Just as Dr. Frankenstein stitched his creation together from the bodies of several people “Victor Frankenstein,” a new film starring James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe, stitches a story together using bits and pieces of other monster movies.
In a flip flop from most Frankenstein movies, the story begins with the nameless, hunchbacked circus freak that would become Igor (Daniel Radcliffe), studying the “science of life” when he isn’t pining after beautiful trapeze artist Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay). His detailed anatomical drawings earn the ridicule of his fellow carnies but when Lorelei is injured after a fall his quick thinking saves her life.
Victor Frankenstein, seeing his potential, smuggles the hunchback out of the circus with an eye toward making him his protégé. The good (or is he?) doctor gives his new friend the name of an old, deceased pal. Turns out the newly minted Igor’s back bump is just an abscess which, once drained, will allow him to stand upright and fit in with upper class Victorian society.
Frankenstein wants to use Igor’s knowledge of anatomy to help construct the “larger whole” the doctor has in mind. It will be, he says, “a scientific enterprise that will change the world.” In other words, he’s looking to reanimate the dead. “I’m of the opinion that death is a temporary condition,” he says.
As the pair work toward their scientific breakthrough Lorelei re-enters the story and a religious policeman (Andrew Scott) sniffs out sin, making it is his moral duty to stop Frankenstein’s experiments. “He reeks of an evil, sinful mischief.”
In the end Igor must look into his soul to decide whether his mentor’s motives are scientific or psychological.
As the title would suggest “Victor Frankenstein” is about the man not the monster. Just as Frankenstein’s work “challenges natural order,” the movie challenges our knowledge of the story, mixing-and-matching details from Mary Shelley’s source novel (which did not feature Igor) with the accumulated mythology from the dozens of films that followed.
Igor takes on a much larger role in the story, transcending the traditional, “Yes master,” assistant to become the movie’s moral compass and emotional core. The movie isn’t really about the monster or creating life. Victor Frankenstein figures out how to create life in a laboratory but, more importantly, he gives Igor a life—changing him from abused circus freak to English gentleman.
Victor is still not one to allow morality stand in the way of science, but here the psychological drama trumps any talk of ethics. Questions as to the implications of bringing the dead back to life are raised and dismissed with clever hypotheticals like, “Imagine that a murdered man can stand in court to face his murderer,” or simply lost in the frenetic action that keeps the movie moving at warp speed.
Also gone are any Gothic overtones. The setting and dusty old laboratories will look familiar to fans of the genre but get lost in the film’s rapid pacing. Director Paul McGuigan seems more intent on keeping the movie moving than fleshing out the story or allowing the atmosphere to take hold. Screenwriter Max Landis can be credited with devising a new take on an old story and doing so with some humour—“We’ll give him a flat head!” says Victor. Why? “Because I like flat heads!”—but both the direction and script feel too modern to snugly fit into the Frankenstein canon.
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” offers up two for the price of one.
Merging the young versions of Magneto and Professor X with their older counterparts is a cool idea, and certainly gives the movie a boost in the marquee department, but I felt the old timers were left with their own heightened sense of drama and not much else. It seems a shame to have McKellen and Stewart, the Martin and Lewis of mutants, on screen together and not give them much to do.
Based on a 1981 two-issue special of the X-Men comic series the new film begins in a post-apocalyptic future. “A dark and desolate world,” according to the narration. “A world of war, suffering and loss on both sides—mutants and the humans who tried to help them.”
The causing all the trouble are indestructible robot warriors called Sentinels. Able to adapt to any mutant power they’ve created chaos for the mutant race, bringing them to the edge of extinction.
In an effort to “change their fate” long time enemies Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) team up with Storm (Halle Berry), Blink (Fan Bingbing), Bishop (Omar Sy) and use Kitty Pryde’s (Ellen Page) teleportation ability to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time to change history and prevent the creation of the murderous automations. His first task is to convince the 1973 versions of Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and young Professor X (James McAvoy) that they are stronger together than apart.
