FILM REVIEW OF "X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST" (2014)

Those immersed in all things Marvel, particularly Twentieth Century Fox’s “X-Men” film franchise, should scrutinize “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (**** OUT OF ****) several times for its larger-than-life spectacle, global adventure, and sterling performances.  Director Bryan Singer, who helmed the first two “X-Men” outings and scenarist Simon Kinberg of “X-Men: The Last Stand” bring the popular Marvel franchise full circle.  This time around fans can savor the best of both worlds, with the original cast in the futuristic scenes while their youthful counterparts flesh out the flashbacks.  Furthermore, Singer and company spring some audacious surprises and provide a whole new future for the franchise.  Clearly, Singer and Kinberg hold “The Matrix” and “Terminator 2” in high regard because they take cues from these seminal science fiction films.  Indeed, as this elaborate time travel tale takes place, some characters suffer from shortage of screen presence for a variety of reasons not altogether clear.  Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Fame Janssen, Kelsey Grammer, Anna Paquin, and James Marsden don’t garner the amount of screen time reserved for Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence.  Nevertheless, they make an indelible impression in spite of their respective brevity.  Of course, if you missed either “X-Men: The Last Stand” (2006) or “X-Men: First Class” (2011), you may have trouble keeping up with both the plot and characters.   Singer and company splice in scenes from earlier “X-Men” epics to refresh our memories when allusions are made to certain characters that do not appear in “Days of Future Past.”  Although it lacks a villain as deliciously despicable as Kevin Bacon’s Sebastian Shaw, this striking ensemble superhero saga eclipses “X-Men: First Class” in virtually every respect.

Comic book fans should prepare themselves for some major surprises.  Singer’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past” shares selectively with issues 141 and 142 of Chris Claremont & John Byrne’s “The Uncanny X-Men.”  The “Days of Future Past” comic book appeared in print January thru February of 1981.  Originally, Kitty Pryde plunged back in time in the graphic novel rather than the Wolverine in the film.  Moreover, some villains in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants are conspicuously AWOL, notably The Blob and Avalanche.  Meantime, the assassination plot remains intact, but the individual marked for death differs.  The assassin’s target is no longer a politician, but an eminent research scientist who wants to eradicate all traces of mutants.  The Sentinels show up and pose a threat not only to the mutants, but also mankind, too.  Despite these changes, Singer and Kinberg have created an exciting, imaginative, but acerbic opus.  The “X-Men” movies have always been a notch above the other Marvel film properties.  We learn that President Kennedy was a mutant and Magneto tried to save his life.  Singer and company depict President Nixon as a buffoon and excoriate the government for the debacle in South Vietnam.  For those who enjoy “X-Men” movies simply as an avenue of escapism, the political commentary may be as extraneous as it is pretentious.  Meantime, we have a movie that isn’t strictly devoted to urban renewal.  The Marvel film franchises at Walt Disney emerge as hollow-minded crowd-pleasers by comparison.  They shun any form of political commentary.  Singer takes “X-Men” seriously, with a smirk every now and then to keep us poised on our collective toes.  Interestingly enough, despite its fidelity to “X-Men: First Class,”  “Days of Future Past” unfolds after a gap in time has occurred since its predecessor.  When we last saw Magneto, he had assembled his own team.  Some of those members met with calamity between “X-Men: First Class” and “Days of Future Past.” 

“Days of Future Past” unfolds 50 years into a dystopian future.  Menacing robots known as ‘Sentinels’ have dominated mankind.  Everything lies in ruins.  The skulls and skeletons of millions of mutants and men litter the barren landscape.  The Sentinels are implacable foes.  These towering robots have been programmed to eliminate all mutants with extreme prejudice.  A lesser group of X-Men, led by Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page of “Whip It”), have managed to evade the Sentinels, but they realize they are living on borrowed time.  They retreat to a camp in remote China.  Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) wants Kitty to project him back in time, so they can rewrite history and avert the rise of the Sentinels.  Wolverine (Hugh Jackman of “X-Men 2”) volunteers to time-trip back to the 1970s, so he can contact the younger versions of Xavier and Magneto.  Wolverine is the only X-Man who can travel that far back in time.  His body can adapt to the hostile conditions of time travel.  As it turns out, the Sentinels are the pride and joy of their inventor, Dr. Boliver Trask (Peter Dinklage of “Game of Thrones”), who has captured and tortured mutants..  Somehow, he managed to capture, torture, and kill most of Magneto’s gang after the Cuban missile crisis.  Trask approaches Congress about his Sentinel project, but the politicians refused to fund him.  Meanwhile, Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence of “The Hunger Games”) plans to murder the diminutive Trask at the Paris Peace Conference to prevent him from launching his Sentinel program.  Coming from the bleak future, Wolverine confronts both a reluctant Xavier (James McAvoy of “Atonement”) and a treacherous Magneto (Michael Fassbinder of “Prometheus”) about the necessity of thwarting Mystique from assassinating Trask. 

