VACATION (Dirs. John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein, 2015)
�I�ve never even heard of the original vacation,� protests James Griswold (Skyler Gisondo), when his father Rusty (Ed Helms) pitches to his family that they should drive cross-country to Walley World just like he did with his parents and sister over 30 years ago.
�It doesn�t matter. The new vacation will stand on its own.� Helm�s Rusty declares, but despite that being a solid meta joke, sadly it�s not true. This new reboot/sequel contains so many call backs to the original VACATION that there�s no way to forget it at any point during this film�s 99 minute running time. Queue Lindsay Buckingham�s �Holiday Road� and we�re off!
For the fifth film in the VACATION franchise (there�s also a TV movie, NATIONAL LAMPOON�S CHRISTMAS VACATION 2, and a 14 minute short film, HOTEL HELL VACATION, but let�s not count those), Helms and Christina Applegate as his wife Debbie take over from Chevy Chase and Beverly D�Angelo as the next generation of Griswolds to make the hellacious trek to the fictional theme park, and I give major kudos for that excellent casting.
Continuing on the meta joke above, Rusty says: �My vacation had a boy and a girl. This one has two boys. And I�m sure there will be plenty of other differences.� Those two boys are Skyler Gisondo as the sensitive, guitar playing James, and Steele Stebbons as the foul mouthed bullying younger brother Kevin. The comic premise that the younger, much smaller brother bullies the older one isn�t as funny as the filmmakers think it is, and it joins many jokes here in that regard.
Remember the Wagon Queen Family Truckster Station Wagon in the first one? Well, this time the Griswolds are driving an Albanian rental minivan called The Tartan Prancer loaded with confusing features (its key device has a bunch of buttons with inexplicable symbols on them, including a swastika). And that�s one of the better running gags.
But just like Chase and D�Angelo who both put in welcome cameo appearances reprising their iconic roles as Clark and Ellen Griswold now as owners of a bed and breakfast in San Fransisco, don�t count the Family Truckster out � it too shows up. Sadly, despite a passing reference to Cousin Eddie, Randy Quaid is nowhere to be seen. That alone would�ve taken this to the next level.
I did chuckle a lot throughout this new VACATION � I lightly laughed at a scene where they visited Applegate�s old college sorority in Memphis and it�s revealed that she used to be a wild party girl (�Debbie Do Anything�), I snickered a bit at Helms trying to get his family into a car sing along of Seal�s �Kiss From A Rose,� and I came the closest to actual audible laughter when Charlie Day of It�s Always Sunny in Philadephia popped up as a rafting guide who starts out all super positive but then gets suicidal when his fianc�e breaks up with him over the phone.
It�s essentially and predictably a series of farcical road trip sketches, some of which more match the crude cringe comedy tone of recent fare like WE�RE THE MILLERS or IDENTITY THIEF than the more relatable vibe of the VACATION movies I knew as a kid back when they were still under the National Lampoon banner.
And I wasn�t really into the sequence where they stay with Rusty�s sister, now played by Leslie Mann, who�s married to Chris Hemsworth (THOR) as �up and coming anchorman.� Helms being threatened by Applegate�s attraction to Hemsworth is clumsily handled, and Mann is barely given anything to do.
I also disliked the callback to Christie Brinkley's role as �The Girl in the Red Ferrari� who flirted with Chase in VACATION '83, in which up and coming supermodel Hannah Davis fills in as �Ferrari Girl� to flirt with Helms, but has an especially crude and unfunny fate.
But overall writer/directors Daley and Goldstein have largely captured the endearingly lowbrow spirit of the famously hapless Griswold family�s �quest for fun� as Chase famously called it in the first one.
When I was a kid, and a big fan of comedy and Chase (back when those things weren�t mutually exclusive) I saw the original in the summer of �83 and loved it. I even read John Hughes� short story, �Vacation �58,� which Hughes adapted into the screenplay and had the movie poster on my bedroom wall (yes, I was that kind of comedy geek, but that poster, painted by Boris Vallejo, is pretty awesome). That said, I really don�t regard it to be a comedy classic (or any of the VACATION movies for that matter). They are in the category of films that I consider just funny enough to get by.
Daley and Goldstein�s homage to the vacation house that Hughes, Harold Ramis, and Chevy built has a fair amount going for it mostly in Helms� and Applegates� go for broke performances, a smattering of one-liners and gags that land, and a few surprise guest appearances, but it really suffers from way too much gross-out humor. There�s vomit aplenty in the aforementioned college sorority event skit, and in the movie�s most disgusting moment, the family goes bathing in a raw sewage treatment area that they mistakenly thought was their own private hot springs.
To be fair, that�s exactly the level of crassness that the other VACATIONs often reveled in. But then they had bigger, more genuine laughs, and an actual heart beating behind it. As it stands, VACATION �15 may elicit some laughter from audiences, but it sure won�t make them whistle �Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah� out of their assholes.
This piece made possible in part by The MovieBob Patreon For my international readers: American politics is still currently consumed by conspiracy theories surrounding the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. The event (which resulted in the deaths of multiple CIA operatives and at least two longtime American diplomats) is universally regarded as a tragedy, but differences in accounts of the day re: why relief was not deployed earlier and on whose authority have lead to widespread speculation and theories, most settling on a displacement of blame ("Someone important fucked up and their incompetence is being covered up"); but for a particular brand of unhinged paranoiac (read: The Republican voting-base) it's another insidious betrayal by President Evil - aka Barack Obama.
So goes some of the more popular lunacy: Obama and Hillary Clinton, in order to placate their respective Black Panther and Feminazi foot-soldiers (who are, for some reason, aligned with Islamic Fundamentalism in this scenario) "allowed" the Americans stationed there to die as some sort of sacrifice to either Al Qaeda, Gaia, or both. Or neither. Maybe they're just so evil it doesn't matter. Anyway, for obvious reasons it's not an issue that Democrats or "mainstream" Republicans are particularly hot to discuss (bringing it up during the last election led to one of Mitt Romney's most embarassing public gaffes), so the only time you really hear about it is when some hot-air escapes the right-wing talk radio echo-chamber.
In any case, you can see why this is fodder for a movie Hollywood would be desperate to make but almost no one would want to lend their name to: It's a more topical BLACK HAWK DOWN, with the potential to draw major box-office on curiosity alone... but it's also almost-certain to become co-opted by GOP/Tea-Party types and wind up bearing some super-ugly stigma. You'd basically need a major director who lives and breathes action, has a comfortable relationship with the "security community," desperately wants attention (and awards) as a Serious Filmmaker but also doesn't give a fuck about a bad media image.
Commissioner... get to the roof and light The BAY Signal...
For what it's worth, 13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI is based on a book compiled from eyewitness accounts by members of the ex-military contractor team at the story's focus; which aligns largely with the "known facts" of the events and maintains an "in the moment" perspective and doesn't get into the stateside political theories or implications - save for the suspicion among some of the contractors that their CIA handler - whom they claim ordered them to delay intervention by about 20 minutes, leading to the attack getting disasterously out of hand and ultimately preventing rescue - did so in order to further conceal Agency presence in Libya by trying to enlist local militia fighters instead.
I have no idea what Bay's politics are, save that he has very strong feelings about animal cruelty and the protection of endangered species in particular. For what it's worth... I think it looks pretty good. I don't always love the way he cuts/edits the final product together, but Bay really is something like a prodigy when it comes to composition and mood - and for better or worse it's obvious that military settings inspire him to really dig deep. Cinematography is by Dion Beebe this time around, though it's impressive how much of the expected Bay aesthetic shines through.
My sense of this is that any political "interest" he might have in Benghazi begins and ends with his obvious affection for various military branches and the ability of the word "Benghazi!" to get audiences into theaters and the movie into the Serious Discussion circuit - that January 15th release date almost-certainly means it'll be screening NY/LA and critics groups in December to qualify for Awards Season. Yup, 15 years after PEARL HARBOR, Michael Bay is ready to try for his Oscar again. That should be interesting.
