Neighbors
Neighbors was a pretty funny movie. It started kind of slow
but once it found it's groove, it was pretty hilarious. Interestingly, though
Neighbors is another in a long line of raunchy comedies, unlike most it has
heart. There are real themes about what it means to grow up both from the
perspective of the fun-loving college kid and the young parent that still wants
to be cool.
So Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne are parents to a baby girl and
stuck in that phase I like to call "baby jail" where-in the parents
are seemingly imprisoned by having to take constant care of their child. New
neighbors move in next door in the form of a fraternity led by Zac Efron and
Dave Franco. Rogen and Byrne decide to introduce themselves to the college kids
in the hopes that they can curb any rowdiness and loud music that might disturb
their baby. They end up hitting it off with the fraternity. But their
relationship goes sour when, unable to reach Efron's character to ask the music
to be turned down, they call the police. The situation devolves from there into
a prank war.
One problem that Neighbors runs into is the same problem
that any college comedy encounters... living in the shadow of Animal House.
It's not anybody's fault, but regardless of how good the movie is, be it Van
Wilder, PCU or Old School, it more than likely pales in comparison to the John
Landis classic. Beyond that, I'm sure one can nitpick a lot about Neighbors,
but in a raunchy comedy, I try not to expect too much. As far as I'm concerned,
if a comedy can consistently make me laugh, as Neighbors did, then mission
accomplished.
I want to point out something that helps set this movie
apart from many other raunchy comedies. With the help of Seth Rogen's real life
spouse Lauren Miller, the part that Rose Byrne would eventually was changed.
Originally the part had Rogen's on-screen wife be the stereotypical nagging
wife. But after some revisions, Byrne's character seemed more equal to Rogen.
She wanted to have fun just like him and as a result, their relation reflected
the mutual respect and adoration they had for one another. It was actually
really refreshing and I give major props to those involved for making those
changes.
Neighbors has a real heart behind it's raunchiness, though.
You have this interesting dichotomy where Rogen and Byrne try to keep their
youth alive by sharing the antics and fun lifestyle that the frat boys have,
but inevitably have to come to terms with their adult lives as parents. On the
flip-side, Efron has spent most of his time at college having fun and not
focusing on his grades. Now that he is staring down the barrel of graduation
and the knowledge that afterward his amazing life and status within the
fraternity will cease, he clings to Rogen's character as an example of how even
grown ups can still be cool. When Rogen calls the cops Efron both feels
betrayed and disillusioned, and takes out his fears and frustrations on the
couple next door. That's pretty deep for a movie with penis jokes.
Overall, I liked Neighbors. I didn't like it as much as some
of the other Goldberg/Rogen films like Superbad, Pineapple Express and This is
the End, but it was pretty funny and worth the matinee ticket I paid to see it.
Godzilla
I don't have much to say about this new Godzilla flick. The
lizard was fat... it didn't seem as bad on the screen, but the various toys
representing this new Godzilla make him look like he ate Rodan. The movie was enjoyable, far from perfect,
but a hell of a lot better than that Roland Emmerich crap from 1998. Although, I did like the Taco Bell tie-in commercials:
(apparently someone spliced new footage to make an update of that first ad)
Most of the criticism I have heard of the Gareth Edwards
Godzilla movie concerns the human characters. I will admit their plot was kind
of weak, feeling more like observers in Cloverfield trying to survive than
active participants in the plot. But I need to point out that the human
subplots in any Godzilla movie are crap! Nobody has ever sat through a Kaiju
movie for the humans, it's always about the monsters! Seriously, as a kid I
would basically sit through 80 minutes of boring human subplots to get to the
10 minutes of people in rubber monster suits fighting and smashing models.
Honestly, I thought the human subplots involving Bryan Cranston, Aaron
Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olson (or as I like to refer to her as...
"The Talented Olson") were better than the others I have seen. (If
only Raymond Burr was still alive). But to read some reviews that talk about
how much more interesting Matthew Broderick's character was in that terrible
1998 movie, that's just insulting. Everyone sucked in that movie except Jean
Reno, because regardless of how bad a movie he is in, Reno
gets a pass for Leon
the Professional. (Granted, if he were to star in White Chicks 2, I would be
forced to revoke that pass.)
My biggest complaints concern how little we saw of Godzilla
until the very end (although the end was awesome). We have a slow build to him,
with short glimpses here and there, which would have been more rewarding if
everyone sitting in the audience had no idea who Godzilla was and what he was
capable of. I did like that there were two other monsters for Godzilla to
fight, which was admittedly more fulfilling than having the King of the Monsters
fight humans with futile weapons. But it was so frustrating that everytime
Godzilla started to fight one, we would cut to something else human related.
