THE BOONDOCK SAINTS/22 JUMP STREET/TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION - A Triple Review

A B (plus), a C, and a D

Three Movies I’ve Seen Recently That I Need to Acknowledge

The Boondock Saints (released in 1999)

Grade: B+

Written and Directed by Troy Duffy

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Sean Patrick Flannery, Norman Reedus, David Della Rocco and Billy Connolly

Rated R for strong, bloody violence and gore, language, some sexual content, and brief nudity

One film I had never gotten around to seeing even though many regard it as the epitome of cool, Boondock Saints begins slowly but starts picking up the pace quick, soon fascinating and enveloping the viewer in its electric world, the way great thrillers always do. Featuring some tremendous acting, dark, dark humor and some terrific action set pieces, Boondock’s premise is fairly simple. Forced to kill a pair of Russian mobsters in self-defense in the aftermath of a bar fight, a pair of tough, sophisticated brothers from South Boston decide to take to heart the sharp teachings of their priest, who insists that the world’s greatest evil is the “indifference of good men”. Well-played by the low-key but superb Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus, the brothers soon become something of cult heroes as they start bumping off infamous mobsters in the city—they’re praised by the locals even though their specific brand of vigilante justice would make Batman queasy. The brothers’ exploits understandably put them in the cross-hairs of both organized crime syndicates and low law enforcement, but it also earns them a special place in the heart and imagination of FBI Agent Smecker (Willem Dafoe), who’s supposed to focus on stopping them. Instead, he (like the audience) begins to look forward to the next bloody crime scene, where he can begin to piece together what these badass vigilantes did this time.

It’s all very well done, with deliriously great action punctuated by moments of outrageous humor, such as a brothers’ slugfest collapsing an air vent—causing them to fall through the ceiling of a room full of Russian mobsters they were out to whack—and one of the best Unexpected Movie Deaths I’ve ever seen. The flashback-heavy plot keeps the viewer on their toes, and the acting is solid across the board. While Flannery and Reedus are the most recognized for their tough/cool portrayals, they’re ably supported by the normally-genial Billy Connolly as a tough-as-nails fellow hit man and David Della Rocco as a wisecracking would-be hit-man. And the film is anchored by the ever-slippery Dafoe, whose sarcastic, homophobic, crime-loving, eccentric FBI agent is a near-perfect amalgam of bits from all his best performances (Platoon, Shadow of the Vampire, Spiderman and Out of the Furnace among them).

22 Jump Street

Grade: C

Starring: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Wyatt Russell, Ice Cube, Peter Stormare, Amber Stevens, and Jilian Bell

Premise: Budding detectives Jenko and Schmidt go undercover again, this time as college students, to try to find the dealer of a new dangerous drug called WhyPhy.

Rated R for constant profanity and graphic sex-related dialogue, crude and sexual humor, and violence

It’s becoming less and less of a surprise to find such movies these days, but 22 Jump Street was made only because its 2012 predecessor did better at the box office than most people expected. Not that anyone really cared about sending up the TV show that made Johnny Depp famous—the odd-couple pairing of dorky goofball Jonah Hill and studly jock Channing Tatum turned out to be magic. So, after going undercover as high school students and stopping Rob Riggle from supplying grade-schoolers with a drug called HFS in 21, police partners Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) are sent to MC State college to try and find the distributors and supply of a new drug that’s caused a few deaths—this one called WhyPhy.

Unsurprisingly, the best thing about 22 is the amusing sight of the strapping Tatum and the round-ish, tottering Hill together, let alone the fact that they actually have pretty good chemistry. Unfortunately, however, upon seeing 22, I can tell it would probably be every bit as fun to simply watch the two actors talk, rather than watch them try to wring laughs from an over-blown, over-stuffed, clichéd, annoying comedy like this one. There are a few good laughs, courtesy of the torrent of expletives spouted by Jenko and Schmidt’s precinct captain, played by Ice Cube, or a few amusing plays on words (“I just found out you can get it anywhere on campus, 24/7”, Jenko tells Schmidt about WhyPhy, not realizing what he heard about is actually WiFi). But endless tides of sex jokes, private parts jokes and beer and drinking jokes plus increasingly corny faux-break-ups and couples-counseling sessions make the movie start to feel tired, not to mention the new tide of co-stars (Wyatt Russell, Amber Stevens, Jilian Bell and Peter Stormare) don’t have the natural heart or humor of the first movie’s supporting cast—Riggle, Dave Franco, Brie Larson and Ellie Kemper, among others.

I won’t deny 22 has some funny parts, but it’s telling when the best part of your nearly two-hour movie is a credits montage of sequels they could make (putting Jenko and Schmidt undercover in Medical School, Military School, Culinary School, Mariachi School, etc…).

Transformers: Age of Extinction

Grade: D

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, and John Reynor, and featuring the voices of Peter Cullen (as Optimus Prime), John Goodman (as Hound), Ken Watanabe (as Drift), John DiMaggio (as Crosshairs), Mark Ryan (as Lockdown) and Frank Welker (as Galvatron)

Premise: A dirt-poor car mechanic buys a beat-up old truck, which turns out to be a transformer, a fact that brings squads of government special ops troopers and less-friendly transformers onto his tail.

Rated PG-13 for intense action and violent content, constant sequences of peril and destruction, and language

The fourth movie in a lucrative but brain-dead franchise, Transformers: Age of Extinction proves once and for all that Michael Bay won’t change. The director of everything from Armageddon and Pearl Harbor to Bad Boys loves to blow things up, cause mass destruction, kill off some bad dudes, and let his camera linger on barely-dressed women. Throw in scores of completely computer-generated robots that like to smash and bash each other in rough-and-tumble fights, plus a bloated running time, and you’ve got a ridiculously busy but also relentlessly-stupid movie, a movie that’s more irritating than entertaining.

