfinished Business (2015) / D: Ken Scott / 91m

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson, Dave Franco, Sienna Miller, Nick Frost, James Marsden, June Diane Raphael, Britton Sear, Ella Anderson, Uwe Ochsenknecht

Rating: 5/10 – Swarf salesman Dan Trunkman (Vaughn) has to overcome all sorts of obstacles to land the contract that will save his fledgling company from going under, including a visit to a Berlin gay bar; a bit of a strange fish, Unfinished Business suffers from being two separate movies joined at the hip: one a raucous comedy, the other a thoughtful study of bullying, but together they don’t make for a cohesive whole, and it’s yet another movie where Vaughn coasts along on former glories.

Unfinished Business

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X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Beast, Bolivar Trask, Bryan Singer, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Magneto, Marvel, Michael Fassbender, Mutants, Patrick Stewart, Professor X, Quicksilver, Review, Sci-fi, Sentinels, Time travel, Wolverine

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D: Bryan Singer / 131m

Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Halle Berry, Shawn Ashmore, Evan Peters, Omar Sy, Josh Helman, Mark Camacho

With X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) leaving a sour taste in the mouth after the glories of the first two X-Men movies, and with two subsequent Wolverine adventures proving that even a massive fan favourite doesn’t mean an automatically good movie, the future of the X-Men franchise was looking a little doubtful.  With both Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen “getting on a bit”, the decision to revisit Charles Xavier and Eric Lehnsherr in their younger days in X-Men: First Class (2011) was a positive boon for the franchise and one that revitalised what was otherwise a moribund series.  Now, with the equivalent of a spring in its step, we have a movie that both acknowledges its predecessors and forges a whole new path for its mutant protagonists.

Opening in the near future, with mutants and mankind alike being targeted for extinction by Sentinels, the world is a wasteland.  With the Sentinels able to assimilate whatever mutant powers are pitched against them, a band of mutants including Kitty Pryde (Page), Bishop (Sy) and Iceman (Ashmore) fight a rearguard action against them that sees Professor X’s pupils evade certain death through Kitty’s ability to send a person’s consciousness back in time; this allows the remaining mutants to anticipate a Sentinel attack and flee before it can happen, thus erasing that particular timeline.  With the arrival of Professor X (Stewart), Magneto (McKellen), Logan aka Wolverine (Jackman) and Storm (Berry), a last, desperate decision is made to send Wolverine’s consciousness back into his body in 1973, the year the Sentinels were created by industrialist Bolivar Trask (Dinklage).  Back then, Trask was assassinated by Raven aka Mystique (Lawrence), which led to her capture and the advancement of the Sentinel programme using her DNA (this enables the Sentinels to assimilate other mutants’ powers).  Logan’s mission: to unite the estranged Charles and Erik, track down Raven, and stop her from killing Trask.

Of course, it’s not easy.  Since the events of X-Men: First Class, Charles has taken to wallowing in self-pity at the loss of Raven, and has lost his powers thanks to a serum created by Hank McCoy aka Beast (Hoult) that allows him to walk.  He agrees to help for Mystique’s sake, though he is unhappy about needing Erik’s help.  With the aid of Quicksilver (Peters), they free Erik from a cell beneath the Pentagon and travel to Paris (where Raven is due to kill Trask at a conference).  Imitating a Vietnamese officer, Raven infiltrates the conference room where Trask plans to sell his Sentinel technology to the highest bidder.  He reveals a hand-held mutant detector that is triggered by Raven’s presence.  Hastily despatching the other attendees – including a young William Stryker (Helman) – Raven is stopped from shooting Trask by the arrival of Logan et al.  Erik disarms her and then turns the gun on her; aware that her DNA will make the Sentinels an unstoppable force he believes it is better for her to die than to let them become so strong.  Raven makes her escape but is wounded in the attempt.  Erik tries to follow her but is stopped by Hank who has morphed into his Beast persona.  All three are caught on film and the “mutant menace” espoused by Trask is taken up by President Nixon (Camacho) who gives the go ahead to the Sentinel programme.