The only things larger than the movie’s lengthy list of stars are the big ideas contained within. Wrapped around a simple time travel story—the kind of thing “Family Guy” does once or twice a season—are timeless ideas about racism, tolerance, war and rebellion. Not usually the stuff of summer blockbusters, but the X-Men franchise has always been a bit brainier than most. At times it’s a bit too ponderous, but I’ll take that over the flash-and-trash of most CGI epics.
Not that it’s a total head trip. It’s a movie about time travel, mutants and serious actors like Michael Fassbender saying lines like, “We received a message from the future,” so, of course, it’s a little preposterous. That’s part of the fun. It plays with the conventions of big time summer entertainment—check out the spectacular time-shredding sequence featuring the lightening-fast mutant Quicksilver (Evan Peters) that’s both eye-popping and cheeky—but tempers the bombastic stuff with thought provoking notions.
In fact, it could be argued that the ideas are the stars of the film. Jennifer Lawrence is the a-listiest actress in Hollywood right now, but in her second outing as Mystique she almost gets cut adrift in a sea of characters. Ditto Peter Dinklage as the closest thing the film has to a villain.
They’re all good, but Magneto, Professor and Wolverine are complex, cool characters that bring the film’s themes to life; all the rest is set dressing, except for the Quicksilver scene. That was like The Matrix without Keanu’s hangdog expression.
Synopsis: From January to December 2013, hundreds of movies opened on our screens. We saw everything from American Hustle to Zero Charisma, from the ridiculous — 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — to the sublime — 12 Years a Slave. The Reel Guys watched a lot of bad movies this year so you don’t have to and saw many great ones to recommend. But some of the good flicks slipped by without finding an audience. This week they revisit some movies you may have missed but should take a look at.
Richard: Mark, Pain and Gain seemed to me like it couldn’t lose. Starring Dwayne Johnson, who was recently named 2013’s biggest money-making star, Mark Wahlberg and directed by Michael “big bucks” Bay, it was the funny-but-true story about a trio of greedy dumb criminals who kidnap a rich guy. It plays like an episode of CSI: Miami performed by the Three Stooges and should have done boffo box office, but for some reason it didn’t. What did you like that slipped through the cracks?
Mark: I loved Pain and Gain, and if anyone told me one of the best movies of the year would be directed by schlockmeister Michael Bay, I would take it as a sign of the upcoming apocalypse. Another overlooked gem to me was Trance, Danny Boyle’s genre buster. Is it about an art heist? Mind control? Sexual obsession? Revenge? Best to ask James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson, both in fine form, and in the case of Dawson, I do mean — ahem — fine form.
RC: Also in fine form were the giant robots and sea monsters in Pacific Rim. I know they always say about Hollywood that “nobody knows anything,” that you never know what will be a hit, but I thought the combo of Guillermo Del Toro, colossal sea beasts with an appetite for destruction and humungous rock ‘em, sock ‘em robots was a winner. It’s a supersize geek freak out that transports you back in time to wherever you were when you were lucky enough to see your first Godzilla movie.
MB: Sorry, Richard, to me, actual rock-em, sock-em robots are more interesting, and are better actors. Another undiscovered gem for me was Side Effects, Steven Soderbergh’s Hitchcockian mindbender from early winter. Starting off as a condemnation of the pharmaceutical industry, it turns a lot of corners and becomes a thrilling cerebral murder mystery. And Jude Law, no longer acting with his looks, is magnificent.
RC: Warm Bodies was essentially one joke — the zombie as a metaphor for awkward teenage love — but it’s a pretty good one and well performed. Too bad more people didn’t see it. The movie doesn’t exactly make sense, particularly if you’re a zombie fan of either the Romero or Walking Dead schools, but no matter how fast and loose it plays with the established mythology of the undead it’s still a new twist on an old form.
MB: Warm Bodies reminded me of Ricky Gervais’ Ghost Town in mood and had the same limitations of premise. A foreign film I thought was brilliant was China’s A Touch Of Sin, which interwove four stories Pulp-Fiction style about the new economy in China and its victims, often ending in sad violent episodes. Brilliant Richard.
