Passengers

I don't think I've done a meta-review before, but I need to rant about the press coverage that Passengers is getting, and dammit I have a blog.

This will involve spoilers. Lots of them.

Gizmodo's review of Passengers, for reference.

The plot point at the center of the complaint in that review (and others) is that Chris Pratt's character Jim wakes up Jennifer Lawrence's character Aurora. As the review says, this is a terrible thing to do, and robs her of the future she had planned for herself, and that's the entire point of the movie. It's not like the movie tiptoes around it.

Gizmodo's review says "Sometimes you see it, others you don’t. It gets a big moment, then it’s forgotten." No. No one ever forgets it. The romance plot, before Aurora finds out, is littered with Jim's guilt. They don't talk about it during the action sequences, because that's really not the time for it, but everything else revolves around his decision to wake her up and what that means.

It's possible that the author of the review simply wasn't paying attention - in the next paragraph, he asks "Why are these people taking this trip?" and "Why is anti-gravity swimming even available?" The first of those is addressed, though not in great depth, and the second - it's not, except when gravity fails due to critical system shutdowns, which is, you know, the driving plot of the movie.

Passengers is good sci-fi. It takes human characters, puts them in difficult situations, and imagines what they would do. Humans are social creatures, and while Jim's decision is clearly unethical, it is understandable, and asking the audience to think about that is the point.

The Gizmodo review further says "Waking Aurora up is tantamount to murder." It's true that Aurora says the same thing, but she changes her mind later, and the reviewer doesn't seem to understand that, or why. We're all going to die. Your parents sentenced you to death at the moment of your birth. How we live our lives is what matters, and that's the other main point of the film. It's not like they were trying to hide that either - it's flatly stated more than once, by more than one character (which is impressive, since there are only four characters with appreciable speaking lines). I understand disliking the ending. I can think of a few other ways they could have handled the situation that might have allowed them a different outcome - but I also understand the choice the characters made, to live the life they had in front of them because it was a good enough life to live.

For the objection that Jim's a manipulative asshole - sure. He's also smart, charming, good looking, funny. I've seen people make worse choices. I do wish the filmmakers had had the vision and balls to pull a Clue and film alternate endings. That would have been spectacular.

Lastly, I'm shocked and appalled that none of the reviews I've read have pointed out the obvious - Jennifer Lawrence's character is named Aurora Lane. And she's a reporter. Aurora for Sleeping Beauty, and Lane for Lois Lane. It's so completely obviously referential. Jim even wakes her up from a glass coffin nonconsensually (in the Disney sense, not the fairy tale sense). Then they reverse the glass coffin scene at the end for closure. The writers clearly knew what they were doing here, and I'm ashamed of the movie critics who didn't get it.

Performance: 4/5
Plot: 3.5/5
Production: 5/5
Overall: 3.5/5
Bechdel: Fail (F - I'm not counting holograms)
Mako Mori: Pass - and this is where I have a problem with some other reviewers. Aurora did have her own motivations that didn't involve Jim, and that's the point.

What are these?

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

There are mild spoilers in this review.

I'm going to start my review with a two-part statement that may cause confusion and outrage: I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and none of the movies are very good. The original Star Wars has an important and hallowed place in cinema history, and it's not a very good movie. Empire, the golden child of Star Wars fans, is really pretty decent, but it has its problems. I have a soft spot for Jedi, but Ewoks, man. Ewoks. Force Awakens was enjoyable, but not really good cinema. Also, there were prequels. What I'm saying here is that Star Wars does not have a track record of making good movies.

There is something about Star Wars, though, that makes it great despite this. The grandeur, the wonder, the scope, the imagination, the Force, the bigness and smallness of it - and of course the music - add up to a cultural phenomenon that I deeply love. I have similar thoughts about Potter, but that's a different topic.

All of this introduction exists to give background and context to my one-sentence review of Rogue One: it's a pretty decent Star Wars-themed action film. It's not great cinema, but I was entertained.

As a Star Wars fan, I appreciated the many references to other Star Wars properties, mostly Episode IV. The digital effects that allowed them to insert characters that first hit the screen almost forty years ago without jarring the audience - impressive.

Of course, as a Star Wars fan, I knew how this film needed to end. Rather, I knew the state that the setting needed to be at the end of the film, and therefore the ending was, by definition, predictable. The journey of getting there was fairly well done, though, and I appreciate that the studio had the guts to make a movie with that ending. I suspect that the commentary I'm seeing comparing it to Empire is based in part on similarity in arc.

I do have a number of problems with the film. I was never convinced by the motivations of the main characters. The actors emoted well, and the writers tried very hard to give them depth, but most of it rang hollow to me. The pacing was off; I suspect tightening up the edit by five or ten minutes would have helped a lot. The movie was very dark; I don't mean tonally, I mean it wasn't well-lit, which often made it hard to see what was going on. And, large parts of the plot (mostly everything to do with Saw Gerrera) were forced/borderline nonsensical.

Despite that, I enjoyed this movie. K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk) was great, as was Donnie Yen's blind monk. The space battles were fantastically good. The ground combats were also well done, and all of it felt like Star Wars. There's a large extent to which not sucking is a major achievement for a Star Wars movie, and this one passed that test.

Speaking of tests, it passes Bechdel but fails Mako Mori - arguably. The test calls for a female character whose arc is not about supporting a man's story. Jyn's arc is all about her father, from start to finish - but his arc is about her, always, down to the project name. It might be a gray area.

I'd have appreciated more female background characters (though there were some), but it was nice that there wasn't a forced romance between the male and female leads.

Performance: 3/5
Plot: 3/5
Production: 5/5
Overall: 3.5/5
Bechdel: Pass (B)
Mako Mori: Fail

What are these?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

This will be a spoiler-free review, at least for Episode VII, and assuming you have at least seen the trailer.

Context is important. I am a Star Wars fan. By that I mean I grew up with the original trilogy, pre-Special Edition. I was actually in the theater, at least briefly, for Jedi, though I don't remember it. I've watched the original trilogy dozens of times each. When Bantam Spectra started publishing Star Wars books, I read them, both the good (Zahn) and the bad (rather a lot of them). I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the original trilogy and of the now-noncanon Expanded Universe.

Even when the books weren't great, though, they were (usually) still Star Wars - and Star Wars is heroic adventure. Much has been written about Lucas using Campbell's Hero's Journey as the basis for the original Star Wars, so I won't rehash. Suffice it to say that the essence of Star Wars is a primally relatable story. It fires the imagination.

