Tag Archives: Superhero

May 22 2014
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Reviews

“X2” Review (✫✫✫1/2)

A social commentary disguised as an action blockbuster.

X2 is science-fiction brilliance, a sequel that is relentlessly exciting, smartly written, intelligently designed, and jam-packed with so many involving action scenes and stunning visual effects that it could potentially work as a stand-alone movie, rather than a direct sequel to its predecessor X-men. Like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, this movie serves as an expansion for the universe that it is in and as an opportunity to provide fan service to its dedicated readers and lovers of the iconic source material. I’m not very much for sequels, and I definitely don’t want this to become a superhero monopoly, but if we have to have sequels packaged with every superhero installment in the near future, more filmmakers should pull inspiration from X2.

X2 picks up just short of a few months after X-men originally left off. After the combined efforts of the X-men defeated Erik Lenshurr, a.k.a. “Magneto” (Ian McKellan), and imprisoned him within a special plastic cell (Countering his ability to manipulate metal), the X-men go about their (ab)normal lives as teachers at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, educating mutants on how to control their powers and not be afraid of who they are. Only Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) sets out to Canada to seek out answers for his long-forgotten past, and even then he comes up empty: the lab where he was supposedly experimented on has long since been abandoned.

Soon, however, a new figure from everyone’s past re-emerges: William Stryker (Brian Cox), a government official who has experimented on mutants for as long as mutants existed. After pitching his program to the President and revealing that Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters is a front to the X-men operation, the X-men and the Brotherhood of Mutants must band together to save each other from Stryker’s plot, and quite potentially the rest of mutant kind with them as well.

Directed and co-written by Bryan Singer, who also directed X2’s predecessor X-men, X2 is a highly involving, irreverently fascinating superhero epic. Functioning just as much as a political thriller as it does a superhero action flick, Singer is careful to deliberate and balance everything effectively in the movie, from its themes of xenophobia and racism to its highly-exciting action sequences where mutants go flying, flipping, and teleporting in every which way and under.

Funny, the first time Singer tried X-men, balance was a problem for him. He put a greater emphasis on the action and the visuals of the mutant’s powers more than what they meant for them individually, quite possibly because that’s more of what the audience wants to see anyway. Here, balance is not an issue. He does a great job at both not only giving us a healthy dose of action-packed sequences of grandeur and excitement: he also does a great job giving us heartfelt, genuine emotion, showing these character’s internal reactions just as much as their external.

Example: After escaping from an attack on themselves and the rest of the X-men earlier in the movie, Wolverine takes himself and a small group of mutants to Bobby “Iceman” Drake’s (Shawn Ashmore) home, where he’s forced to essentially come out to his family that he is, in fact, a mutant. After seeing the emotion and disparity of his family reeling in with the shocking revelation of Bobby’s abilities, the police pull up to the house, and an explosive battle results between these X-men and the officers.

See, this is what I’m talking about: there isn’t a single moment in the movie where the action outweighs the drama, or the drama outweighs the action. For every scene where something emotionally weighty or significant is revealed, there is another scene where something exciting or thrilling happens that jump-starts your interest all over again. Whether it’s a scene involving dialogue between characters, a narrator giving exposition on a conniving plot, or another scene where some sort of grand, explosive battle takes place doesn’t matter. It’s always moving, it’s always doing something different, it always keeps up its interest and it is never boring.

I’m very happy with this movie. In a world where so many sequels make the mistake of replacing genuine emotion with an overdose of action and visual effects, X2 is a clear standout. While not necessarily perfect, and still incapable of escaping from some of the cheesy, ham-fisted moments that I rued in the first movie, it definitely stepped up its game as a far as drama goes, and has deeper contexts to offer regarding the xenophobia/racism issue that inspired the series as a whole since its comic book creation. In that sense, X2 is more than a superhero blockbuster. It’s a social commentary on judging another person for who they are and the destructive consequences that can come from it as a result.

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May 22 2014
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Reviews

“X-MEN” Review (✫✫✫)

Racism, xenophobia and too many super-mutants to count.

We open on a quiet, haunting frame of a familiar image. Poland, 1944. As German soldiers stand on top of brick rooftops with rain pouring down their uniforms and gun barrels, soldiers at ground level file Jewish citizens from one line into another. One soldier separates a young boy from his aging parents. The mother screams out in agony, aggressively pushing against the flow of the crowd just to get to her son. Soldiers block her path, her husband trying to hold her back while desperately trying to hold back tears. The son, who is kneeling in fear as both tears and rain pours over his cheeks, rushes through the mud to get to his parents. It’s too late: the gate has already closed.

Frustrated in grief and agony, the young man reaches out to the fence as soldiers hold him back, as if he’s wishing the bars to bend so he can escape and save his parents. Before a soldier comes up and knocks him out, his desires becomes his reality: the metal fence is left as bent and tangled as a twisted paperclip.

This is how Bryan Singer’s X-men starts off, with a visual metaphor for bigotry and discrimination where we don’t quite understand what happened, but its emotional power retains itself regardless. The plot goes from the dramatic to a much more stranger turn when we’re introduced to the film’s premise: a new form of species is identified as “mutants,” who are superhuman beings who develop extraordinary abilities through a biological change in their DNA. There’s nothing they do to forcefully trigger the change: it’s as natural as a teenager going through puberty.

What does society choose to do with these mutants? They scrutinize them, convict them and force them to submit to their mutant registration program where they will be forced to reveal themselves, otherwise they will be considered enemies of the state.

The plot goes much deeper than that. The mutant race has been mostly split in between two factions. One of them is the Brotherhood of Mutants, an extremist group led by the gray-haired and calculative Magneto (Ian McKellan), who you will notice was the little boy we saw in the earlier-mentioned credits. The other organization is hidden under the secrecy of a preparatory school called “The X-men”, a group of mutants who train other mutants to control their powers rather than be afraid of them, led by the passively-oriented Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart).