“Romeo & Juliet” is arguably the best known of Shakespeare’s plays. Certainly it is his most loved romance and is one of the most filmed plays of all time. Among the modern versions of the two young “star-cross’d lovers” are a classic big screen MGM adaptation starring Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer, the musical “West Side Story” and an anime rendering about two rival ninja clans fighting each other. Perhaps the strangest reimagining of the story, however, hits screens this weekend. As the title suggests, “Gnomeo & Juliet” replaces the human protagonists with garden gnomes. That’s not gnormal but then again, this isn’t your garden variety kid’s flick.
Set on Verona Drive, the movie takes place in the back gardens of feuding neighbors Mr. Montague and Mrs. Capulet. Their dispute isn’t the only grudge on the block however. While they are away at work or asleep at night their garden gnomes come to life and do battle. Divided into red and blue gardens, every night the gnomes kick some grass in an effort to sabotage one another. The whole situation comes to a head when Gnomeo (voice of James McAvoy) and Juliet (Emily Blunt) fall hopelessly in love after a chance encounter.
“Gnomeo & Juliet” isn’t a strict translation of Bill Shakespeare’s play. In other words, and this is not a spoiler, it doesn’t end in gnomacide. Other than that the themes of the original are in place—like the forcefulness of love, love as a cause of violence and the individual versus society—but that’s for eggheads and this is for kids. In the movie the high-falutin’ themes have been winnowed down to nice teachable moments for the tots about tolerance and not judging a book by it’s cover, or in this case, a gnome by the color of their hat.
Parents will likely get a kick out of the nods to classic movies—there’s the chariot race from “Ben Hur,” the bucket scene from “Flashdance” and “American Beauty’s” bed of roses to name a few—and the equally classic Elton John song (he’s a producer on this along with his husband David Furnish) but overall this is pitched at young children.
The best thing about “Gnomeo & Juliet” is the animation. Each of the colorful gnomes has a distinct personality and the animators have carefully recreated the weathered ceramic look of real garden gnomes.
The downside is kind of dull voice work—surprising because the cast is a who’s who, including Michael Caine, Maggie Smith and Ozzy Osbourne and even duller 3D. But despite the lack of really memorable voices the story carries the day to create a fun family-friendly film.
You can always tell its awards season when the biopics start hitting the theatres. Biographies are powerful Oscar magnets. The Academy has always been a sucker for a true-to-life story. Since the beginning of the Academy’s history 1 in 7 films nominated for Best Picture have been life stories and once designated, 1 in 5 go on to win. In the last two years alone Oscars went to actors portraying Ray Charles, Truman Capote and June Carter Cash. Next in line for Oscar consideration, in the Best Actor category at least, should be Forest Whitaker’s true-to-life look at Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s rise to power in The Last King of Scotland.
The story begins with a young Scottish doctor who travels to Uganda to do charity work and winds up as the newly minted dictator Amin’s personal physician. Based upon the novel by Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland places the fictional MD into a historical setting.
James McAvoy, who people will remember as Tumnnus in The Chronicles of Narnia last year, plays a doctor who starts out with the best of intentions but soon finds himself implicit in Amin’s madness as the body count around him grows. Director Kevin MacDonald takes us into Amin’s inner circle, allowing us to see the dictator’s descent into madness from the point-of-view of an objective observer. The doctor acts as a filter through which the viewer learns about the evil of Amin.
We meet the larger- than-life Amin just as he has come to power. He is a captivating figure, a man of the people, whose speechifying can whip a crowd into a frenzy. The doctor, swept away by Amin’s charisma, agrees to work with him to create a new health care system for Uganda. Soon the cracks in Amin’s personality reveal the cruelty of his reign.
McAvoy may be the leading man, but Forest Whitaker’s brilliant performance as Amin is at the heart of this film. He shows us the duality of Amin, the man who on one hand was a magnetic, charismatic leader and on the other a cold-blooded killer who ordered the deaths of 300,000 people during his reign of terror. It is a complex and richly realized performance that elevates the movie from standard biopic to Oscar caliber film.
Movies don’t come more “ripped from the headlines” than “Salt.” The story of a sleeper agent living in the United States unfolded in real life recently but wasn’t nearly as exciting or as silly as its on-screen counterpart.