When the Special Editions were released, I was one of the people waiting long hours in line. The Special Editions were the start of my disillusionment with George Lucas. I was willing to explain away some of his decisions (adding lots of CGI critters for no reason, changing some music) and not others (replacing Jabba's band, Han's encounter with Greedo). Still, I am a Star Wars fan. When Episode 1 was announced, I was excited. I remember seeing the poster with Jake Lloyd standing in front of the dome on Tatooine, with his Vader-shaped shadow. And I remember sitting in that theater, during the podrace scene, and the journey through the planet's core, shifting uncomfortably in my seat as I realized that this movie had some very serious problems. Still, it was Star Wars, and it wasn't until quite a bit later that I fully appreciated how bad that movie is. When Episode II wasn't better, I was profoundly disappointed, but I saw Episode III anyway, because I'm a completionist. And then I shelved the Prequel Universe away into its own section, the lesser-Star-Wars section. I didn't bother to read any of the prequel-setting books. I didn't watch any of the Clone Wars-related movies or TV shows. And it was okay, because I had the original trilogy and the Expanded Universe.

When it was announced that Lucas was making Episode VII, I was... not disappointed exactly, but hardly optimistic. Lucas had conclusively shown that he doesn't understand the essence of what he created. Also, I always thought of the Thrawn Trilogy as the equivalent to episodes VII-IX - as indeed I suspect did Zahn when he wrote them. But it was clear from the beginning that Lucas was never going to use that plotline for the cinema. He couldn't, really - that time came and went long ago for the actors.

When Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, I allowed myself to hope for a movie that did not suck. This is not a very high bar, but it's also not one that any of the prequels cleared. When JJ Abrams was attached as director, I was cautiously optimistic. I have a number of issues with Abrams and his handling of Lost and Star Trek, but it's clear that he's a competent film-maker. And then I spent time managing expectations. I avoided as many details about the film as possible. I refused to get my hopes up.

And then I decided to re-watch the existing movies, in Machete order. Briefly, this is IV-V-II-III-VI. Nothing happens in Episode I that is important for the plot of the series (or at all, really), so it can be skipped. In this order, the story of Luke unfolds until the big reveal that Vader is his father, and then there is a two-movie flashback of how Anakin became Vader, and then back to the future for the showdown. This was the first time I had seen Episodes II and III since the theater. They have not improved. What I really learned though, re-watching them in this manner, though, is that the original trilogy really isn't that good either. I've known that, on some level, for a long time, but it was more obvious when viewing them in company with the prequels. They remain far superior, of course, but they are hardly exemplars of virtuoso writing or acting. They had spirit, though, and heartfelt drama and action mixed with humor (not of the scatological variety, as in Episode I). They also had groundbreaking special effects, and hold an important place in the history of cinema, but that's not terribly relevant to the discussion at hand.

Incidentally, I did later re-watch Episode I in an edited version which cuts out large amounts of the things that made the movie bad, and it was actually watchable. Sadly, the movie is fundamentally unfixable. But that, too, is not relevant right now.

So then, when all of that background as to my qualifications and opinions about Star Wars, I have this to say about Episode VII - I'm pretty sure that movie did not suck. I'm going to watch it again. This is not a perfect movie, but it is a movie which respects its past - in many cases, it is literally littered with its past - while moving into the future with new and interesting characters. It has heroes, and heroics, of a variety of types. It doesn't have as iconic a villain as Episode IV, but that's a high bar indeed. It has action, and some truly breathtaking special effects and cinematography, without ever letting that take over the film (I'm looking at you, pod-race). It even has a few surprisingly emotional bits.

This is not the original trilogy - nothing ever will be like those, for good or for bad. It is also not the prequel trilogy, for which I am indescribably grateful. This is something new. This is a modern Star Wars, and it does not suck. So far. I reserve the right to be pessimistic about all forthcoming Star Wars films. Certainly not all of the new Star Wars content is good - I read the first book in the new-canon, and it was really badly written.

As a side note, I'd like to thank whoever was responsible for cutting the trailer for this movie, for doing a brilliant job of misdirection. I hate when trailers reveal the entire plot of the movie, and this trailer emphatically did not.

Edited 12/22/15 to add the link to the spoiler-filled review.


Performance: 4/5
Plot: 4/5
Production: 5/5
Overall: 4.5/5
Bechdel: Pass (B)
Mako Mori: Pass
What are these?

Fun Movies

1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (4.5)
2. Avengers: Age of Ultron (4.5)
3. Mad Max: Fury Road (4.5)
4. The Martian (4)
5. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (4)
6. Pitch Perfect 2 (4)
7. Ant-Man (4)
8. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (4)
9. Spectre (3.5)
10. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (3.5)
11. Jupiter Ascending (3.5)
12. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (3)
13. Jurassic World (3)
14. Tomorrowland (2.5)
15. Kingsman: The Secret Service (2)
16. Insurgent (2)
17. Chappie (1)
18. Blackhat (1)

Serious Movies

1. American Sniper

Spectre

I saw Spectre.

Those following my movie reviews may remember that I gave Skyfall a fairly negative review. It ranked 14th of the 28 movies I saw in 2012. I had plenty of time while watching Spectre to ponder why I was less enthusiastic about the later films in the Daniel Craig era. I very much liked Casino Royale, though I wasn't yet writing reviews when it came out. Skyfall and Spectre, though, are not the same kind of film as Casino Royale was; the latter was an action film, and I suspect that much of my issue with Skyfall was that I was expecting an action film, and that's not what it was. Sure, it had action in it - glorious, overly engineered set pieces as one expects from Bond films - but in between it had long, dreary, moody not-action. The ratio of not-action to action was very high.

Spectre is the same way. While I think it's a better film in most ways than Skyfall, it's still not what I want out of a Bond film. It's not an action film, it's not a thriller. It's an art movie. No, really. It's an art movie which occasionally breaks out into action. The entire opening location shoot, right up until the action starts, is a single shot. It's a glorious piece of cinematography, but completely unnecessary. The pacing is glacially slow. The movie is two and a half hours long, but it feels like at least three. Spectre is beautiful, expansive, lush - and also, bloated, slow, and honestly not that well written.

There is a good plot in there somewhere, and I applaud the topical subject matter. However, even with all the glacial slowness, the plot advances in fitful jerks, and not all of the pieces actually fit together very well, especially when it comes to characters and their motivations. The dialogue, while witty in some places, is dreadfully bad in others. The acting, too, is uneven. In some places the actors give compelling performances, and in others they walk through their parts with no emotion.

Is this a good film? Maybe. It is not a good action film at all - it's much too slow. Is it a good art film? Quite possibly, though I'm only an amateur student of film, so what do I know? Is it a good Bond film? I'm not even sure what a Bond film is any more. It seems to hit many of the character and plot points which I associate with Bond, at least. I'm enough of a Bond fan to know that there are quite a number of references to classic Bond films in this one, but not enough of a Bond fan to actually get them fully.

I understand that this may be Daniel Craig's last performance as Bond. I'm okay with that.

Still, I enjoyed the film.

Performance: 3/5
Plot: 3/5
Production: 4.5/5
Overall: 3.5/5
Bechdel: Fail (D)
Mako Mori: Fail
What are these?