There’s too many other mutants in this movie to keep track of, and even a short roll call won’t cover all of them either. There’s Rogue (Anna Paquin), a teenage mutant who absorbs the life energy out of any being that she touches. There’s Storm (Halle Berry), a silver-haired centurion who can summon lightning bolts and powerful winds through her ability to control the weather. There’s Jean Grey (Famke Jennsen), a telepath who lives with her boyfriend Cyclops (James Marsden), who can obliterate anything with a laser beam simply by looking at them (makes you wonder how they take care of their evening business in the bedroom…). Perhaps the most recognizable mutant here is Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who came into the X-men with Rogue after spending years trying to remember who he was and where he came from. Wolverine has the most unique ability out of these X-men by being able to heal at a faster rate and protrude claws out of his fists when threatened. So there’s that.

Long story short, the Brotherhood of mutants hatch a scheme against the human race, and the X-men must rise up to stop them. Doesn’t sound like any other superhero team-up action flick out there, right?

Let me start off with the positives. To put it simply, X-men is just a big ball of fun. Whether we’re laughing from a line of scathing dialogue between Wolverine and Cyclops, or watching a thrilling action scene between two mutants fighting on top of the Statue of Liberty, there’s so many memorable moments to look at and enjoy regardless of how hammy or preposterous they might be. Because of this, I think I have a good idea of who this movie was made for: it’s made for the comic-book die-hards, the kids that would freak out in glee and excitement when they get their never-before-opened copy of The Uncanny X-men #141 in the mail for the first time.

For me, my experience with the X-men comes from the 1990′s saturday morning cartoon, the one that included these characters and more in a colorful, energetic and fast-paced ensemble that had much more time and episodes to introduce these characters and delve a little more into their backstories and motivations. For me, this movie hits a few notes on that feeling of nostalgia and then misses on others. I like a lot of what this movie had to offer, from the exciting and uniquely-packaged action scenes all the way to the more dramatic, tensely-driven moments, such as when a mutant argues with a U.S. Senator on mutant rights.

Again, I know where this feeling comes from. Earlier in his career, writer and co-creator Stan Lee created the X-men as a response to the civil rights movement, as an allegory to how people are afraid and hated by other people just because they are different from them. With this movie, I was hoping it would delve into those themes as deeply as Spider-man did with his themes regarding love, guilt and responsibility. Instead, it chooses to make the makeup and visual effects the stars of the movie, showing us cool, flashy effects of people in black leather costumes instead of making the story and themes itself the focus. The movie is a playground to show off what kind of cool tricks these kids can do: not a serious drama about why the two kids are fighting on the playground in the first place.

Here’s the critical factor that saves this movie from just being another standard action flick: the cast. I’ve already mentioned how this movie touches up on some of the nostalgia from the original cartoon. This cast is the reasoning behind that nostalgia. McKellan was conniving as Magneto, a torn and hateful man who sees only one outcome in the human-mutant conflict, an extremist not too dissimilar from that of Malcolm X during the civil rights movement. If he’s Malcolm X then, Professor Xavier is Martin Luther King. Jr., a patient, kind-hearted and wise man who wishes to co-exist with the human race, and defend both of their rights for the sake of that future. I especially liked Hugh Jackman as the feral and vicious Wolverine, a man who definitely has that hardened, rough edge to him, but also that soft spot where he feels protective over those who can’t protect themselves, almost like a papa bear over his little cubs. The script is the transgressor for the silly, generic plot: the cast is what elevates this film above its mediocrity and makes it more than what it actually is.

Overall, I liked X-men. I wish it could have been better, being that the source material is among the most original and influential comic books ever conceived in print, but I’m willing to let that pass for the sake of the franchise’s potential future. If the movie aimed to be nothing else except for visually-splendid eye candy to fill the gleeful hearts of comic book nerds, this movie succeeded. Hey, at least Stan Lee’s Marvelites will be satisfied.

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May 02 2014
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“THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2” Review (✫✫✫✫)

Don’t worry: it’s not “Spider-man 3.”

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the standard of a superhero movie that everyone should aspire to. It’s exciting, action-packed, gut-bustlingly hilarious and emotionally involving to a point where I was surprised at how personal and genuine it really was. “Amazing,” in fact, is not a good enough word to describe this movie — “Superior” is more like it.

Taking place after Curt Connors, aka The Lizard, attacked New York City, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 shows Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) as he continues to adapt to his new life as the spectacular Spider-Man. He’s just about to graduate, he’s getting a job as a freelance photographer at the Daily Bugle and his relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) is going strong. Being Spider-Man has its perks and its downfalls, and this is a rare high point in Peter’s life.

Elsewhere, however, dark forces develop under Oscorp. Engineer Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) gets electrocuted by bio-electric eels, transforming him into the chaotic villain known as Electro. Russian mobster Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti) gets equipped with a fully armed mechanical suit, becoming the Rhino. And Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), an old friend of Peter’s, returns with a dark secret that he’s hiding from everyone.

That makes three villains in total for this sequel. Concerned? You should be. The last time we had three villains in a Spider-Man movie, that film was Spider-Man 3. I’m never going to get that image of Tobey Maguire doing the Elvis Presley-stride out of my head, ever. Does anyone have any hydrochloric acid I can pour into my eyes?

Well, you can rest easy, fellow web heads. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is not Spider-Man 3. Quite the contrary, actually. This is a significantly better Spider-Man than its predecessor, a film that bounces in between multiple tones and genres all at once and does all of them brilliantly.

An early fight scene in the film, for instance, is as wacky and funny as a Looney Tunes cartoon, with Spidey struggling to grab all these plutonium canisters off of a moving truck like he’s in the middle of a pinball table. In another scene, he’s in the middle of an action sequence so exhilarating and mind-blowing that it could have come straight from a video game cut scene. In another moment, him and Gwen are dealing with a real emotional struggle neither quite know how to handle, something that has haunted Peter since the first movie.

That’s what makes this Spider-Man better from the other one: It has many tones, story lines, characters and emotions that it’s juggling all at once. That’s a weighty order, and not one to handle easily. Yet director Marc Webb handles the challenge excellently, delivering just as relevant a character drama as he does an exciting action movie.

The cast members have expert chemistry with each other, but that should be expected because of their exceptional performances in the first film. We already expect Garfield and Stone to be perfect with each other because they were nearly inseparable in the first round of the series. It’s more efficient, then, to focus on the newer cast members: Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan. 