When we first meet Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) she is an American hero after surviving a brutal interment in North Korea. “Do you know what she’s done for her country?” asks her boss (Liev Schrieber). Actually we don’t, but she did have a nasty black eye when she was rescued. She’s married to Michael Krause—the world’s leading arachnologist—and is happily riding a desk at an undercover CIA office in Washington. Everything suddenly changes one day, however, when a Russian defector named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) shows up with a wild tale of a sleeper agent named Evelyn Salt who is going to assassinate the Russian president in order to trigger a war. Accused, she makes a run for it—searching for her husband and the truth.
“Salt” has a Cold War inspired plot that even James Bond creator Ian Fleming, no stranger to elaborate plot musings—he once created a villain who killed his victims with liquid gold—would have rejected as over-the-top.
Logic flies out the window early on, leaving room only for outlandish plot turns unlikely twists and an ending that can only be described as preposterous.
That said, “Salt” is a lot of fun but it’s not a story that will hold up to a great deal of scrutiny. Hitchcock would have referred to it as a refrigerator movie. It seems to (mostly) make sense while you are watching it, but later, when you are home in front of the fridge making a snack and thinking about the film you realize it doesn’t hold up. But that’s OK when the action is as relentlessly paced and fun as Phillip Noyce delivers here. The escalation from accused spy to fugitive happens very quickly—it’s exaggerated—but once the action starts it covers for the trite dialogue—”You’re not safe with me!”—and silly plotting.
The part of Evelyn Salt was originally written for Tom Cruise, who eventually walked away because he felt the story too closely resembled his “Mission Impossible” movies. Good thing too. Cruise would have brought his usual hero persona along with him, taking away some of the down-and-dirty pleasure of the film. Besides it’s way more fun to see Angelina Jolie jump from building to building and use dead guys as a silencer for her gun. Cruise would have insisted on less good-or-evil ambiguity. Jolie oozes bad girl vibes and it works very well here. As Evelyn she’s two parts bombshell, one part “MacGyver” and all badass. She has more lives than Felix the Cat, but that’s all part of the fun.
Less than fun is the end of the movie. There will be no spoilers here, but the preposterous finale makes me think that a.) it was written to set “Salt” up for a sequel—can “Salt and Pepper” be far behind? or b.) Noyce didn’t know how to end it and went for the easiest and least logical way out.
“Salt” is silly fun. A summer spy romp that works as an action film but doesn’t bear up to scrutiny.
According to Hollywood a bonk on the head can empty a mind of all its memories. Experts say amnesia doesn’t work that way, but nonetheless it’s an age-old movie device. But then Hollywood would also have you believe that robots from outer space will one day take over the world and Russell Crowe can sing French show tunes.
That sense of disbelief will be crucial to your enjoyment of the new Danny Boyle film “Trance.” A big buy-in is required to accept the far-fetched plot devices to this intriguing, but intrigue-heavy movie.
After an elaborate art heist goes awry a valuable Goya painting ends up missing. Not in the hands of the thieves, or the police. The only person who knows where it is Simon (James McAvoy) but a head injury wiped his memory. To recover his memories—and the painting—criminal mastermind Franck (Vincent Cassel) hires Dr. Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) to hypnotize Simon and unlock his memories. Lines between reality and memory becomes blurred, however, as Dr. Lamb probes deeper into Simon’s unconscious mind.
“Trainspotting” director Boyle presents the hypno sessions in an interesting way—as though the viewer is in the nether world between reality and the recreation of Simon’s memories. It’s disorienting filmmaking that disguises what’s real and what isn’t, which is important for a thriller with this may twists and turns. Occasionally, however, it feels as though there are too many bends in the story.
I won’t elaborate—no spoilers here—but the old saying, “Buy the ticket, take the ride,” applies here. This is Boyle pushing the boundaries of the genre and audience acceptance to the edge.
For instance if you can buy in that Cassel and his gang are the most patient violent thugs ever or that femme fatale Dawson is Reveen the Impossibilist on steroids, then “Trance” will provide some thrills. If not, why not pull out that VHS of “Trainspotting”?
Wanted is about fathers and sons. It’s about a deadly fraternity, called, with startling clarity and simplicity, The Fraternity. It’s about bullets etched with epitaphs and tattooed assassins.