Fun Movies

1. Avengers: Age of Ultron (4.5)
2. Mad Max: Fury Road (4.5)
3. The Martian (4)
4. Pitch Perfect 2 (4)
5. Ant-Man (4)
6. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (4)
7. Spectre (3.5)
8. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (3.5)
9. Jupiter Ascending (3.5)
10. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (3)
11. Jurassic World (3)
12. Tomorrowland (2.5)
13. Kingsman: The Secret Service (2)
14. Insurgent (2)
15. Chappie (1)
16. Blackhat (1)

Serious Movies

1. American Sniper

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a spy film directed by Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class) and based on the comic series The Secret Service, by Mark Millar (Kick-Ass, Ultimates) and Dave Gibbons (Watchmen). It plays with spy tropes and makes meta references, but also desperately wants to be a Bond film.

The older good guys (Colin Firth, Michael Caine, Mark Strong) are all very properly British. This works well, since there's something very appealing about calm, collected Brits kicking the crap out of people. The lead character, on the other hand, is British but not proper. I suspect he's the English equivalent of the cast of Jersey Shore. This works for contrast, but he's somewhat annoying as a character.

And then there's the villain, Samuel L Jackson's insane lisping megalomaniacal psychopath. He and his plot and his base and his minions are worthy successors to the old Bond material from which this movie draws inspiration. That is not necessarily a good thing. Despite multiple characters claiming that this is not the kind of movie where the villain makes dumb mistakes for plot purposes, the villain's plot has rather a lot of flaws.

The plot structure of the movie also has problems. It attempts to juggle the villain's plot, the Kingsman-recruit plot, and the mentor plot between Firth's Galahad and Taron Edgerton's Eggsy. The result is a bit of a mess, with one part or another dropping out for long periods of time. Presumably the comic had a bit more time to deal with everything properly, but it doesn't all fit gracefully into a two hour movie.

The action sequences are reasonably good - the sort of thing you'd expect from the people responsible for Kick-Ass doing a spy movie. There are lots of gadgets, chase sequences, and lots and lots of oddly bloodless killing. The movie is R, and earns it with a huge body count (and a bunch of language), but the violence is distractingly bloodless while still being brutally over-the-top.

The result is a film with style, action, a weak plot... and terrible misogyny. There are three named female characters in Kingsman. One is Eggsy's mother, who exists to be pathetic and abused. One is the villain's sidekick, who is really cool and bad-ass and has no substance whatsoever - we learn nothing about who she is, what she wants, or how she ended up where she is. The third female character is Sophie Cookson's Roxy, who is one of the other Kingsman recruits. She is described as competent and smart, but repeatedly requires Eggsy's approval or encouragement to do anything. She is artificially weak and subservient for no reason at all.

So Kingsman is a reasonably entertaining film with egregiously bad depictions of women. It can be enjoyed, but perhaps it shouldn't be.

Performance: 3/5
Plot: 2/5
Production: 3/5
Overall: 2/5
Bechdel: Fail (D)
Mako Mori: Fail
What are these?

Fun Movies

1. Jupiter Ascending
2. Kingsman: The Secret Service
3. Blackhat

Serious Movies

1. American Sniper

American Sniper

American Sniper is a war movie about Chris Kyle, who killed at least 160 people (probably closer to 250) between 2003 and 2009 while serving as a Navy Seal in Iraq. It stars Bradley Cooper as Kyle, with Sienna Miller as his wife Taya. The movie follows two stories, one true and one created for dramatic effect. The first is the story of Kyle himself - his background, his relationship with his wife, and his career as a soldier. The second is Kyle's hunt for an enemy sniper, Mustafa. Some of the other portrayed events happened, but the main Iraq-based portion of the movie plot did not.

The Mustafa storyline ties together the war scenes, and works well as far as plot structure, tension, and drama. It gives the film a villain, and gives the character a resolution to the war that the real Kyle did not have. The Kyle-as-human storyline mostly revolves around his wife Taya. Cooper and Miller deliver fantastic performances; Cooper's Oscar nomination is well deserved.

Technically speaking, this is a fantastic film. The direction, editing, and script are all excellent. There was no obnoxious shaky-cam. My problem with the film is that I don't know what it's trying to do.

There are two kinds of films - those which are made to be fun, and those that are made to be important. American Sniper is not fun, not remotely. It is not an action film, even though it has action scenes and a large body count. No, this is a film which is made to be important, to have a message. I don't know what that message is, though.

As previously mentioned, this movie is about only two things - Kyle and the Iraq War - so the message must relate to one or both of them.

Kyle as portrayed in the film, ignoring the last few minutes, is not a great man. Most of the tension of the Kyle-as-a-human plot stems from this. He was not a good husband or father. The movie is very clear on this. It seems unlikely, then, that the message is that we should celebrate the memory of this man as a person.

The film's portrayal of the Iraq War is more troubling. No attempt is made to address the purpose of the war - it is just there, a constant ongoing thing to which Kyle returns repeatedly. While the film fabricates a story arc inside the war to give Kyle an ending point, it is never implied that any of Kyle's actions contributed to any kind of progress toward a resolution of the war itself. In this film, war is just a thing that exists, a setting in which Kyle can kill the people who are trying to kill the people on his side.

At no point in this movie are the Iraqi people ever treated as humans, with the debatable exception of one family. Otherwise they are treated as objects or targets, with no lives or motivations that do not relate to the Americans. Multiple characters refer to them as savages. Is this the message that the movie wants to convey? Hoo-rah America and let's celebrate the man who killed a whole lot of savages in the name of America?

As a last note, the character of Kyle's wife Taya bothers me. The real Taya wrote a book about Kyle, gives speeches about him, and was heavily involved in the movie production. Miller, as previously mentioned, does a fine acting job. But the character exists only in relation to Kyle. She has no job, no hobbies, no friends. Nothing else about her exists aside from her relationship with Kyle and her ability to bear children.

Performance: 4.5/5
Plot: 3/5
Production: 4.5/5
Overall: 2/5
Bechdel: Fail (D)
Mako Mori: Fail
What are these?

Fun Movies

1. Blackhat

Serious Movies

1. American Sniper

Blackhat

Movies that are released in January are awful. Hacking movies are awful. Blackhat is a hacking movie released in January. It should be no surprise, therefore, that it is awful. What is a surprise is that the depiction of hacking was not one of the worst parts of the movie. The plot, editing, and cinematography are far worse.

The inciting incident (the nuclear power plant breach, which was shown in the trailer) isn't actually particularly farfetched. Last year hackers did serious damage to a German steel factory by hacking with the controllers to a blast furnace, which melted down. The Stuxnet work destroyed a whole lot of Iranian centrifuges around 2010 (meta-source). Most of the rest of the hacking shown is phishing or social engineering, most of which is technically reasonable (though if I were designing a bank's network, I would not connect the machines at the front desk to the financial systems).