That was my biggest complaint.
However, I paid to see monsters fight and in the end, that's
what I saw. Toward the climax, we got to see Godzilla go balls to the wall
fighting both the other monsters at once and leveling much of San Francisco in the process. During that
fight, the movie achieved the one thing I had demanded of it, or else it would
not have been a Godzilla movie. In 1998's Godzilla, the monster DIDN'T BREATHE
FIRE! The trailer tricked us into thinking it did with the breath from it's
roar kicking up a burning helicopter, but that was a lie. The Godzilla I knew
would light up it's spiky fins and breathe blue atomic fire at it's enemies...
and by damned that's just what we got in this Gareth Edwards movie! In the end,
I was pleased enough with what we got, which was finally the Hollywood
version of Godzilla that was faithful to the Toho films I grew up watching!
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Okay, so in lieu of a regular review for the newest X-Men
movie, I am doing a list of ten things I liked and 10 things I didn't like (or
were kind of weird).
10 Things I Liked
About X-Men: Days of Future Past
1. I am happy X-Men: Days of Future Past wasn't the train
wreck it could have been. I said the same thing about First Class and like with
that movie, I was more than pleasantly surprised with the new one. For a movie
concerning time travel, the plot mostly made sense.
2. I give mad props to Bryan Singer and the casting
department for having Peter Dinklage play the part of Bolivar Trask, not
because Trask was supposed to be a little person (the Marvel Database says he
is supposed to be 5' 10") but because Dinklage is a great actor. It's
extremely rare for a little person to get a role for any reason other than the
character needing to be small, so this is a pretty amazing thing. Hell, there
wasn't even a mention of Trask being small in the film, he was just treated as
the character. That, and he had an incredible moustache. The 70's really were a
great time to have a moustache.
3. The dystopian future scenes were used really well. I
thought it would have been a five minute scene at the beginning of the movie
and it was done, but no... it was a recurring segment that helped create
tension throughout the film (and especially toward the climax). Also, it made
pretty good use of the characters. We didn't learn about the newcomers to the
franchise (Bishop, Sunspot, Blink and Warpath) but we saw their powers in
action.
4. The Nimrod Sentinels were awesome. They were like creepy
futuristic evolving Destroyers... you know, like that thing from the first Thor
movie?
5. Blink. Yeah, I know I already mentioned her, but she was
cool in the movie and she's one of my favorite Marvel characters. They did a
great job showing her teleportation powers.
6. It was great to see the old X-men again. Beyond Xavier
and Magneto, we get to see Storm, Shadowcat, Iceman, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast
and Rogue... for a second, but Rogue nonetheless. I will also compliment Kelsey
Grammer for sitting in makeup for what must have been hours just to appear on
screen for literally 3 seconds!
7. Quicksilver was great. They clearly amped up his speed to
Flash levels, but his character was perfect. That one segment set to Jim
Croce's "Time in a Bottle" was one of the best of the entire film.
8. It was nice to see them actually use Ellen Page. It
seemed like she was barely in The Last Stand. Later on, Jonny Prophet and I
were watching the disturbing movie Hard Candy, and marveled at her performance
(made all the more impactful that only she and Patrick Wilson were the on
screen characters for about 95% of the movie). We both surmised that Ellen Page
was tragically underutilized in X-Men 3. Thankfully in Days of Future Past she
got a pretty important role.
9. Days of Future Past pretty much ret-conned The Last Stand
from continuity! No more vaporized Xavier! No more Morlocks with wrong powers
like Psylocke. No writing out Cyclops! No having Angel in the cast for no
reason at all! No Dark Phoenix being a dumb psychic split personality! It makes
me so happy! (I wonder if it also fixes the crap from X-Men Origins: Wolverine?
Deadpool deserved better, dammit!)
