X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Title:  X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Peter Dingklage, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, James Mardsen, Kelsey Grammer

So this is to be the end all be all of all X-Men movies, reuniting characters seen in all previous X-Men films, from the first trilogy, to X-Men: First Class. The story this time is based on the famous Chris Claremont/John Byrne storyline that ran through The Uncanny X-Men #141 and 142. Many comic book fans consider this storyline one of the greatest Marvel Comics ever made. I mean, it’s easy to understand why. A lot of important characters die, the whole idea that mutants are being wiped out like flies is a scary one, drawing parallels with fascism. It’s a story that touches upon many important themes. Racism, bigotry, xenophobia, you get the drill. So anyhow, here comes the film based on the famous tale; did it do it justice?

One of the greatest Marvel Comics ever made; The Uncanny X-Men #141!

                             
For those who haven’t read the story, Days of Future Past starts out in a dark distant future where giant dna-copying robots known as Sentinels go around hunting mutants and eradicating them from the earth, like cockroaches. The idea being that mutants aren’t so special anymore because these Sentinels can copy their dna, and as a result their powers. But wait! The X-Men have figured out a way to send Wolverine back in time to stop the anti-mutant hysteria that started way back in 1973, when the Sentinels where first created. Can Wolverine convince a younger Prof. Xavier to help him stop the events which lead up to the creation of the Sentinels?

Bryan Singer returns to the franchise he helped build with X-Men (2000) and X2 (2003). In a way, Singer has returned to fix the huge mess left by Brett Ratner with X-Men: The Last Stand (2006); a film that changed X-Men cannon by killing off important characters as if they didn’t matter. I can almost hear Ratner saying “Kill Prof. Xavier? Sure! Let the next guy deal with it, meanwhile I’ll have a movie that everyone will talk about because important characters die!” That next guy ended up being Bryan Singer, picking up the pieces, trying to make things make sense again, trying to make order out of chaos. So it’s no surprise that Days of Future Past has a couple of surprises in store for X fans! In many ways, it’s great to have Singer back in the helm. I mean, so far, he’s the director that has handled these films the best, so it’s kind of comforting to know the material will be treated with some dignity and respect.

In Days of Future Past there are so many characters appearing on screen at the same time, that unless you’re a diehard X-men fan, you probably won’t know who the hell is who at times. Who’s that guy with fire coming out of his chest? Or that mutant opening portals? I don’t know, but it sure is cool! That’s one of the things I’ve always enjoyed about the X-Men comics, the multitude of characters, each with their own amusing ability. Having this whole mess of mutants running around using their powers and kicking the hell out of each other is fun times in my book. On this particular X-Men flick we get to meet many mutants we hadn’t seen before, like Quicksilver, whom you might have gotten a glimpse of during the final moments of Thor: The Dark World (2013). And by the way, speaking of Quicksilver, he was the one character everyone was all worried about. “He looks funny, he doesn’t look right” Whatever! He’s the guy who steals the movie! Quicksilver only appears for a short period of time, but damn, Quicksilver’s moment to shine is so cool that I don’t think the film every reached that level of awesomeness again. The film reached its peak somewhere around the middle of the film and it was all thanks to Quicksilver.

For all you comic book purists out there, well, you know they tweaked things around a bit. I guess the most notable change to the story is that Kitty Pride is not the one who goes back in time, it’s Wolverine. Every book to film translation suffers from changes for the sake of being more cinematic or exciting, so its understandable why they chose to make Wolverine the main character instead of Kitty Pride (like in the comics) or Bishop (like in the cartoons); considering Wolverine is the most popular X-Man ever, it kind of makes sense. In a sea of characters, some are bound to get lost in the shuffle and the one that got the least amount of attention in my book was Storm who is in the film for about 5 minutes total…or maybe less. Other characters only cameo and others you’ll see in some outstanding action sequence, and never see them again. But this is the nature of the beast. X-Men has always been a comic propelled by the idea that this is a group of super heroes and with so many characters in its roster, it stands to reason that the spotlight will shine on a different one with each story. In a future movie, who knows, maybe it won’t revolve around Wolverine so much. I mean, there are so many other characters to focus on. Still, with such a huge cast, I have to give Bryan Singer some props for not letting this turn into a total cluster fuck of a film.

At the end of the day, this film is a spectacle, a huge comic book movie with top notch special effects work, tons of action and many mutants to keep you entertained. Is it the best X-Men film ever made? I don't know, I guess time will tell on that one, but I will say that it's a very satasfying film. My only complaint would be that I wish they’d showed us more of the dark future world where the film starts out in. That part of the story is supposed to be very post apocalyptic, but alas we only get a glimpse of it. Aside, from that, I’m a happy geek boy with this movie. Of course the story brought to mind many time travel films, but the first I drew comparisons to was The Terminator (1984), because of the whole idea of going back in time to stop something from happening. By now everybody expects an extra ending at the end of all of these superhero movies. Disney has been doing this “extra ending” thing for a while now with great success. It’s a great thing in my book because it keeps the spirit of comic books alive. Comics have always been about the “to be continued” at the end of the comic, the cliffhanger to make you come back for next issue, or in this case, the next film. So yeah, now 20^th Century Fox is copying this technique in their Marvel movies, and it makes all the sense in the world to me. Trust me, stay after the credits! Then go on the internet and find out who the hell Apocalypse is. Looking forward to X-Men: Apocalypse come 2016!