Foxx is electric as the high-voltage villain, pun intended. At first he’s just a socially silly and awkward scientist, similar to Jim Carrey’s version of the Riddler in Batman Forever. When he goes through his transformation into Electro, however, everything changes. He becomes an angry and malicious supervillain, a man who is mad and frustrated at everything and just wants to kill everyone, then jump start their heart just so he can kill them again. DeHaan, especially, was desperate and conniving as Harry Osborn, a menacing and starkly different Harry than the James Franco version we are used to in the original trilogy.

Both of these villains serve a pivotal role to Peter’s development. Electro is the physical conflict Peter has to face in the movie; Harry is the emotional one.

There’s another concern comic book fans will have about this movie, and that is the same concern they have with Captain America: The Winter Soldier: We’ve already read the comics. We already know the twists that are coming up, and as a result, our reaction is dulled when that moment comes in the movie.

Let me make a reassuring statement for my fellow comic book lovers: I could see the twist in this movie come from a mile away. Yet when I saw it, I reacted as if I was witnessing Peter’s tragic story for the first time.

There are apparent concerns to have with this movie. The multiple story strands are worrisome, the overload of villains can be an issue and Max Dillion’s character is far too silly to fully accept as being realistic.

Does that change The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s influence, or for that matter, its effect on the audience? The answer is no, it does not. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is still a great sequel, an excellent expansion to the Spider-Man universe and a more-than-welcome development to Peter’s never-ending growth as Spider-Man. I’m tempted to compare it to the legendary Spider-Man 2, although I’m not sure if it’s quite there yet. One thing is for sure, however: it’s head-over-heels over Spider-Man 3. If Webb keeps this up, he just might surpass Sam Raimi’s original trilogy.

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Apr 30 2014
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“X-MEN: FIRST CLASS” Review (✫✫)

Pretend G-men trying to skip out of class.

The very first shot of X-men: First Class is the exact same scene of the Holocaust, frame-by-frame of the very first X-men movie directed by Brian Singer. Not a good way to start off your movie by copying another one, isn’t it? The very next scene after briefly skipping through that one is a young Charles Xavier’s encounter with a young, hungry blue-skinned mutant named Raven who was trying to steal food from his refrigerator. Talking to her in a very sincere, comforting voice, he assures her that she doesn’t have to steal, and reaffirms it by saying that she’ll never have to steal again. Touching. I wonder how this conversation went over with his mother?

Years pass, and we’re reintroduced to the characters we’ve come to know for the past few movies now. Erik Lenshurr (Michael Fassbender), the man soon to become Magneto, is out on the hunt, looking for the man who killed his family and tortured him as a child back when he was a Jew in the concentration camps. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is now in college with the now much more mature Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), who is pursuing his masters degree in psychology.

There’s a mutual enemy that unites these three individuals together: Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a menacing and conniving mutant with the ability to absorb and redistribute energy. That means a grenade can explode in his hand and he can transfer the explosion straight into you with a touch of his finger. Shaw is the man who tortured Erik back when he was a young child, and Xavier discovers a sinister plot that Shaw is setting to unveil upon the world. Erik and Charles combine their resources and their efforts to form a mutant team to work together and stop Shaw.

And how exactly does Shaw plan to carry out this giant, dastardly plan? By conspiring and coercing the Cuban Missile Crisis among nations, that’s how. How original. I wonder if these guys considered overthrowing the Chinese government while they were at it?

Hypothetical question. If you hear the term “prequel” being used, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? For me, its the word “beginning”. Beginning, as in, the start of the story. Beginning as in, the start of a legacy. Beginning as in, filling in the holes of all the ambiguous stuff we were told in the original trilogy, and beginning as in making sure everything fits into a nice, nifty little package by the time the end credits roll.

As a superhero blockbuster alone, X-men First Class succeeds. It’s exciting, it’s visually stunning, it features everyone’s favorite X-men that they’ve come to know and love, and it has enough comic book lore in it to make even Kevin Smith giggle with glee. As an action movie meant to please summer movie lovers, it is fine. As a prequel to the critically-acclaimed series that it is based on, however, it is utter and absolute failure.

Three of the biggest goofs that completely and utterly frustrated me. 1) There were flashback scenes in X2, X-men: The Last Stand, and Origins: Wolverine where Xavier is clearly seen as to being able to stand. Yet at the conclusion of First Class (spoiler alert!) Erik deflects a bullet into Xavier’s spine, permanently paralyzing is legs. 2) In the first X-men, Professor X audibly said to Wolverine that him and Magneto helped build Cerebro together, while in this movie it is very clear that a mutant named Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) was the one who built it instead of them. Magneto’s helmet also didn’t exist prior to X-men, whereas here it already does. And lastly 3) a cameo appearance of a certain three-clawed mutant meeting Xavier and Erik about halfway through the movie at a bar. Wouldn’t they have remembered him thirty years later, especially since one of them is a telepath?

These ignorances to the plot show me that instead of providing an accurate prequel to a highly-revered superhero series, the filmmakers were more interested in letting loose and having fun rather than making something straight-laced and refined. I’m all for fun and high-octane action movies, but if you go in ignoring everything else that happened in the movies previous to your own, you’re being disrespectful to the franchise.

Oh, the cast was more than exceptional, I won’t deny that. McAvoy portrays the younger Professor X wonderfully here, passing himself off as a sort of young Patrick Stewart that’s more reckless and immature than his older self. Bacon is smug and charismatic as Shaw, and even though his role wasn’t as compelling as Ian McKellan’s was in the original trilogy, it still served its purpose in the film.