Despite its two-hour plus running time, “Days of Future Past” neither wears out its welcome nor bogs down in a labyrinth of complications.  Singer and Kinberg conjure up considerable tension and suspense.  They keep throwing obstacles into the path of our heroes so that Wolverine and company have to struggle against incredible odds.  Indeed, the box office triumph of this “X-Men” escapade has already prompted Twentieth Century Fox to green-light a sixth installment, “X-Men: Apocalypse.”  You should linger and patiently watch the end credits for a glimpse of the awesome adversary who awaits our mutant heroes in the next outing.  Don’t skip “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''GODZILLA'' (2014)

Believe it or not, although the Japanese made their landmark monster movie “Godzilla” in 1954, Hollywood beat them to the punch with “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.”   Adapted from a Ray Bradbury short story published in “The Saturday Evening Post” magazine, “Beast” concerned a prodigious prehistoric amphibian awakened from hibernation by atomic bomb blasts.  Wasting no time, the scaly leviathan wended its way to New York City where it wrecked havoc on a heretofore unparalleled scale.  Even before “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,” Hollywood had made a 1925 silent-era movie “The Lost World” where a dinosaur on the loose rampaged through London.  Anyway, about a year after “Beast” came out, the Japanese released “Gojira,” and the Toho Company went on to exploit its radioactive creature for every cent it was worth.  Godzilla stomped Tokyo to smithereens, and the film proved so profitable that Hollywood reedited it to accommodate American actors and changed the title from “Gojira” to “Godzilla.”  Afterward, Hollywood entrusted the gigantic monster genre to the Japanese.  Meantime, Toho has churned out at least 28 Godzilla epics over a 60 year period and coined millions at the box office with their man in a rubber suit.  Eventually, rival Japanese studios produced Godzilla knock-offs; the chief example was the titanic turtle “Gamera” that breathed fire. 

In 1998, “Independence Day” director Roland Emmerich helmed the first American “Godzilla,” but it took too many liberties with the Toho legend.  First, Big G lost his incendiary breath.  Second, Big G resembled a Komodo dragon.  Emmerich and co-scenarist Dean Devlin rewrote Godzilla’s origins.  Comparably, “Godzilla” (1998) sold only half as many tickets during its opening weekend as “Monster” director Gareth Edwards’ ambitious, second American reboot of Big G.  Unlike Emmerich’s “Godzilla” that synthesized spectacle and slapstick, Edwards and “Seventh Son” scenarist Max Borenstein have shunned humor in favor of catastrophe.  The new “Godzilla” (*** OUT OF ****) doesn’t embroil lame-brained amateurs, but grim-faced scientific and military types.  Indeed, this “Godzilla” treats the Toho icon with genuine respect and dignity.  This time around Godzilla isn’t searching for someplace to lay its eggs.  Instead, Big G has embarked on its own crusade to defend mankind and thwart a couple of nuclear-age behemoths that want to lay their eggs in San Francisco.  Ironically, Big G wins the battle of the monsters, but he doesn’t garner as much stomp time as he did in Emmerich’s “Godzilla.”  You’ll have to wait patiently about an hour for Big G to show up.  Nevertheless, Godzilla makes a dramatic entrance, and he dominates the action for the last half-hour.  Edwards’ straight-forward version of “Godzilla” eclipses Emmerich’s comic version.