Unfortunately, the plot wrapped around the hacking is not nearly as reasonable. The main characters all suffer from Jack Ryan Syndrome, in which an analyst or other technical asset suddenly turns into a competent field agent, including the ability to make long-distance pistol shots while under fire better than trained assassins. Nearly everything about who they are and what they do strains credulity. The villain has no motivation beyond "crazy" - and while that can be done well, this is not. The romance subplot is laughably bad. Wei Tang does a fine job of acting the character which was given to her, but that character exists in the plot for the sole reason of being the romantic interest, which is pretty pathetic. None of the other performances are worth mentioning, mostly because the characters aren't interesting in the slightest.

Blackhat is 2 hours and 13 minutes long, and I'm not sure why. I think there might have been about an hour and a half of plot, maybe an hour 45 if I'm generous. Nearly every shot lasts ten seconds or so more than it needs to, though, which makes the movie drag terribly. Some of those shots are completely out of focus for no reason whatesoever. Action movies should not be boring, but this one is.

Worst of all, every single shot is so shaky that the movie is almost unwatchable. Long-time readers will know that I am not a fan of shakycam; this is some of the worst I've seen. Even in shots with no movement, the camera waves around nauseatingly. Action scenes are far, far worse.

There is no reason to watch this movie unless you're a hacker, want to see how bad it is, are seeing it for free, and want a headache.

I take solace in the strong possibility that every movie I see for the remainder of the year will be better than this one.

Performance: 2/5
Plot: 1/5
Production: 1/5
Overall: 1/5
Bechdel: Fail (D)
Mako Mori: Fail
What are these?

1. Blackhat

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

If you want some background on how deeply disappointed I have been in the Hobbit trilogy, see my previous reviews:
There and Back Again
The Desolation of Smaug
If you don't want to wade through a couple thousand words of complaints, this is the relevant line from the second review: "I no longer have faith that the completed trilogy will be at all worthwhile."
It is not worthwhile. The best thing that can be said for this movie is that it was not as bad as the second one. That, however, it not saying much. As a whole, the trilogy is fully on a level with Episodes I-III as far as magnitude of disappointment. Perhaps more, because we have the book to compare it to, so we know what we could have gotten. And perhaps less, because we still have the book, whole and unspoiled, and the hope that some day someone might make a decent film adaptation of it.
Now, this movie does have some decent moments. Most of Bilbo's scenes are actually tolerable. Richard Armitage, as Thorin, is pretty great at acting like a gold-crazed lunatic. Some of the fight choreography is quite nice. And that's it.
All the putrescent bloat that Jackson infused into the first two movies bubbles over into this one: unnecessary romantic sub-plots; needlessly altered timelines; Azog, who should be decades in the ground; Radagast, who somehow STILL has bird crap in his hair despite everything he's been through; Legolas fan-service; almost everything about Lake Town, especially the Master and his minion. Tall things continue to fall in unlikely ways. Fight scenes continue to be ridiculously contrived.
And - this paragraph contains minor spoilers - parts of the movie are simply nonsensical. For instance, the Dwarves dress up in some (pretty awesome) armor for the standing-around-and-posturing part of the movie, and then ditch the useful things, like the plate and the helmets and most of the shields, and instead go to battle in chainmail. Which, well, chainmail is okay. It's not as good as plate, but it's still armor. Except this chain closes like a vest, with most of the middle of the chest exposed. Who thought that was a good idea? Another example: at one point the Dwarves need to do some rock-climbing, because Jackson is obsessed with tall things, and there are orcs on the heights, who somehow built huge signal flags without anyone seeing. At any rate, they acquire riding goats. And these riding goats are completely awesome, but where did they come from? We already saw the entire Dwarf army arrive. Dain has his (also awesome) war-boar, but everyone else was on foot. And yet somehow four riding goats appear out of nowhere, exactly when and where the heroes need them, outfitted for war and minus riders. Huh.
Physics is repeatedly and egregiously violated, most notably in the beginning of the movie, in the interaction between Bard and Smaug. Bows do not work like that. Wood does not work like that. String does not work like that. Generally, matter does not work like that.

At any rate, it's probably clear by now that I did not like this movie. I watched it because I needed to see this thing all the way through, and the best thing I can say for it is that it is done and over with.

Performance: 3.5/5
Plot: 1.5/5
Production: 3.5/5
Overall: 2/5
Bechdel: Fail
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Fail
What are these?

1. Boyhood

2. Guardians of the Galaxy
3. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1
4. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
5. X-Men: Days of Future Past
6. Edge of Tomorrow
7. The Fault in Our Stars
8. Lone Survivor
9. The Wind Rises
10. The Maze Runner
11. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
12. The Lego Movie
13. Lust For Love
14. The Grand Budapest Hotel
15. Pompeii
16. Hercules
17. Fury
18. Big Hero Six
19. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
20. Maleficent
21. I, Frankenstein
22. Monuments Men
23. Knights of Badassdom
24. Divergent
25. Brick Mansions
26. 300: Rise of an Empire
27. Godzilla
28. RoboCop
29. The Giver
30. Winter's Tale
31. Interstellar
32. Transcendence
33. Noah
34. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
35. The Legend of Hercules
36. Need For Speed
37. 3 Days to Kill
38. Lucy
39. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Boyhood

Boyhood is a wildly ambitious art film written and directed by Richard Linklater. Whereas most of his films are set in a single 24-hour period, Linklater (Slackers, Dazed and Confused) filmed Boyhood over twelve years. This is a gimmick, but it is also an unprecedented artistic undertaking, and makes this film truly unique. Over the course of three hours, you can watch characters and actors actually age twelve years. This is an extraordinary thing to experience.

The title of Boyhood would lead one to believe that Mason (Ellar Coltrane) is the main character, and he is, but the movie is really about his entire family - sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, the director's daughter), mother (Patricia Arquette) and father (Ethan Hawke). This family begins the film broken, and progresses in ways both predictable and unexpected as the children grow and the parents age.

This is not a film with a tightly woven plot and crisp script. This film is messy and meandering, like life is. It is slow, and quiet, without even a score (though it does feature songs appropriate to the periods in which it was filmed). It is a three-hour piece of performance art on film, and as such is unlikely to appeal to a mass audience.

For a willing audience, though, this is a cinematic treat. The cinematography is brilliant throughout, with wonderfully staged long takes. Real artistry, and lovely to watch. The actors' performances are convincingly, essentially human, which is the point of the endeavor.

It would be easy for a project like this to lose itself in pretentiousness. It purposely avoids the usual rules of plot and structure. It has no inciting moment, no antagonist. The main character is not at all proactive. The movie violates the principles of storytelling in a bid to depict real life, and it works. Even though this is a work of fiction, it feels like a childhood condensed to three hours - a dysfunctional, messed up, realistic childhood.

I have never been a fan of Linklater's films. This, though, is a work of art. What Linklater and the cast of Boyhood have accomplished is something that no one else has ever tried to do, and probably will never try again. Well over a century since the invention of the motion picture, this is something new. This is a piece of cinema history, and it is fabulous.