There’s no point in talking much about the plot, in which a couple of cliché, one-dimensional human characters occupy some time in the foreground just to provide a sort-of-meaningful set-up for giant robots to start punching each other’s faces in. The new “reboot” cast fares no better than the old, with Wahlberg a better actor than former Transformers star Shia LaBeouf but saddled with an even more meaningless character, Stanley Tucci a tiny bit less annoying than John Turturro, and spray-tanned newcomer Nicola Peltz actually (dare I say it) making one pine for Megan Fox. It really is the laziness put into the setting-up of the human characters that kills all joy and excitement for Transformers—if we as viewers can’t care about the actual flesh-and-blood humans, why should we care about the giant robots, most of whom get blown up anyway? And it’s probably a bad sign when I privately cheered the early offing of the main character’s best friend, because the dude was so freakin’ annoying, only around to try and generate laughs from his hyper, dumb-ass white persona.

While I can appreciate the work put into making some admittedly impressive CGI characters and fights, I had zero appreciation for the characters or the plotting of this new movie. Maybe that’s to be expected, that the movies are only made to pit giant alien robots against each other. Well, if they assume we want to see giant robots fight giant robots that bad, can’t we just have a couple of hour/hour-and-a-half long movies just about the robots heading toward an imminent clash with each other? We might actually care more.

The Boondock Saints (1999)

Written and Directed by Troy Duffy

Rated R

Length: 108 minutes

22 Jump Street (2014)

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Written by Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel and Rodney Rothman

Based on the television series '21 Jump Street' created by Patrick Hasburg and Stephen J. Cannell
Rated R

Length: 112 minutes

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Directed by Michael Bay

Written by Ehren Kruger

Based on the "Transformers" toys by Hasbro

Rated PG-13

Length: 165 minutes

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST

A Million Ways to Die in the West

Grade: B

Starring: Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Neil Patrick Harris, Liam Neeson, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman and Amanda Seyfried

Premise: A laid-back farmer challenges his ex’s new boyfriend to a duel, and ends up receiving gunfighting lessons from a strange new woman in town.

Rated R for constant profanity and graphic sexual dialogue, crude and sexual humor, sensuality, and some violence

A Million Ways to Die in the West—Family Guy funnyman creator Seth MacFarlane’s new goofy parody of the western genre—is incredibly crude but essentially harmless. There are jokes here about slavery, whoring, drinking, nudity and sex, sex, sex, but it’s really got a heart of gold. All this movie really wants to make people do is laugh and walk out feeling good, and in that regard, it succeeds. It’s not necessarily hard-hitting, politically-savvy humor, but at least A Million Ways backs up its comedy with an actual story that could make up an actual movie—there are real elements here, not just the bare bones thrown together to provide for a gag marathon, as was the case in last month’s Neighbors. And I guess I’m a sucker for a little movie that makes me laugh and lets me feel good. If it weren’t an outrageous comedy, it would be a B, maybe C, movie, but as a diverting little treat amidst lots of hard-hitting moody action dramas, I enjoyed it. And I daresay I’ll probably watch it again.

Plot

Recently dumped by his adorable but self-centered girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried), hapless sheep farmer Albert Stark (MacFarlane) is blue and hating everything about the rough, tough west. After all, as Albert notes, on the frontier, people die daily from disease, gunfights, bar fights, wild animal attacks and even “fast-moving tumbleweeds”. In the wake of his split, he’s so blue even his conservative, sunny best friend Edward (Giovanni Ribisi) and Edward’s spry hooker girlfriend Ruth (Sarah Silverman) can’t cheer him up. He’s in a bar drinking his depression away when a fight breaks out, and he happens to spot a woman in danger of being crushed by brawlers falling from the second-floor balcony. He saves the woman by pushing her out of the way of the falling bodies, and then realizes he doesn’t know her. Anna (Charlize Theron) turns out to be gorgeous, smart, and funny, and she can work a pistol like no one’s business. She and Albert form an instant connection—she consoles him about his breakup and laughs with him about Louise’s stuck-up new boyfriend Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), and she encourages him when, in a moment of high temper, Albert actually challenges Foy to a gunfight in town.

In over his head, Albert gets shooting lessons from Anna, and then they fall for each other. But Anna’s mysterious past catches up to the happy couple when her husband, notorious, deadly outlaw Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson) rides into town with his gang, and almost immediately hears that someone’s been kissing on his wife. And Albert, who just survived one gunfight, is soon gasping at the prospect of a gunfight with a famous killer.

What Works?

A Million Ways to Die is funny, generating laughs from Albert’s shoddy skills as a sheep farmer, Ribisi’s awkward continued courtship of a woman who has sex with dozens of men a day, a few brilliant celebrity cameos, and its many, many jokes and puns. Some of them are stupid, but if you’re looking for laughs, you’ll find them. One source of amusement is merely the fact that MacFarlane, famous for providing the clever but over-the-top caricatured voices on Family Guy and the movie Ted, is a regular-looking and sounding white guy at the end of the day. He’s not an incredibly-charismatic person on his own, all jokes and F-bombs aside, but he and Theron do generate endearing chemistry, so that we can at least root for the couple. By turns tough, hilarious and charming, Theron is the gal pal any guy would die for. Some of the other actors, such as Liam Neeson and Neil Patrick Harris, elicit laughs mainly by parodying their own work (Neeson plays a badder but stupider version of his moody tough guy, and Patrick Harris is the same obnoxious tool he is on TV’s How I Met Your Mother, but this time with a moustache).

Outrageous as this movie is, I can also note that it goes down easier than other recent comedies like Neighbors and Anchorman, because its actors are more likeable than the former’s and it’s IQ is way higher than the latter’s.

What Doesn’t Work?

Okay, if you’re looking for a shred of real seriousness, you’ve got the wrong movie. None of the main actors even attempt western accents, so if you were expecting period details and not Neeson’s Irish brogue, Ribisi’s nasally sniff and Patrick Harris’ city-boy brouhaha, well, sorry. Of course, some of the gags are dragged out way longer than they need to be, too. And even though this is a silly comedy, it’s one thing to have physical slapstick and sorta-kinda commentaries about the time (like a ‘Runaway Slave’ carnival game and a doctor whose remedies usually include dismembering barely-sick patients), and another to have dragged out potty humor routines or needless peeks at sheep privates. Unlike the harder-hitting Neighbors, there’s a nice little PG-13 movie in A Million Ways to Die.

