Movie Review Logan

Logan (2017) 

Directed by James Mangold

Written by Scott Frank, James Mangold, Michael Green 

Starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Richard E. Grant, Hal Holbrook, Stephen Merchant 

Release Date March 3rd, 2017 

When I first saw Logan, the latest spin-off of the X-Men franchise, I was not impressed. There was so much hype, so much discussion about how the R-Rating would finally allow Wolverine to be Wolverine. Then I saw the film and found it to be as conventional as any of the other X-Men movies with a little bit of gore tacked on for fan service. So, what’s changed for me since March of this year? Why was watching Logan at home on a DVD screener from the studio so different from watching the film in theaters earlier this year?

Logan once again stars Hugh Jackman in the role of Logan aka Wolverine. When we see him, he’s sleeping in the back of a fancy stretch limousine and gang members are trying to steal the tires. Logan tries to convince the men to leave peacefully but they prefer to attack him. In defense of his expensive vehicle, and with little care for his own well-being, Logan launches into a grisly battle and leaves several of the thieves’ dead.

From there we travel across the border to Mexico where Logan is hiding the debilitated Professor X (Patrick Stewart). With the help of another mutant named Kaliban (Stephen Merchant), Logan cares for Professor X by doping him up with medication to keep his powers neutralized and to keep him from remembering that he was responsible for killing a lot of people when he suffered a seizure several years ago that led the government to consider his mind a weapon of mass destruction.

The tiny, insular world that Logan has built for himself is upended when he meets Gabriella (Elizabeth Rodriguez). Gabriella wants to hire Logan to drive her and a girl she claims is her daughter, Laura, (Daphne Keen) to North Dakota where a group of fellow mutants is expected to help them cross the border to a place they call Eden. Unfortunately, Gabriella is being hunted by Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), the low-life leader of a group called The Reavers. It’s Pierce’s job to eradicate mutants that won’t fight for the evil Transigen corporation.

The plotting of Logan is simple and straight forward and I failed to give the film credit for that simplicity in my original review. Keeping things clear and easy to follow in the complex and desperately crowded super-hero genre is surely something to be praised. Logan has a clear and simple goal, get out of the country alive at all costs and if unable, make sure you die, and take as many Reavers with you as possible. The motivation is clear, and all the action is linked strongly to that motivation.

Find my full length revie in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review The Wilde Wedding

The Wilde Wedding (2017)

Directed by Damian Harris 

Written by Damian Harris 

Starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Patrick Stewart, Minnie Driver, Jack Davenport 

Release Date September 15th, 2017 

Published September 13th, 2017 

The Wilde Wedding has the chance to be a pretty great movie but lacks the courage to pull it off. The film brings together the talents of Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Patrick Stewart for a wedding comedy and the charm factor would be off the charts except that writer-director Damian Harris can’t resist mucking up the works by having the younger cast too often crowd out the more interesting veterans.

The Wilde Wedding casts Glenn Close as world famous movie star Eve Wilde. Eve is on the verge of her 4th marriage; this time to a novelist named Harold Alcott (Stewart) who could not be less suited for her. We meet Harold as he is arriving for the weekend wedding with his two daughters and a friend and appears to be cramming for a test on Eve’s IMDB page. He can’t seem to remember the names of Eve’s most famous movies and seems to be of the belief that if he can’t remember them he won’t be able to get married.

Joining the wedding party is Laurence, Eve’s first ex-husband played by Malkovich. Pompous but charming, it was Laurence who’d gotten Eve her first role in Hollywood, one that very quickly eclipsed his own Hollywood start and eventually led to trouble in their marriage. Laurence and Eve have three sons, played by Noah Emmerich, Rob Langeder and Peter Fascinelli who are each given one trait to portray based off the simplistic notions of the emotional trauma of having been children of divorce.

They are joined by various girlfriends, assistants, friends or children, all very limited in their screen time and none of much particular interest. Minnie Driver plays one of the son’s rock star ex-wife who sings a pretty terrible cover of Billy Idol’s White Wedding as a supposed wedding gift while Grace Van Patten is the requisite millennial who is on hand to film everything for a documentary as her gift to her grandmother. Van Patten is saddled with an attraction to her cousin whom she insists is a first cousin once removed because that’s somehow less creepy or necessary to the story?

Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review The Emoji Movie

The Emoji Movie (2017) 

Directed by Tony Leondis

Written by Tony Leondis, Eric Siegel, Mike White

Starring T.J Miller, James Corden, Patrick Stewart, Anna Faris

Release Date July 28th, 1997

What is there to be said about The Emoji Movie? That’s what I have been asking myself for the more than an hour since I sat down to write this review. This empty, mostly competent, 90+ minute ad for smartphone apps doesn’t inspire much to be written about it. Sure, I could rail against the empty, soulless, mercenary nature of what amounts to app product placement the movie, but I have been shouting into that void since the trailer for the film hit and no one seemed to care then. So, let’s just start writing and see what happens.

The Emoji Movie centers around Gene (Voiced by T.J Miller), a professional "Meh" emoji on his first day on the job in Textopolis, a home for Emoji’s inside a teenager’s phone. Gene’s parents Mel and Mary Meh (Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge) aren’t sure Gene is ready for the job of expressing indifference because, unlike other Emojis in Textopolis, Gene is able to perform other Emoji functions beyond just being the face of Meh.

When Gene panics and ruins a text to a girl by making a funny face instead of Meh, he’s set to be deleted as if he were a virus. This leads to Gene having to flee Textopolis with his new pal Hi-5 (James Corden) to find a hacker named Jailbreak (Anna Faris) whom he hopes will be able to reprogram him to be Meh and help Hi-5 get back into the favorites page of his owner’s phone where he was once among the most oft-used Emojis.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: X2 X-Men United

X2: X-Men United (2003) 

Directed by Brian Singer

Written by Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, David Hayter 

Starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellan, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden

Release Date May 2nd, 2003 

Published May 1st, 2003 

The first of 2003's many blockbusters is here. The sequel to the 2000 cash machine, X Men, X Men United once again has Professor Xavier's clan of mutants attempting to prevent a human-mutant war. The twist however in X2 finds our hero's on the same side as archenemy Magneto against an evil army general with a double secret agenda. The familiar story combines with spectacular effects for an enjoyable popcorn entertainment.

The film opens with a sensational effects scene involving a new mutant called Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) and an attack on the White House. Using his mutant ability to turn to smoke and float through walls, Nightcrawler evades the secret service and attacks the President. Through luck, the President's life is saved, but now the tentative peace between humans and mutants that started at the end of the first film is over.

Despite the efforts of Mystique (Rebecca Romijn Stamos who is not bad when she's not saddled with too much dialogue) disguised as the late Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison), an army General named Stryker (Brian Cox) convinces the President that a strike against mutants is necessary. His target, Xavier's School for the Gifted, AKA the X-Men compound.

In the meantime, Professor Xavier has begun searching for Nightcrawler to uncover why he attacked the President. Xavier dispatches Storm (Halle Berry) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) to find Nightcrawler, while he and Cyclops visit archenemy Magneto (Ian Mckellen) to determine his involvement. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) returns to the school just in time to take charge of the student while everyone is gone. Of course this is when Stryker and his army attack, forcing Wolverine to empty the school and go on the run.

With Rogue (Anna Paquin), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and Pyro (Aaron Stanford), Wolverine heads for safety in the home of Iceman's parents. In one of the films most talked about scenes, Iceman "comes out" to his parents about being a mutant. It's not long though before the cops show and they are on the run again.

Once reunited with Storm and Jean, they find that the Professor and Cyclops are missing and they are being hunted by military jets as they escape in the X jet. After taking a hit the jet nearly crashes, they are saved at the last minute by the unlikely savior, the now free Magneto. With the mutual enemy of General Stryker, they must team with Magneto and Mystique to free Xavier and stop Stryker from launching the war against mutants.

Summer blockbusters aren't about great storytelling, they are about special effects and sly humor and X2 delivers both. Not only is there the awesome White House attack sequence, but also the jet fight with Storm attempting to lose the military jets in a series of tornado's that she creates.

Most of the film’s humor comes, surprisingly from Wolverine in subtle commentary in his surroundings. Thrown in to babysitter mode while the rest of the crew is hunting for Nightcrawler, Wolverine has some fun interaction with the students before the military attacks. Then as witness to Iceman's coming out, Wolverine's annoyance of his conventional surroundings are very funny. Jackman's gruffness is perfectly in tune with his humor.

The effects are strong, but suffer in comparison to the Matrix trailer that precedes it. The Matrix trailer was so good I missed the first couple minutes of X2, still reveling in Reloaded. That is not to say I wasn't impressed by X2 but it is made to look conventional by comparison.

