Daniel Radcliffe tries his hand at romantic comedy in this trailer for What If, coming out in August. Looks kinda cute, although I've never been more fully aware of Radcliffe's diminutive status than when I see him standing next to guys like Adam Driver and Rafe Spall. Speaking of Adam Driver, how is it that he's in everything lately? I don't think anyone has ever broken out faster from a TV show than he did (although he was the best part of Girls, maybe the only good thing about it).
REVIEW: "The Normal Heart" (2014) Mark Ruffalo, Julia Roberts. Dir. Ryan Murphy
The Normal Heart is an imperfect yet emotional rendering of Larry Kramer's famed 1985 play, and thankfully, the original material is meaty and impactful enough to essentially overcome the unnecessary dramatic flourishes of its director, Ryan Murphy, who didn't realize that all he needed to do was step back and let the actors speak for themselves.
Assembling a great cast, virtually all of whom turn in wonderful performances, The Normal Heart is set at the onset of the AIDS crisis, in the very early years of the disease, when it was still being labeled "gay cancer," there was no known treatment and it was only seen to be affecting homosexual men in the large gay communities of major cities like New York and San Francisco. Larry Kramer's play was written in the midst of the crisis and the voice of the protagonist, Ned Weeks, is an angry one, a stand-in for himself as the well known activist and writer of the gay rights movement. Mark Ruffalo plays Ned in the film, and is utterly convincing as the pained and angry rabble rouser, trying desperately to shout his case from every rooftop and at anyone who will listen, which at the time, was close to no one. Fear and hatred plagued the straight world, made up of indifferent (or closeted) politicians who didn't want to come anywhere near the sick and dying, like the majority of the public in the early 1980's. Even the medical community had little hope to offer, seeing how difficult it was to get enough research funding to simply identify the virus that was only seen to be affecting those members of society who were already outcasts.
Julia Roberts plays Emma, a doctor and ally of Ned's with polio, who's just as angry as he is but incapable of doing much except prolonging the lives of the sick, who nearly all perish in her hospital rooms, with many of her own staff afraid to even to bring them their meals. Ned starts the Gay Men's Health Crisis, an organization intended to put pressure on the government to help the affected, but ends up doing many of the tasks that go along with consoling the dying men, much to Ned's protestations throughout the film. The other men involved include Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons and Joe Mantello, each of whom get their chance to shine with the dramatic monologues imbued throughout the script, even if Ryan Murphy can't help himself from going nuts with the camera during some of the speeches, thus robbing the actors of what should have been urgent, quiet spotlight moments for each of them. A major standout among this cast is Matt Bomer as Felix, a New York Times reporter Ned gets involved with, but who succumbs to the disease over the course of the film, and it's he who feels the most developed as a character and whose arc over the movie leaves you the most heartbroken. He goes from a confident, smart and charming young man with his whole future ahead of him, to a broken down vessel of wasted potential, making you feel as depressed and outraged as Ned and his friends at the generation of lives lost due to the public's indifference and lack of outcry. If the final scene between Felix and Ned doesn't pummel you into a submission of tears then you truly are made of stone.
Yet even with the powerful material and well cast actors on hand (although Julia Roberts is perhaps a bit distracting as she's made to look as self-consciously unglamorous as possible and her simple inability to disappear into a part proves to be unintentionally amusing when she goes zigzagging around hallways in her wheelchair), Ryan Murphy hamstrings the production with a schizophrenic camera style (especially during the opening Fire Island-set sequence) and poorly edited flashback scenes that often are distractions in and of themselves. It has the unfortunate effect of feeling like it should be a TV movie when HBO films are often a cut above that in effort, usually seeming like they should have easily been in theatrical release (such as last year's Behind the Candelabra, which had Steven Soderbergh's decidedly cool restraint behind the scenes). Still, the actors make it worthwhile, and the feeling and urgency of a subject matter that sometimes seems as though it's been unjustly forgotten in the days when HIV is now treatable and no longer a death sentence, make films that look back on those dark early days a much appreciated tribute to those whose lives were lost. It's a noble effort from all involved and a reminder of the necessity to have compassion and empathy for our fellow human beings, none of whom are ever as different from us as you might believe.