Content

But, of course, a nice little cheap-looking PG-13 western that’s light on violence wouldn’t make a splash—even a ripple—on the summer movie scene, right? So MacFarlane and company crank up the profanity, the sexual references, and the sight gags. A Million Ways earns its R rating for sure, though, again, it’s all meant to be in good fun.

Bottom Line

It’s odd to call an R-rated comedy “innocent”, but A Million Ways to Die in the West isn’t out to really challenge anybody or shake up the comedy scene—it’s just meant to make people laugh. In that way, it succeeds. With a likeable cast and some hilarious gags, it’s a diverting-enough feel good comedy.

A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)

Directed by Seth MacFarlane

Written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild

Rated R

Length: 116 minutes

EDGE OF TOMORROW

Edge of Tomorrow

Grade: A-

Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson and Noah Taylor

Premise: A military officer re-living the day of a massive battle again and again struggles to learn how to save his doomed comrades from an advanced alien race.

Rated PG-13 for intense action and violence, language, blood, and some disturbing images

For what is believed to have been as much as 30-plus years, Bill Murray’s weatherman Phil Connors awoke in a hotel room to the chipper sounds of Sonny & Cher on the radio, singing “I Got You Babe”. It always let him know that, sure enough, it was once again Groundhog Day. In the new sci-fi action epic Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise’s William Cage can only wish he woke up in a hotel room. Each day he wakes on an airport runway, almost immediately snatched up and chewed out by a blustering master sergeant who mistakes him for a low-ranking enlisted man and plugs him into one of the squads leading the way for a massive invasion of mainland France. Within 24 hours, he’s in a troop-carrying aircraft, which explodes in mid-air before even making it to the beach where the troops are set to deploy, to try and fight the advanced alien race that has conquered large portions of the world. The attack, which was supposed to be a surprise, almost instantly fails. Along with the others, Cage dies a horrible death. But Cage knows he will wake again on that runway, but no matter how much advance knowledge he gives anyone, he can’t stop the attack, can’t stop the slaughter, and can’t stop himself from finding his way back to that runway again, so he can wake up and do it again.

It hits theaters with less than half the advance buzz of recent titles like X-Men, Godzilla and The Amazing Spiderman, but Edge of Tomorrow borders on outright brilliant. With a killer central premise, this movie—part Groundhog Day, part Starship Troopers, part something all its own—is can’t-look-away type-stuff. It’s got terrific visuals, balls-to-the-wall action, an intriguing coming-into-his-own arc for the main character, and perfectly-suited existentialist is-it-all-even-worth-it undertones. Sorry, that’s a lot of hyphens; I was exhausted when I watched Edge of Tomorrow late last night (I might have nodded off during a lesser movie), so I’m rather struggling to really describe it, but needless to say, this was my favorite movie of the summer so far, a dazzling blockbuster that made me go “hell yeah—this is freakin’ awesome!”

Plot

It’s believed the Mimics came to Earth via meteors, but that’s about all any human can almost be sure of. The fast-moving, clawed and tentacled monsters have quickly overrun nearly half the planet, proving nearly invincible against even heavy weapons. But when humanity wins a surprise victory at Verdun and the heads of the United Defense Force see an opportunity to raise morale—put a few likeable heroes at the head of the big invasion of mainland France, which is sure to be another great victory—it puts Major William Cage (Cruise) in the crosshairs. A winking, smiling PR man who looks confident but is terrified at the very idea of actual warfare, Cage refuses UDF commander General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson) on the spot at the idea of being the face of the new invasion, with a camera crew following his every move as his lands with the first wave. Orders are orders, but Cage doesn’t like them—he tries to run, but is caught and sedated and then, it appears, thrown under the bus. He wakes on Heathrow Airport’s runway in handcuffs with no identification, and no one believing he’s a high-ranking officer. Forget a camera crew—what he has now is Master Sergeant Farell (Bill Paxton) brandishing a note that says he’s a deserter and a lowly enlisted man. Next thing “Private Cage” knows, he’s been stuck with a squad of unfriendly, unhelpful grunts, packed into the high-tech, gun-toting futuristic suits the troops wear, and marched onto a carrier craft headed for the coast of France.

*Is it a coincidence a movie that centers on a massive invasion of conquered mainland France came out on the 70^th anniversary of D-Day? I doubt it.*

The Mimics, it seemed, knew this “surprise attack” was coming. Many of the troop-carrying craft don’t even make it to the beach, and those troops that manage to stagger out of the wreckage-filled waves (Cage among them) are greeted by mayhem, explosions, and the whirling dervish aliens that make short work of them. Not even able to work his armored suit’s guns at first, Cage actually manages to kill a mimic with an explosive, but it detonates too close, mangling his body. But he doesn’t even die (or does he?) before he wakes on the runway again, gets chewed out again, and gets thrown into rotation again. The craft explodes again, he makes the beach again, he dies again. The one advantage of the recurring time warp is that he learns when and where the Mimics will attack, allowing him to progress further each time. His progression soon leads him to cross paths with Rita (Emily Blunt), the Special Ops dynamo who spearheaded the victory at Verdun. She, apparently, had the same thing happen to her as has happened to Cage—she could relive the day, allowing her to strategize and counter the Mimics. Pairing her top-notch skills with his improving ones, they’re able to progress through the beach, and, with a tip from a disgraced military scientist (Noah Taylor), they begin to figure out how they could save the invasion force, and maybe kill off the Mimics for good. But the Mimics are deadly and fast, and Cage is all too-human, and the slightest miscalculation means dying—and starting all over from that runway.

What Works?