I especially enjoyed Fassbender’s performance as the angry, relentless, and grief-stricken Erik Lenshurr. The staple performances in the series overall belong to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, there’s no doubt beyond that. Still, Fassbender gives it his all here. You notice the effort he extends here, the passion and the fire he instills in this character. McKellan’s rendition of Magneto was calm, collective, and calculated, a great foil to the equally intelligent but more morally aligned Xavier. Here, Fassbender is neither calm nor calculated. He is simply a raging, hateful man, a mutant who has been in pain and alone all his life, desperately seeking some sort of way to fill the emptiness within his cold, solemn heart. I genuinely liked and appreciated his take on the character, even though he bends missiles in one scene that look about as realistic as a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

“But wasn’t it fun?” is a common argument I get from a lot of moviegoers. “Fun” is such a subjective word, and can mean any one of different things. In the aspect of simple, plain, straightforward blockbuster fun, I guess this movie satisfies. The problem is I didn’t go into X-men: First Class expecting a brainless blockbuster. I went into this expecting this to be exactly what it claimed to be: a start to the X-men’s journey, an insightful and hot-blooded prequel that showed perspective on how their story began. This wasn’t even close to being a prequel, ending with more questions where there should have been answers. Fox has already announced that a sequel is currently in the works to be released sometime in 2014, and here I am, thinking that these kids need to go to summer school before even thinking about going into the second semester.

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Apr 30 2014
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“THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN” Review (✫✫✫1/2)

♪Does whatever a spider can♪

If I were to have a reboot of one of my favorite superhero films made just ten years ago, The Amazing Spider-man would be that reboot. What can I say about the film that will accurately do it justice? That it is exciting, suspenseful and displays visual effects that leaves the old one in the dust? That the writing is just as acute and skilled as the direction is? That Andrew Garfield has perfect chemistry with Emma Stone? No. Instead, I will describe the film by simply using just one word: amazing.

When Peter Parker was a young, bright-minded child, he lived in the content and warmth of his parents home. When his house was broken into, his father’s office searched through in every crook and cranny, his father Richard (Campbell Scott) quickly packs a suitcase, drives Peter to his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May’s (Sally Field) house, and tells Peter him and his mother will be gone for a while. A few days later, the plane that Peter’s parents were on was reported to have crashed. They didn’t make it out.

Twelve years later, Peter (Now played by Andrew Garfield), now in his teen years, is in high school, gets picked on by the local bullies every now and then, and has a crush on this pretty blonde-haired genius named Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone). While in the basement one day helping his Uncle unclog the water pipe, Peter makes an interesting discovery: his father’s briefcase, filled with notes, theories, and algorithms Peter has never seen before. While looking and studying the notes his father left behind, Peter realizes everything points to one scientific company in particular: Oscorp.

From there, Peter snoops around, goes into a lab he wasn’t supposed to go into, a radioactive spider bites him, and well… you probably already know where it goes from there.

If we look at the story, it is on repeat from the first Spider-man. But the repeat isn’t what we care about. The Amazing Spider-man is done with a new style, energy, and enthusiasm to it than the original one was. Funny, I didn’t expect this movie to be as energetic as it is. This film is directed by Mark Webb, who to date, his only directing experience being music videos and the 2009 romantic-comedy 500 Days of Summer. Quite a difference in genres, I know, but Webb handles the transition well. He makes Spider-man as he sees it, as a young man coming out of puberty using his powers for playful, mischievous reasons rather than the heroic acts of courage and responsibility that most heroes are known for. This Spider-man is more jokey and sarcastic than the original one, spitting witty one-liners while arresting a criminal or web swinging past bystanders.

He fuels the action scenes, inspires laughs, and is the source for original entertainment. If Tobey Maguire is the more emotional Spider-man, this Spider-man is the more sporadic and amusing one.

Andrew Garfield does a great job in portraying this Spider-man in a totally different dynamic. His character is definitely different, retorting to puns, jokes, and one-liners that would only result with awkward silences if Tobey Maguire tried to pull off the same thing. Garfield, however, is more talented than a one-dimensional joker. Like any great actor, his character portrays a flurry of emotions, and he portrays all of these emotions well. We can tell exactly when he is troubled or concerned, when he is angered and enraged, when he is happy and content, or when he is saddened and alone. Peter experiences many tragedies in this movie, and Garfield does a good job expressing the emotions for all of them. Emma Stone, equally, is incredible in this movie, providing the film’s beautiful, smart heroine. Together, their chemistry is irreplaceable, and forms a romance that rivals that of the chemistry Maguire and Dunst made in the original Spider-man movies.

Here is, regardless of pre-conceived opinions, a great movie. It is a blockbuster that does a great job balancing in between spectacular action, heartfelt emotion, and genuine humor, all combining into a reboot that makes it not only fun, but unique in its own right.

From a technical perspective, this film has no flaws. It, however, is not about what it did wrong; its a matter of who did it better.

The biggest weakness with The Amazing Spider-man is its release date. This is ten years after the first movie came out, and five years after its most recent one. Why did it need a reboot? It cannot help but bring up the comparison game when you watch this movie. And what happens when you compare things? You recognize which one did things better, and which one did things weaker. In comparison to the old one, The Amazing Spider-man cannot help but look inferior.

But how, exactly? The flaw exists in the writing, dear reader. There are just simply not enough moments in the film that are as emotionally real or relevant as there was in the first two Spider-man movies. Take, for example, the scene in the original Spider-man where Peter’s Uncle Ben dies because Peter did nothing to stop a criminal that ran past him. In the original film, this was a tragic, painful, and heartbroken realization for Peter that it was not the burglar who killed Uncle Ben, but Peter’s inaction and lack of doing the right thing. Here, it’s just on repeat as something that Peter needs to go through in order to become Spider-man. Peter, however, never acknowledges his responsibility in the matter, and neither does he ever even confront the criminal. How, then, does the issue ever become resolved? Answer: it does not. At the end of the film, everything is resolved except for that one specific conflict.

That’s the film’s only real weakness. I don’t want to go on about this weakness, though, because I’d be beating the bush. The main point: The Amazing Spider-man is still utterly fantastic. It is action-packed, suspenseful, energetic, relentless, exciting, humorous, and highly, highly entertaining. The production is all-around strong, the cast is even stronger, and the story is as driven and purposeful as it has ever been, despite a few moments of misplaced emotion. This is a reboot to one of my favorite superhero films of all time, and the surprise is I wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel to it in the slightest.

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Dec 30 2013
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“DAREDEVIL” Review (✫✫✫)

What is the man without fear afraid of?  

We open on a still, quiet shot, a haunting frame of a rat walking over a pool of blood dripping in front of a church.  As we pan up the window frame, with quick flashbacks cutting in and out as the music crescendos, we reach the top, helicopter spotlights shining on a wounded man in a devil costume grasping onto the holy cross.  This is easily the film’s master shot, and its influence quite possibly lasts throughout the rest of the film, even if nothing else ever comes to live up with this establishing shot.