* * 1/2
Movie of the Day: "American Graffiti" (1973)
Today's graduation pick is an essential for any film lover, and if yesterday's choice was one of the best teen romances ever made, than this is one of the best movies ever made about teenagers, period. It's set on the last night of summer in 1962, the night before high school grads Kurt (Richard Dreyfus) and Steve (Ron Howard) are set to go off to college in another state. But as all recent graduates do, they're now having second thoughts, conflicted about what it is they really want, and while they mull it over, we get to hang out with them and their pals as they spend one last, aimless night cruising around town to one of the best soundtracks ever put to film. Part of the fun of this movie is picking out the future star-studded cast when virtually all of them were unknowns (hey there's Harrison Ford!), and Lucas managed to capture a moment in time that felt so authentic it struck a nostalgic chord across the country and became a sensation, influencing dozens of movies in its wake (including Dazed and Confused, which tried as hard as it could to do for the 70's what this one did for the early 60's). I know what you're thinking, it's hard to believe George Lucas of all people had something like this in him once, huh? Almost makes you wonder what might have been if it hadn't been for that little space movie...
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TRAILER #2: "Annie"
The second trailer for the December 19th release Annie, thankfully doesn't look as bad as the first, and you can tell little Quvenzhane Wallis definitely has a screen presence. But where's the music? For a movie that's supposedly a musical they sure are trying to hide it in the marketing. I do wonder though if this is a movie that might turn out slightly better than it looks, because the director Will Gluck (Easy A, Friends With Benefits) does have some comedic storytelling ability and his past two movies were actually pretty decent. But I wouldn't get my hopes up just yet.
Movie of the Day: "Say Anything" (1989)
Our second movie for graduation week is Cameron Crowe's Say Anything, one of the best teen romances ever made and the movie that gave us John Cusack in his iconic role as Lloyd Dobler, the boyfriend every girl wants in her life. Charming rambler Lloyd is in love with Diane (Ione Skye) the class brain, but can't get up the nerve to ask her out until after graduation, when they only have the summer together before she goes off to college in England. The sensitivity of relationships is everything in this movie, and it never hits any note that's crass or overly sentimental, just total perfection all the way through. A lot of movies have tried to copy it without succeeding (most recently The Spectacular Now, which was a pale imitation) and that's why this one is still the movie to beat when it comes to portraying the real feelings of teenagers and the heartbreaking anxieties of first love. It's one of the great ones.
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TRAILER: "This is Where I Leave You"
This family relationship dramedy looks pretty good actually, based on the novel by Jonathan Tropper, who also wrote the screenplay. The cast is star-studded with TV heavyweights plus Jane Fonda as the matriarch of a family who reunites when the father dies. Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver and Corey Stoll are four grown siblings who spend the next week at home, and the usual hilarity/heartwarming antics ensue. Shawn Levy is the director (the guy who did Night at the Museum and Date Night), so I wouldn't say it's guaranteed to be good, but the trailer doesn't look so bad overall. It's coming out September 12th.
Movie of the Day: "Adventureland" (2009)
Well, since we did prom a couple weeks back it's now time for graduation, which will be the theme of our Movie of the Day series for the rest of the week. We start off with this sweetly satisfying and underrated movie from 2009, a film that was more than a little surprising to me because, fair or not, I can't walk into anything starring Kristen Stewart with any degree of optimism. But I'm willing to admit that she's actually pretty good in this comedy set in 1987 about a recent college grad James (Jesse Eisenberg), who moves back home to Pennsylvania and has to work at the local amusement park for the summer. It's there that he meets Em (Stewart), a too cool for school fellow employee (an attitude that actually suits her screen personality for once) and spends his time hanging out with pals while pondering what to do with his life now. This is a movie that kind of wants to be like an 80's Dazed and Confused (and it isn't on that level), but Jesse Eisenberg is completely charming as the goofy and aimless but decent James, and he and Stewart share a sweet and actually moving coming of age romance. This was a nice little gem that more people should discover.
Trailer:
TRAILER #2: "Get On Up"
Another trailer for the James Brown movie, Get On Up, still coming out in August. I hope this will be good, but I don't know- it just looks like a very old school, traditional, straight down the middle biopic to me. I could almost see it airing on HBO or something. But maybe Boseman will bring something more to it in the performance scenes.