Despite their previous merits, each of last month’s big blockbusters had at least a minor stumble. X-Men: Days of Future Past was a little too talky. Godzilla was way too talky and almost forgot to show Godzilla do anything cool. The Amazing Spiderman 2 had too many plot threads and too much drama, and spent so much time building its story that it stuck both of its major villains in the same rushed climactic action scene. Edge of Tomorrow is almost perfectly-balanced: it never forgets it’s a sci-fi action extravaganza, of course, but it’s got a little mystery, a little humor, and a little heart. Directed by Doug Liman, who directed the first and deepest of the Bourne movies, and co-written by Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Oscar for penning the still-legendary original screenplay for The Usual Suspects, Tomorrow manages to make you feel the weariness of Cage’s plight. Each day, he wakes, he’s chewed out, he’s by turns neglected and pushed around, he trains, he lands on the beach, and he fights. No matter how admirable he becomes in battle, if he’s cornered or badly injured, there’s nothing for it but to die again. As was the case in Groundhog Day, the montage of Cage dying in many different ways provokes a sort of perverse laughter, but you do begin to feel the weight and the misery of the ordeal. That said, this isn’t Shakespeare—there’s some terrific, pedal-to-the-metal action, and it goes right up to the finish.

This is Cruise’s best role in years, mainly because it’s not really a Movie Star part. Cruise brought the charisma and heroism in last year’s Oblivion, but what with the Cruise clones, it just screamed Movie Star Flick. His two big 2012 roles didn’t help either—people don’t want to see this over-exposed movie star play a near-mythic, crime-fighting lady-killer (Jack Reacher) or a preening sex-god rock star (Rock of Ages). Here, he could just be another guy: the fact that he’s thrust into a situation where no one gives him any respect and he has to work from the ground up helps—we can root for an underdog (remember Jerry Maguire?). Blunt is solid, too, as the tough-talking, pistol-packing Rita, and Bill Paxton elicits hoots as the blustering, cliché-spouting master sergeant who’s this movie’s answer to Ned Ryierson, the dorky insurance agent Phil Connors kept re-encountering in Groundhog Day.

What Doesn’t Work?

Tomorrow does a lot of things right, as I’ve mentioned. The battle scenes on the beach get a little hard-to-follow, whether it’s because the Mimics move so quickly or because the scenes are suffused with so much CGI, but that’s really my only complaint other than wanting to see what happened next, after the ending scene.

Content

This is PG-13, so most of the violence isn’t super bloody, but a lot of people get killed off in a lot of different ways in this one, and there are explosions and crashes and collapses aplenty. The rather light, reversible way death is treated in this movie might rub some people the wrong way as well. And, typically, because this movie takes place entirely around soldiers, there are plenty of cuss words.

Bottom Line

A thrilling, balanced action flick with a cool premise and a "have-you-seen-this-before" energy, Edge of Tomorrow is a great movie and one I definitely want to see again.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Directed by Doug Liman

Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth

Based on the novel “All You Need Is Kill” by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

Rated PG-13

Length: 113 minutes

MALEFICENT

Maleficent

Grade: B

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley and Sam Riley, with Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville and Juno Temple as the pixies and Brenton Thwaites as Prince Phillip

Premise: A fairy who once coexisted peacefully with humans swears vengeance on them after she’s wronged by a treacherous young man.

Rated PG (contains scary moments and some intense action)

“Now you shall deal with me, oh Prince, and ALL THE POWERS OF HELL!!” With that memorable oath—and her subsequent transformation into a dragon—Maleficent, the witch antagonist of Disney’s 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty, immediately entered the ranks of all-time great movie villains, where she remains today. As sinisterly-exciting as that character was, though, I doubt anyone’s been crying out for her to get her own live-action spinoff movie fifty-five years later. But with big-budget fairy-tale re-tellings all the rage the past few years (we’ve already gotten two new Snow White movies, plus Alice in Wonderland, Oz the Great and Powerful and Jack the Giant Slayer), we now have Maleficent, a glossy new flick starring Angelina Jolie as the Mistress of All Evil.

Rated PG and filled with giggles, gasps and cutesy CGI versions of critters like fairies and trolls, Maleficent was probably made for people less than half my age, but dang it, I liked it. Anyone devoted to the 1959 Beauty will have fit after fit due to copious changes in the main story and character details, but Jolie’s in fine form as the titular character, Elle Fanning makes an utterly charming Aurora, and, after consistently moodier fare like Godzilla, X-Men and The Amazing Spiderman, it’s nice to see a movie where everything turns out okay.

Plot

Without parents from a young age, Maleficent (played as girl by Isobelle Molloy) still had a happy childhood. With a bright smile, magic powers and a set of large, beautiful wings, she was one of the most luminous and powerful fairies. Alongside other magical creatures like pixies, trolls and goblins, she lived in the Moors, a gorgeous oasis in the middle of a large rural kingdom. Within sight of the Moors’ borders is a city filled with regular, non-magical humans, who, it has been said, hate all magic creatures. So Maleficent is at first alarmed and suspicious when a human boy stumbles out of the bushes one day. The boy, Stefan (Michael Higgins), is a kind but lonely sort, and they immediately strike up a friendship. In fact, they fall in love as the years pass.

But, like most glory-seeking men, Stefan (played as an adult by Sharlto Copley) has always been seduced by the sight of the huge nearby castle, and the lure of luxury and wealth has tugged at his heart and mind. First serving merely as an aide to the old, sitting king, he’s offered the throne after he brings the son-less king an amazing gift of tribute. Once he’s crowned, he turns his back on Maleficent (Jolie) for good. Hurt and lonely once again, Maleficent, now aided by a shape-shifting ally (Sam Riley), learns of the birth of the king’s daughter, Aurora, and, along with all the kingdom’s nobles, visits her, and then decides to bestow upon her a certain “gift”. Hurt and shocked, Stefan sends his daughter away, to be raised in safety and seclusion by three pixies (Leslie Manville, Imelda Staunton and Juno Temple), until after her sixteenth birthday, when a certain curse is said to take effect. As Stefan hides out in his castle and swears vengeance, Maleficent spends her days watching the growing Aurora (played at fifteen by Elle Fanning), and waiting for the day when she can strike back, hard, against Stefan’s heart.

