Movie Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) directed the first two X-Men films back in the early 2000's.  Then he handed over the reigns for the next few.  Well, now he's back for the latest installment, and I think he's brought us the best of the bunch.

In the not-too-distant future, the world is not a safe place for mutants.  One Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage, The Game of Thornes) has created giant mutant killing robots called Sentinels.  They adapt to anything the mutants can throw at them, so the mutants are getting wiped out.  It's so bad that it has brought Professor X (Patrick Stewart, X-Men) and Magneto (Ian McKellan, X-Men) back together again to fight side by side.  They've come to find that Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page, X-Men: The Last Stand) has the ability to send people's minds back in time to a younger version of themselves.  In doing so, they can then alter history.  This brings them to the plan of sending someone way back to 1973 to stop the initial start-up of the Sentinal program.  The only person they believe can withstand going back that far is Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, X-Men).  They send him back and he must bring together a young Professor X (James McAvoy, X-Men: First Class) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender, X-Men: First Class) to fight a common cause.

So, you've got six movies already in this X-Men universe and the continuity is all over the place.  What do you do?  You bring in time travel, of course.  That fixes everything, right?  I was a little worried going in, but it ended up being a pretty fun ride none-the-less.  It doesn't answer every question, and it even raised a couple more, but it did keep the time travel plot from getting to convoluted.  Actually, I thought this movie was pretty contained, and that was refreshing.  It didn't try to bring in a million new mutants like some of the other films.  And they didn't try to jam in backstories for the ones that were brought in.  It showed their powers and their purpose, and you just went with it.  The story itself stayed pretty simple, future selves try to survive, past selves try to stop Trask.  The pacing of the film was pretty good too.  The only problem it may have had was that it was a little too long.  It lagged a little in the middle act, but once you get over that little hump it picks up again through to the end of the film.

The acting is what you expect if you've seen any of the previous films.  I think everyone has gotten pretty comfortable in their roles.  The only problem I may have is actually Jennifer Lawrence of all people.  I think she's a very good actress and love several of her movies, but she just doesn't work for me as the young Mystique.  I just can't accept her as the stone-cold heartless killer that is Mystique.  The newbies to the group held their own with the veterans as well, though.  The stand out would have to be Quicksilver (Evan Peters, Kick-Ass).  Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who co-starred with Peters in Kick-Ass, another superhero movie) needs to bring his A game when playing Quicksilver in the next Avengers movie.  Ironically, Quicksilver was one of the highlights of the film while also being one of it's downfalls.  It irritated me a little that he was mainly brought in as a convenient plot device.  They could have utilized him a lot more.  Here's to hoping that the next film brings him back.

The action, I feel, is some of the best we've seen in the franchise.  One of the newcomers is a mutant named Blink (Bingbing Fan, Iron Man 3).  Her powers make for some interesting battles visually in the future camp.  Also, I have to bring up Quicksilver again.  There is one really well done scene showing him using his super-speed to stop a fight.  That scene alone almost made it worth the price of admission.

This was over-all a very welcome movie to the franchise.  If you can put the unfixable continuity problems of the previous films aside, this movie works very well, even with the time travel.  Minor lag in the middle and not enough Quicksilver were the most of it's problems.  This was a very good summer blockbuster movie.

Rating: ********-- (8 out of 10)

Memorable Quote:

Logan: In the future, you and I will be good friends.  You just don't know it yet.

A Week of Entertainment - Issue 6

Happy Easter!  Hope you all had an Easter as good as mine.  And for you non-religious folk, I hope you just had a happy weekend in general.  Now onto the news.


In the beginning...- So, there has been a new trend in movies lately (superhero movies in particular), that seems to have really gotten kicked off with The Dark Knight.  That is the whole bit on releasing the first few minutes of a film.  This week saw two such releases. One of these is from Days of Future Past.  It is labeled as "opening fight scene", so not sure if it is the very beginning of said film.  The other is the first three minutes of Joss Whedon's film In Your Eyes (which you can see over at EW.com).  The question is, is this a good new trend.  I guess my personal opinion is that if the material is good, then yes.  Trailers now seem to be giving away the whole plot of movies lately.  In the case of In Your Eyes, the first three minutes were intriguing enough with the setup for me to want to see the film.  I didn't need key scenes from the rest of the movie spoiling things in a trailer.  Mind you, a well put together trailer can do wonders still.  They just really need to stop giving away the whole plot.





Speaking of trailers, and X-Men, the final trailer has been released this week.  Up until now I have only been mildly enthusiastic about this movie.  Between that opening fight scene and this new trailer, however, I must say my excitement level has gone up a couple of notches.





Future endeavors?- One final bit of X-Men news and I'll move on.  It is well known that Marvel/Disney has not really wanted to combine efforts with Fox and Sony with superhero movies.  That is fair enough, because they are trying to get rights back to their properties.  But, could something be brewing between Fox and Sony?  Sony has announced that they will have a mid-credit sequence in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 of the X-Men.  Not quite worth getting too worked up over yet because it is apparently just a scene from the new X-Men movie and has no cross-over implications at all.  However, this collaboration does indicate that the two studios are communicating with each other positively.  One can only hope that maybe we'll see Spider-Man show up in Fantastic Four or X-Men in the future, or vice versa.  One can dream of said cross-over anyway.