The man we are looking at is Daredevil, and unless you read the comics, you would never have guessed that he’s blind. Growing up as a young boy in Hell’s Kitchen, Matthew Murdock (Ben Affleck) was the son of former boxer Jack “The Devil” Murdock (David Keith), nicknamed for his brutal fighting style towards his opponents. One day while skating past a construction site, Matt got in the way of a truck carrying barrels of radioactive chemicals when a bar suddenly punctures the metal, spilling the lethal chemical into young Matt’s eyes.

He lost his vision, but what he gained changed him forever. When he woke up in a hospital bed the next day, all of his senses were enhanced to superhuman levels. He could feel the fabrics of his eye bandages without even touching them. He could smell the aroma of bleach permeating off of the tiles in the hallway outside of his room. He could hear the sound of construction work, the cars beeping and the heartbeats of other human beings from miles away. But most impressively, his sense of sound gave him a “radar sense”, allowing him to form images of the people and things that he saw in front of him. He wasn’t just a boy any longer: he became a living sonar.

After witnessing the death of his father (I guess “hearing” his death if you want to get technical), Matt vows to never be afraid of the things he can’t see. To find the killer and bring him to justice. To seek justice, one way or another. To become Daredevil.

Here is a film that has an irresistible sense of style, a movie that takes us through its lavish stunts, choreography, and fight sequences and makes them exhilarating to sit through. It is really exciting, seeing these characters pulling off these crazy, mind-blowing leaps and bounds over buildings, in bars, and on rooftops as they fight each other with lightning-quick movements, attacks and reflexes. It’s even more fascinating seeing it from Daredevil’s perspective, watching bullets fly past him while he slides on railing, flips over tables, and knocks criminals out with his staff and nunchuks. Most would probably view these scenes as silly or preposterous, with characters flying from building to building as if they were in The Matrix. My response? I don’t really care. The fight scenes are choreographed and filmed in a very specific way to where its enjoyable, almost as if the laws of physics don’t matter in a movie like this. You more or less watch it for the joy of seeing the sensational effects rather than criticizing how preposterous and unrealistic it looks.

Oh yes, the action is excellent. Compared to the action, the performances are… inconsistent. Not bad, mind you, just inconsistent, and not all of it is entirely the actors fault. Affleck at least does a good job to keep us interested in between the sensational fight scenes, and even offers some very nice emotional moments where his character experiences both fear and vulnerability. Michael Clarke Duncan, most known as the pure-hearted and innocent miracle-maker in The Green Mile plays here the antonym of that role, a kingpin so foul and villanous that its shocking to see him make the transition. The highlight performance is in breakout actor Collin Ferrel as a hitman named Bullseye, and his presence on the screen is infectious. He is terrifying, his motions, speech and mannerisms forming this character who is so set on making his jobs perfect that he will kill anyone that makes him do something as simple as missing. He is mortifying, and definitely not the kind of guy you want to sit next to on a plane. The only actress I didn’t care much for in this movie was Jennifer Garner, who played a love interest of Matt’s named Elektra, but we’ll get a more into that in a bit.

For simple entertainment, the movie is acceptable. The fight scenes are great, the actors are fitting in their roles and the story advances in a form of pulpy comic book violence, the kind you expect to see when you open a Frank Miller comic and see two superhuman acrobats fighting all over the page.

The problems don’t start at the fight scenes or in its cast: they start at the hands of writer-director Mark Steven Johnson, and that’s a problem because those are two areas that should be the strongest in any film. Johnson, who directed the critically-favorable Simon Birch before this obviously has his “rookie” cap on because the film is so lopsided. It’s so freakingly inconsistent, so much so to the point where I can name an equal number of scenes that I liked side-by-side with the scenes that I disliked.

Do I really need to write out a list? The script switches from serious to silly. So does the acting. The tone can’t decide whether it wants to be dark and dreary or smirking and tongue-in-cheek. I mentioned early in this review that we were introduced with a dark, mesmerizing shot that hooked our attention to the screen. Would you take this movie just as seriously, however, if I told you that there was scene later in the movie where blind lawyer Matt Murdock was kung-fu-fighting against Elektra at a children’s park in broad daylight in public? Probably not, no.

Look, in the eyes of a critic (and I’m not talking about myself), this movie failed. The tone is off-beat, the acting is off-kilter, the scripting is inconsistent, and on that note, so are the visuals. And yet here I stand, giving this movie a marginal positive rating.  Why?  Because I liked it, that’s why. Because I sat down, looked at the movie, compared the good side-by-side with the bad, and ultimately, the good won me over.

I know that won’t be the same case for other viewers, and others are likely to hate the movie for its silliness, for its half-completed visuals, for its inconsistent scripting, filming, editing, and even acting. That’s fine. Different movies appeal to different tastes, and Daredevil won’t appeal to all of them. In the genre of superhero movies, there are many obviously superior to this one,  including the recently-released Spider-man and X-men movies.  If we are going to admit what it is worse than, however, let’s not be forget that Batman and Robin and Howard The Duck also exists. No, that last one was not a typo.

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Jul 02 2013
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The Scope

DC Versus Marvel: Why “The Justice League” Will Not Be As Successful As “The Avengers”

Well, this’ll ruin your morning coffee.  Due to recent developments, I am now convinced that no matter what DC does, that the much-speculated Justice League movie will not be as unique or outstanding as Joss Whedon’s The Avengers was, is, and always will be.  Why all the pessimism?  Call it intuition.  Before The Avengers cinematic universe was conceived, Marvel had a wider grasp of successful projects to boast of, including (but not limited to) Spiderman, X-men, Blade, Wolverine, Kick-Ass, and Men In Black.  DC, in comparison, only has Superman, Batman, and arguably RED and Watchmen as their most successful properties.  Also, I have an unhealthy amount of OCD.  Just thought you should know.

Believe me, I would like nothing more than to see a well-made Justice League movie hit the horizon.  There are as many characters that are as creative and dynamic in the DC universe as there are in the Marvel universe, many of them with memorable stories and villains of their own.  While I want to see a movie eventually, I now believe it will not happen, and if it does, it will not hit the mainstream success that The Avengers did.