Because you demanded it, here (after the jump) a text version of my now-famous PIXELS review. And hey, while you're here, maybe consider visiting The MovieBob Patreon?
I� have no words. I just don�t. I saw PIXELS mere hours ago as of this writing, and I find myself incapable of putting what I�m feeling into words � such is the magnitude of the disaster I�ve witnessed. Is this what Cavemen felt the first time they saw what, to them, looked like something was literally eating the Sun? Is this that Existential Horror thing Lovecraft was talking about� in between all the super-uncomfortable anti-semitic stuff?
PIXELS� is an unmitigated piece of godawful fucking dogshit. It�s existence feels like alternately like a poison or a genital infection. It is celluloid chlymidia. Cinematic strychnine. I shouldn�t even BE here � this isn�t my jurisdiction: I�m a film critic, and PIXELS isn�t a movie� it�s a motherfucking active crime scene. And the crime is cultural vandalism.
What we�re faced with here is not simply the almost-certainly WORST major Hollywood movie of the goddamn year and easily the worst Adam Sandler movie where he�s NOT doing a stupid fucking vocal-affectation, but the vomit-encrusted nadir of the unholy assembly-line transmutation of Generation-X nostalgia into the quote-unquote �geek� corporate-branded marketing identity � the Burning of The Library of Alexandria by way of Hot Topic t-shirt printing.
PIXELS is bad enough to make you hate the things you love, and watching it made me want to take a blowtorch to every scrap of video-game memorabilia� except then I�d only have like 2 decent t-shirts. I didn�t merely hate this movie � I wanted to beat it slowly to death with a fucking wiffle-ball bat. So it�d take longer. I was bored within 2 minutes, angry after 5 and by the time all 100 minutes had run out I was sad and numb� which has now simmered into pure, white hot pants-shitting rage. This is the kind of movie that shouldn�t be �reviewed� so much as fed through a malfunctioning industrial shredder� cock first, as I have to assume is the custom over at Happy Madison.
Egh� fuck everything. But anyway! The �plot� to this tepid cauldron of room-temperature yak piss (inspired by a charming animated short film from a few years ago whose creator I� hope was well fuckin� compensated at least) is that a race of aliens have misinterpreted samples of Earth popular-culture contained in NASA probe for a declaration of war and have attacked the planet with an army of energy-creatures mimicking the forms of circa-1982 arcade games included among said samples.
That�s� not the �worst� mechanism for setting up what is effectively retro-game JUMANJI by way of a castrato-cover of MARS ATTACKS � assuming that�s something you�ve decided needs to exists for some shit-awful reason � but in Sandler�s typical combination of overwrought yet somehow still half-assed story-structure, it can�t just leave things there. Instead, PIXELS wants to shoe-horn in a metric-ton of Kevin Smith-style pop-reference pandering in the form of another tired-as-fuck manchild hero�s journey; so the invaders opt to challenge humanity to life-sized �real life� variations on one specific classic game at a time � leading Kevin James� embattled United States President (fucking really!) to conscript Sandler, Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage as a team of former competitive arcade champs to lead the battle� mostly by engaging in tacky, dated stereotypes about these �loser weirdo� gaming-nerds having to prove themselves against the skepticism of the big meanie army guys.
SIDEBAR: The *hell* is Peter Dinklage doing in this pile of skidmarked Sumo thongs? I know a Lannister always pays his debts but what the FUCK? Did Sandler pull him out of a tire fire or something? He doesn�t have to do this shit! Hell, neither does Josh Gad � I�m pretty sure he gets paid every time someone buys one of those fuckin� Olaf dolls!
Anyway... The whole �SCOTT PILGRIM but for assholes� routine with the game sequences is so overcomplicated yet poorly thought-out you�d think they shot the fuckin� thing over a weekend if not for shamefully expensive it all looks. The rules, stakes and mechanic change with no rhyme or reason: The humans play the �good guy� player role for the Centipede scene but they have to be the Ghosts in the Pac-Man scene � why? Who the fuck knows and the movie doesn�t care. At one point entering a �cheat code� works for some reason without explaining how it was entered and why it mattered; and these aren�t tiny nitpicks � these are major plot developments getting ground up into some of the worst action-movie storytelling since TRANSFORMERS 2.
What do the Aliens even want? Nobody seems to care � sometimes they�re evil, then in the next scene it�s all about them being confused, at one point we�re flat-out told in a moment of important, highlighted exposition that they were peaceful until they got hold of our probe and could maybe be reasoned with� and it�s dropped ONE scene later never to come up again because there�s some Donkey Kong jokes we haven�t done yet! There�s the germ of an interesting idea dying from lack of oxygen within this shitstorm i.e. so muchof our popular-culture being grounded in the mythologizing of, competition and the arbitrary winner/loser binary why wouldn't they mistake it for us declaring war� but that might�ve been interesting and insightful, and PIXELS is clearly aiming more of an �advanced scrotum-cancer� kind of vibe.
But what really turns the whole thing from just one more stupid fucking waste-of-time Summer comedy into the waterfall of elephant jizz cascading into theaters this weekend is that it�s so oppressively, endlessly, bald-faced cynical about the disingenuous appropriation of its own supposed reason for existing. There�s not a single interesting joke or visual gag making use of the presence of all the classic gaming iconography Sandler and his goon-squad have been allowed to fuck around with. The supposed �humorous� use of every single Pixelated �thing� in the movie never ONCE rises beyond the level of �HAHAHAHAHA! I recognize that, which for some reason qualifies as a joke now!� This isn�t just keeping great art in a bad frame � this is using original Monets to wallpaper a port-a-potty at an IBS Symposium.
This is the kind of bad licensing-driven movie that�s so fucking glib and self-satisfied with its own sleazy cash-grab existence that it takes time out to make sure it ALSO shits on the sort of more earnest, heartfelt version of the same idea someone who gave two shits might�ve made � as you�ve already seen in the trailers with the weirdly mean-spirited "creator of Pac-Man" sequence.
But it get's worse: One of the dozen fucking go-nowhere nonsensical subplots is that the aliens beam down �good� incarantions of random game characters as �trophies� when the humans win a game, which literally ONLY exists so that Q*Bert can become a comic-relief sidekick midway through� except the aliens later refer to him a �traitor� which contradicts this and OH MY FUCKING GOD DID ANYONE PROOFREAD THE SHOOTING SCRIPT FOR GORILLA TURD!? Still� Q*Bert briefly becomes the only decent (if pointless) thing in the movie because he�s cute and its just kinda funny that he�s �there� �but they find a way to fuck it up.
See, another subplot is that Gad�s creepy basement-nerd caricature is obsessed with a made-up female game heroine who shows up as one of the Pixel-monsters but then switches sides and helps him fight because reasons� and then he�s sad vanishes with all the other aliens once the good guys win (SPOILER! Fuck you!) win because �they only get to keep the Trophies� ...which then causes Q*Bert to magically transform into that same heroine for some cocksmith�s idea of a fucking happy ending. So PIXELS *ends* with the only likable character and the only non-bullshit incarnation of it�s own premise blinking out of existence so that ONE of two vaguely-prominent women characters in the cast can serve as a literal trophy. Holy fucking shit.
That, above all else, is what�s so irrationally infuriating about this maggot-oozing head-wound of a movie: It plays at being this sentimental ode to the glory days of classic games, but clearly doesn�t have a fucking drop of sincere interest in what�s made these characters and imagery so enduring or even what made the games themselves so compelling! No matter how many classic cabinets and 80s MTV needle-drops PIXELS trots out, it�s always � nakedly! � the work of a bunch of shit-gargling fuckwits with zero love for or understanding OF this stuff beyond the ability to sell tickets based on �Hey! Remember PAC-MAN!? Remember SPACE INVADERS!? Remember when this guy was in GOOD MOVIES!?�
Fucking hell. Sandler�s literal character-arc in this movie is learning to let go of the pride he takes in having the skill to excel at these classic games and instead embrace an open-ended �what-ever!� just-try-not-to-die modern-gaming approach in order to succeed � �But hey! Don�t pay attention to all that, folks! Look! Stuff from JOUST! Remember JOUST!? Pay us money to remind that JOUST existed!!!� And the only thing worse� is that it�s probably going to work � one more bullshit movie-interlude for the masses to break up the monotony of our ongoing waddle toward IDIOCRACY.