What Works?

It’s sometimes hard to remember because she’s always on the red carpet and in the tabloids, but Angelina Jolie hasn’t actually made that many notable movies. By my count, she’s only made three truly notable ones (1999’s Girl, Interrupted won her a Supporting Actress Oscar, 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider made her a bonafide sex symbol, and 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith brought her into the life of one Brad Pitt). Yet everyone still is seemingly attuned to her every movement and action because of the fame her personal life has brought her. Maleficent doesn’t require a huge, heavily-dramatic performance from her, but she makes palpable her pain at Stefan’s abandonment and betrayal, and she provides teasing hints of humor amidst her character’s darkness and sadness. She also brings impressive, honest feeling to a key moment where she admits her care for Aurora, even though it is Aurora she swore to target with her curse.

It’s impossible not to care for Aurora, though, when she’s played by Elle Fanning. Actress Dakota Fanning’s little sister, Elle is absolutely adorable—I’m pretty sure the phrase ‘pretty little ray of sunshine’ was made up for her. She’s not required to act much, but I have to believe audiences would watch her do anything. Her Prince Phillip—actor Brenton Thwaites—looks like a stand-in for One Direction and doesn’t get to join her in a rendition of “I Walked With You Once Upon A Dream” (lame), but he’s endearing enough that you wish the two of them had more time together in this movie. And as Stefan, Sharlto Copley (best known as the hit man who got his face blown off and then fused back together in last summer’s Elysium) is well-cast: he’s way too much of a wild-man to play a regular old, noble king, but he’s perfect for the antagonistic slant the character’s given.

Again, not much acting is required, but Maleficent delivers the goods where it really needs to. The scenery and all the magical creatures look glorious, and there are enough awesome moments as the winged Maleficent soars above the clouds, and swoops under waterfalls and past cliffs, to make you wonder how good this movie is in 3-D.

What Doesn’t Work?

Maleficent is one of those rare movies that would actually benefit from being longer, as the movie in its current tidy 97-minute state has a few plot holes that could have been filled in with a few small details. The characters of Aurora’s protective pixies are also completely worthless here; clumsy, blithering idiots, they do less to sensibly raise our Sleeping Beauty than Maleficent does (it’s a little sad to see the likes of Imelda Staunton and Juno Temple wasted in these roles).

Content

This is actually a pretty intense PG, with one large-scale battle scene between men with swords and spears and goblins and tree monsters, plus a late battle royale at the castle as Maleficent tries to get her revenge. There’s not much blood, of course, but parents might find their youngest kids a little unnerved.

Bottom Line

It butchers the story as we all know it as kids—from the 1959 Sleeping Beauty—but Maleficent, made with the right dashes of action, whimsy and heart, is actually pretty endearing. I’d have to say this might be the best of the recent fairy tale reboots.

Maleficent (2014)

Directed by Robert Stromberg

Based on the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty, and the original “Sleeping Beauty” stories by Charles Perrault and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Rated PG

Length: 97 minutes

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Grade: B+

Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Patrick Stewart, Peter Dinklage, Evan Peters, Ian McKellen, Shawn Ashmore, Ellen Page and Halle Berry

Premise: After years of apocalyptic war, the last surviving band of mutants sends one of their own back in time to prevent the creation of some of the most powerful anti-mutant weapons.

Rated PG-13 for intense action and disturbing images, language, brief nudity, and some suggestive material

It’s difficult to not give X-Men: Days of Future Past a higher grade in this review. It really is. For a movie that has to serve as a prequel, a sequel, and a reboot, combines themes and ideas from six previous movies, juggles multiple storylines and has about a dozen major characters, it’s incredibly well put-together. In fact, it has the overall quality package that I thought this summer’s earlier blockbusters—The Amazing Spideman 2 and Godzilla—didn’t quite have. Days doesn’t disappoint, and it fulfilled nearly all my expectations. And yet…

And yet, despite the fact that some parts of the movie are borderline flawless—and I’m tempted to say this is the best possible movie they could have made with this material—something in the movie’s second act felt a bit off to me. I’m not sure what it was. This is a sleek, polished, well-acted, well-paced movie that does justice to its franchise and makes you look forward to future installments, but, even after seeing it twice, I’m feeling that something just didn’t fit. As good as the movie was, my interest started to wan in the middle—both times. A little long, perhaps? A little too talky? Days of Future Past is very, very good, but I can’t quite give it unbridled praise.

Plot

Some time into a dark, terrifying future where nearly-indestructible mechanical beings called Sentinels have been used to hunt down and destroy almost all free mutants, a last surviving group has avoided detection using a simple mind trick. Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) has the ability to send a person back a few days or even weeks to their younger body, so that they know the future. They can know when and where the Sentinels will attack, and they and their comrades can relocate to stay alive. This has proven successful for some time, but mutant figureheads Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) know their race’s only real hope is to send someone back in time, to stop the war before it even begins.

The year to send a person would be 1973, the year of the Paris Peace Talks after Vietnam. The mutant sent back to that year is Logan, better known as Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), whose unparalleled healing abilities make him the only person who could recover from the brain trauma of such a significant time-jump. His mission is to find the younger Professor X (James McAvoy), also known as Charles Xavier, and the younger Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who’s real name is Erik Lensherr. Their mission together is to go to Paris to stop a certain vengeful mutant from cold-bloodedly executing a pioneering scientist (Peter Dinklage) who had been experimenting on mutants to try to find a suitably powerful weapon to use against them. This scientist, Bolivar Trask, had been developing the Sentinels, and history says his shocking, savage killing inspired other scientists to embrace his work, to weaponize the mutant gene, and create the weapon that would nearly annihilate mutants. With a revolving door of friends and foes like the shape-shifting Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), strong and fierce Beast (Nicholas Hoult), and lightning-fast Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Wolverine, Xavier and Magneto race against time to try and stop Trask’s killing. But they quickly find there is significant danger in trying to change the past, and they can’t help but wonder if so dark-hearted a man as Trask should really be allowed to live.