It is, of course, extremely difficult to compare a movie like this to most of the other movies I have seen this year. Normally if I have a hard time deciding between movies of the same overall grade, I go by which was the most fun, but that won't do here. Boyhood earns the top spot due to its artistic importance.

Performance: 4.5/5
Plot: 3.5/5
Production: 4.5/5
Overall: 4.5/5
Bechdel: Pass
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Fail
What are these?

1. Boyhood

2. Guardians of the Galaxy
3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
4. X-Men: Days of Future Past
5. Edge of Tomorrow
6. The Fault in Our Stars
7. Lone Survivor
8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
9. The Wind Rises
10. The Lego Movie
11. Lust For Love
12. The Grand Budapest Hotel
13. Pompeii
14. Hercules
15. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
16. Maleficent
17. I, Frankenstein
18. Monuments Men
19. Knights of Badassdom
20. Divergent
21. Brick Mansions
22. 300: Rise of an Empire
23. Godzilla
24. RoboCop
25. The Giver
26. Winter's Tale
27. Transcendence
28. Noah
29. The Legend of Hercules
30. Need For Speed
31. 3 Days to Kill
32. Lucy
33. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The Giver

The Giver is based on the Newberry award-winning novel of the same name by Lois Lowry. This book has sold over ten million copies and is required reading for many middle schools. I have not read it, so my comparisons between the book and the movie are based on online summaries and conversations with people who have read it.

The Giver is yet another story set in a dystopian future, but this one is a bit different from The Hunger Games, Divergent, and the rest of the lot. For one, the book at least is aimed at a middle grade audience, not a teen audience. The main characters are 12 in the book, though they are 16 in the movie. A second important point will wait until after general comments.

The main character is Jonas, played by Brenton Thwaites (Prince Phillip in Maleficent). He is serviceable in the role, though not spectacular. He is joined by the now-obligatory mixed gender pair of friends: the relative newcomer Odeya Rush as Fiona, and Cameron Monaghan (Ian Gallagher in Shameless) as Asher. More on them laster as well.

Jonas's family, played by Alexander Skarsgard (Eric in True Blood) and Katie Holmes, also have important parts, but in many ways the most important character other than Jonas is the titular Giver, played by Jeff Bridges. He delivers the best performance of the film, which makes sense - he's Jeff Bridges, he has the best part, and he's apparently been trying to get this movie made for 20 years.

So the acting is good to very good. The movie is also extraordinarily pretty. The cinematography is absolutely lovely, the sets are immaculate, and the effects fit cleanly into their scenes. The strategic use of black-and-white and color, while not original, is very well done, both thematically and technically.

My problems with this movie are nearly entirely with the plot. As mentioned above, the setting is a future dystopia. The plot of the movie follows Jonas as he discovers that his society is not as idyllic as it seems. The problem is that the society actually shown on screen is much closer to utopia than dystopia. Everyone is shown as happy and satisfied. They are being drugged to keep them in this state, but it is not convincingly demonstrated that this lowers their quality of life. I am given to understand that the effects are more pronounced in the book, but in the movie there are several clear instances of characters experiencing human emotions while drugged, principally in the totally unnecessary but still strongly implied love triangle between Jonas, Fiona, and Asher, but also in several other interactions.

In the book, the Elders are strongly controlling, but in the movie they are not menacing at all; the society as actually presented on screen is very orderly, but not iron-fisted. Everyone is assigned a job instead of given the freedom to choose, but no character is shown as unhappy with his or her assignment, either at the time of the ceremony or later. The society does have rather strict population control measures, but these are focused on only in a context in which I fail to be moved.

I suspect that if you are in the religious demographic for which abortion is unacceptable for any reason, then this movie will push all the right buttons for you. I don't have an attachment to a sanctity of life concept, so nothing shown in the movie actually bothered me. As depicted on screen, the Community is a great place, and Jonas and the Giver are not heroes at all for attempting to disrupt everyone's happiness.

I hope the book presents the moral issues much better than the movie, but from what I've seen I sadly doubt it. I found the movie extremely preachy (in a religious as well as moral sense), enough so that it nearly destroyed any enjoyment I found in the art of the filmmaking.

Performance: 3.5/5
Plot: 2/5
Production: 4.5/5
Overall: 2.5/5
Bechdel: Fail
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Fail
What are these?

1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. X-Men: Days of Future Past
4. Edge of Tomorrow
5. The Fault in Our Stars
6. Lone Survivor
7. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
8. The Wind Rises
9. The Lego Movie
10. Lust For Love
11. The Grand Budapest Hotel
12. Pompeii
13. Hercules
14. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
15. Maleficent
16. I, Frankenstein
17. Monuments Men
18. Knights of Badassdom
19. Divergent
20. Brick Mansions
21. 300: Rise of an Empire
22. Godzilla
23. RoboCop
24. The Giver
25. Winter's Tale
26. Transcendence
27. Noah
28. The Legend of Hercules
29. Need For Speed
30. 3 Days to Kill
31. Lucy
32. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Lucy

I knew from the trailers that Lucy was going to be trouble for me. On the one hand, it looked like a fun action movie with superhuman powers thrown in, with two top-notch actors in the lead roles. On the other hand, the trailer also included extensive talk about the myth that people only use 10 percent of their brains. As this is egregiously untrue, I knew that I would have to work hard to ignore that part of the plot in order to enjoy the movie.

Unfortunately, there is no way to separate the 10% malarky from the rest of the plot. It is absolutely integral to everything that happens. This is aggravating. This would be quite a good movie if it weren't using junk science as the entire basis of the story, but that's analogous to saying that eating a wormy apple would be quite pleasant if it weren't full of worms. I tried very hard to hear "magic magic magic" every time someone talked about brain percentage, but it's just not possible to handwave away the central conceit of the film.

Other than that, the film does have some positive qualities. Scarlett Johansson gives a solid acting performance as the titular Lucy, and is excellent in her action scenes as well. This is what we expect from her at this point. Similarly, Morgan Freeman performance as Professor Norman is what we expect from him - charismatic and engaging. Unfortunately, the entire point of his character is to spew horrible lies.

Why am I so upset about the 10% thing? Because it willfully promotes ignorance and misinformation. The movie presents this subject seriously and with a scientific veneer, and the general moviegoing public doesn't have enough science background to be skeptical of it. This movie takes an idea that was never true in the first place, and which has been thoroughly debunked by actual neuroscience, and presents it back to a gullible (or just trusting) public, to the detriment of all of us. Yes, movies are just entertainment, but they are also part of the public consciousness, and purposely reintroducing blatant lies is a vile thing to do.

The sad thing is that this would have been a perfectly fun fantasy-ish sci-fi film without the crap. It still would not have been great cinema, but if the drug were explained as a magical thing then at least the film would not have been so incredibly, insultingly frustrating.

Performance: 3.5/5
Plot: 1/5
Production: 3/5
Overall: 1.5/5
Bechdel: Fail
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Fail
What are these?