Let me be crystal fucking clear here, folks: PIXELS is the *worst* thing to happen to video games since the CDi, Microtransactions, YouTube screamers, voice-chat and the death of the Dreamcast combined... but it would absolutely still be a festering ocean of stagnant koala feces no matter WHAT licensed-property nostalgia it was pretending to pander to � and probably will still be less than four fucking months from now in the form of that Jack Black GOOSEBUMPS movie. Every game company who let their creations turn up in this shitpile should be flogging themselves like a Catholic masturbator right now � yes, even you, Nintendo � fucking hell, you "swear off" Hollywood for like 20 years after one shitty Mario movie but NOW suddenly you�re totally okay with Mario, Donkey Kong and the Duck Hunt Dog showing up in this abortion? Classy. Real motherfuckin� classy.
But for now, PIXELS is awful on a level that defies even the most negative conventions of review. Not a single joke lands, not a single performance works, the story is beyond lazy, the stakes make no sense, the staging is limp and lifeless and director Chris Columbus has finally made a movie worse than NINE MONTHS. It demands some sort of new metric below the �stars� or �thumbs� number-scales, like �How many fingers should the people responsible for this be allowed to keep?� I hate this movie so much I would�ve rather watched BLENDED again. I hate this movie so much I wish I�d caught up with PAUL BLART 2 instead. I hate this piece of shit so much I�m no longer rooting for Tyrion to make it out of Season 6 alive! I wanted to run this movie over with my car. Repeatedly. I wanted to ritually blind this movie with razor-wire.
As a film critic, I�m so used to Sandler sucking at this point that it�s a challenge not to start grading his bullshit on some kind of �curve,� but as some who actually loves all the stuff PIXELS fucks around *pretending* to appreciate it feels like the Pride of Manchester New Hampshire here broken into my fuckin� house, took a bloody, backed-up post-Taco Bell Miralax-shit in the middle of my fuckin living room and now wants me to pay him for the goddamn privilege.
Fuck this movie. Fuck everyone who made this movie. And if you pay money to watch this movie? FUCK YOU TOO.
So... yeah, hypothetical "scriptment" pitches for hypothetical movie adaptations. Thought exercise and all that.
This one will be a touch on the different side, less of a blow-by-blow and more of an outline; since in this instance the "challenge" isn't to figure out how to turn the X-MEN franchise into a movie (that's been done) but to work out how a "reboot" of the series might be made to fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe if and when the rights to the characters were to fall back under Marvel/Disney's control.
Principal aims: Work out the "purpose" of Mutants in an MCU which, within a few years, will likely have already burned through the "disenfranchised minority metaphor" business using THE INHUMANS. Renew focus on the sexual/relationship politics-dominated "soap opera" interplay that characterized the Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne era wherein these characters became popular.
See what I came up with after the jump:
And here we go:
OPEN in 1834, the THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS. Yup, we're going here: CHARLES DARWIN is investigating animals and cataloguing samples, gradually discovering the beginnings of his theory of Natural Selection... faster than one might have expected, thanks to some whisper-gentle nudging from a largely anonymous assistant who seems to already know as fact the theories he's subtly planting the seeds of in Darwin's head. His name is NATHANIEL ESSEX.
We move ahead to: WORLD WAR II, the liberation of a Concentration Camp by joint U.S. and Canadian forces including CAPTAIN AMERICA and The Howling Commandos. Cap is irritated by the fact that freeing these camps isn't higher on the Army's priority list, and that this is the first one his unit has been sent to - and not for the camp itself, but for what's "under it."
As if on cue, HYDRA troops appear from an underground bunker and a fight breaks out. While the Commandos protect the prisoners, Cap finds himself fighting into the bunker alongside a Canadian soldier posessed of superhuman strength. When asked who he is: "Would you believe 'Captain Canada?'" In short-order, Cap and yes-we-know-it's-WOLVERINE discover a HYDRA lab where experiments are being conducted on a boy of about 6 - ERIK LENSHER. The scientist in charge gives up rather easily and offers a fake name, but we can recognize Nathaniel Essex, looking not a day older than 1834.
Another leap, this time to 2015 (presume, for the sake of this exercise, that this film would not be produced until at least 2020 - one year after Marvel's last currently-slated feature is set to bow) and the offices of the AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. An update on the Inhumans "situation" is being presented, along with a theory that some of the assets classified as Inhuman are actually not - that they are mutations of ordinary humans, not descendants of alien interference.
These "Mutants" are a troubling prospect - born with powers nascent until their teens but biologically indistinct from humans and not requiring Terrigenesis to "activate" their abilities - but the talk is gently but firmly shot down by a Senior Agent - Essex, once again.
Finally, the PRESENT - a suburban Superintendent of Schools office late at night. Teenaged student KATHERINE "KITTY" PRYDE slips into the building to steal SAT answers - via the mutant power of walking through solid walls. But she's stopped by an oddly well-timed security guard - Essex again, brandishing a gun.
Kitty is saved by a voice in her head telling her to beware, followed by the appearance of CHARLES XAVIER (bald, wheelchair) and his much older companion - Erik Lensher (ancient-looking but strong, standing/walking with the aid of metal braces on his legs, back and arms.) Essex proves able to block Xavier's psychic attacks, but Lensher's metal-controlling powers bludgeon him badly enough that he reveals his monstrous-looking true form: MISTER SINISTER!
Enter THE X-MEN, in classic blue/gold uniforms, ages ranging from 19 to 22: CYCLOPS, JEAN GREY, ANGEL, PYRO and MYSTIQUE. Brawl ensues, Sinister escapes.
The X-Men bring Kitty aboard the BLACKBIRD jet and explain the scenario: Mankind isn't prepared to know about Mutants, fear of the recently-revealed Inhumans has made it worse, Xavier and Lensher operate XAVIER'S SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED to protect/nurture Mutant youth, the X-Men are onetime students graduated to teachers.
Recruitment to Xavier's School (via CEREBRO, which can discern Mutant from human/Inhuman where biology cannot) has been increased of late in order to checkmate abductions by MR. SINISTER (an augmented human via experiments on Mutants, which he believes he "discovered" in the mid-1700s) the reasons for which are yet unclear.
At the school, Kitty (yes, he's our audience-POV character for this one) meets her same-aged (mid-teens) student contemporaries; chiefly cocky athlete ICEMAN, gentle-giant COLOSSUS and withdrawn beauty ROGUE.
Xavier reaches out to a contact in S.H.I.E.L.D (or whatever the post-CIVIL WAR power-aparatus is), HANK "BEAST" MCCOY (non-furry version) for information about Sinister. Not much known, but his actions threaten to (finally) pull Mutants into the public sphere. Charles and Erik argue - Erik in favor of going public and starting a fight he believes will occur no matter what, Charles on the cautious side.
Also noted: The Inhumans have (off the record) refused to "cover" in the event of exposed Mutants by claiming them as part of their race.
While the machinations of the Bigger Story grind on in the backdrop with the "grownups" (short version: Sinister is collecting powerful Mutants for what he calls a "Brotherhood," promising that he can both keep them safe and improve their natural powers, Xavier has plotted out a list of likely targets to try and head him off) Kitty does the Harry Potter thing moving between the students and classes. All is not well: Growing "cliques" of students profess a psuedo-cultist fixation on "militant" essays (as opposed to Xavier's pacifist philosophy) Erik penned as a younger man...
...but Erik is ambivalent about those writings now, and gently dissuades his would-be acolytes. He develops a rapport with Kitty, explaining that his lifelong militancy softened fairly recently and for a specific reason: When Captain America (effectively) returned from the dead, he had a chance to meet and thank the man who'd saved his life as a boy and began to believe in second chances.