What Works?

This movie’s functionality is astounding. As I mentioned, Days of Future Past follows three original films (2000, 2003 and 2006’s X-Men movies), a prequel (2011’s X-Men: First Class), a prequel spinoff (2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and a sequel spinoff (2013’s The Wolverine). But it works. Days of Future Past remembers things that happened in all six other films and includes elements of them, but it never even slightly feels like a remake or a mere moneygrab sequel. It’s the perfect lynchpin—even while changing the texture of the franchise so that parts of the older films become arguably irrelevant, it’s Future Past’s hearkening back to those old films that makes you so excited for coming installments, because you know it’s on course.

A lot of the credit for Future Past’s quality must go to director Bryan Singer, who’s back 11 years later after directing the two best movies in this franchise, X-Men and X2: X-Men United. Future Past feels fresh and exciting, with the heart and fullness of Singer’s two great installments but also maintaining the high-energy pulse of First Class, the very solid prequel. Just in case anyone’s wondering, the special effects are topnotch, the time-traveling concept works without being oversold or too-easy, and, most importantly, Singer makes this one about the characters. Despite the amount of action and hoopla happening onscreen, it’s the generally familiar, interesting characters who are the focus, as it should be.

Undoubtedly, it helps Singer in this regard to be headlining the film with a quintet of the most charismatic actors in the world (Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Peter Dinklage), plus two always-great vets (Stewart and McKellen). It’s true some of the regulars from the early movies get short shrift, like Halle Berry’s Storm and Anna Paquin’s Rogue, but I’m still impressed with the number of layered, meaningful performances packed into this movie. McAvoy is utterly superb as the younger, more conflicted Charles Xavier, a man filled with regret over loss, injury and failure, and, most poignantly, struggling with the burden of superpowers he never wanted to have, and sometimes still wishes he didn’t have. The Scottish-born actor has starred in a handful of movies that have made a splash at the Oscars (Atonement, The Last King of Scotland, The Last Station), but I’d argue his performance here is his best yet. As his opposite foil, Fassbender reminds us he can make any role completely compelling. Jennifer Lawrence—who was still making a name for herself when she played Mystique in 2011’s First Class—is dynamite here, as usual, combining the tough-as-nails dynamo and enigmatic loner personas she’s portrayed in her most famous roles (The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook, respectively). Dinklage is suitably effective in a less-showy but key villainous role, and Jackman is solid in his seventh go-round as Wolverine.

Finally, a nod must be given to Evan Peters, who lights up several key scenes as newcomer Quicksilver. With so much drama going on in two different timeframes, Days doesn’t have a whole lot of time for jokes or fun experimentation with powers, but Quicksilver’s stint onscreen provides some of the movie’s most gleeful material. With some great writing, awesome special effects (his powers might be the new Most Wanted X-Men Powers after this) and some pretty clever visuals, Quicksilver might just be this movie’s X-factor (pun intended, obviously).

*Oh, and if you stay all the way through the credits, there's a 20 second teaser for the next movie, supposedly to be called X-Men: Apocalypse.*

What Doesn’t Work?

There were times early in the going both times I saw Future Past that I thought “this is great. I mean, this is awesome. Could it be better?” And yet, both times, about halfway through the movie, following one major altercation, something started to slip. As I mentioned before, I found myself less focused and less entertained. At 2 hours and 11 minutes, is Future Past a little long? Yes. Does it get a little talky? As good as some of the actual drama is, there are large portions without any action, so I’d say yes. If I’m allowed to be really cynical, I suppose I could say there’s something about a movie that sets up characters and action—only to lead to a big action-packed finale—that’s cliché now, because we’ve seen that kind of thing so many times. In any case, it’s not a good sign when your movie has effectively set up the characters and the stakes, and yet even a big finale that includes uprooting an entire baseball stadium fails to truly excite.

It’s also inevitable that any movie that concerns time-travel and history-changing raises about 800 billion different questions and What Ifs, and, while Days of Future Past has an answer for many of them, it can’t answer all of them.

Content

Ladies, you get to see Hugh Jackman’s butt in this one. Buy your tickets now. In all seriousness, you do see a muscle man’s bare derriere, plus you can debate whether Jennifer Lawrence, in her scenes in full blue Mystique make-up, is naked or not under all that makeup. Thankfully, though, besides these flash-in-the-pan moments, Days of Future Past has more on its mind than sex, or even kissing. There is a lot of intense action, of course, and some of our mutants die in some pretty horrible ways (some even more than once, thanks to time travel), though most of these ways happen without much bloodletting. And there’s a handful of swear words, including an F-bomb dropped by our friend James McAvoy. Things can be pretty intense, but, ultimately, it’s nothing worse than your typical Iron Man, Spiderman, Avengers-type movie.

Bottom Line (Yes, I’ve Finally arrived here)

X-Men: Days of Future Past is really, really solid, working great as a sequel, a reboot, and even a stand-alone movie, and dang if it doesn’t make you want to see the next one. The main actors are all great, there are some awesome special effects, a few pretty big laughs, and some intense drama. After the relative disappointments of The Amazing Spiderman 2 and Godzilla over the past few weeks, this one fulfilled just about all my expectations and exceeded them in other ways. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely worth seeing.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Directed by Bryan Singer

Screenplay by Simon Kinberg

Rated PG-13

Length: 131 minutes

GODZILLA

Godzilla

Grade: B

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, David Straithairn, Bryan Cranston and Sally Hawkins

Premise: When radiation awakens several enormous creatures on the Pacific coast, the world’s scientists and militaries try to determine whether the monsters are out to destroy humanity or if they’re merely on a collision course with each other.

