X-Men: Days of Future Past

 

• Released Internationally on 22/05/14
• Released in Malta by KRS on 22/05/14

Review (21/05/14)

3-word review: Impressive family reunion. 

 

The X-Men franchise is quite remarkable. Now in it’s seventh film; having had a huge variety of directors, actors, angles of the story and heroic fanfares; it manages to remain hugely entertaining and fresh, mixing a fascinating array of characters with a central theme that is eerily relevant in today’s often xenophobic world. The main risk with this latest film was that too many famous faces and memorable characters would make for a crowded or confusing film, but the end result is in fact great fun and surprisingly coherent, considering the time-travel plot.

Back to the future

The film kicks off in a desolate, dark future, which is unpleasant to watch, let alone live in. After an intense opening sequence we learn that this chaos is the result of a longstanding war against mutants and those who support them, and a war that has got slightly out of hand due to the merciless ‘sentinels’ which enforce it. The cast of the first three X-Men films assemble, along with the ubiquitous Wolverine/Logan (Hugh Jackman, who has appeared in all seven films), whom they agree to send back in time to try and stop this war before it begins. We therefore swiftly jump back to the much more pleasant swinging seventies.

 

Time travel can be fun

Films that dip into the river of time risk opening up huge plot holes and losing the audience, but thankfully the technicalities are made rather simple here. Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) stars as the scientist Dr Trask, who back in the 70s is the mind behind the first set of sentinels, whom he has designed to help target mutants. Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games, Silver Linings Playbook) is out to kill him, but in doing so would be captured, and her DNA used to make the sentinels all the more powerful. So essentially Wolverine has to round up the 70s X-Men and get them to stop her. What makes everything more fun is the playing with history that films like this are allowed. Magneto (Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave) has been imprisoned for the alleged assassination of JFK, the Vietnam war is ending, and Nixon is about to approve the sentinel programme.

Spoilt for choice

Rather than overcrowding the film, the many wonderful characters manage to make the film consistently brilliant, with a good mix of set pieces and character scenes. The main new role, besides Dr Trask, is the mutant Quicksilver (Evan Peters, Kick-Ass), who manages to hold his own amongst all the established names, and completely steals the limelight in the superb, show-stopping (literally) ‘time in a bottle’ sequence. Jim Croce sounds as great here as he did in Django Unchained. The overall feeling is that since all the main characters were so wonderfully built up in the previous films, they can immediately step on stage and make the scene more involving. Storm (Halle Berry) is back after a lengthy absence, and even though the future versions of Magneto and Professor X (Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart) have less action than they are used to, their presence is felt throughout. Jennifer Lawrence manages to shine through her heavy makeup and make Mystique possibly the most intriguing of all of them. It’s great seeing them all on screen together.

 

In the end

Brian Singer has pulled off quite a difficult task – cramming all the X-Men into one film, using time travel, and ending up with an entertaining film rather than a lengthy mess. He also drives forward the central theme of tolerance, and throws in some stunning action and visual effects as icing on the cake. It’s turning out to be a great summer at the movies.

 

p.s. Make sure you stay until the end of the credits, with your 3D glasses on.

 

Trailer: 

Cloud Atlas

• Released Internationally on 26/10/12
• Released in Malta by KRS on 10/04/13

Preview (first published 01/04/13 in VIDA Magazine)

The is definitely the release I’m most interested in this month. The film has all the makings of an epic, but was less-than-enthusiastically received across the Atlantic. It is the difficult adaptation of the multi-award winning novel from 2004 by David Mitchell (not the comedian). The book follows six separate stories which are eventually shown to be related to each other in various ways, despite being set in various corners of the globe and often many centuries apart.

This must have made it a bit of a nightmare to bring to the screen, but the task was undertaken by Lana and Andy Wachowski (The Matrix Trilogy) and Tom Tykwer (Perfume, Run Lola Run). Tykwer is one of those rare directors who also composes music for his films, and here he teamed up with Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek to compose what was undoubtedly one of the best and most beautiful film scores to come out of 2012.

The film also boasts a stellar cast, with Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving and Susan Sarandon, amongst others, portraying multiple roles in the various story segments. Despite all this, it failed to make huge waves at the US box-office, although the general impression is that those few who did enjoy it, think it’s a masterpiece. Let’s see what Europe thinks.

 

Review (10/04/13)

“All boundaries are conventions.”

There's a point, roughly two hours in, where this fast-paced film takes a breather, and a new piano melody appears. It slowly builds to a gorgeous march, playing out perfectly in sync with the montage on screen. The shots skip nimbly between different eras and different locations, and the voiceover from one of them carries over into the others, perfectly accompanying what we are seeing on screen. It's a rare moment of movie perfection, with sound, music, narration, emotion and imagery melding perfectly. I wished it could last hours, but it was over in a couple of minutes - a sublime crystallization of all that is wonderful about this film.

“What is an ocean but a multitude a drops?”

This is, in fact, the single most daring and ambitious decision taken by the filmmakers - to constantly cut from one story to the other, rather than lay them out in lengthy chunks like the novel does. From the very beginning of the film, in a whirlwind opening sequence, we are transported between an 1849 sea voyage, 1936 Cambridge and Edinburgh - where a fledgling composer somehow completes his finest work, 1973 California - where a young reporter daringly tries to uncover an environmental time-bomb, present day UK - where a publisher is tricked into entering a mental asylum, 2144 Korea - where a daring escape is underway in a Coruscant-type city, and a post-apocalyptic Hawaii where technology is only held by the few. It seems like a mammoth task, but from the very first shots the frames are carefully set with props and clues, as well as costumes and makeup, to orient the audience to time and place. Somehow, it works, and it allows for a few breath-taking sequences like the one mentioned above.

“From womb to tomb we are bound to others, past and present.”

The point, of course, is that everything is linked. As the film unfolds, we see how not-so-random acts of kindness in one era resonate in the next, and how places and people are clearly affected by others. Some of the links are obvious, but others had me thinking and reading up online well into the night after leaving the cinema, wide-eyed. The crossover narration mentioned above is a key feature, and it’s not everyday you see such seamless collaboration between script and editing. The other way the filmmakers chose to link the eras is by having the same actors portray various roles in each segment. This is one change I was less enthusiastic about, although it does help stress the point of linkage. The makeup and prosthetics are generally excellent, but there were a few characters that I felt ended up looking too odd, and being a distraction.

“That’s it! The music from my dream!”

The other common thread throughout the six segments is the music. Rather than try to compose music typical (or expected) of each setting, the music acts as a timeless thread between them all, also forming part of the plot, and of course enhancing key moments and carrying the story forward in other pulsating sequences. There are some moments of sheer gasp-out-loud joy, such as a comical escape, and others moments of shocking violence or futuristic action. The sheer variety and complexity of what we see on screen during these nearly three hours is staggering, and no wonder three directors were needed. I believe it was quite an oversight for the Oscars to shut this film out completely, especially with regard to original score. I can only imagine the logistical nightmares that art direction, makeup and costume design teams faced.

By the time things are brought beautifully to the boil, and all six segments rush towards their individual, but inevitably shared, conclusions, you’ll either be completely befuddled and uninterested, or else be sitting there with your mouth open, wondering how anyone had the guts to make this film, and make it so beautifully.

 

 

Trailers:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/cloudatlas/

 

Cloud Atlas Trailer