On a dare, Kitty sneaks onto the Blackbird for a mission - quietly observing the X-Men's recruitment of STORM (usual origin re: orphan worshiped as a goddess/witch in tribal Africa.) Back at school, she and Kitty become friendly.
Meanwhile, a Christian Fundamentalist religious sect called THE CHURCH OF NATURAL LAW (think Westboro Baptist, but fixated on hating aliens, Inhumans and superheroes) led by REVEREND WILLIAM STRIKER begins to make news with outlandish protests against various events/ideas referencing other recent story points in the MCU. Erik finds him especially disturbing.
Kitty and her friends discuss whether or not they'll also be X-Men as they get older. One thing they agree on: The blue/gold uniforms don't work for them, and they begin to discuss their own hypothetical gear/getup.
A later recruitment (with Beast tagging along for S.H.I.E.L.D reasons) does not go so well: The target, TOAD, has already sworn allegiance to Sinister - it's a trap! The X-Men escape, but not unscathed: Beast is hit with an "improvement" injection from Sinister and mutates into his blue furry form.
With the team's progress delayed, Xavier asks Erik to take a detachment of "advanced" students (Kitty, Iceman, Colossus, Rogue and Storm) to attempt contact with another potential target in rural Germany: Teleporter Kurt Wagner, NIGHTCRAWLER. It goes... awkwardly, but Nightcrawler ultimately agrees to come along because he's immediately smitten with Kitty.
All parties return to the School for some (relative) down-time. While the grownups compare notes (and Erik secretly agonizes over growing issues with his arthritis and bone problems), a group of "cool girls" (including JUBILEE, maybe?) goad Kitty into getting Nightcrawler to teleport them into a sold-out local concert by pop-star DAZZLER (think Miley Cyrus by way of Lady Gaga.)
At the Dazzler concert, Kitty feels bad about "using" Kurt, but he's already over it - he's noticed that Dazzler seems to be setting off light-effects on the stage without any means of ignition: She's a Mutant!
Something else they both notice (too late) "Nathaniel Essex" is in Dazzler's roadie crew! He sets off a chemical release which supercharges Dazzler's powers, causing he to fire destructive light-beams out of her fingertips. Footage makes the news, and just like that Mutants are now publically known.
The Federal government (particularly whatever superhuman governing-machinery is set post-CIVIL WAR) mobilizes hearings on "The Mutant Problem." With public hysteria growing, Erik presses a reluctant Xavier to hold a press-conference spearheaded by "a friend" (Tony Stark if that's still plausible, someone else if not) introducing/rebranding The X-Men as an Avengers-style superhero team to put public fears at ease.
Kitty is torn between the two "sides" in the school: Some want to go militant and prepare for war with humanity, others want to coexist. The only person she can fully confide in is Storm, who is thus far an observer not taking any full side.
During the press conference, a Mutant henchman of Sinister's hits Erik with the power-charging serum, resulting in a metal-controlling freakout that turns the assembled crowd (with goading from Stryker's "Church," who attended to heckle) against them.
Amid the chaos, Sinister appears in full regalia, feigning as though he's an ideological ally of the scattered, confused X-Men. His "Brotherhood" (a small army of B/C-list Mutants, have fun with it) attack the crowd, and by the time The X-Men can regroup to fight them everything has gone to shit. Sinister escapes, but before he does he hands Lensherr a vial of "something" and an ominous message: "Admit it. You enjoyed yourself back there. Here's another taste - if you want it. And you will." An analysis of the vial reveals that it contains (among other things) genetic material with a remarkable healing factor... but NOT the type that keeps Essex/Sinister effectively immortal. It's marking also trace back to an obscure decomissioned military facility in Canada's Northwest Territories. An obvious trap, but The X-Men (bringing an insistent Nightcrawler along for good measure) have no choice but to try.
Kitty (and the rest of the school) watch via video monitors as The X-Men attempt to raid the compound... only to find themselves attacked by amped-up Brotherhood henchmen and taken prisoner via mind-control devices of Sinister's design. When Xavier tries to reach out psychically to stop this, an already-ensnared Jean Grey telepathically knocks him unconscious. Nightcrawler barely manages to teleport himself and a badly-beaten Cyclops to safety, beginning a travel-by-teleport rush back to the Xavier School...
...which has problems of its own: A torches-and-pitchforks style mob, led by Reverend Stryker, has stormed the grounds, and without Xavier to hold them back things go straight to hell - including a brutal injury to Erik. The students are unable to coalesce in resistance (Kitty leads the "protect and de-escalate" side, with the militants outnumbering them) until...
Storm appears (classic costume, classic attitude), demands they fight together but backs Kitty's "just get them out of here, don't make things worse" approach. She does, however, use some extreme examples of her power to put the fear of God(dess) into Stryker before sending him on his way.
Xavier comes to amid the wreckage just as Cyclops and Nightcrawler teleport in, adamant that the X-Men have to be saved but unsure how to do it. Kitty proposes a solution: She, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Iceman and Storm should serve as a new/temporary X-Men team under Cyclops' leadership to go and rescue the others. He's unsure... but there's no other choice.
The "All-New X-Men" suit up in the unique costumes they'd discussed earlier (Cyclops trades his battered blue/gold uni for his 80s all-blue look) and head into battle.
Unseen in the rubble, Erik is alive... barely. He manages to get his hands on the vial from Sinister and, with nothing else to lose, drinks it. The effects are shocking and immediate - he begins to de-age into a remarkably fit-looking man possibly in his mid-30s, just with white hair.
The "new" X-Men fight through Sinister's goons, only to find themselves fighting the mind-controlled originals! After a difficult fight, all of the X-Men are now on the same team, and chase Sinister himself into the bowels of his base. There, Sinister reveals a mysterious form inside a tube of chemicals - a Mutant of "remarkable powers" whom Essex calls an "old friend" that had been turned into a bio-weapon by a Canadian military-backed science project. "The truth is, some people already DID know about Xavier's little Boy Scout troop, and wanted a checkmate. Enjoy your time with WEAPON X!" Sinister takes off as WEAPON X (Wolverine-but-not-with-that-name-yet from the prologue, duh) emerges, pops his claws and an all-against-one fight breaks out, eventually exploding out in the forest with both X-Men teams easily matched by this rampaging monster. Only a combined pooling of their various powers, with Kitty and Nightcrawler using phasing/teleporting in tandem to wear him down, prevails.
Jean Grey uses her powers to un-brainwash "Weapon X," who remembers nothing except the codename "Wolverine" - but he's immediately fond of the "lady head-doctor."
Back at the school, repairs are underway. Angel (real name Warren Worthington III) is reveal to have gotten his family business to donate much of the cost, but at a price: He's to finally take an active role on the board, meaning he must depart The X-Men. Also departing: Mystique and Pyro, who confide in eachother that after what they've seen from Stryker etc they can't believe in Mutant/Human coexistence anymore. Beast is headed to (an MCU science/research reference) but will be in touch.
Saddened but accepting of this change in personel, Xavier makes it official: Kitty, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Iceman, Colossus and Storm will join Cyclops, Jean and Wolverine as the new official X-Men team.
STINGER: Pyro and Mystique seek out "Mutant resistance" information in a secret location, only to hear talk of "TRUE Brotherhood" and the reveal of a still de-aged Erik Lensher, now wearing his classic uniform and calling himself MAGNETO.
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So, PIXELS, the latest in a long line of crass comedies from Adam Sandler�s Happy Madison Productions, is a typically lame offering, but it really doesn't suck as much as the majority of critics are saying.
I mean, it�s currently holds an awful 12% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. C�mon! It deserves at least 30-something percent. *
PIXELS scores a few points by trying a little harder than Sandler�s largely crappy output of late (the GROWN UP series, THAT�S MY BOY, BLENDED, etc.) and it has a pretty promising premise � aliens attack earth in the form of �80s video games � which does at times add up into some genuinely enjoyable dumb fun.
There may be dragging stretches between those instances of amusement, and tons of lame jokes litter the landscape along with the pixilated carnage, but as a throwaway summer popcorn picture it�s actually almost passable.