At its center is Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) a cubicle-dwelling accountant so mild mannered he allows his best friend to carry on a torrid affair with his girlfriend and can’t stand up to his nagging boss. He’s a nobody; the kind of guy who Goggles his name and draws a blank. No Results. When a simple trip to the drug store to buy his anti-anxiety medication turns into an out-of-control shoot ‘em up between dueling killers (Angelina Jolie and Thomas Kretschmann) he is indoctrinated into the secret world of The Fraternity, a millennium old band of assassins. It seems his estranged father was a world class killer and Sloan (Morgan Freeman), the organization’s enigmatic head honcho believes Wesley has what it takes to join the exclusive club.
After a vigorous and violent training he goes from slacker to whacker; they mold him into a highly skilled killer ready to carry out the ancient code of The Fraternity and kill the man who offed his father.
Based on a high octane comic book series by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, Wanted has the same manic energy of the graphic novels. Director Timur Bekmambetov uses Matrix-style action, combined with Quentin Tarantino-style attitude and a nod to the goofy humor of the Transporter movies to create an over-the-top bash-fest that takes off like a rocket from its opening minutes and doesn’t let-up until the end credits roll.
Unlikely action star James McAvoy, best known as Mr. Tumnus, the naive satyr in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, holds his own amidst the crazy carnage. As his character goes from office contract manager to contract killer the diminutive McAvoy proves that he can be convincing as both a dweeb and stone cold killer. Angelina Jolie, as the appropriately named Fox, riffs on her Mrs. Smith character—a kind of deadly runway model—managing to be simultaneously sultry and tough. Morgan Freeman puts a nasty spin on his well-worn calm but commanding film persona, playing a rare, for him, morally ambiguous character.
There’s nothing subtle about Wanted. The violence is graphic, out-of-control and plentiful—it’s Fight Club without the brainy subtext—the story is in-your-face and even Danny Elfman’s score can only be described as bombastic. It’s a shock to the senses that will delight action and comic fans but may leave the faint of heart dazed and confused.
“X-Men: The Younguns” has its share of things that go boom but it doesn’t follow the summer blockbuster format. There aren’t action sequences every ten minutes, the characters actually talk to one another and there’s even subtitles! What a relief. After the heavy metal bombast of “Thor” and its ilk, “X-Men” is more like the art rock of a Radiohead disc—brainy but still fun.
From concentration camps in Poland to a mansion in Westchester, NY, “First Class” details the evolution of the mutant band of X-Men (and Women). We learn how the two most powerful mutants, Eric / Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) get along long enough to put together a team of mutants, but soon find themselves on opposite side in a game of Free to Be You and Me. Add in some former Nazis, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Betty Draper and you have one of the most satisfyingly good blow-‘em’-up movies of the year so far.
“X-Men: First Class” is a bit talkier than you might expect from a big budget comic book movie, but at least they’re saying something. It isn’t just chatter. Mixed in with the action and the one-liners you expect from these kinds of films is a parable about tolerance and social context with a timely edge—one line in particular, “Security is more important than liberty,” sounds scarily up to date—but the reason it all works so well is that it has the best of all worlds, good crash-boom-bang, great villains, cool characters and a script that respects all of the above. If they wanted to make it less chatty, I suppose they could cut some of January Jones’s lines. One thing is for sure, acting is not her super power.
The other actors, however, do their best to make us forget that Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen once donned the mutant black and yellow uniforms. McAvoy brings real heart to the role of Xavier and Fassbender is edgy enough to really make us believe the rage that fuels Magneto. Of the teen mutants only Jennifer Lawrence, as the shape shifting blue lady Mystique and Nicholas Hoult as Beast do something interesting with their characters, even though Beast’s mask looks like a dollar store purchase. The others are underdeveloped embryonic characters that provide some color but not much else to the story. Hopefully if any of them come back they’ll do more than spit fire or flutter insect wings.
Stealing the show is Kevin Bacon as the power hungry Sebastian Shaw. Trying to take over the world is serious business, but that doesn’t stop Bacon from having some serious fun with the role.
“X-Men: First Class” is a welcome addition to the “X-Men” movie series and a great example of how big blockbuster entertainment can entertain the eye (thanks January Jones and Jennifer Lawrence) and the mind.