Rated PG-13 for intense action violence, constant scenes of peril and destruction, scary moments, and some language

Do you realize Godzilla has been stomping across movie screens longer than James Bond? Bond’s been around with more regularity, but this new big-screen production of Godzilla marks 60 years since the 1954 Japanese original. Since 1954, countless cities have been cratered, thousands of people have been stomped on or pulverized by a giant, swinging tail, at least half a dozen other radioactive monsters have been slapped around, and a certain reverberating, high-pitched roar has become one of the most familiar sounds in the history of movies. Sure, there’s always been an unmistakable element of cheesiness with Godzilla—whether it’s because early films used animatronics, stop-motion animation, models, and guys in suits to portray the monster, or because the English dialogue dubbing for Japanese-made films was always hilariously obvious—but Godzilla, like King Kong, remains a classic element of cinema.

But unless we’ve been breaking out the old VHS copies of the black and white ‘70s flicks where he fought Mothra or three-headed Gidrah, Godzilla’s gotten short shrift in movies recently. The highly-lucrative but lamely Americanized1998 version changed his look and made him a defensive, pregnant mother, and some early 2000s versions tried to recapture the campiness of the old Japanese films, with minimal success. Now, recreated in glossy CGI (with the assistance of motion-capture acting god Andy Serkis), Godzilla is back and better than ever…or is he?

Plot

When a nuclear power plant in southern Japan suffers a horrific meltdown and collapses, the world’s governments and press label it an accident. However, one of the plant’s head scientists, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston, aka Walter White from Breaking Bad), knows otherwise, as he had been carefully monitoring unusual seismic activity in the area around the time of the collapse. But with the plant closed and an entire residential populace evacuated from a now-quarantined area, Joe no longer has access to his research. Years later, an obsessed Joe is considered a conspiracy theorist and regarded with skepticism by almost everyone, including his grown son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, aka Kick-Ass), but when a confidential experiment on the old plant grounds suddenly goes haywire, a pair of scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) become desperate for his research. Armed with the old research and tracking sudden new phenomena throughout the Pacific, the scientists gather that there are at least two giant, ancient creatures out there, awakened and hungry for radioactive fuel, which likely created them or contributed to their enduring life spans. One of them leaves a wide path of destruction across the Pacific as—the scientists believe—it looks for a place to breed; the other causes a devastating Hawaiian tsunami. A nuke-packing American admiral (David Straithairn) is ready to draw the monsters back out into the Pacific and try blowing them up, but the scientists urge him to wait, believing nature will stabilize itself (i.e. the monsters will have a monster smackdown from which there can only be one winner). But as both make land in San Francisco and cause massive destruction, time appears to be running out to see if the monsters will kill each other. But if they don’t, the question remains whether humanity has powerful-enough weapons to stop them.

What Works?
I’m being intentionally vague in my plot synopsis because, as many have guessed, Godzilla happily features a number of surprises the trailers have not spoiled. Right from the get-go, when the movie opens with a superb, gut-wrenching sequence, this Godzilla proves better thought-out than most monster movies. There’s more to this flick than Monster-Is-Discovered, Monster-Kills-People, People-Try-To-Kill-Monster, which is a pleasant surprise. Godzilla also utilizes the classic Jaws hidden-monster dynamic, where the monster is built up and built up until a big reveal—and here, even when the big reveal comes, it’s not a reveal of the monster you might think.

The special effects are pretty great, making convincing the devastating wrath of a tsunami, wanton destruction in major cities, and, of course, bringing to life some huge supernatural beings. There’s definitely a wow factor as these bad boys roar, stomp, burst out of the ocean and, most impressively, come whipping down out of the sky. This movie also gets a big-time bonus point in that there’s nary a use of shaky-cam, so what’s happening is always clear and easy to determine. Ultimately, Godzilla is sleeker and better put-together than most summer blockbusters.

What Doesn’t Work?

That said, Godzilla almost completely wastes a talented cast. With the exception of Bryan Cranston, who does some fine work (no surprise there) as a mad scientist type, the other actors are given almost nothing to do. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is onscreen the most and survives various falls, explosions and Close Encounters, but his character is a blank slate. Three Oscar nominees (Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins and David Staithairn) do little other than stare at screens and provide expository dialogue, an Oscar winner (Juliette Binoche) has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, and the talented Other Olsen Sister (Elizabeth Olsen) is wasted in a generic waiting-in-the-wings-spouse role. Now, I know the star of this movie—the one people are here to see—is Godzilla himself, and not any of the humans, but it’s still a shame they brought all these talented people on board and then basically forgot about them.

Godzilla is also a surprisingly joyless affair. I know giant monsters trampling humans and causing widespread destruction is not exactly a recipe for constant laughter, but, with a grim, brooding tone, this movie isn’t very much fun, especially for something that should be a throwback to classic popcorn movies from the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s excessively talky early on, and there’s surprisingly little monster action until the third act (I couldn’t help drawing comparisons to last summer’s monster mash Pacific Rim, which was undeniably cheesy, but at least gave you the “man, that was awesome” highs you get watching monster movies like these). I’m sorry, but I’m not here to watch people watch screens; I’m here to watch Godzilla.

Content

There’s not a whole lot of blood and gore (other than a bit of creature-on-creature dismemberment in the third act) nor is there a lot of swearing or anything sexual, but Godzilla certainly has its intense moments. Whole cities are leveled, lots of people die, people run in terror from rampaging monsters or onrushing tidal waves, and people are backed into no-win scenarios. There are also a few good shocks—and some ear-splitting roars—that might scare the kiddies.

Bottom Line

Ultimately, Godzilla did the one thing right that it needed to, which was to have a Japanese man (Watanabe) be the first person in the movie to say the monster’s name—it sounded like “good-zla” and, of course, took me back to the classic English-dubbed black and white Godzilla flicks of the ‘70s. Everything else is just icing on the cake, right? Well, Godzilla could certainly benefit from having a bit more fun with its monster mash premise, and I still am disappointed it wasted such a great cast, but without the brain-dead plot and shaky-cam filming that screws up so many summer blockbusters, this one was ultimately pretty solid.