Sandler, Josh Gad, and Peter Dinklage play former �80s arcade champions, who we meet as kids played by the well cast Anthony Ippolito, Jacob Shinder and Andrew Bambridge, in an opening flashback set in 1982. We also meet Jared Riley as the kid version of Kevin James� character, who�s not a great gamer but is able to score a Chewbacca mask from the Claw Game.
In the intervening years, Sandler�s Sam Brenner grows up to be a schlubby Geek Squad-style media center installation guy, while his best friend, James� Will Cooper (or �Chewie� to his friends) has gone on to be elected President of the United States.
When Austrialia gets invaded by an alien force resembling the game Galaga�, James recruits Sandler to use his gaming skills, which involve recognizing patterns, to help the army defeat the 8-bit menace. Gad, now a conspiracy theory buff, and a mulleted Dinklage, in prison for criminal hacking, are also called upon and before long they�re all wearing uniforms identified as �Arcaders.�
Michelle Monaghan as Lt. Colonel Violet van Patten, Sandler�s obvious love interest from the get go, is skeptical of the crew until they take down Centipede� in a battle in London�s Hyde Park.
The big showpiece is the showdown with Pac-Man� in New York City. The Arcaders take on the role of the ghosts via brightly colored cars with their names (Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde) on their license plates. Pac-Man is his old yellow, recognizable self, albeit ginormous, who shocks Sandler and his creator, Denis Akiyama as Toru Iwatani (the real Iwatani has a cameo as a repairman), by being �a bad guy.�
PIXELS takes the aliens recreating our old pop culture premise from GALAXY QUEST mixes it with the satirical yet nostalgic take on arcade classics from the Reagan era of WRECK-IT RALPH, and then wraps it all up in GHOST BUSTERS packing of having lovable, schlubby underdogs overcoming supernatural odds to save the world from a dangerously silly threat. Oh, and there�s an added splash of THE KING OF KONG in there too � the posturing of Dinklage�s Donkey Kong champion more than a little resembles the arrogant Billy Mitchell in that compelling gaming doc.
It should also be mentioned that there�s an episode of Futurama, �Raiders of the Lost Arcade,� that shares the same premise, but the real inspiration, which is credited, is the French animated short �Pixels.� Nearly every visual gag in the short is redone in the movie � watch it here.
Scripted by longtime Sandler screenwriting pal Tim Herlihy, PIXELS has a decently dopey tone to it. It doesn�t care whether its jokes land, or its plot mechanics are transparent, it just wants to fuck around on its huge playset with all the props and memories of the overgrown man-children in its audience.
Unfortunately there are so many missed opportunities with this material that it�s a shame that like somebody like the retro-meta-mastermind team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (the 21 JUMP STREET movies, THE LEGO MOVIE) wasn�t hired to touch up the screenplay.
Like I said before, it�s pretty close to crappy (which could be said also of its cluttered cinematography), but not as interminable, soul crushing, or as painful as many critics are saying. It�s a mediocre attempt at a crowd pleaser that actually has some amusing moments. It just fits better into the �Sandler is so over� narrative that so many pop culture pundits have been selling lately to paint it as a big, stinky dud.
I can�t say I�d recommend it to anyone who�s not a big Sandler fan, or somebody who doesn�t say upfront that they like big, stupid movies, but if I were using a star rating system I�d give it two stars out of five for �doesn�t completely suck� (the other stars for the record: 1 star = �sucks,� 3 stars = �good,� 4 stars = �almost awesome,� and 5 stars = of course, �awesome�).
Oh, and I enjoyed the Q-Bert, and Max Headroom cameos too.
* The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 12% was what it was at when I originally wrote this review. It's now at 20%, so it's slowly inching it's way up as more reviews are posted. Maybe it'll make 30-something % yet.
This is the "pilot pitch" for the upcoming ABC prime-time revival of THE MUPPET SHOW. It represents probably the best use anyone has made of these characters since at least MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND (and I liked the first of the two recent movies, so don't start any shit.)
I love The Muppets like few other things, and this feels like it could be something really spectacular. The movies have always been fine - at least three of them are great - but these characters belong on TV in this exact type of farce. So excited.
So. Just saw ANT-MAN for a second time, just because. Hold's up - this one really works. Not GUARDIANS-level transcendent, but really good.
Anyway! Long story short: By now you've heard that there's quite a bit of Universe-building business sprinkled throughout this one - multiple cameos, two post-credits beats and a no-name name-drop. But on my second viewing, I'm reasonably certain I caught a glimpse of something that's either a sly inside-reference, the most well-hidden Easter Egg since Cap's prototype shield on the workbench in IRON MAN (the first one) ...or I'm seeing things.
Obviously, to say/show more would be a MASSIVE SPOILER even if I'm wrong, given the sequence it occurs in. So I'll put the rest of this after the jump: / / / / / / / / / /
MAJOR SPOILERS FROM HERE ON: Okay. So, ANT-MAN's version of Chekhov's Gun Finishing-Move is "going subatomic," i.e. using the Ant-Man suit's shrinking capabilities to reduce one's size down below that of the building blocks of life - useful, but super-dangerous because if you shrink too far you hit the point where physics and reality no longer matter and start slipping through the cracks in space/time, and in the film's backstory, doing so led to the death of original Ant-Man's wife Janet "The Wasp" Van Dyne (hence why he's adamant that his daughter Hope not use the suit herself, hence the conscripting of Scott Lang as the new Ant-Man.) Using this technique ultimately turns out to be the only way for Scott to defeat YellowJacket in a deadly situation, and he winds up tumbling down through the Subatomic World in nifty, possibly COSMOS-inspired sequence (there's a Tardigrade!!!) that starts out straight-science and then goes all Cosmic Marvel.
At sub-atom size, Ant-Man continues to drift through the kind of hazy/colorful psychedelia Marvel has thus far used to represent "otherworldly" spaces like Thanos' domain, finally winding up in a fractal space where he's finally able to finagle an escape back to reality - though he can't remember anything he saw or did there. It's enough, however, for Pym to imply that he's keen to go looking for Janet again...
Anyway! At one point in the process (during both the "shrinking" and "escaping" shots), we pass through what vaugely looks like a cloudy mountain-range of some kind. In the upper right-hand corner of the frame, I'd swear you can see (partially masked by "clouds") what appears to be a gigantic humanoid figure looming over the scene. It's brief, it's not "pointed out" and it could be anything - but it sticks out to me because it's there both times.
Here's a snap from an in-theater recording I found online (I'm not linking to the original, I'm generally against phones/cameras in theaters and if there turns out to be an issue here I'll glady remove it.) Anyway:
And HERE'S a version I've highlighted to show where I'm seeing the "figure":
So. Assuming this is "something," who or what is it? Marvel overseer Kevin Feige has already confirmed that the subatomic/cosmic stuff in ANT-MAN is meant to be a really tiny tease at how "The Other Side" can look/work for DOCTOR STRANGE, so that leads me to think this could be an early sighting of either Eternity or Infinity - in the Marvel Universe, esoteric cosmic concepts (see also: Death, whom Thanos is in literal love with) have semi-physical embodiments that you can meet and talk to if you have the ability, and Stephen Strange is one of the folks most often doing that talking. Here's what they look like:
And yes, they do "present" as male and female - a couple whose "union" (all of space and all of time) encompasses the entirety of the Universe (in case you wondering - yes, there are dopplegangers of both in all the different adjacent Universes in the Marvel canon.)
On the other hand, it sort-of looks like there's a light-source coming from where the chest would be on the shape, so it could also be The Living Tribunal, the disagreement-arbiter and final authority over all cosmic entities like Eternity and Infinity. Basically, this is the on-paper powerhouse of the Marvel Cosmology - the last "guy" on the totem pole in terms of power and authority below "The One-Above-All," (aka The One True God - whose true form/identity/alignment/etc are never officially depicted.) He looks like THIS:
So. What say you, Internet? Have we seen our first Cosmic Entity in the MCU?