2 Fast 2 Furious-  In body double news, the show must go on with Fast and Furious 7.  Universal officially announced that Paul Walker's brothers, Caleb and Cody, will be filling in for any of his unfinished scenes.  Paul had gotten most of his dramatic scenes filmed already, so they won't have to fill in for a lot.  I realize that for Universal, this is mostly, if not completely, about not losing money by having to scrap the movie for rewrites and reshoots.  But, I do like that they will not be just CGIing him into these remaining scenes, and also Paul's brothers get to honor his memory in a unique way, which also means that this decision was family approved.


Disappearing act-  Have to give a mention to one trailer that was released this week.  That is for Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.  Just had to mention it because it looks like a good new thriller, and I'm just a huge fan of the director David Fincher.  Everything he does, if not great, is at least very interesting.





And that ain't no bull- In the realm of completely bizarre news, we have the release of the documentary The Final Member.  This film is about two men who are both vying to be the first human to have their "member" be the first human penis in the Iclandic Phallological Museum.  While you are wrapping your head around that little tidbit, I'll get onto the actual bizarre part of this story.  Drafthouse films is the production company for this film, and if you pre-order the movie here, you get a little souvenir along with it.  That would be a wax-sealed glass jar containing an actual bull penis.  So, I guess it is a little bit of bull after all.


Well, that's it for tonight. Have a pleasant week.


Until next time.....remember to always grab the bull by the horns.


Weekend top 10 at the box office:
1 - Captain America: The Winter Soldier $26.6M
2 - Rio 2 $22.5M
3 - Heaven is for Real (new release) $21.5M
4 - Transcendence (new release) $11.2M
5 - A Haunted House 2 (new release) $9.1M
6 - Draft Day $5.9M
7 - Divergent $5.8M
8 - Oculus $5.2M
9 - Noah $5.0M
10 - God's Not Dead $4.8M

A Week of Entertainment - Issue 3

Gotta say, I thought it was a slow week for anything real newsworthy.  So much so, that I'm leading off with a poster.

Poster of Future Past - This is the new poster released for the upcoming X-Men movie.  Don't have a whole to say about it.  I just thought it was cool and can't wait for the movie.

No More Monkey Business - Well, maybe a little bit more.  Everyone's favorite go to man in Hollywood to play the role of monkey is taking off the CGI mask and heading to the director's chair.  Andy Serkis is done monkeying around.  Now he wants to direct someone else to do it in the new live action Jungle Book.  On a side note, this will be another Snow White and the Huntsman/Mirror Mirror situation.  Two companies taking a beloved classic Disney cartoon and making a live action version.  It looks as though Serkis will be directing for Warner Brothers, while Jon Favreau directs his own version for Disney itself.

Aarruaghah, my back! - It looks like Arnold "I'll be back!" Schwarzenegger is keeping his promise once again.  The 66 year old Austrian actor is coming back to play the same T-800 robot he made famous waaaaay back in 1984.  Here's what he had to say:

“The way that the character is written, it’s a machine underneath,” he said. “It’s this metal skeleton but above that is human flesh, and the Terminator’s flesh ages, just like any other human being’s flesh. Maybe not as fast, but it definitely ages."

So, Skynet was able to develop technology that could teach itself and eventually take over the world, but they weren't smart enough to develop a synthetic skin that wouldn't age?  That's kinda weak Ahnold.  I love that you're back in the movies, but let this Terminator thing go.  All that being said.....I'm sure I'll probably go see it.

TMNTrash - I kid, I kid.  It's just that this new Ninja Turtles movie (new trailer) has two huge strikes against it.  Michael Bay and Megan Fox.  Yes, I will admit that I thought Transformers was entertaining.  Then they went and made 2 and 3.  The slightly promising news is, Bay is only producing, and in the trailer at least, Megan Fox had no dialogue.  Hopefully they will keep that to a minimum in the film too.  Although the storyline of Shredder working with O'Neil's father to create the turtles is something that will be hard to wrap my head around, the trailer had a few good things.  One, the turtles' fun-loving side showed through in a few of the scenes.  Two, the turtles' faces look a little funky, but other than that they don't look too bad.  Three, William Fichtner!  Seriously, I'll watch that guy in anything.  I mean, have you seen Drive Angry? Probably not, because it was a really crappy (although a lot of fun) Nicolas Cage movie.  Most of that fun is because William Fichtner is awesome.

Until next time......Kowabunga dudes!

Weekend Top 10 at the box office:

1 - Noah (new release) $44M

2 - Divergent  $26.5M

3 - Muppets Most Wanted $11.4M

4 - Mr. Peabody & Sherman $9.5M

5 - God's Not Dead $9M

6 - The Grand Budapest Hotel $8.8M

7 - Sabotage (new release) $5.3M

8 - Need For Speed $4.3M

9 - 300: Rise of an Empire $4.3M

10 - Non-Stop $4M