Why am I so convinced of this?  DC has every inconvenience against them, and they have to deal with issues Marvel never had to face while producing The Avengers.  I’m not saying Marvel had it easy while making The Avengers.  Lord knows you’ll have a fair amount of doubt and backlash when you try to combine five comic-book properties into one high-adrelanine, action-packed adventure.  Regardless, DC is facing a lot of issues Marvel didn’t have to worry about, including competitive release with The Avengers in itself.

Let’s face facts: When The Avengers was released, we didn’t know what to expect.  All we knew was that it was incorporating six superheroes into one movie, they would be mostly featuring the same actors, the writer/director of “Firefly” was at the helm, and we were hoping it wouldn’t turn into the Saturday Morning Power Hour.  It didn’t, and now we have the exciting, exhilerating, witty, and entertaining Hulk-box-office-smash that The Avengers was.

This is the biggest issue that DC has over Marvel: the comparison game.  If DC would have thought of a plan similar to this ahead of Marvel and released Justice League incorporating elements from multiple DC universe movie properties at once, they would then have had a substantial edge over Marvel and would give them reason to compete for their box office revenue.  But the plain simple fact is that Marvel beat them to it, and now we have something to compare to when Justice League hits the theaters.  How big of a catastrophe is that?  What could possibly compete with The Avengers as far as box-office superheroes go?  I’ll name a few just for facetious effort: X-men, Fantastic Four, and Watchmen.  Now be honest with yourself: do any of those movies stand out in your mind at the level of enjoyment as The Avengers does?

If you’re being honest, it probably doesn’t, and what’s worse is that DC is now pressured into that because Marvel did it first.  But like I said, DC has a lot of issues against them, and many of them have to deal with their very own properties.  Take the following franchises as an example:

THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY

If we were talking about the movies by themselves, there’s no reason for concern.  The Dark Knight trilogy is among the greatest trilogies ever released into theaters, and it not only pleased long-time fans of the caped crusader: it pleased moviegoers who were not associated with the comic books.  The Dark Knighttrilogy isn’t only one of the best comic book movies of all time: they one of the best movies of all time, period.  Very few bad things are said about that franchise as a whole.

Which would enhance excitement to the fans when they think this same character will be incorporated into the Justice League, right?  Wrong.  Producer/Director Christopher Nolan and screenwriter David S. Goyer have stated multiple times that the Batman in the new Justice League is not associated with Nolan’s trilogy.  The quote from Goyer pulled from IGN says it all:

“…Zack has said that Bruce Wayne exists in this universe. It would be a different Bruce Wayne from Chris’ [Nolan] Dark Knight trilogy, and it would be disingenuous to say that Zack and I haven’t had various conversations on set, around ‘what if’ and ‘moving forward'”.  

On top of that, Christian Bale himself admitted to Entertainment Weekly that not only will he not be portraying Batman in the upcoming DC team-up film: he doesn’t even know about a release date.

“I have no information, no knowledge about anything. I’ve literally not had a conversation with a living soul. I understand that they may be making a Justice League movie, that’s it”.  

So what is their plan?  End a movie series in 2012, release a Superman movie in 2013, and reboot the character only a few years later?  Don’t they remember how many people saw those movies?  How much people praised them?  How those movies stuck out in people’s minds when someone mentioned the word “Batman”?  What are they thinking?  How on Earth do they think can they replace that?

Now, someone could offer the argument by saying Nolan’s universe was meant to be seen as realistic, whereas the rest of the DC universe wouldn’t be.  To which I respond that as hogwash.  Snyder also saidMan Of Steel was meant to be seen as realistic too, but we all know how realistic it is for an alien from outer space to get super powers on earth, or having a guy dress up in a halloween costume to beat criminals to near death.  The thought of superheroes in itself is fictitious, with powers or without.  So why are we trying so hard to differentiate in between reality and fiction?

Another possible argument someone could make is that The Dark Knight trilogy has ended, and there would be no way to revive the character for the Justice League.  To which I would say you are half right.  If we are talking about the Batman after The Dark Knight Rises then yes, that Batman is no more with us. But what about the Batman in between movies?  There is a two-year split in between Batman Begins andThe Dark Knight, and a five-year split in between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.  Surely, someone could find room to fit Nolan’s Batman into the JL somewhere in that time stamp?

So, already you have your greatest property and you’re sending it out the window.  That’s great.  What else could go wrong?

MAN OF STEEL

I’m just going to go ahead and say this: Man Of Steel was a great film.  It had depth, it had character, it had development, and it had plenty of high-octane turbulent action.  It was a great reboot for Superman, and it was a great jump-off point for a possible Justice League series.  That much I will give to Snyder and his crew.

The complications with the Justice League universe, however, are plenty.  The biggest issue right now is their speculated release dates.  As many of you might expect, Warner Bros. has been trying to push for the Justice League movie to be released in 2016, to be released competitively with The Avengers 2 andStar Wars: Episode VII.  The original plan was to release Man Of Steel this year, release a possible sequel in 2014-2015, and then release the Justice League movie

That puts a great amount of pressure on Man Of Steel, and I don’t think it can handle it.  Again, not to play the comparison game with Marvel (even though I am), but like Man Of Steel, Iron Man was a great jump-off point for The Avengers, even though it was more charismatic and down-to-earth than Man Of Steel was.  It was a great film.  Great enough to jump right into The Avengers though?  Absolutely not.  It had to release four more movies before the buildup to the Avengers was complete and the excitement was at its highest.

Like Iron Man, Man Of Steel is a great film to set up its expanded Universe.  Enough to jump right into aJustice League movie though?  Not even close.  Another sequel, maybe, but to jump right into the DC-team-up film would be suicide.  The announcement of a JL movie that this point wouldn’t be an anticipation: it would be a surprise.  How is that a good setup for a box-office smash?

Also, many other audience members felt the tone was too serious and did not fit into the joyous, silly veins of the original Christopher Reeve series.  To which I would say quit being a stooge and enjoy the movie for what it is.  People who wanted Green Lantern to be fun and silly got what they asked for, and look at how that movie faired with the moviegoing audiences.