UPDATE: Some folks are chiming in to say it could just as easily be The Wasp, which is true enough. Meanwhile, here's director Peyton Reed saying on the record that "an object or a person" is indeed hiding within our view of subspace:
The first time I was introduced to Ant-Man it was in an old Saturday Night Live sketch from the late '70s. Margot Kidder was hosting at the height of the success of the first SUPERMAN movie so they did a sketch with her reprising Lois Lane in the premise of hosting a party with the man of steel (Bill Murray) as her new husband. Dan Aykroyd showed up as The Flash, John Belushi made quite an applause-filled entrance as The Hulk, and extras came in dressed as Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, The Thing, etc.
Then there was Garrett Morris (SNL cast member from '75-'80) as Ant-Man, who was mocked mercilessly by The Flash and The Hulk. �He has the strength of a human!� Aykroyd�s Flash joked. I honestly thought at the time that they had made up the character for the sketch - it was a while later that I found out that he'd been around since the early '60s.
The gag that Ant-Man is one of the lesser superheroes is one that still endures. Paul Rudd, who takes on the role as the tiny crime-fighter in the new comic book blockbuster wannabe opening today, said on LIVE with Kelly and Michael this week that compared to the rest of the Marvel family he felt like �cousin Oliver to the rest of the Brady bunch.�
It�s just that sort of self-deprecating comic charm that Rudd has in spades that helps elevate ANT-MAN from the all-too familiar formula makes it one of the most fun films of the summer.
The movie opens in the late �80s with Michael Douglas, who with the help of make-up and CGI looks like he did when he won the Oscar for WALL STREET, as Dr. Hank Pym storming in on a S.H.IE.L.D. meeting angry because they've been trying to reproduce his shrinking technology without his knowledge. Pym, who was the original Ant-Man in the comics, resigns from the agency and takes his formula with him.
Cut to 25 years later where we meet Paul Rudd as master thief Scott Lang as he's being released from prison. Rudd's Lang doesn't want to return to a life of crime, but a stint at Baskin Robbins gets cut short because they learn about his record. Lang is desperate to see his daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson), but his ex-wife (Judy Greer), who is now married to a cop (Bobby Cannavale), forbids it until he can pay child support so he takes on �one last job� with his old cohorts (Michael Pe�a, Tip �T.I.� Harris, and David Dastmalchian).
This involves breaking into a vault made out of the same metal as the Titanic, but all that's in there is Pym's old Ant-Man suit. Lang tries it on when he gets home, presses a button on it and is shrunken to, yep, the size of an ant. The amped-up experience, which results in a scene that comes off like HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS on acid, scares Lang into returning the suit, but this gets him arrested.
In jail, he's visited by Pym posing as his lawyer. Pym had set him up because he's chosen Lang to be the new Ant-Man, and with the help of the suit Lang breaks out. Pym's daughter, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) isn't happy with this, but goes along with geting Lang in shape to help them pull off a major heist.
Pym wants Lang to steal the dangerous garb duplicating his shrinking technology dubbed Yellowjacket, which was developed by his former prot�g� Darren Cross (Corey Stohl from House of Cards).
From there it becomes the expected mix of fight scenes, surreally-tinged chases, and comic asides, which all breeze by without an instance of clunk.
As Cross, Stohl isn't the strongest villain, and the plot mechanics can feel pretty standard at times, but thanks to the wit, charm, and likability of Rudd, a well executed origin story, and a strong supporting cast (funnily enough, it's Pe�a who gets the most laughs), ANT-MAN is a welcome, and far from lesser, addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Back when Edgar Wright (SHAUN OF THE DEAD, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD) who was originally slated to direct dropped out of the project and was replaced by Peyton Reed (director of the definitely un-super rom coms DOWN WITH LOVE, YES MAN, and THE BREAK UP), it looked like it could end up a bomb, but the result is a summer superhero movie that satisfyingly pops.
Wright is credited for co-writing the screenplay, along with Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, and Rudd, so a lot of his vision is happily intact, and with a running time of under 2 hours, it's the least bloated Marvel movies in ages.
Rudd plays well off his fellow cast members, especially Lilly, who appears to be primed to have her own superhero character soon, The Wasp, and Douglas, who, like Robert Redford in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, has one of his juiciest parts in recent memory. There's also a cameo by one of the Avengers, but I won't tell you which one. There's maybe more that that if you stay to the stinger at the end of the credits, but, again, that's all I'm gonna say.
Rudd also plays well off his CGI-ed insect pals, which Ant-Man can communicate with, and his affection for a winged carpenter ant he names Antony is cute in a way that only Rudd can pull off.
ANT-MAN is a delightful ride through yet another franchise starter, and a fine finish to Phase Two of the MCU. All that, and it's got a cameo by Garrett Morris in it too. Coincidence?
In his fifth feature, TRAINWRECK, Judd Apatow gives comedienne and Comedy Central star Amy Schumer her first starring role, and he let her write the movie too.
This is a first for Apatow as he wrote or co-wrote his previous films (THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN, KNOCKED UP, FUNNY PEOPLE, and THIS IS 40) but his confidence in Schumer�s filthy, feminist brand of comedy shines through, maybe a little too much, as like with all of his other movies, it could�ve been edited down considerably.
Schumer plays New Yorker Amy (no last name given), a writer for S'Nuff, a snotty men�s magazine run by an eccentrically unhinged editor-in-chief hilariously portrayed by an almost unrecognizable Tilda Swinton.
In a cold opening/flashback, we learn that Amy was taught by her father (longtime comic Colin Quinn in his best screen role) that �monogamy doesn�t work,� so we learn up front why her life consists of a series of one night stands. In her voice-over narration she tells us that she is actually seeing somebody � a lughead body builder played by WWE superstar John Cena � but, of course, not exclusively.
After getting dumped by Cena when he finds out, Amy surprises herself by developing actual feelings for a sports doctor (ex-Saturday Night Live cast member Bill Hader) she�s assigned to do a story on. However, initially she treats it like just another one night stand.
Hader, in one of his most grounded in reality roles, winningly keeps up with Schumer�s wisecracks. Their courtship is convincing, even when we can see the conflicts that will have them breaking up from a mile away.
The New York setting is another first for Apatow, but as expected he fills it with a bunch of recognizable faces like Dave Attell as a homeless guy that lives outside Amy�s apartment building, SNL�s Vanessa Bayer as one of her co-workers, current indie �it� girl Brie Larson as her settled down sister , Mike Birbiglia as Larson�s husband (Schumer was in comic Birbiglia�s SLEEPWALK WITH ME), and Ezra Miller (PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER) as an eager young intern at the magazine.
But most notably there�s LeBron James as a version of himself, one of Hader�s patients, who does his amusingly droll spin on the advice giving best friend.
Schumer and Apatow embrace many rom com tropes here, mostly taken from the ANNIE HALL rulebook. The twist is that usually it�s the male who�s the commitment-phobe who has to make the climatic mad dash to win back their love when they finally realize what they want.
We know Schumer�s boozy, pot-smoking, slutty character will be redeemed by the end, but the question is are there enough laughs along the way to make it worthwhile?
The answer is yes � there are a lot of genuinely funny moments throughout TRAINWRECK, but, as I mentioned before, it�s longer than it should be. It clocks in at just over 2 hours, when this material could�ve been shaped into a tidy 90 minutes � the ideal length for a comedy imho.
It�s like they couldn�t bear to cut anything that got a laugh out. In the aforementioned mad dash, they even work in a subway cameo by SNL�s Leslie Jones. It is funny, but it�s got �deleted scene� for a latter Blu ray/DVD release written all over it. So does a lot of shtick here (most of the Cena stuff should've been cut - no offense, Mr. Wrestling Champion).
But the best stuff is comedy gold, and there�s a warm and touching undercurrent to the proceedings. Schumer�s exchanges with Hader, Larson, and especially Quinn as her ailing father help flesh out that feeling.