1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. X-Men: Days of Future Past
4. Edge of Tomorrow
5. The Fault in Our Stars
6. Lone Survivor
7. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
8. The Wind Rises
9. The Lego Movie
10. Lust For Love
11. The Grand Budapest Hotel
12. Pompeii
13. Hercules
14. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
15. Maleficent
16. I, Frankenstein
17. Monuments Men
18. Knights of Badassdom
19. Divergent
20. Brick Mansions
21. 300: Rise of an Empire
22. Godzilla
23. RoboCop
24. Winter's Tale
25. Transcendence
26. Noah
27. The Legend of Hercules
28. Need For Speed
29. 3 Days to Kill
30. Lucy
31. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

There has never been a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie which could be called "good." Even filtered through the lens of childhood, the cartoon wasn't good either. It was fun, though, and the films of the 90s were appealingly bad. This version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is appallingly bad.

I had some hope for the project after a revised trailer backed off, and indeed mocked, the original idea that the Turtles were aliens rather than Terrestrial mutants. Sadly, that was the most clever thing associated with this movie.

The Turtles are done with motion capture and CGI, which can certainly be done well, as Gollum was. In this movie, though, it doesn't really work - the Turtles never really look solid or real, even though they are very well detailed. Worse than that, though, the characters are shallow and uninteresting. Their dialogue tries to be hip and/or retro in reference to the 80s cartoon, and just ends up bad.

The action scenes are terrible. All the martial arts bits are done with close-up shaky-cam, probably in an attempt to hide the awful choreography. Most of the scenes are in the dark, presumably  for the same reason. The snow set-piece is illogical and boring.

Megan Fox, who plays April O'Neil, delivers a lousy performance. Granted, the script she was working with was awful, but she completely fails to be compelling or even interesting. The point of her character is to allow the audience to relate to the Turtles and the fantastic things and events that surround them. She doesn't.

The plot is dictated by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles origin story, and there might even have been some decent ideas in there, but the execution is dismal. Plus, the whole thing comes across as more than a little racist, since all of the bad guys and only the bad guys are Asian.

So what we have here is a movie without any actual characters, just caricatures, topped off with really bad acting performances. Even Whoopi Goldberg is in full ham-it-up mode for her bit part. The effects are bad, the fight scenes are bad, none of the jokes are funny. The plot is the strongest part of the film, and that's just sad.

If you think you want to see it anyway, just don't. Go watch Guardians of the Galaxy (hopefully again) instead. There is no fun to be had here.

Performance: 1/5
Plot: 1.5/5
Production: 1/5
Overall: 1/5
Bechdel: Fail
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Fail
What are these?

1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. X-Men: Days of Future Past
4. Edge of Tomorrow
5. The Fault in Our Stars
6. Lone Survivor
7. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
8. The Wind Rises
9. The Lego Movie
10. Lust For Love
11. The Grand Budapest Hotel
12. Pompeii
13. Hercules
14. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
15. Maleficent
16. I, Frankenstein
17. Monuments Men
18. Knights of Badassdom
19. Divergent
20. Brick Mansions
21. 300: Rise of an Empire
22. Godzilla
23. RoboCop
24. Winter's Tale
25. Transcendence
26. Noah
27. The Legend of Hercules
28. Need For Speed
29. 3 Days to Kill
30. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Guardians of the Galaxy

I was skeptical of this movie when I first heard about it. A comic book film with a talking raccoon? It sounded cheesy to me. Then I saw the first trailer, and it had STYLE. The finished product does too, and while there is certainly an element of cheese, it's high-quality delicious cheese. Most of all, this movie is FUN.

GotG is based on a Marvel comic book of the same name, and the movie was produced by Marvel, who can apparently do no wrong. The movie is a space opera in which a group of misfits and criminals fight evil. This is hardly a ground-breaking plot in science fiction or comics, but the movie is a perfect translation of the idea to the big screen. The filmmakers took a ridiculous, cartoony cast of characters and made a fun, funny, action-filled marvel of a movie.

Heading up the cast is Chris Pratt as Peter Quill, the only character from Earth. The film absolutely rides on his portrayal of an emotionally scarred orphan who idolizes an Earth he barely remembers, and he nails it. Quill is very very human, which gives the audience something to relate to in an otherwise outlandish setting.

Assisting in that is the soundtrack of 70s songs. The trailers wisely played up this aspect of the film. Rarely has a soundtrack of previously existing songs mattered so much to the plot and tone of the movie, and it works perfectly.

The rest of the principal cast are Gamora and Drax (Zoe Saldana and Dave Bautista) and Rocket and Groot (voiced by Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel). Gamora is a plot driver and token female, but actually not a bad character. Drax is comic relief but also has a detailed backstory. Rocket and Groot are the standout stars, though.

Rocket is the trigger-happy talking raccoon, which should be utterly ludicrous but isn't (though as with nearly everything in this movie, there is comedy relating to him). His combination of pride, ferocity, intelligence, and compassion are the product of some fantastic writing, animating, and voice acting. Groot is the large tree-like creature whose only line is "I am Groot" but somehow he is one of the most appealing characters in the film, thanks in no small part to a surprisingly complex voice performance by Vin Diesel.

The plot itself is not really special. It has the very straightforward feel of a comic book plot, where the villains are especially villainous just because they are. The effects are fantastic, fully realized and utterly believable. Even the 3D is reasonably well done, though having seen it both ways I still recommend the 2D.

Most of all, GotG is thoroughly entertaining. It has action, it has comedy, and it has a surprising amount of actual emotion for a space opera based on a comic book. It is funnier than previous Marvel movies - where they have been action (or thriller or war) movies with humorous elements, this is very much an action-comedy. And it's good. Really good. Go see it, or go see it again.

Performance: 4.5/5
Plot: 4/5
Production: 4/5
Overall: 4.5/5
Bechdel: Pass
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Pass
What are these?

1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. X-Men: Days of Future Past
4. Edge of Tomorrow
5. The Fault in Our Stars
6. Lone Survivor
7. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
8. The Wind Rises
9. The Lego Movie
10. Lust For Love
11. The Grand Budapest Hotel
12. Pompeii
13. Hercules
14. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
15. Maleficent
16. I, Frankenstein
17. Monuments Men
18. Knights of Badassdom
19. Divergent
20. Brick Mansions
21. 300: Rise of an Empire
22. Godzilla
23. RoboCop
24. Winter's Tale
25. Transcendence
26. Noah
27. The Legend of Hercules
28. Need For Speed
29. 3 Days to Kill

Hercules

Not to be confused with The Legend of Hercules, this is the Hercules with The Rock in it. This one has the undeniable advantage of actually having recognizable relationships with the Hercules myths, though the movie does play with expectations.

This is a much better movie than I expected. It is not a great movie, by any measure, but it is fun, and better than it should have been.

In this version of Hercules, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays of the Greek demigod. This is a Hercules whose famous labors are behind him, and who wanders the world as a mercenary, haunted by his past. The matter of what exactly haunts him is part of the story, and ties together the various exploits into something resembling a decent plot.