Speaking of which…

GREEN LANTERN

Many people hated this movie, and their hate was warranted.  Green Lantern was silly, stupid fun, and that’s all it needed to be.  I for one enjoyed the movie and appreciated it for its confidence, its stellar visual effects, and its smirking charisma.  Others, however, obviously do not share my opinion, and ultimately their opinion as a whole matters more than mine does.

To which I know disregard and ask this: what are you going to do with him now for the Justice League?  They can’t bring this same character in and have him do the same thing he did the first time: that will resurrect everything audiences hated the first time they watched the Martin Campbell film.  What are they going to do then?  Are they going to revamp him?  Recast him?  Reboot him?  Maybe even cut him out entirely?  Batman has a great story behind his success and Superman a great following.  Green Lantern has none of that.  So what can DC do to the character to give him a new spin and a spirit on the franchise?

The list of issues goes on and on.  How are they going to incorporate Wonder Woman into it?  What about the Flash?  Martian Manhunter?  Who would they cast?  Who would be the villain?  And how on Earth are they going to make Aquaman not look stupid???  

Bottom line: Justice League will not be as good as The Avengers.  DC just isn’t prepared for it.  There is the off-chance that it can still be good, exciting, and entertaining blockbuster fun, but I’m convinced that there’s no way that DC can give these characters the same treatment Whedon did for The Avengers solely because they won’t be as recognized as those characters have.  Even if you do give each Justice Leaguer his own movie and give time to set up each character: how do you know you’ll be as successful as The Avengers was?  Won’t you be following a formula at that point?

Of course, there is the off-chance that I’m completely wrong and that the Justice League will be vastly more successful than The Avengers will be.  I’m going to see it regardless of what RottenTomatoes says, and I hope it’ll at least be as good as Man Of Steel is.  But that’s unlikely, and no matter how it turns out, lets just be grateful that Robert Schwentke won’t be directing, writing, or having anything to do with the movie.  The last thing we need is a PG-13 version of RED.

Oh, wait a minute.

Source: EMPIRE, Entertainment Weekly, IGN
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Jun 15 2013
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Reviews

“MAN OF STEEL” Review (✫✫✫✫)

Look!  Up in the sky!  Its a bird!  It’s a plane!  It’s the man of steel!

Now this is what I’m talking about.  Man Of Steel is in a special place as a reboot, a carefully calculated yet ambitious and affectionate movie giving a new energy and enthusiasm to a cherished American icon.  The last thing I wanted Man Of Steel to become was a remake of the original Superman movies, or even worse, a PG-13 version of Watchmen.  We have none of that here.  It isn’t coy, formulaic, or insincere: it’s a rare rebooted superhero remake that affectionately, genuinely works.

In case you haven’t picked up on it by now, Man Of Steel is a retelling of the story of Superman.  Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) is a young inhabitant of Smallville, Kansas who deals with a specific problem that other teengers his age doesn’t deal with: he has metahuman powers the likes of which cannot be from planet earth.  And young Clark isn’t from planet Earth either: but he doesn’t know that.  Not yet.

You see, Clark’s real name is Kal-El, and he comes from the planet Krypton, a planet that died due to its own selfishness and greed.  Scientist Jor-el (Russel Crowe), who is the father of Kal-El, knew of Krypton’s future demise, and planned ahead for it.  He embedded the code of Krypton’s DNA within his newborn son, Kal-El, and sent him to a faraway planet where he not be harmed from Krypton’s destruction: Planet Earth.

Unfortunately, his former ally and friend General Zod (Michael Shannon) is hellbent on preserving his species and building a new Krypton on planet Earth.  For this he needs Clark and his DNA to fuel his machine so that they can form a rebirthed Krypton upon the ashes of Earth’s surface.  Clark, fully knowing where he came from and the extent of his abilities, decides to defend the earth from Zod’s evil scheme and to become the symbol of hope for all of mankind to follow.

Fully aware of the dangers that came with a reboot for Superman, one of my initial worries for the film was that there would be too much action and not enough character investment to go with it.  That is the typical danger with superhero movies, after all: filmmakers are typically more interested in the action and visual effects than they are in emotion or in investment for their characters.

That is not what we have here.  Director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) and screenwriter David S. Goyer (Dark City, The Dark Knight Trilogy) make here a wonderful marriage of something rare: great scripting with great action, and great directing.  What makes this movie so appealing is not the fact that it is an action movie: we’ve seen hundreds of movies before where action is just stacked on top of action, with no real cause or motivation to be concerned with any of it.

Man Of Steel is not that.  It is a rare thing: a movie in which the action is just as fleshed out as the character’s emotions are.  Whenever Clark isn’t flying, breaking the sound barrier, or punching some guy’s light’s out, the movie interjects a flashback of Clark’s childhood: we get a glimpse to a more personal portrait of Clark as a child and what it was like growing up struggling with these superhuman powers.  Perhaps in another movie it would be all fun and jokey, but here it is taken as seriously as the death of Bruce’s parents from the Batman series.  I was reminded of the last line Peter spoke during his ending monologue of the original Spider-man: “This power is my gift: my curse”.

The action, however, is utterly spectacular.  In the original Superman movies, Clark was resorted to lifting up school buses and stopping nuclear missiles as his highest challenges.  Not here.  Here the stakes are much higher, and we can tell that because of the level of destruction in this movie.  When Superman trades blows with another Kryptonian, destruction is sure to follow.  Crushed cars and overturned trains are a constant during these fight scenes.  Crumbling buildings and falling debris is to be expected.  There was even one terrifying moment where the Kryptonians used a gravity machine to tear apart the Earth’s infrastructure.  Did I mention the crumbling buildings?  Watching this level of destruction made me feel sorry for the mayor of Metropolis.  I’d hate to see the repair bill.

And lastly, I must pay respect to Henry Cavill and Michael Shannon.  Here, they are the perfect embodiment of themselves: good, or evil, human or Kryptonian. They don’t fight in an area of black-and-white: they fight in many shades of gray, because while we don’t want Clark to lose his home on planet Earth, we also understand and sympathize with Zod’s reasonings because he too lost his home.  There’s a very human reason why these men are fighting, and there’s no simplicity in their conflict: only complexion and brutal reality.