The performances aren't much to be remembered Halle Berry's Storm gets more screen time this second time around but not much insight is made into the character. Jackman as Wolverine gets the most screen time and is undoubtedly the star but the more Wolverine is on the screen the less impressive he becomes. In comparison with Jean and Storm, Wolverine's powers, his adamantium claws and superhuman healing ability seem small. You know when it comes to the major save the world stuff it will be Storm or Jean doing the saving with Wolverine as a spectator.

Director Brian Singer does an efficient job of balancing his large cast and huge effects scenes, and while the story isn't all that impressive it's all very well choreographed and follows a certain logic. To balance all of this big budget stuff and make a film that is semi-coherent is a feat all on it's own. It's an entertaining popcorn film that effectively sets the stage for the next sequel. It's no Spider-Man, Batman or Superman, but it's still pretty good.

Movie Review Star Trek Nemesis

Star Trek Nemesis (2002) 

Directed by Stuart Baird 

Written by John Logan

Starring Patrick Stewart, Tom Hardy, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden

Release Date December 13th, 2002 

Published December 12th, 2002 

I was a huge fan of the Star Trek: Next Generation TV Series. That is, until, the first movie was released. Generations was not a bad movie but it lacked the depth of the series. In fact, the film version seemed to brush aside the elements that made the series so interesting in favor of lame sci-fi action that dominates most films of the genre. Granted the series intelligent studied style that only resorted to action and effects when it had to probably doesn't translate well to the screen. So, if you have to change it so drastically why do it at all?

The second film in the series was a little better with it's adherence to a storyline begun on the TV series, but it too resorted to effects and action that we've seen dozens of times in sci-fi movies. Then came Insurrection, a true lowpoint as Trek made it's first dip into campy self parody. Cheesy effects, performances and action, Insurrection should have killed the series. Yet here we are again with another Next Generation movie and the continuing de-evolution of a once great series.

Nemesis reunites the familiar faces of the once great TV series including Captain Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), Commander Riker (Jonathon Frakes), Deanna Troy (Marina Sirtis), Data (Brent Spiner), Worff (Michael Dorn) and Jordy (Levar Burton). The crew of the Enterprise begins Nemesis celebrating the marriage of Commander Riker and Deanna Troy, a relationship that has evolved from the TV series. After a coup in the Romulan senate, Captain Picard and his crew are ordered to go to the Romulan neutral zone to begin possible peace talks with the new ruling regime from the Romulan neighbor planet Remus. Once in the neutral zone Picard and members of his crew beam aboard the Remus ship to speak to the leader Praetor Shinzon (Tom Hardy). It is quickly revealed that Picard was called here not for peace negotiations, but so Shinzon can reveal himself as Picard's clone.

All of this in the films first 20 minutes, the remaining screen time is dominated by dull sci-fi action and shockingly cheesy dialogue and effects. It's no surprise that Shinzon plans on blowing up the Earth and destroying the Federation, but then there are no surprises in Nemesis.

What is so shocking about Nemesis is how director Stuart Baird manages to make his talented cast look bad. The bad acting, cheesy dialogue and special effects scenes are worthy of Ed Wood. Not all the effects are that bad, in fact some of the effects are very good. However, effects that happened inside the ship (Sparks coming from engines, people pretending to fall down, forcing the poor cast to sit in their chairs and shake themselves as if they were being battered by unseen blasts) are just sad.

How is it that in the 25 some years since the first Star Trek film that none of these geniuses has been able to create a shield that doesn't degrade by 50 percent after one or two blasts? When will Jordy fix that stupid core so it doesn't blow up so quickly leaving the crew completely vulnerable? As many times as the ship has broken down and been busted up I would fire my engineer for not making some kind of improvement.

Poor Patrick Stewart. Once he was a Shakespearean trained actor and now the words “full power to forward shields” will be on his tombstone. In addition, what happened to Jonathon Frakes? At one time his Commander Riker was an oddly stoic guy with a strange sense of humor. In the past two films he has became an over the top cheeseball ham. Two movies into the Next Generation films and Frakes' charming grin is now a mask of hamminess.

The downward spiral of Next Generation from smart TV show to dull movie series is a perfect example of how money corrupts. On TV, Next Generation was forced to come up with smart scripts and stories that didn't rely on special effects because they didn't have the budget for it. Now on the big screen and flush with cash to do the effects they couldn't do on TV, the series is dominated by the effects.