At a press conference in the grounds of the White House set up to reveal the existence of the Sentinels and their purpose, Raven impersonates a Secret Service agent in order to get to Trask.  Now on his own, Erik steals back the helmet that magnifies his powers and uses them to levitate a baseball stadium; he transports it to the press conference and drops it around the White House, effectively sealing it off from the police and everyone else.  Charles is trapped under a piece of fallen scaffolding, while Logan and Hank do battle with one of the Sentinels (which are now under Erik’s control).  In the future, the Sentinels attack the mutant hideout; casualties mount up as Professor X and Magneto wonder if Logan’s mission will be successful in time.  As the future becomes ever bleaker, Erik castigates the President and his staff for their animosity towards mutants, and threatens them with a new world order, with mutants in control.  With Logan and Hank unable to stop the Sentinel, and Raven still intent on killing Trask, and Erik about to dispose of Nixon and his staff, in the future the Sentinels breach the mutant hideout and target Magneto and Professor X…

X-Men Days of Future Past - scene

Even at this late stage in the game there’s still more to the story than you’d expect.  X-Men: Days of Future Past is a triumph for all concerned, an exciting, often unpredictable addition to the X-Men saga that more than lives up to expectations but also deepens and enriches the story begun in X-Men: First Class.  With the stakes upped considerably, and the inclusion of more mutants than have been seen since The Last Stand, the movie seems, at first glance, to be overdoing it, adding too much to the mix for it to be as satisfying or rewarding as it should be (by necessity as much as expediency, some characters have more screen time than others).  But thanks to Simon Kinberg’s measured script, the movie glides smoothly along, gaining momentum, adding layer upon layer of meaning, and providing an emotional depth that is missing from most – if not all – other superhero movies.

Largely this is due to the stellar cast, led by McAvoy and Fassbender, two actors who have made their roles their own.  Their adversarial friendship is expanded upon here, both characters’ sense of having been betrayed by the other adding a dangerous edge to their scenes together, adding to the tension that develops as the world heads towards oblivion.  Both actors give tremendous performances (McAvoy is superb in his opening scenes with Jackman), and the support they receive, notably from Hoult and Jackman, is equally impressive, while Dinklage (sporting a wig and a half) invests Trask with an eerie messianic quality that elevates the character from perfunctory villain to unwavering fear monger.  And then there’s Lawrence, endowing Raven/Mystique with a mix of rage, sadness and longed-for redemption that makes her the most intriguing character of all, her dual nature at odds with itself even when fiercely determined to walk her own path.  The real surprise, though, is the inclusion of Quicksilver.  Peters turns in a funny, smart, freewheeling performance that is as charming as it is a real comedic shot in the arm.  His sardonic smile and deadpan glances are perfectly pitched, and his appearance leaves you wanting more (which we’ll get in X-Men: Apocalypse).

Returning to the director’s chair following the departure of Matthew Vaughn, Singer shows a firm grasp of the material and an even firmer grasp on ensuring the human/mutant element isn’t lost amongst all the special effects and impressively mounted carnage.  Even a small scene, such as the one between Professor X and Magneto towards the end of the movie, is more affecting than you might expect, and there are numerous occasions where Singer’s pleasure at being back in the director’s chair couldn’t be more evident if he’d stopped the movie mid-scene and held up a sign saying “I loved making this movie”.  Singer is an expressive director, always willing to try something new, and his staging of the showdown at the White House shows a clear intention to avoid the usual action motifs, making the sequence that much more impressive (it’s also a clever move to reduce Logan’s involvement in the action, especially as he doesn’t have his adamantium skeleton for Erik to play around with).

The early Seventies are recreated with a fine eye for the details of the time, and there’s an astute tweaking on contemporary fashions (though it might have been fun to see Wolverine in bell bottoms), while the inclusion of footage shot as if it were news reports from the time is a clever conceit and works particularly well during Raven’s escape from the conference.  The Sentinels are appropriately scary (and make Terminator 2’s T-1000 look like a skinny prototype), there’s the by-now obligatory post-credits sequence that sets up the next instalment, and there are a number of cameos that will have fans cheering in their seats (two cameos are very welcome indeed).

There are some stumbles.  The opening ten to fifteen minutes, where the plot is established and some new characters introduced, is a bit clunky and muddled, and as mentioned before some of the cast don’t fare as well as others.  Page does little more than sit with her fingers poised either side of Jackman’s temples for most of the movie, while McKellen gets to add the odd line here and there, but it’s Berry who’s almost completely sidelined, so much so that one of the cameo turns has more lines than her.  (And on the subject of screen time, someone should give Anna Paquin’s agent a gold star; she appears for approximately ten dialogue-free seconds but is seventh billed; now that’s impressive.)  Trask’s hand-held mutant detector is a clumsy contrivance that feels like it was added at the last minute, and the movie’s coda owes a little too much to another recent sci-fi franchise reboot (but it’s a welcome development nevertheless).  All in all, though, the movie is too well constructed and executed for any of these (very minor) problems to spoil the overall presentation.

Rating: 8/10 – back on top as the best of the superhero movie franchises thanks to Singer’s return and an intelligent approach to the story (one of the comics’ most well-respected outings), X-Men: Days of Future Past is a treat for fans and non-fans alike; audacious, skilful, thought-provoking and often dazzling, the movie helps erase the debacle that was X-Men: The Last Stand, and is a better alternative universe for it.

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