Most of the amusing “Godzilla” movies from the 1960s & 1970s pitted Big G against two enemies, and the new “Godzilla” adopts the scenario of the outnumbered hero.  The battle scenes between Godzilla and the MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) are thoroughly invigorating.  Unfortunately, the two biggest drawbacks to Edwards’ largely entertaining “Godzilla” are its dreary, one-dimensional humans who clutter up the action and the bland MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) monsters that resemble gargantuan mosquitoes that walk on their knuckles like gorillas.  A cast of familiar faces cannot compensate for their sketchy characters.  Mankind isn’t half as interesting as Godzilla, especially when he tangles with the MUTOs in a world class smack-down brawl.  Ironically, Big G appears to get the short shrift.  “Godzilla” isn’t so much about the monsters as the spectacular collateral damage that Godzilla and two airborne giants wreck on mankind.  The destruction, or perhaps urban renewal, matches the wholesale mayhem of the “Transformers” trilogy and Marvel’s “The Avengers.”  Traditionally, filmmakers have employed Godzilla as allegory for the appalling consequences mankind has paid for tampering with our environment.  Essentially, Godzilla has always been the cultural embodiment of global warming.

The action unfolds in 1954 when the military detonates atomic devices at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in a futile effort to destroy Godzilla.  We catch a glimpse of Big-G’s heavily spiked back emerging from the depths as the explosions erupt.  Later, a nuclear power plant in Japan collapses, and the radioactive ruins become the equivalent of Area 51.  Janjira Plant Supervisor Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston of “Drive”) watches in horror as his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche of “The English Patient”) dies when the reactor blows up.  Afterward, the government quarantines the collapsed plant, but Brody suspects the government is orchestrating a cover-up.  Meantime, Joe's son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Savages”) grows up, joins the Navy, and specializes in explosive ordnance disposal.  He marries Elle (Elizabeth Olsen of “Oldboy”) who is nurse in San Francisco.  Naturally, they have a son Sam (Carson Bolde).  Fifteen years after the Janjira disaster, Joe hasn’t recanted his crazy theories about a cover-up.  The authorities arrest him for trespassing in his old home in the quarantine zone.  They escort him to meet two scientists, Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Graham (Sally Hawkins), who have established a secret facility within the Janjira ruins.  All hell breaks loose a second time, and a colossal, winged reptile materializes. 

Clearly, the last thing director Gareth Edwards wanted for us to do is snicker at his “Godzilla” reboot.  Not only does he want us to take Godzilla seriously as a monster, but he also wants us to take the movie “Godzilla” seriously.  This new “Godzilla” shares little in common with the-man-in-a-rubber-suit “Godzilla” franchise.  If you haven’t seen either “Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla” (1994) or “Godzilla vs. Megalon” (1973), you haven’t seen some of the vintage “Godzilla” entries that challenge your suspension of disbelief.  Edwards draws on Steven Spielberg’s classic “Jaws” as a template for both the presentation and the pacing of this impressive, beautifully lensed, two hour plus CGI monstrosity.  Like the 1998 “Godzilla,” the new “Godzilla” rewrites the creature’s origins.  Despite the outlandish sci-fi fantasy elements, the visual effects make everything appear believable.  The spectacle of destruction in Japan, Hawaii, Las Vegas and San Francisco is stunning.  Altogether, Edward’s “Godzilla” breathes new fire into a old franchise. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN" (2012)

Sony Pictures has ignored the old adage: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Five years ago, Sony canceled the fourth installment in the Toby Maguire "Spider-man" franchise with original director Sam Raimi at the helm.  The studio cited escalating production costs as justification for abandoning the series.  Now, not only has Sony rebooted it with a different director and a different pair of leads, but also the studio has retooled it with a darker screenplay. You could call it "The Dark Spider Arises" because the filmmakers are channeling "Batman" in this entry.  Unfortunately, "The Amazing Spider-man" isn't as amazing as the original "Spider-man," but it is still worth seeing despite its flaws. "(5oo) Days of Summer" director Marc Webb struggles with two problems: a lackluster villain straight out of a bad B-movie chiller and a drawn-out running time.  Essentially, "The Losers" scenarist James Vanderbilt, original "Spider-man 2" scribe Alvin Sargent, and "Harry Potter" penman Steve Kloves have kept intact most of the best parts of the original. Dare they depart from the canon?  Happily, they've have retained the radioactive spider bite, the confrontation with obnoxious Flash, and the splendid web-slinging training sequences. Webb and his writers have put into effect some interesting changes.  Ostensibly, except for a single close-up on a stack of newspapers, they have omitted the Daily Bugle newspaper. This time around they depict Uncle Ben's murder in graphic detail, an event that occurred off-screen in the Sam Raimi original. Further, they have made the heroic Peter Parker more of a nerd than he was in Toby Maguire's incarnation.  The last thirty-five minutes make it worth watching despite its occasional tedium.  Don’t skip the added scene isolated in the end credits.