TRAINWRECK will make Schumer fans happy (I'm one and I left the theater smiling), while turning a lot of newcomers into fans. It�s as flawed as its protagonist, but it brings the funny again and again and that�s way more important.
It�s time to take a break from all the summer sequels and highly hyped blockbuster wannabes clogging up the multiplexes, and take note that one of the best films of the year, Alex Garland�s sleek, dark sci-fi thriller EX MACHINA drops this week on Blu ray and DVD. Despite critical acclaim, it quietly came and went in theaters early this year, but I bet it�ll build its deserved audience quickly on home video.
Domhnall Gleeson (HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PARTS I & II, ABOUT TIME, FRANK) plays Caleb Smith, a programmer at the Google-esque internet search engine giant Bluebook, who wins first prize in a companywide lottery. This entitles Caleb to a week�s stay at the home of the company�s reclusive CEO, located on his vast mountain estate (location never specified, but filmed in Norway).
In another solidly intense performance, Oscar Isaac (head shaved, but sporting a bushy beard) portrays the CEO, Nathan Bateman, who tells Caleb in their first meeting that his impressive compound of glass, stone, and shiny surfaces isn�t a house, it�s a research facility. After he gets him to sign a non disclosure form, Nathan reveals to Caleb that he�s built an android with Artificial Intelligence and that he wants Caleb to be the human component in the Turing Test - �when a human interacts with a computer, and if the human doesn�t know they�re interacting with a computer � the test is passed.�
Caleb is introduced to the AI, Ava (Alicia Vikander), who via CGI has parts that are transparent, and their sessions begin. Caleb speaks to Ava through a glass wall of an observation room, and, of course, develops an attraction to her. Nathan monitors their conversations on surveillance cameras, but during a power outage (something that happens often, Nathan explains) Ava warns Caleb that �Nathan is not your friend.�
There are other red flags that Nathan, who�s constantly boozing it up, is a modernized version of the classic mad scientist character �he�s hacked into the cell phones of billions, the contest was a smokescreen for this experiment, there is footage of other AI models desperately (and destructively) trying to escape , and he may have programmed Ava to flirt with Caleb.
There is only one other cast member - Kyoko, a Japanese housemaid (Sonoya Mizuno) who speaks no English but definitely has some dance moves as we see when a yet again drunken Nathan tries to get a party going with she and Caleb.
The directorial debut of screenwriter Alex Garland (28 DAYS LATER, NEVER LET ME GO, and DREDD) EX MACHINA is sharply constructed � there�s not a misplaced line, shot, or story beat and Geoff Barrow and Glenn Salisbury�s eerie electronic score effectively connects it all together.
Gleeson�s role is similar to his part in FRANK � a smart ambitious guy who gets way in over his head trying to be a part of something grand � but his acting is more focused here. His nervous exchanges, playing off of Isaac�s rich genius cockiness, give the film its humanity. However it�s the kind of humanity that may seal our race�s doom.
It's easy to see why Gleeson's Caleb would fall for Vikander's alluring Ava, even when he's trying to keep in mind that she's a machine, albeit sentient. Vikander tops off the trio of terrific performances, and makes the viewer go through their own personal take on the Turing Test as well.
It builds brilliantly from an intriguing think piece into a thriller, that�s both psychological and technological, with an ending that floored me then stuck around to haunt me for days. This is cerebral film making of the highest order � Stanley Kubrick, who Isaac says in one of the bonus features that he patterned his character after, would�ve loved it.
Special Features: The 5-Part Featurette �Through the Looking Glass: Creating EX MACHINA,� 8 Behind-the-Scenes vignettes, and SXSW Q & A with cast and crew that'sintermittently interesting if you've got an hour to kill.
If there's ONE reason to be excited about comic-book continuity being a "movie thing" now, outside of just "because it can be," it's that the medium is rife with great material that really only works when it has a Universe backing it up. Among the best examples of that: "Suicide Squad," a long-lived DC cult-fave whose knockout premise (an Government program that offers conditional pardons to incarcerated supervillains if they agree to use their special powers/skills for off-the-books, high-risk covert dirty-work assignments) just wouldn't be as much of a knockout if we didn't "know" these people were the assembled nemeses of a whole planet full of Batmans, Supermans, Flashes, etc.
With that in mind, just the knowledge that there is now going to be a cohesive (for good or ill) DC Movie Universe makes this already fairly kick-ass (despite being obviously comprised of very early, obviously-unfinished footage) SUICIDE SQUAD trailer feel like it's got real weight to it. Plus, David Ayer is a fascinating choice for directing this sort of material, and even Will Smith looks like he showed up to play:
Whether or not this is any good will come down to the story, execution, etc; but as "sizzle reels" go this is a good one. I'm still not really "in love" with Floridian Juggalo Joker, but I can at least see it as a "look" he'd try on and - gods help us - Jared Leto actually seems pretty into it.
The "thrift store versions of our usual costumes" look actually makes sense and goes with the overall feel (they look like those mall kiosk t-shirts where Popeye or Marylin or whoever are all tatted-up in L.A. gang ink and bandanas); and there's a brief comics-perfect glimpse of Deadshot in his "classic" getup that at least leaves hope open that Margot Robbie (who looks nuts) will get to slip into Harley Quinn's classic latex body-stocking at least once.
Really, though, what's most interesting here is the idea that this (supposedly) R-rated, no-bullshit, grownups-only "side story" is being directly connected (and openly promoted as such) to the more PG-13 "big" DCU movies and promoted as such - you can see Ben Affleck's Batman (plus someone wearing a Batman party-mask) right there in the action wrassling with Joker's purple and green Lambo' (because David Ayer) and Amanda Waller specifically namechecks Superman. That's a bridge Marvel really has yet to cross (I'd love to see someone like Blade or Punisher spend their whole individual movie/show wading through blood only to show up in AVENGERS or whatever all "Oh, hey guys.")
Tragic news. Saturo Iwata, the colorful CEO and "public face" of Nintendo since 2002, has died of an ongoing health issue at the age of 55.
Described as a "genius programmer" in his youth, Iwata begna his gaming career working at Nintendo-affiliate HAL Laboratories on classics like EARTHBOUND, the KIRBY series and BALLOON FIGHT. His elevation to CEO at Nintendo - the first man not descended from the company's founding-family to ever hold the position - was widely seen as an overdue turn toward modernity for the fiercely-traditional company, and he became a familiar and beloved presence to gamers and the gaming press for his participation in the offbeat, humorous Nintendo Direct internet presentations.
The most important thing, obviously, is sympathy and condolence to Iwata-san's friends and family, but there is no overlooking that this is an incalculable loss to the video-game world. It was an open secret that Iwata was the main business-side force pushing the last giant of the Golden Age into embracing the modern game-culture more enthusiastically - in 2013, when the company was facing a financial shortfall, he famously took a major pay-cut in lieu of firing any employees. Without him, the future direction of the company and indeed the industry feels suddenly more uncertain than it has in a long time.
Just because I'm anticipating being called a spoilsport or overly-negative because reasons, I feel like briefly mentioning that THIS feels like genuine gods-honest hope to me:
I still have no real "faith" in JJ Abrams. I think he's an average technician (at best) with deeply limited vision and terrible creative instincts. But he clearly has passion for this, and so does everyone else involved so far - even Ford. Sometimes that can override a lot. OR I'm just a sucker for puppets and model-work and monster-costumes and I've missed BTS reels that are something other than mocap suits and greenscreens SO. MUCH... This might work. This might actually work.
2:28 - Oh, snap! So that's what happened to Batman's parents! Whew. Man, I was worried they were never going to tell us!
As I've said before, at this point I (and anyone else on my "wavelength" about this stuff) needs to suck it up and accept that Warner Bros and DC have consciously decided that 90s COMICS: THE MOVIE (better-than-ever art/visuals, pointlessly dark/grim, thematically-unrecognizable characters) is the way they're going with their Cinematic Universe. You've got to have some way to distinguish these things, and since Marvel/Disney current has the market cornered on no-bullshit fun n' wonder superheroics, they're going hard and heavy for the Frat Rat set: These are Muscle Milk-chuggin' collar-poppin' ballcap-reversin' Ed Hardy-stylin' Nickleback-blastin' sick abs-flashin' Axe Body-Spray smellin' Bro Actioners that happen to feature DC Comics characters; deliberately - and they're going to have to be judged as such.