Blu-Ray Pick of the Week: "Red River" (1948)
A great western from the 40's is out today on blu-ray, and it was one that cast John Wayne in one of those darker roles that he was always so good in (see him in The Searchers for a look at his most famous twisted character). Always great as the traditional western hero, but even better as a shady antihero with ulterior motives, here he played a damaged rancher leading a cattle drive from Texas to Missouri, who grows ever more at odds with the younger cowboy he took under his wing (Montgomery Clift), when he slowly reveals how disturbed he really is. The movie has an old Hollywood copout of an ending, clearly not the natural climax the story was headed towards, but overall it's a great film from the genre worth seeking out.
Trailer (sorry about the subtitles on this one):
Movie of the Day: "The Dirty Dozen" (1967)
In honor of Memorial Day, I direct you towards the May movies, which have celebrated it all month long, but here's an extra recommendation that I didn't get a chance to note for either "In Commemoration" month. The Dirty Dozen is an awesome action film that still has the power to thrill and excite anyone who watches it. Starring Lee Marvin as a major who's assigned a top secret mission ahead of the D-Day invasion- to gather a group of the army's felons and convicts to raid a meeting where some of the top Nazi officers will be gathered, and take out as many as possible. The ragtag group consists of rebels like Telly Savalas, John Cassevetes and Charles Bronson, who are all willing to go along with the suicide mission- they may be criminals, but they're still patriots, damnit! A lot of this inspired Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds years later, and it's still an exciting precedent for the many other classic war films that followed it.
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REVIEW: "X-Men: Days of Future Past" (2014) Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy. Dir. Bryan Singer
Bryan Singer returns to helm the latest X-Men movie and it's pretty much a winner, following in the vein of his original two entries in the series (which were my favorites) and uniting the cast of the previous films with that of 2011's reboot, X-Men:First Class, for the most complicated, convoluted X-Men tale yet. Luckily, the clever script intertwines past and present timelines in as straightforward a way as possible, and with the ever present Wolverine as our guide between worlds it turns out to be a fun, twisty and high minded injection of energy into the 14-year old franchise.
It could be argued that 2000's X-Men was the movie that kicked off the era of the perpetual superhero film that we now live in, and in this current world, with each new entry in the genre comes dwindling hope in finding something fresh in any of these comic book stories. The best of this year's crop included Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which held up a mirror to corrupted government institutions that clearly paralleled our own, and now X-Men: Days of Future Past finds some new and somewhat clever material in the time-travel genre, always a risky, loophole filled area of science fiction that threatens to boggle the mind of the viewer, as well as the time traveler in question. In this case, that's Wolverine, our steadfast and reliable central X-Man, as always played by Hugh Jackman, who somehow gets buffer and better looking with every new film. In an apocalyptic future we join up with what's left of the original crew, including Wolvie, Storm, Iceman, and of course, Professor X and Magneto, played once again by aging stalwarts Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. In this world, massive machines called the Sentinels have taken over and are targeting mutants for extinction, thereby forcing the old gang into hiding where they have to battle it out with the robots every day, prolonging the inevitable until they can figure out a solution.
Now they think they have, as DOFP is inspired by one of the X-Men comic's most famous story lines, in which mutant Kitty Pryde goes back in time to try and erase the existence of the Sentinels. Kitty Pryde is here played by Ellen Page, reprising her role from 2006's The Last Stand, although her screentime is limited, since the time traveling role in the film is given to Wolverine, and she's simply the tool through which they send his mind back to his younger self- in 1973 to be exact. Once there he must meet up with the younger mutants and get them back together to stop Mystique, who is the vessel through which the path of destruction is set. Most of the action takes place in the past, where we get to see Jackman team up with the young Charles and Erik, who are still facing the problems of their split in First Class, which this movie essentially functions as a sequel to. The standout this time is James McAvoy as the emotionally damaged young Charles, who's suffering the loss of his legs and treating it with a drug that will bring back his ability to walk while wiping out the use of his powers. McAvoy brings a charisma and energy to the role that gets a bigger chance to shine here than it did in the last film, since the screenplay gets rid of virtually all the extraneous characters in that movie, keeping just Charles, Erik, Mystique and Beast as the important mutants in play.