The movie is sort of narrated by Iolaus (Reece Ritchie), Hercules' much-less-muscled nephew. The hero is also accompanied by a band of adventurers - in fact, the group greatly resembles a Dungeons & Dragons party, with Hercules as the fighter and Iolaus as the bard. Rounding out the cast are Amphiaraus (Ian McShane) as the cleric, Autolycus (Rufus Sewell) as a rogue, Tydeus (Aksel Hennie) as a deranged barbarian, and Atalanta (Ingrid Bolso Berdal) as the ranger.

Atalanta is an interesting character. On the one hand, she is the token female, and her costume is the sort of ridiculous objectifying thing that one expects from male-targeted fantasy art (such as the D&D manual). On the other hand, she is actually a decent character - capable, and with more depth than expected. On the third hand, her companions outright state that she doesn't count as a woman, as if a strong character can't also be feminine. Those viewers with strong feminist leanings might be offended.

Other than that, the movie suffers from a plot that is at times predictable and at times nonsensical, though at other times it is really quite well done. There is one scene which will infuriate Greek armor aficionados, or anyone with some Greek linguistic awareness, but in the larger scheme of things the gratuitous misuse of a label is not that important. The acting is hardly exceptional, but it suffices for a fun action movie without pretensions to more.

The special effects are really very good, as is the look of the movie in general. The action scenes are excellent. The Rock very much looks the part of the demigod. Speaking of which, the movie deftly plays with reality versus myth, to wonderful effect.

The worst failing of this movie is that they spent $100 million making it. This is a fun movie, but it is more fun than it should have been. If they had made this movie for $60 million, everyone would have been happier. Except, of course, that it might have ended up looking like The Legend of Hercules, and no one wants that.

Performance: 3/5
Plot: 2.5/5
Production: 3/5
Overall: 3/5
Bechdel: Pass
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Pass
What are these?

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. X-Men: Days of Future Past
3. Edge of Tomorrow
4. The Fault in Our Stars
5. Lone Survivor
6. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
7. The Wind Rises
8. The Lego Movie
8. Lust For Love
10. The Grand Budapest Hotel
11. Pompeii
12. Hercules
13. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
14. Maleficent
15. I, Frankenstein
16. Monuments Men
17. Knights of Badassdom
18. Divergent
19. Brick Mansions
20. 300: Rise of an Empire
21. Godzilla
22. RoboCop
23. Winter's Tale
24. Transcendence
25. Noah
26. The Legend of Hercules
27. Need For Speed
28. 3 Days to Kill

The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars is based on a bestselling book by John Green. Both book and movie are about Hazel (Shailene Woodley) and Gus (Ansel Elgort), two teens who become romantically involved after meeting in a cancer support group. This is not a light, happy teen romance. This is a tearjerker. It is also a very good movie.

This is Woodley's second starring role this year (Divergent being the other). She deserves the work. Her performance is wonderful - strong, vulnerable, funny, sad, and appealing. Elgort (who oddly played Woodley's sister in Divergent) also nails his role as an optimistic, charismatic cancer survivor. The movie relies on the two of them selling their parts as teens, people with cancer, and lovers, and they do.

Laura Dern (Jurassic Park) plays Hazel's mother, and doesn't quite overact it. Hazel's father is True Blood's Sam Trammell, who excels at looking pained and sympathetic. Willem Dafoe also shows off his abilities in the sort of secondary role that I imagine actors like him love to get.

The plot is a fairly typical girl-meets-boy, with the added complication of cancer. The movie handles this subject well - frankly, honestly, not shying away from the horror of the thing. The love story offsets this somewhat, though, especially Gus's vibrant personality, and the movie uses humor effectively to keep the audience from sliding into depression. Still, tissues are recommended.

The book and movie are aimed at teens, if nothing else because the main characters are teens, but the movie should have a broad demographic appeal. Certainly my showing had a good sampling of ages, and the audience appeared to approve.

This is a different sort of movie than I usually review, which makes it somewhat difficult to deal with. There are no effects to speak of, no action scenes. It is an extremely good movie, but difficult to compare to, for instance, the movie it opened against, Edge of Tomorrow. Edge set out purely to entertain, and did so very well. Fault aimed to make the audience feel, and certainly succeeded in that. My rankings are purely subjective and sometimes arbitrary, and this is the kind of movie that makes me regret using the format. I can think of reasons to put it anywhere in the top 8 on the current list. So don't read too much into where I actually put it - this is an excellent movie which is likely to make you cry but still come out of the theater with faith in humanity.

Performance: 4.5/5
Plot: 4.5/5
Production: 3/5
Overall: 4/5
Bechdel: Pass
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Pass
What are these?

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. X-Men: Days of Future Past
3. Edge of Tomorrow
4. The Fault in Our Stars
5. Lone Survivor
6. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
7. The Wind Rises
8. The Lego Movie
8. Lust For Love
10. The Grand Budapest Hotel
11. Pompeii
12. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
13. Maleficent
14. I, Frankenstein
15. Monuments Men
16. Knights of Badassdom
17. Divergent
18. Brick Mansions
19. 300: Rise of an Empire
20. Godzilla
21. RoboCop
22. Winter's Tale
23. Transcendence
24. Noah
25. The Legend of Hercules
26. Need For Speed
27. 3 Days to Kill

Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow is a sci-fi action movie with a plot reminiscent of Groundhog Day. In the place of Bill Murray reliving the same day over and over again in order to win the heart of Andie MacDowell, Edge of Tomorrow stars Tom Cruise (William Cage) reliving the same two days over and over again in order to save the world from an alien menace. This is not a detraction - Groundhog Day is a great comedy, and Edge of Tomorrow is an excellent action movie, and while the plot premise is certainly familiar, this movie is actually based on a Japanese young adult novel whose title is translated as All You Need is Kill.

Much of the credit for this movie must go to the writer, Christopher McQuarrie. Time travel stories are never easy, and adding purposeful repetition does not help. McQuarrie, though, is the same man responsible for The Usual Suspects, and as in that movie he has made a wonderfully coherent narrative out of a complicated story. The only complaint I have about it is that the coda is a little too Hollywood. Otherwise, the pacing and dialogue are superb, with tense action and timely humor.

I am not a great fan of Cruise, but he is quite good in the lead role. He still (somehow) has the physical presence to be convincing in the action sequences, and he can always play crazy (in this case his character is not crazy, but since everyone thinks he is, it amounts to the same thing).

Emily Blunt plays Rita Vrataski who, unlike Cruise's character, retains her age, nationality, and name from the novel (though the book's main character, Keiji, is called Cage). As explained in the trailers, Rita previously experienced the same kind of time loop as Cage is caught in. Blunt does very well in her portrayal of the tough but damaged Rita. Unfortunately, the weakest part of the plot is the inevitable romantic tension between Cage and Rita. Despite that, she is a really good character.