At the very least, it looks pretty gorgeous on a strictly visual side. Warners' "please write thinkpieces about this" pitch to the non-fanboy press (particularly regarding their wishy-washy approach to continuity) is that they're making Real Cinema(tm) versus Marvel's assembly-line pulp; and if that's your story Snyder is the guy to tell it - at least in trailer form. He looks to be back in his own comfortable style here, rather than the Christopher Nolan emulation from MAN OF STEEL.
We get our basic plot from this, too, which looks to be about what you'd expect: Bruce Wayne is mad about all the 9/11-by-way-of-Akira-Toriyama destruction caused in MAN OF STEEL - "Batman V Superman: We Meant To Do That, Honest!" - so he pulls his Batman gear out of mothballs and picks a fight with Superman, likely with a little egging-on from Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), who has Kryptonite and is up to something nefarious with the corpse of General Zod that I don't think will be the huge surprise* they're betting on it being. Also, Wonder Woman is there, looking... actually, nothing to even snark about there - she looks on-point. Snyder knows women-in-action, and complaints about Gadot not being able to sell the physicality appear fairly unfounded.
See also:
I think Superman speaks approximately one line of dialogue in this trailer. If I didn't know better, I'd assume we were introducing this character on the heels of a BATMAN movie, not the other way around.
"You don't owe this world a thing, you never did." Well, good to know there's some ideological consistency in the Kents' shitty parenting. Maybe this is more deliberate "modernizing," Clark Kent as a Gen-Xer defying his Me-Generation 'boomer parents? Or just more bad writing.
Apparently Gotham City and Metropolis are right next door to eachother. That's dumb.
"Retired" Robin-costume in a glass case, reminding us (like we needed it) that this is Frank Miller's aging fascist asshole Batman from TDKR. So is it Jason, Tim or Dick? FWIW, rumors have pegged a Nightwing'd Dick Grayson showing up in one of these movies - possibly this one.
#1 reason to not go the trendy "figgity-tech-dweeb-because-Apple-get-it???" route for your super-genius supervillain: Listen to Eisenberg utterly fail to sell "Black and Blue! God versus Man! Day and Night!" or "The Red Capes are coming! The Red Capes are coming!" and imagine it coming out of an actor with gravitas and conviction. Hell, not to go with the obvious, but think about Gene Hackman tearing into prose like that.
Bruce Wayne - billionaire with a lifetime of combat experience able to afford any training equipment he could possibly need - preps for his Batman-ing by gettin' swole-up workin' the Big Tire. Totes epic. Pound it, 'bro.
All the scenes of Batman in motion look better than the character has ever looked in terms of a physical presence onscreen... and also like cutscenes from the Arkham games.
Kidding aside, though, this looks... alright. Probably enjoyable, though I imagine I'll be rolling my eyes if the Sooooooo Seeeeeeeerious tone of this trailer is what plays out for the whole thing. Superheroes are inherently silly, particularly DC's roster of mostly pre-WWII Depression Era wish-fulfillment avatars. The "awe" or "mythic" aspect of them shines through best when it exists in-tandem with how intrinsically goofy they are (think Captain America instructing the cops in AVENGERS, or any Alex Ross painting ever) - not when it's trying to supplant (or apologize for) it.
We'll find out how this all comes together in March. For now, color me... I dunno, "not dreading it?" I think that's about right.
*POSSIBLE FUTURE SPOILERS:
If I had to guess (based on things known, things assumed and the way WB has managed this franchise for the last 20 years) Zod isn't coming back to life, but they'll use his body/DNA/whatever as a quickie origin story for someone/something big enough to fight/sideline Superman in Act 3, necessitating a Justice League recruitment drive or both. Doomsday? I'd bet on Doomsday - like I said, WB has been operating under the assumption that Death of Superman, Dark Knight Returns and Killing Joke are the only stories they own worth telling since about 1990 or so. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they "killed" Superman in this as the inciting-incident for JUSTICE LEAGUE; i.e. the instant-win-god-mode guy is sidelined for most of the first movie, comes in to save the day at the finale, just in time for "Something not even Superman can easily defeat is coming!!!" setup for PART II.
You will really get to know the face of the late, great jazz singer Amy Winehouse well before the end of this biodoc which details the rise and decline of the �little Jewish kid from North London with a big talent,� as her brother Alex described her.
Apparently from when she was a teenager to her tragic death at age 27 in 2011 from alcohol poisoning, somebody was filming her constantly. There�s so much in-her-face footage that at times it can make you feel like you�re in the chair across from her, hanging out.
This is ideal in the early stretches of the film, in which the bubbly, funny, and extremely talented performer is just starting out, poised on the verge of becoming a major top-charting, award-winning sensation. Of course, we get less face-time when the story grows dark as her battles with booze, drugs, mental health, and bulimia begin to overtake her musical career.
Director Asif Kapadia, whose previous film was another excellent biopic - 2010�s SENNA, about Brazilian motor-racing champion, Ayrton Senna - constructs Winehouse�s narrative out of tons of archival video, film, and photos (much previously unseen), connected by excerpts from over 100 interviews with family, friends, and fellow musicians. Interviewees include her first manager and mentor Nick Shymansky, childhood friend Lauren Gilbert, The Roots� bandleader Questlove, producer Mark Ronson, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), and Winehouse�s bodyguard, Andrew Morris.
Throughout AMY there is a healthy, welcome amount of performance material. The songs we witness Winehouse singing live in clubs and working on in the recording studio are treated with great import via individual lyrics in handwritten fonts being superimposed on top of footage, and often nearly complete versions of key tracks.
One of the most endearing moments in the movie comes at the 2008 Grammys. Winehouse wasn�t at the event in L.A. but was going to perform on a live feed from Riverside Studios in London. Winehouse�s monster hit �Rehab� was up for Record of the Year, and we watch her listen to Tony Bennett (one of her idols), and Natalie Cole read the nominees for the category. When Justin Timberlake�s name and song is announced, Winehouse makes a face, and snarkily asks �His song is called �What Goes Around�Comes Around?� So great to get that little insight into what she thought about Timberlake, and to see her bug-eyed shock at winning the award seconds later is priceless as well.
Speaking of Bennett, there�s an affecting segment of the jazz legend working with Winehouse on the duet �Body and Soul.� Winehouse, in total hot mess mode, is having trouble getting her vocal right, but Bennett soothes the situation with understanding warmth. You completely believe Bennett when he says that she�s �one of the truest jazz singers I ever heard. Up there with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.�
Winehouse�s ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil sure comes off sketchy here � the guy introduced her to crack cocaine for Christ�s sake! Infamous photos of the couple covered all bloodied and bruised that appeared in tabloids in 2007 speak scary volumes.
Mitch Winehouse, Amy�s father, doesn�t come off much better; we see him in footage from 2005 say his daughter didn�t need to go to rehab, and then in 2009 he tried to cash in on her fame with a reality TV show � we see Amy get highly irritated that he invited a camera crew to follow them around when she was on vacation in St. Lucia. It�s no wonder Mitch is threatening to sue.
It�s devastating to see Winehouse losing the battle with her demons, while she was being ridiculed by the brutal British press and American late night comedians � we get a sampling of the jokes at the time by such luminaries as George Lopez and Jay Leno.
She may have had a look stolen from Ronnie Spector � down to the beehive hairdo and Cleopatra make-up � but Winehouse had an amazing voice that was all her own. That she only left us with a couple of records (2003�s �Frank� and 2006�s �Back To Black�), some random outtakes, guest appearances, and a smattering of live recordings, when there should�ve been decades of stellar work, is still hard to process, even four years after her death.
See this incredibly moving and illuminating biodoc, one of the best of its kind, and you�ll get a really good idea how seriously heartbreaking a loss this really is.