Godzilla (2014)

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Written for the Screen by Max Borenstein

Rated PG-13

Length: 123 minutes

NEIGHBORS

Neighbors

Grade: C+

Starring: Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Dave Franco and Ike Barinholtz

Premise: A well-to-do couple’s peaceful life in the suburbs is rudely disrupted when a fraternity moves into the house next door.

Rated R for constant profanity, strong, graphic sexual content (including nudity, graphic sex-related dialogue, and crude humor), drug and alcohol use, and comic violence

It’s not easy for me to review a movie like Neighbors, because I know a movie like Neighbors was not intended for me. If a shockingly-dirty, hard-R comedy about a wild, constantly-escalating prank war between a repressed, sex-minded suburban couple (comic Seth Rogen, and Rose Byrne of Bridesmaids) and the leaders of the hard-partying frat house next door (Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and a few others) sounds like your kind of movie, stop reading this review now, and run—don’t walk—to the theater near you, and prepare to laugh until you’re gasping for breath. Neighbors is funny—I won’t deny that. Nor will I deny that I laughed a lot or that I thought some of its many, many gags were comic genius. It’s just that, as a consistent moviegoer, I’m generally looking for something a little more, overall, than two stoners slapping each other with dildos during a wild cockfight. As much as I may laugh and roll around in my seat at a movie like that, there’s a hollow place inside where I feel a legitimate plot, genuine characters, and a point should be.

So: if you’re like me, I wouldn’t recommend Neighbors. But if my description sounds to you like the meaning of a good time, you’re gonna have a good time.

Plot

Lovers since college, Mac (Rogen) and Kelly Radner (Byrne) have their first child, live in a nice neighborhood, and have thus far steered clear of the domestic problems that affected their best friends. But they sense trouble when the vacant house next to theirs is claimed by Delta Psi, a notorious fraternity from a local college. Immediately worried the frat’s raucous, all-night parties could disturb them (particularly as it concerns the sleeping patterns of their infant, Stella), Mac and Kelly soon arrange a pleasant meet and greet. The heads of the fraternity, Teddy (Efron) and Pete (Franco), seem friendly enough. Mac and Kelly agree to call them before the police if anything gets out of hand. But on night number one, the party gets loud. Mac and Kelly go over to complain, but, offered a few drinks and impressed by the kind of fun party they themselves haven’t experienced college, they decide to let their hair down and have a good time. Unfortunately, this gives the frat boys a sense of security, the idea that they can do whatever they want, and it’ll be just fine with the neighbors. It isn’t, and Mac and Kelly, suffering through nightly ear-blasting parties from next door, soon find themselves working with Mac’s friend Jimmy (Ike Barinholtz) to either catch the frat boys doing something so bad the fraternity will be shut down, or to frame them for something. In retaliation, Teddy and Pete, who have been hoping to make the fraternity’s Hall of Fame for their antics, decide to take things to a whole new level.

What Works?

While Rogen must be an acquired taste (mostly he just seems to me to be a sloppy guy who cusses a lot), most of the cast is terrific. Byrne’s fearlessly-funny turn is particularly inspired, considering she was the one orderly member of the Bridesmaids gal pals a few years ago. The oft-shirtless Efron is a hoot, here about as far removed as possible from the squeaky-clean High School Musical franchise that gave him his start. But the scene-stealers are Dave Franco—who fully emerges from his less-entertaining older brother’s shadow with a manic but committed performance—and Ike Barinholtz, a Mark Wahlberg-lookalike who does a terrific few impressions (Wahlberg, Barack Obama, and DMX) that rank among the movie’s smaller but more brilliant bits.

Neighbors is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, with jaw-dropping, eye-popping gags and some hilarious one-liners. It reaches a pretty great crescendo with Rogen/Efron’s aforementioned comic slugfest, which involves everything from the dildos to an aptly-placed ceiling fan.

What Doesn’t Work?

As I said, Neighbors is fearlessly, proudly, shockingly-dirty, with whole scenes dedicated to the making of dildos or the unpredictable state of Byrne’s breastfeeding-stage chest. Most all of the humor is better done than in, say, Anchorman, but it’s still wildly no-holds-barred. If that sort of crude humor isn’t your thing, this is definitely not your movie. Personally, while I laughed a lot, I soon realized the humor is all Neighbors has to offer. Rogen’s fairly bland—nothing but a potty-mouthed party-animal—and he and Byrne definitely aren’t believable as spouses or parents. Neighbors fails to even consider questions like whether anyone else who lives on the street is bothered by the frat’s music-blasting parties, whether anyone notices when Mac and Jimmy step outside their office to smoke weed, or why Mac and Kelly don’t call the police when their cars are vandalized by the frat brothers. Again, Neighbors isn’t my kind of movie—you’re probably wondering why I’m asking such questions of a movie where two guys (Efron and Franco) “fight” by squeezing each other’s testicles—but the movie fails to maintain any level of real-life plausibility even while dealing with an intriguing suburban scenario. I also can’t help feeling a little peeved that a laugh-fest comedy like this features, but barely uses, proven comic talents like Christopher Mintz-Plasse (the Kick-Ass movies) and Lisa Kudrow (TV's Friends).  

Content

I hope you’ve gotten the point by now. Neighbors backs down from nothing, with the exception of showing actual male privates (it compensates with the dildos, the grabbing, and a great many references to them). There are topless women, bare butts, gratuitous pot-smoking and drinking, insinuated sexual acts, actual sexual acts, and about five F-words a minute. I doubt most teenagers would be fazed, but I still wouldn’t recommend this one for anyone under 17.

Bottom Line (I Promise):

I can’t help feeling somewhat hypocritical—I laughed my head off at different parts of Neighbors, and some of them were funny-enough gags that I want to tell people about them, but, as a critic, I can’t help but note Neighbors has nothing to recommend it beyond copious amounts of unbelievably crude humor. It’s about as R-rated as you can make a comedy. If that sounds like your thing, you’ll love it. If it doesn’t, stay away, because this is one wild party animal.

Neighbors (2014)

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Screenplay by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O’Brien

Rated R

Length: 96 minutes