Along the way Webb and company have forged a few surprises, particularly with Peter's other romantic interest; Gwen Stacy has replaced Mary Jane Watson.  Peter contends with new antagonists both natural and supernatural.  The most prominent villain is Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans of “Notting Hill”), while the second is Gwen's father, New York Police Department Captain Stacy (sneery Denis Leary of “Two If My Sea”) who abhors vigilante interlopers and has nothing but contempt for Spidey. The scene at the supper table when Peter meets Captain Stacy sets these two characters at odds with each other.  Stacy is a hidebound law and order man.  Later, when Peter tries to warn him about the threat that Dr. Connors poses, Stacy reminds him that he is referring to his daughter’s mentor.  Only during the grand finale do Spider-Man and Captain Stacy resolve their conflicts and unite.  Stacy amounts to an alternative to newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson who help Spider-Man in similar contempt.  Unfortunately, the film stretches itself perilously thin in the final quarter hour into a 136 minute running time. Actor Rhys Ifans' maimed scientist villain is seamlessly mutated into a giant green lizard, but he lacks half of the ferocity that Maguire's adversaries provided him with in director Sam Raimi’s trilogy. The Green Goblin was a lively, audacious adversary, but The Lizard is rather dreary. The special effects are terrific as is the cinematography. Although he is 28 years old, British actor Andrew Garfield looks more believable as a skinny teenager than Toby Maguire.  Indeed, he would be fantastic as Norman Bates if Hollywood ever reboots the Hitchcock classic. 

Several scenes distinguish “The Amazing Spider-Man” as an above-average epic.  The scene on the Williamsburg Bridge when Connors mutates into the Lizard stands out, with the nimble Spidey driven to save multiple characters.  The most memorable is a little boy stuck in an SUV hanging over the East River.  What makes this instance so significant is that our hero identifies himself as Spider-Man to a grateful father (C. Thomas Howell) after he has rescued his son.  Later, the grateful father repays Spidey when the injured champion has to websling his way to Oscorp building from the other side of town.  .  The scene where Spidey tests his new found abilities to leap and lung is reminiscent of Kevin Bacon’s dance antics in the original “Footloose.”  The final confrontation between The Lizard and Spider-Man is truly impressive stuff, more so because the early disparaging Stacy now works for Spidey.

Martin Sheen is good as Peter’s uncle, but he cannot eclipse Cliff Robertson in the Tobey Maguire origin.  Gwen learns about Peter’s alter-ego Spider-Man when he shows up battered at her room in a New York high-rise apartment.  The chief difference here between the Tobey Maguire “Spider-Man” and Garfield’s is that Gwen and he don’t kiss with our hero dangling upside-down.  One of my chief complaints about this slick reboot is the scene between Peter Parker and Flash.  After Peter acquires his mysterious powers at Oscorp, he humiliates Flash on the basketball court and is summoned to the principal’s office.  Later, Uncle Ben reprimands our hero for wanting a little payback.  Stan Lee shows up for his usual cameo.  This time around he is in the high school library wearing head phones while the Lizard and Spidey tangle with each other.

Although the special visual effects in “The Amazing Spider-Man” are stupendous, it doesn’t seem real when Spidey puts on the mask and performs his acrobatic feats because we know that he is a visual effect.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2" (2014)

Although it surpasses its predecessor, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” (*** OUT OF ****) suffers from too many villains.  Meantime, audiences should prepare themselves for more narrative tweaking on the part of “(500) Days of Summer” director Marc Webb, “Star Trek” writers Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci, and “Fringe” scribe Jeff Pinkner to the classic Marvel Comics characters created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko back in August 1962.  Initially, “Evil Dead” director Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” trilogy coupled Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker with Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson, while the Andrew Garfield reboot pairs Peter with Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy.  Technically, in the comics, Gwen was Peter Parker’s first love.  Clearly, Webb’s reboot shows more fidelity to the comics than the original Raimi trilogy.  Peter and Gwen were dating before our hero met Mary Jane.  Comparably, Superman has two comic book love interests: Lois Lane and Lana Lang.  Mind you, Lois has dominated the movies.  This time around the tweaking involves a villain that Tobey Maguire tangled with in his first web-crawling chronicle.  Of course, people don’t watch “Spider-man” movies, or any superhero saga, to agonize over the fate of the invincible entity.  We show up for the latest outlandish villain, their origin story, the inevitable showdown with Spider-Man, and pyrotechnical constellation of special effects. 

