The Weekly Roundup

This Week’s Watches

X-Men First Class (2011)

Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, January Jones & Oliver Platt

Directed by: Matthew Vaughn

Rating: ★½

A lot of the reviews of X-Men First Class said that it was the best movie of 2011, so I expected it to be pretty amazing. And sadly, it isn’t. Sure, it’s enjoyable enough if you want to see a pretty standard superhero movie, but it has so many terrible problems- continuity, casting and plotting- that they overwhelm the audience by making us continuously ask questions about how shoddily the script, and the entire movie, was put together.

Even though the film does have some good points, for example Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique and the introduction of Beast, X-Men First Class is riddled with major flaws that are jarringly obvious, even to someone who isn’t a movie reviewer or X-Men fan.

The main problem I had with X-Men First Class is the fact that the two main characters, Professor X (McAvoy) and Magneto (Fassbender), are pushed heavily to the forefront of everything throughout the movie’s duration, but neither one of them are particularly good in their roles. McAvoy plays Professor X as some sleazy sex offender and Fassbender… well, I know that everyone loves him and he is currently a Hollywood darling, but there is something incredibly frightening about him… he’s too intense. I always feel like, while acting, he is burrowing into the soul of the actors he is interacting with, and for that reason, he scares the crap out of me, and is instantly dislikeable (which is true of him in crap-fest Prometheus). This is of course a huge problem, because if both main characters suck, it is hard to really care about their plights, especially when both characters are meant to be flawed but essentially endearing, but both end up being detestable. This also means that all of the best parts of the entire movie are moments that they aren’t involved in.

Luckily, the supporting characters are much stronger and provide more interesting and enjoyable scenarios. Mystique is excellent and Emma Frost is super sexy, even though her role is relegated to being a tacky and glorified assistant. Wolverine even makes a rather random and problematic cameo, and even though it is unexpected and hilarious, it calls the entire continuity of the franchise into question. There are, however, perhaps too many characters, and the whole ‘evil heroes’ subplot, which exists purely so that the ‘good guys’ can fight the ‘bad guys’ at the end, is weak.

Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw is by far and away the best thing about the entire film. His character, and his acting, is excellent. He is so good that I was actually gunning for him to succeed in starting a nuclear war, something that I’m not sure the writers intended. The fact that he has amazing superpowers helps make him suitably awesome, but this makes his incredibly easy and shitty defeat all the more disappointing. We wanted a massive showdown between Magento and Shaw, but instead we gets an incredibly disturbing and stupid resolution that isn’t worthy of Shaw’s character or the entire X-Men franchise.

To say I was pissed off with the ending is an understatement. I was furious. Why kill off the best character in the entire movie? It makes no sense! With a film packed to the brim with superheroes, it is fair to say that you expect something spectacular, but instead you get a damp squib of an ending that not only sets it up for an equally weak sequel, but made me even more worried about the future of cinema.

Originality is dead, people. You heard it here first.

Coraline (2009)

Starring: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French & Keith David

Directed by: Henry Selick

Rating: ★½

Coraline is a dark and disturbing nightmarish fantasy drama that is incredibly bizarre. I’m not entirely sure that I ‘got it’. The animation may be superb, but the plot is so jumbled and odd that it fails to deliver a cohesive or interesting storyline, even though it is successful at being terrifying.

Coralineis all about a little girl who goes into a parallel world where an evil witch who steals children’s souls lives. And by the way, this is meant to be suitable for children, but it isn’t. At all. Especially when the souls of the dead children come back to haunt Coraline. Yes- this is the kind of film that Coraline is: an ‘offbeat’ children’s horror movie, which is intensely creepy and would scare the crap out of any child.

I’m a horror fan, and I didn’t like it at all, mainly because it doesn’t make much sense, has too many bizarre subplots, and is way too gloomy to be enjoyable. And this is coming from a horror movie fan.

My advice: give it a miss.

The Change Up (2011)

Starring: Ryan Reynolds & Jason Bateman

Directed by: David Dobkin

Rating: ★

I must ask this question because it seems an important and pertinent one: has Ryan Reynolds actually starred in a good movie and/or given a good performance? The more I watch of him the more I realise that he seems to be in movies for two reasons: 1) to smirk and be smug and 2) to take his top off. And this seems to be the entire point of his role in The Change Up, except this time he has Jason Bateman starring alongside him to: 1)be the archetypal ‘exhausted everyman’ and 2) not take his top off. So basically, someone wrote a movie where the two leads play the same roles they always play, switch them around so they struggle to play against type, and conclude the film by having them once again become the same people they play in every single other movie.

The Change Up  is about two ‘best friends’ who wouldn’t actually be best friends in real life as one is a hard working family man and the other is a lazy unemployed loser (guess who plays which) and they conveniently and magically switch bodies, learn life lessons, and then everything goes back to normal. The end. Add in some literal toilet humour that is mainly centred on babies pooing into people’s faces and people crapping in front of one another with some gross out humour about penises, testicles and masturbation, and you get the idea. But of course, because this is a Hollywood body-swap movie, there has to be some sickeningly sweet schmaltz about life and love etc etc blah blah blah alongside the rude, crude and brash jokes that don’t often hit the mark. There are one or two funny moments, but that’s it.

I like body-swap movies, so that element of it appeals to me, but the fact that The Change Up  doesn’t in fact change it up very much, means that it is just any other Ryan Reynolds/Jason Bateman potty mouth/toilet humour life affirming/gross out ‘comedy’. (Sigh).

My Pick Of The Week

Undertow (2009)

Starring: Cristian Mercardo, Manolo Cardona & Tatiana Astengo

Directed by: Javier Fuentes-León

Rating: ★★★★½

Miguel and Santiago struggle to deal with the feelings they have for one another...

Undertow is a powerful Peruvian character driven drama about a Miguel (Mercado), his pregnant wife (Astengo) and his lover Santiago (Cardona).  It is an exceptionally slow moving and stirring tragedy that looks beautiful and feels genuine.

Undertowdeals with love, death, sexuality and faith in a thoroughly involving and realistic way. It allows a deeper exploration of Peruvian culture, customs and religion that is not only interesting to watch, but also shrouds the story in a thought provoking aura.

The acting is absolutely excellent, with all three leads giving emotionally impacting performances as they deal with their relationships with one another. The director makes the most of the beautiful seaside scenery and landscape that Peru provides, and the incredibly personal and potent message about love that the film brings up is sincerely moving. The isolated beaches and the turbulent sea link well into the film’s themes of loneliness, seclusion and ultimately, redemption.

I haven’t felt so touched by a movie for a long time, but Undertow is so hauntingly heart-breaking that I couldn’t help feeling inspired by it. Unlike many other films with an agenda, Undertow is not over the top or in your face; it is the exact opposite and makes its point clearly, but not forcefully.

Apart from the strong script, brilliant actors and wonderful directing, I really enjoyed the strong religious undercurrent that the movie has, and how it worked, and was simultaneously at odds with, the main storyline. It’s refreshing to see a movie that discusses a controversially topical issue with such profound and effective sensitivity. The ending is breathtakingly painful, and stays with you for days.