Star Trek: Nemesis is not a disappointment but rather the continuation of disappointments that has been growing since the TV show was shoved onto the big screen.

Movie Review: TMNT

TMNT (2007) 

Directed by Kevin Munroe

Written by Kevin Munroe 

Starring Chris Evans, Patrick Stewart, Sarah Michelle Geller, Kevin Smith, Mako, Ziyi Zhang

Release Date March 23rd, 2007 

Published March 22nd, 2007

Yet another retread of the Teenage Mutant Turtles attacks our cultural consciousness and as with so many copies of an original, it is dulled and less compelling, a copy of a copy really. Directed by a videogame veteran with videogame sensibilities, TMNT looks more like an ad for the TMNT game on the XBox 360 than like a feature length film.

The brothers, Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo and Donatello, who make up the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crime fighting team, want only to be on the streets fighting crime and scarfing pizza. However, their sensei Master Shredder has forced them to give up crime fighting out of fear for their safety, not merely from the bad guys but from the good guys who could not easily accept talking turtles.

Each of the turtles has found their own way to deal with seclusion. Michaelangelo and Donatello perform at kids parties, dressed as turtles(?). Leonardo has thrown himself into training with Master Shredder. Raphael, on the other hand, has taken to vigilante-ism. Taking to the streets under the guise of the Nightwatcher, Raphael is inviting a number of dangerous encounters.

When his activities are exposed it leads to a rift between Leonardo and Raphael that nearly comes to blows. However, Raphael's activities do expose the crimes of a shady businessman who has teamed with a group of ninja assassins to steal 13 warrior statues that once gathered can be made real and used to take over or destroy the world.

Directed by video game veteran Kevin Munroe, TMNT delivers a view of the Ninja Turtles that seems to want to be a little darker than previous incarnations. Their is the sense that Munroe and screenwriter Peter Laird want to delve a little deeper into these characters and their motivations. Sadly, they abandon this idea early on in favor of some truly moronic and insulting humor and kid friendly action scenes.

Restricted by the typical rules of kiddie flick etiquette, Munroe and Laird give up any notion of creating really compelling characters and an engaging coming of age story in favor of simpleminded lessons and tropes about family and doing the right thing. Oh and a bit of bathroom humor, also a staple of this vacuous type of story.

There is some promise to TMNT early on and it comes in a showdown between Leonardo and Raphael in his guise of the Nightwatcher. Not knowing who the Nightwatcher really is, Leonardo engages him and the two fight until Raphael's real identity is revealed. The tension extends back home and the conflict is genuine and compelling.

Unfortunately, this interesting bit is quickly forgotten about and the typical tropes about loyalty, family and doing the right thing take center stage in all of their unambiguous, black and white forms. I'm not saying TMNT was ever going to offer great conflict or drama, but this story was interesting before it was jettisoned in favor of more simply manipulated emotions.

As for the animation, keep in mind that director Kevin Munroe comes from a video game background. TMNT looks so much like a videogame that you may be tempted to search around your seat for a controller. The animation of videogames have made great leaps in recent years but movies require a good deal more than mere kinetic, quick cut images.

Conditioned by the beautiful work of the team at Pixar, CG animation is now an art form and if a cartoon feature cannot match the beauty of Ratatouille, Cars or Monsters Inc, we aren't as interested or engaged. Pixar and the teams at Dreamworks Animation (Shrek) and the terrific Sony crew (Ice Age), have raised the bar in CG animation and a film as flat and colorless as TMNT pales in comparison.

Without a great story to pick up for the lack of great visuals, TMNT flounders and becomes tedious by the time the end comes in a mere 84 minutes.

TMNT is a flat, uninspired recreation of an inspired group of characters. The potential was there, but the imagination and daring were lacking leaving TMNT to be yet another product of kid-centric marketing. The makers of TMNT may have been better served dropping the turtles directly into television commercials for Pizza and pop, rather than wasting millions on a theatrical feature.

It's clear from watching TMNT that the only value of these characters can be found in their salability rather than their depth of character. Why not cut out the middleman and just make commercials and toys.

Movie Review: X-Men The Last Stand

X-Men The Last Stand (2006) 

Directed by Brett Ratner 

Written by Simon Kinberg, Zak Penn 

Starring Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, Kelsey Grammer, Elliot Page, Shawn Ashmore

Release Date May 26th, 2006

Published May 25th, 2006 

Director Brett Ratner is a hack. That is the reputation he has earned over a career of nine features including two Rush Hour films (and soon a third), Red Dragon, The Family Man and After The Sunset. Each of these are examples of the basic mainstream formula pictures that few would call innovative or relevant. Ratner is a mainstream showman who works only from studio approved genre templates and thus, the label of hack, is appropriate. 