Imitating the Warner Brothers’ Batman franchise, Webb and company pit Spidey against three villains to keep him busy throughout this occasionally tedious two hour and twenty minute plus pandemonium.  Judged by this criterion, “Amazing Spider-Man 2” trumps its one-adversary predecessor with a triple threat treat.  Happily, Jamie Fox’s glowering Electro, Dane DeHaan’s bizarre Green Goblin, and Paul Giamatti’s obstreperous Rhino are far livelier than Rhys Ifans’ dreary Lizard.  Electro puts up the fiercest fight.  Green Goblin doesn’t match Electro in terms of actual combat, but he contributes to the worst thing that happens in the third act.  Indeed, the allure then is not just for the adversaries but also for the hero’s closest friends.  Apart from Sally Fields’ indestructible Aunt May, Gwen Stacy is the only other hold-over from the 2012 original.  Webb and his writers add a wrinkle that raises the romance above its usual peripheral subplot status.  Everything that Spider-Man does has consequences for Gwen.  Naturally, a superhero spends his life negotiating an obstacle course, and the love interest complicates matters.  Spider-Man worries about Gwen not so much because he loves her.  We’re reminded Spider-Man swore an oath to her gruff father, the late Captain Stacy, that he would stay out of her life.  Every time he turns around, Spider-Man sees the specter of Captain Stacy frowning at him and this haunts him. 

“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” opens about the same time as its predecessor, with a juvenile Peter in his parents’ house.  All we know from the original is that Richard Parker (Campbell Scott of “Dying Young”) and his wife deposited Peter at the house of his Uncle Ben and Aunt May.  In the sequel, we see what else happened after they left Peter and boarded a private jet to Switzerland.  This scene reminded me of the opening scene aboard a plane in the James Bond movie “Moonraker.”  Anyway, as far as we know, the Parkers perished in a plane crash, but anything—you know—can happen in a cinematic superhero franchise.  The action resumes with Spider-Man arriving in the nick of time to pick up his diploma at his high school graduation after thwarting a fanatical Russian criminal, Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti of “Rock of Ages”), from stealing plutonium vials during a runaway chase through Times Square.  This exhilarating demolition derby with Aleksei careening through downtown Manhatten traffic in a tow-truck hauling an armored car gets everything on off on the right foot.  During this mayhem, Spider-Man saves Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx of “Django Unchained”) from being struck by Sytsevich.  Afterward, we are introduced to one of Peter’s closest friends, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan of “Lawless”), who haven’t seen Peter for a decade.  Comparatively, DeHaan doesn’t eclipse James Franco from the Maguire trilogy.  Oscorp executive Donald Menken (Colm Feore of “Pearl Harbor”) ushers Harry to the bed of his dying father, Norman (Chris Cooper of “Money Train”), who bears bad tidings to his son.  Meantime, Max plunges accidentally into a tank at Oscorp and is bitten by genetically adapted electric eels.  Eventually, Max mutates into the electrifying villain Electro who generates no end of problems for Spider-Man as well as the city electric company.

Once again, Garfield outshines Maguire as the costume-clad champion, even though it is obvious that Garfield, an Englishman in his thirties, doesn’t look like an angst-afflicted teen.  The twentysomething Stone is as luminous as ever as Gwen, but she is too old to be playing a teen, too.  Nevertheless, this sympathetic couple shares enough chemistry and radiates enough charisma that it is easy for us to overlook their age disparity.  Meanwhile, you’ll have to suspend your disbelief because the larger-than-life antics could never occur in the real world.  Indeed, Electro qualifies as an unusual villain, driven by revenge, who can materialize seemingly at will whenever and wherever he wants like a wraith.  The showdown in Times Square with Spider-Man where Electro tries to electrocute everybody crackles with thrills and chills.  Battling Electro alone would have been more than sufficient for “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” but Webb and his writers unleash the nefarious Green Goblin while Gwen insists on helping Spider-Man despite the consequences.  You could probably shove your finger into a light socket and experience the same effect that this noisy, ambitious, vertigo-inducing, sci-fi fantasy delivers with gusto.  The OMG prosthetic make-up and visual effects are nothing short of stunning.  “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” doesn’t know when to quit, and it leaves us breathless after a supreme tragedy to soldier on with our webslinger hero poised to battle one more adversary.