Fassbender is terrific again as young Magneto, and one of the highlights of this film, as it was before, is the interaction between Charles and Erik, who share a chemistry and rapport that allows us to believe they will eventually become the older and wiser versions of themselves that we're so familiar with. Jennifer Lawrence also returns as Mystique, and thankfully her role has improved since her last appearance, as the film makes her character and her choices the primary vehicle through which all future events depend. Of course, this drastically alters her part in the original X-Men movies, as this Mystique resembles virtually nothing of the villain anyone familiar with the original trilogy remembers. And given her role in creating that hellfire version of the future, what does that say about what happened to the Mystique from the old films? Did she never exist? Of all the loopy time frame questions this story line brings up, that's my biggest one- this movie actually starts off with Patrick Stewart's Xavier re-telling the story of his relationship with Mystique to mutants who all react as if they've never before heard her name, which makes no sense.
But obviously those are the kinds of nitpicks that always occur in "altering the timeline" sci-fi stories, and as such, that's hardly a reason to not see it. It's filled with the kind of action and characters that make for the best summer popcorn movies, while managing at least a little bit to challenge you to keep up with its time-bending structure. One of the best action scenes belongs to new mutant Quicksilver (Evan Peters) who nearly steals the movie in a small role where he moves at lightning quick speed and we see through his eyes what passes in less than a second for those around him (think of it as comparable to the famed Nightcrawler opening of X2). The 70's set sequences radiate a similar kind of period energy that recalls the best parts of First Class, and even gives us a hilarious Richard Nixon impersonation from actor Mark Comacho, (our 37th president was apparently in on some of the mutant-led activity during the Paris Peace Talks of '73). Best of all, the new timeline virtually wipes the slate clean on the events of the first three X-Men movies, which is tolerable if it means we can all pretend that X3: The Last Stand never took place (I know I'd certainly like to), and sets up the possibility of sequels set with either the old cast or the newbies (although I suspect aside from Hugh Jackman, any new X-Men films are likely to want the younger, fresher faces involved).
Days of Future Past gives you everything you might want in a summer action film, while asking just enough of you in return. In some movies that can be lazy, but done well, as it is here, it's a fun and rather ingenious trip back in time, and certainly the most ambitious X-Men film yet made. And hey, any artistic ambition in a summer blockbuster? I'll take it.
* * *
BOX OFFICE 5/23-5/25: 'X-Men' Sails to the Top Over Memorial Day Weekend
X-Men: Days of Future Past opened to $90 million from Fri-Sun, and seems poised to bring in about $107 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend. That's just slightly less than X-Men: The Last Stand, back in 2006 over the same holiday, which could be considered a bit disappointing for 20th Century Fox, given all the hype directed at this one. But the X-Men movies look to have a definite ceiling no matter who's in them, at least in the United States. Worldwide it's a completely different story, as DOFP has already made $171 million overseas for a $261 million worldwide total. Given that no X-Men movie has ever grossed even half a billion worldwide before, that's pretty astonishing, and it also means that any superhero movie these days is pretty much guaranteed a gigantic overseas total, no matter what it is. DOFP was incredibly well-reviewed (91% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and got an "A" Cinemascore, so it may hold better than the typical X-Men movie domestically, but we'll see.
The other new release this week bombed hard, as the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore comedy Blended fell flat with just $14 million. It got the usual terrible reviews for an Adam Sandler movie, but his comedies are normally bulletproof in that area and he can still bring in $30-40 million openings with stuff like Grown-Ups 2. Not so with this one, despite the reunion with his best co-star, the only person he's ever had any chemistry with onscreen. Could the days of Adam Sandler's reign finally be over? One can only hope. Last week's blockbuster Godzilla fell a surprisingly steep 66% for $31 million this weekend, meaning the word of mouth on this movie was pretty harsh, but it's still likely to make at least $200 million in the end. The rest of the top five was filled out by Neighbors ($117 million total) and Amazing Spider-Man 2, which is another film that may have fell short of predictions in the U.S. but is a monster hit overseas, speaking to the troubling irrelevance of quality in foreign markets when it comes to action and franchise movies. That's an unfortunate trend.
Top 5:
- X-Men: Days of Future Past- $90.7 million
- Godzilla- $$31.4 million
- Blended- $14.2 milliion
- Neighbors- $13.9 million
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2- $7.8 million
In limited release, Chef expanded to more theaters this weekend, earning $2.2 million for a total of $4.3 million, while Heaven is For Real has now grossed an amazing $86 million total. Next week it's Angelina Jolie's Maleficent and Seth MacFarlane's One Million Ways to Die in the West. See you then!