Before you ask me, no this does not replace the original “Superman” movies, and no, Cavill is not an adequate replacement for Christopher Reeve himself.  That is besides the point.  Man Of Steel did to the Superman franchise what The Amazing Spider-man did for Spider-man: it breathed a new life and conception to it, ensuring that when its all said and done, the Superman legacy will live on, and it will not die away because the actor of the former icon has passed through time.  Snyder has accomplished quite a feat here: he has paid tribute and honor to Reeve and the filmmakers of the original Superman by offering this exciting, emotional, and action-packed thrill ride that gives a new birth to the flying caped crusader.

PS: Admittedly, I saw this film in IMAX 3-D.  See it in IMAX, but don’t waste your money on the 3-D.  A fantastic movie doesn’t deserve a dim picture anyway.

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Jun 15 2013
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Reviews

“WATCHMEN” Review (✫✫)

Bad content, bad timing, and a bad comedian, all five minutes before midnight.   

Watchmen is a misguided and misunderstood film, a movie that will sharply divide the fans for both the original graphic novel and fans of the superhero movie sub genre, period.  On one hand, what we have here is compelling superhero drama.  The characters are fleshed out, their motivations are clearly understood, and we’re rooting for a few of them once we understand that their intentions are pure.  For everyone else, however, we grow to despise their character arc, we become annoyed with their conventions, and some characters are just downright despicable.  And how come some of them aren’t even wearing pants?  Didn’t they know jeans were invented way back in 1873?

Watchmen is based around the graphic novel of the same name by artist Dave Gibbons and writer Alan Moore (who demanded his name be left completely out of the credits, convinced that a movie adaptation of his novel was impossible).  Both the graphic novel and the film adaptation surrounds a group of retired superheroes called “The Watchmen” who are brought out of retirement when they learn that one of their own has been murdered by being thrown out of his own the window and landing on the concrete pavement, his blood staining the smiley pin on his jacket.

The one who has been murdered is Edward Blake, aka “The Comedian” (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).  The first Watchman to learn of Blake’s murder is a fedora-wearing culprit known as Rorschach (Jackie Eerie Haley), who wears a ink-blot shape-shifting mask which makes his name appropriate.  He develops a theory that someone is gunning for masked heroes, so he sets out to warn his other fellow watchmen: Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), aka a Batman rip-off called Night Owl, Sally Jupiter (Malin Akerman) aka Silk Spectre, Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode) aka Ozymandias, to whom his secret identity is known to the world, and John Osterman, aka Doctor Manhattan (Billy Crudrup), who is the only one with super powers, apparently being able to conduct anything his mind can imagine.

Here is a movie that is, at parts, a compelling character study and a fascinating crime drama.  That is because unlike other action movies, Watchmen is based heavily on character and story, not relentless action and CGI.  The film delves deep into the histories and origins of each individual watchman, and while at times the exposition may be drawn out and a bit boring, the rest of the time it is undeniably gripping and attentive.

Cudrup was ghastly and stoic as Doctor Manhattan, a man slowly losing his humanity but doesn’t know what to quite do about it.  Malin Akerman had a sort of spunk and wit to her as Laurie Jupiter, and in one emotionally stirring moment we experience all of her dread and desperation through her cries of anguish and defeat.  I especially liked Jackie Earle Haley as the cold, calculated, and unforgiving vigilante known as Rorschach.  I think he is the most fascinating character out of the bunch.  He has a rashness, a raspy, hurt, and pained voice behind his every narration, and we can tell that this is man who has had a pained past.  I would have hoped that the movie would delve deeper into his past than it did, but that’s besides the point.  Haley is so intimidating in his performance, the alternate title for this movie could have been called Watchmen: The Journal of Rorschach.

There are parts of this movie that are undeniably surreal and fascinating.  For the rest of the movie, however, the emotion and the mythology becomes redundant, and we lose interest because of its slow pacing and its drawn-out monologue.  This surprises me, because the director is Zack Snyder, and he is the same man who made the the visually and emotionally appealing 300 prior to this.  How is it that he goes from the provocative, epic, and entertaining veins of 300 to something as drawn-out and overly-philosophical as this?

Part of this, I think, has to be his dependency on the original comic.  One of his tactics when filming 300 was using the original graphic novel as both the storyboard and script for the production.  He has been reported to have used that same tactic here for Watchmen, with a few minor edits of the script by screenwriters David Hayater and Alex Tse.  How could this tactic work for 300 and yet backfire on him for Watchmen?  Simple: the answer lies with the page length.  300 had a total of 88 pages, while Watchmen had a total of 416.  Surely, Zack Snyder must’ve thought at some point he’d lose his audience with the overuse of exposition?

Whether he thought about it or not, he went through with it anyways: what we have here is a note-for-note, page-by-page adaptation that copies its story as simple as a copy-and-paste edit on Microsoft word.  For that, he loses points for unoriginality and innovation.

I feel like I’m watching two different movies here: two halves of one whole.  One half of the movie is dark and mesmerizing, is well acted, emotional and motivated, and sports plenty of visually beauitful scenes at the helm of the film’s director, Zack Snyder.

The other half of this movie is filled with content so bleak, graphic, and unnecessary that I’m shocked Zack Snyder didn’t turn it into a porno.  Maybe he did and we don’t even know it: Doctor Manhattan is naked through more than half of the film (and yes, we see every angle of his shining blue huevos), there’s an overly-prolonged sex scene between Night Owl and Silk Spectre, and you could have cut half of the Comedian’s scenes in the movie and make him more appealing to the audience.  Seriously: someone explain to me how having a guy rape a woman and then shoot another he impregnated supposed to make him a sympathetic figure?

Someone in theory could make an opposing argument by saying “But David!  That was in the comic book!”  Yes, but should that have been in the comic book, let alone in the movie?  I’ll answer that for you: No.  It shouldn’t have.  If it doesn’t advance story or define character, then what was the point for having it in there in the first place?  If the superhero genre is a big, beaming smiley face, Watchmen is the blood stain covering the eyelid: distracting, unsettling, and unnecessary.

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