The rest of the supporting cast is mostly forgettable (though competent in their roles) with the exception of Bill Paxton, who is fantastic as Master Sergeant Farell, the speechifying, cliche-slinging hardass who is nominally in charge of Cage. The book has impressive diversity in its cast, and while the movie does have some in the small speaking parts, it would have been nice to retain a bit in the better parts. For instance, in the book Farell is Brazilian-Japanese, and Rita's mechanic is a Native American woman. The latter role is replaced in the movie by a white male scientist.

While it could have been even better than it is in some ways, Edge of Tomorrow is one of the better sci-fi action films I have seen, not just this year but in general. It is almost in Terminator 2 territory. I am rating it below the two Marvel movies only because they were slightly more fantastic and colorful.

Performance: 4/5
Plot: 4.5/5
Production: 4.5/5
Overall: 4.5/5
Bechdel: Fail
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Pass
What are these?

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. X-Men: Days of Future Past
3. Edge of Tomorrow
4. Lone Survivor
5. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
6. The Wind Rises
7. The Lego Movie
8. Lust For Love
9. The Grand Budapest Hotel
10. Pompeii
11. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
12. Maleficent
13. I, Frankenstein
14. Monuments Men
15. Knights of Badassdom
16. Divergent
17. Brick Mansions
18. 300: Rise of an Empire
19. Godzilla
20. RoboCop
21. Winter's Tale
22. Transcendence
23. Noah
24. The Legend of Hercules
25. Need For Speed
26. 3 Days to Kill

Maleficent

Maleficent is Disney's new take on Sleeping Beauty. During the trailers, I was wondering who they thought their target audience was. I'm still wondering. This is a PG movie which is a bit dark for the kids and not quite sophisticated enough to satisfy me. I enjoyed it, but it is not fantastic.

The film does have a number of good points. Foremost among these are the visuals. The movie just looks amazing. There are lots of long shots of beautiful scenery, and the creature effects are mostly excellent. As always, attempting to make live actors actually interact with animation is a bit awkward, but most people probably won't notice.

Angelina Jolie is quite good in the title role, and her makeup is great. Elle Fanning is really very pretty as Aurora. However, I had some problems with both of their characters, and with several others, which detracted from the movie.

The character of Maleficent is tricky - she's a villain, but she's also the main character, and her arc is the whole point of re-making the story from this perspective. I found it hard to sympathize with her, though, since most of her problems were caused by her being naive, and then throwing an epic tantrum. She was close to being a great character, but was missing something.

Still, Maleficent is miles better as a character than anyone else in the movie. The three fairies are ridiculously dumb, and not in a good way. Aurora's chief feature (remarked upon several times) is her smile. Stefan is more crazy than anything else, but the movie never gets deep enough into him to make him interesting. That is the major flaw with the movie - the characters are all a bit (or a lot) shallow. For me, the most compelling character is Sam Riley's Diaval, and he's a sidekick.

Then there's the matter of the story itself, both the original and the villain-focused adaptation. Maleficent visually references Disney's own Sleeping Beauty on a number of occasions, but the story is too different to be just another perspective on the one we already know, as the narrator would like us to believe. In addition, the new movie's entire plot foundation rests on the existence of a human kingdom next to a fairy kingdom with a relationship between the two that defies all logic. And the original story on which both movies are based is not actually a very good one, even in the versions which don't involve the prince raping the unconscious girl.

In sum, the movie is beautiful but lacking in real substance. Still, I enjoyed it.

Performance: 3.5/5
Plot: 2/5
Production: 4.5/5
Overall: 3/5
Bechdel: Pass
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Pass
What are these?

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. X-Men: Days of Future Past
3. Lone Survivor
4. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
5. The Wind Rises
6. The Lego Movie
7. Lust For Love
8. The Grand Budapest Hotel
9. Pompeii
10. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
11. Maleficent
12. I, Frankenstein
13. Monuments Men
14. Knights of Badassdom
15. Divergent
16. Brick Mansions
17. 300: Rise of an Empire
18. Godzilla
19. RoboCop
20. Winter's Tale
21. Transcendence
22. Noah
23. The Legend of Hercules
24. Need For Speed
25. 3 Days to Kill

X-Men: Days of Future Past

X-Men: Days of Future Past (hereafter DoFP) is the latest installment in Fox's X-Men franchise. This is not to be confused with Sony's Spider-Man franchise or Marvel's own Avengers-and-friends franchises. While these all draw from the same sources, they are separated by legal issues as well as tone and subject matter.

The quality of the X-Men series can charitably be called uneven. This is probably the best of the franchise. It hits all the right X-Men notes - a focus on mutants being hated and feared due to their inhumanity (and the corresponding parallel to any group which can be persecuted); identity issues; ethical questions; worlds-spanning scope. And it does all of them well.

DoFP combines the cast of the original three X-Men movies with the cast of the 60's-set First Class to tell a story of survival. In the future, the original cast, now older, are hunted by Sentinel robots who can adapt to and overpower mutant powers. In a major departure from the source material, Kitty Pryde sends Wolverine into the past rather than being sent back herself, in order to convince the younger cast to stop the events which caused the Sentinel program to go forward in the 70's.

The part of Bolivar Trask, who invented and champions the Sentinels, is played by the brilliant Peter Dinklage, who is just as good here as in Game of Thrones despite the porn-stache. The other especially notable acting performance comes from James McAvoy as the younger Charles Xavier. His struggle to deal with his powers, the effect of them on his life, and the consequences of having or not having them, are at the heart of what the X-Men are about.

Wolverine is narratively the main character, because Fox understands that he and Hugh Jackman are a huge audience draw. Certainly Jackman is a fine actor who does very well in this role (and is distractingly ripped). My only complaint in this regard is that it short-changes Ellen Page's Kitty, who doesn't get to do very much.

The effects and action sequences are excellent, especially the dark and gritty future-set scenes. There is not a whole lot of character development for these beleaguered survivors (I'm not clear on what all of their names are) but they fill their part of the narrative very well by showing how hard and dangerous the future is.

This is a movie with a solid plot, great acting, very good effects and choreography, and which stays true to the spirit of the source material. It might be confusing if you're not already familiar with the previous movies, but that is the only complaint I can make.

Performance: 4.5/5
Plot: 4.5/5
Production: 4.5/5
Overall: 4.5/5
Bechdel: Fail
Reverse-Bechdel: Pass
Mako Mori: Pass
What are these?

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. X-Men: Days of Future Past
3. Lone Survivor
4. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
5. The Wind Rises
6. The Lego Movie
7. Lust For Love
8. The Grand Budapest Hotel
9. Pompeii
10. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
11. I, Frankenstein
12. Monuments Men
13. Knights of Badassdom
14. Divergent
15. Brick Mansions
16. 300: Rise of an Empire
17. Godzilla
18. RoboCop
19. Winter's Tale
20. Transcendence
21. Noah
22. The Legend of Hercules
23. Need For Speed
24. 3 Days to Kill