Ratner's style is safe, conventional and boring. So it was quite understandable that when Ratner was hired to direct the third film in the X-Men series, X-Men The Last Stand, longtime fans gnashed their teeth and prayed to whatever mutant god that controls such matters that Ratner not be allowed to screw up their beloved franchise too much. The fans prayers have been answered, for the most part. Though X-Men: The Last Stand has plot holes you could drive a truck through and cringe inducing moments unsuitable to the franchise, Ratner has not screwed the thing up too bad. Actually it's not that bad at all.

X3 turns on the idea that a wealthy industrialist has discovered a cure for the mutant X gene. It's a revelation that rocks the burgeoning mutant community at a time when a tentative peace had come between mutants and humans. The President of the United States (Josef Summer) even has created a dept. of mutant affairs headed up by a mutant, Dr. Hank McCoy aka Beast (Kelsey Grammer). The cure while good for some mutants is a divisive and even deadly issue for others.

Standing against the cure is Magneto (Ian McKellen) who, with his brotherhood of mutants, including Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) and Pyro (Aaron Stanford), plans to use the cure as a rallying cry for mutants to renew the war against humanity. Then there are our heroes the X-Men. Conflicted and confused, most are opposed to the idea that mutants are in need of a cure but against any kind of war with humanity, the X-Men are caught dead set in the middle.

In the midst of the controversy the X-Men face an even bigger crisis. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), thought dead after the last major X-Men conflict, is alive but she is no longer the Jean Grey the team once knew. Her near death experience has released her secondary personality known as the Phoenix, a being of unimaginable and uncontrollable power and rage. With war on the horizon and Jean Grey an even greater danger than that war, X-Men The Last Stand is bursting at the seams with plot. 

Throw in the introductions of several long awaited X-Men characters and you can understand the herculean task that Director Brett Ratner endured in making X-Men The Last Stand. That X3 is as coherent as it is with all of that plot and so many characters is a credit to Ratner. Not that I can let him off the hook completely for the films many flaws but even the biggest Ratner hater out there must cut the guy some slack for the sheer massiveness of X-Men The Last Stand.

Where Ratner succeeds in X3 is in crafting some serious blockbuster action scenes. A fight with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Storm (Halle Berry) facing down Magneto's brotherhood, including Pyro and new members including the super strong Juggernaut (a massively muscled up Vinny Jones) and the empathic speed demon Callisto (Dania Ramirez), is terrific, fast paced action and a terrific lead up to the films most shocking moment.

The ending is the films strongest moment as Wolverine is forced to face off with Jean Grey/Phoenix as she prepares to destroy the entire planet. The scene is exciting and emotional incorporating massive special effects and the entwined histories of these two characters into one powerhouse scene. Predominant amongst the films flaws however, are the younger X-Men, especially Shawn Ashmore as Iceman. The dewey eyed teenage Iceman is an emotional cypher who lacks power and presence. Iceman's main plot function is as the opposing element to Aaron Stanford's Pyro but since Stanford is also an underwhelming presence their time together onscreen is forgettable at best.

The less said about Iceman's romantic triangle subplot with Anna Paquin's Rogue and Elliot Page's Kitty Pride (the girl who can run through walls) the better. I could go on for several more paragraphs picking apart the flaws of X-Men The Last Stand even though I honestly believe that the good outweighs the bad. Brett Ratner's work is not exactly a masters class in direction but it is competent and professional and even thrilling when it really needs to be. The performances of the leads Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry are as good as they have been in the first two films with Jackman's wit becoming more prominent each time out. His work here makes talk of a Wolverine stand alone franchise something to look forward to.

Kelsey Grammer even cuts a surprisingly strong action hero figure as Beast. Fans of the comics have long looked forward to seeing the blue haired monster Dr. Hank McCoy with his unique combination of super strength, agility and erudite intelligence. Embodied by Kelsey Grammer, Beast has the gravitas of Dr. Frasier Crane combined with agility and strength of a classic comic book character. If you can put aside the flaws and concentrate on the terrific performances and often exceptional action scenes and shocking surprises of X-Men The Last Stand you will have a great time. X-Men The Last Stand is big time summer blockbuster entertainment.