Rating: 4 out of 5

Trick R' Treat (2009)

Title: Trick or Treat (2009)

Director: Michael Dougherty

Review:

The Anthology horror film has been around for a while. Amongst them you can include Tales from the Crypt (1972) Vault of Horror (1973) The Illustrated Man (1969) and more recently Creepshow (1982) Tales from the Darkside: The Movie(1990) and Twilight Zone: The Movie(1983). I love these movies because they offer us short fast paced stories that aim to shock and get to the point quick, sometimes, that’s all we need. A quick horror jolt to the system! Same kind of thrill I get from watching old episodes of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt. Its that instant thrill and gratification of reading a short story that gets to the point quick.

The latest film to join the ranks of the horror anthology film is Trick R' Treat. A film that had a rocky production phase, where Warner Bros. suddenly pulled the film from its 2007 schedule, they pushed it back to 2008 and was finally released straight to DVD on October 2009 two years after it was produced. Why? Well, there’s various reasons swimming around. One, that they didn’t want the film to go up against Saw IV (yup, this movie has been made for that long!) which was also to be released in October 2007. Some also think that Michael Dougherty (the films director) was responsible in part for writing Superman Returns, and since that Superman flick was such a  flop, the studio retaliated by pulling Trick 'R Treat from its theatrical release. As of form of saying "thats what you get for writing such a crappy Superman flick!". To top things off, the film was produced by Legendary Pictures, Brian Syngers production company. If I remember correctly, expectation was high for that Superman flick, and more then one fanboy was disappointed by it, including myself. I enjoyed it, but lets face it, it could have been better. More then 300 million were spent in what was a very unimpressive flick. For that amount of money I was expecting Superman to go up against almighty God himself!

I guess that’s how Hollywood plays the game. You make them loose a couple of million dollars and they put you on the black list. So anyhows, is Trick R’ Treat any good? Should Warner Bros. have let Trick R’ Treat have its theatrical run? Well, word on the net is that this is the best Halloween movie ever, that its great, that it deserves a place among the best Halloween themed movies out there. I myself saw the previews for this movie and thought it looked cool as hell, and wondered why the heck it had not been released yet. Well, low and behold, Warner Bros. finally decided to let this one out into the world. How was it?

The film has four stories that all happen on Halloween night. It’s a bit different to some anthology movies where usually we get a “wrap around” story that joins all the stories together. Here, the film plays out more like Pulp Fiction or Amores Perros where what holds the different stories together is one common theme, in this case, its that everything happens on Halloween night. Sometimes, you’ll see one character that died on one story, on the other one, same as in Pulp Fiction, where you would see Vincent Vega when he had already died in some other part of the movie. Same deal here.

My problem with the movie was that it was uneven in tone. At times it plays like a child like fairy tale. One of the stories “The Halloween School Bus Massacre Revisited” is about these four kids who want to play a prank on a nerdy girl, so they take her to this place where these kids died and try and scare her. Its that type of tale that’s spooky but not too scary, which kind of leads you to believe that this is the kind of story that wont go too far. It’ll try and be spooky, but not too out there. But then they have a story about a girl who's apparently trying to have sex for the first time. Its called “Surprise Party” turns out the story ends up having girls getting naked and dancing in the fire and suddenly the story goes into R rated territory. So I’m like, is this film directed to kids, or adults? Or what? But ultimately, this uneven tone didn't really matter to me because the whole film is just spooky, atmospheric, gory, bloody, Halloween fun. 

Fred Dekker's Monster Squad suffered a similar problem years ago when it was first released in 1987. Actually, this ambiguity in tone is what killed Monster Squad in theaters. People didn’t know if the film was aimed as a fun harmless horror movie for kids, or if it’s a hardcore horror film for adults. As a result, the film tanked at the box office. Same thing happened with this movie in my opinion, it had an uneven tone. Sometimes it plays like a Halloween movie for kids…suddenly its hot chicks with their tits coming out of their dresses apparently searching for guys to have sex with.

But okay, it’s uneven in tone. What else can I say about it? I liked that the film really exploits the fact that it’s a Halloween movie and fills every square inch of the screen with Halloween ornaments, Pumpkins, dried leafs, the wind blowing, trick or treaters, candy, you know the whole Halloween shebang. You kind of feel like your living in The Nightmare Before Christmas’s Halloween Town. So kudos to the filmmakers for really capturing the spirit of the holiday, it seems that Michael Dougherty, the films director, really loves Halloween.

As in any good anthology film, they save the best for last. On the last tale we get to meet Sam, that little guy on the poster. The origins of 'Sam' are interesting, back when Michael Dougherty was just a student filmmaker, he directed a short animated film called “Seasons Greetings”. You can watch it cause it’s the only extra that this dvd includes; and it’s the coolest little animated feature. It just oozes atmosphere. And it presents us with this little character that feels like it came right out of Tim Burton's imagination. Or something you'd see in that movie 9. So anyhow, he has a burlap bag over his head, has the height of a little kid. And kills people. Why. Who is he? Who the hell knows! But apparently, he doesn’t want you saying bad things about Halloween, or not liking Halloween cause then you are going to get it. Who is this little creature? That remains a mystery, but he will kill you if you don’t like Halloween!

Brian Cox plays a old hermit who is the Halloween equivalent of Mr. Scrooge. Ah Humbug! Halloween is meaningless! And so he gets a lesson from the little creature known as Sam. I thought that idea was cool, to have Halloween version of Mr. Scrooge and its by far the most original thing this movie has going for it, I hope Sam gets explored a little more if they ever make a sequel. This film is drenched in Halloween coolness, I’m sure it’s what’s going to help it live through the years as the perfect film to watch on Halloween night. 

Rating: 4 out of 5