10. Michael Fassbender.
10 Things I Disliked
About X-Men: Days of Future Past (or were just weird)
1. So we learn that Bolivar Trask captured and killed
several of the characters introduced in First Class in order to perfect his
Sentinels. These characters are Azazel (okay, red Nightcrawler isn't a big
loss), Riptide (aka the Hellfire Club guy nobody can remember the name of),
Angel Salvatore (I liked Zoe Kravitz's character and was hoping that the X-men
would have to face her since she went bad, but I guess it's not a huge deal
since they're already doing that with Mystique), Banshee (WHAT?) and White
Queen (THE FUCK?!?) Part of me can let Banshee go. His character is long dead
in the comics and the actor who played him wasn't even Irish (one of my complaints
of First Class), but Emma Frost is dead? She is actually a huge part of the
X-men-verse and the Marvel Universe! Beyond her involvement in the Hellfire
Club, she led her own young mutant team called The Hellions, co-led another in
Generation X (with Banshee no less), became the Head-Mistress of the Xavier
School, was a member of the Dark Illuminati and has been a major player in the
Marvel Now (post Avengers vs X-Men) mutant books. But no, I guess the films
have no use for this interesting fan favorite character. If things didn't work
out with January Jones, fine, but you can recast! Frickin' stupid!
2. How the hell did Charles Xavier get his body back? Up
until the end, everything that led to the dystopian future followed the movie
path, meaning Xavier's body was still vaporized by "Phoenix" Jean Grey. Yet in the future,
he's all Patrick Stewart. What the fuck, movie? Yes, I have heard the theory of
Xavier having a perpetually comatose twin, but that's just about the most
convenient bullshit I have ever heard.
3. Wait, so John F. Kennedy was a mutant? What was his
power? Sexual Persuasion? Wait a minute... what if during his famous speech in Germany, he
revealed himself as a mutant by declaring he could become "a jelly
donut" at will!
4. You know, there's a missed opportunity here. What if
instead of the Angel Salvatore character in First Class, they had used Warren
Worthington III as Angel? Now let's say he reprised his role in Days of Future
Past, but was seemingly killed at some point? The next movie is Apocalypse...
wouldn't it have been bad ass to have Archangel
debut as the Horseman of Death? (Of course, since the Zoe Kravitz's Angel is
dead, what if she were resurrected by Apocalypse with metal wings as a female Archangel? That would actually be awesome!)
5. Since when does Kitty Pride (Shadowcat) have the power to
send a human consciousness back in time? That could actually be explained with
the "secondary mutation" thing. The same way Emma Frost could turn to
diamonds, some mutants gained another power... for some reason. Kitty Pride
could actually be given that power in the comics, thus rendering this whole
argument moot. However, that would just be silly.
6. I am a little sad that Days of Future Past moved the
franchise back toward Bryan Singer's X-Universe. It makes me wonder what might
have been if First Class had stayed course. You had a team of X-Men having to
cope with loss and betrayal after the Cuban showdown. You had Magneto (for the
first time on film actually looking like classic Magneto) with his Brotherhood
of Mutants running amok. You had a whole new world of mutants both good and bad
to explore in the awesome setting of the mid to late 1960's. I mean, I would
have loved to have seen the influence of the "Summer of Love" and
hippies on the exploits of the X-men. First Class had such a unique feel unlike
any of the other X-men films and while Days of Future Past tried to bring about
the 70's in the same way, it wasn't quite the same.
7. I didn't really get why so many students and teachers of
the Xavier Institute were drafted into the Vietnam War. The draft wasn't that
all encompassing. It wasn't like World War II where there were so few working
age men left that women had to run the factories. It wasn't like the American
Civil War where all able-bodied men would be drafted from a town. Draft ages
are typically 18-25, so why were the teachers drafted? Also, I thought there
were exemptions for students (I could be wrong about that). Also, seeing Havok
there made me wonder why America
wouldn't have done better? Screw Agent Orange and napalm, that guy can clear a
jungle with one energy blast! Granted, the movie made it seem that Havok and
his fellow mutants kept their powers on the down-low for fear of bad government
stuff happening to them. That just seems weird though. The US government knows they have mutants living
among the humans, you'd think they want them to fight for America with
their gifts! Come to think of it, the X-men started as a government funded
operation in First Class. You'd think the US Military would love to get their
hands on mutants to be their new weapons.
8. Okay, so now we've had the 3rd actor to play Colonel
William Stryker? I get not using Brain Cox, he looks too old. Why not use Danny
Huston again? I doubt he's doing much. Plus, his appearances in X-Men Origins
Wolverine started right around the time of DOFP and into the 80's. Maybe he
just aged really badly.
9. In speaking of aging badly, what the hell happens to
James McAvoy in between DOFP and the 1981 flashback of Xavier and Magneto
visiting a young Jean Grey? The dude lost all his hair and aged considerably!
He looks like a completely different guy! (See what I did there? Yeah.)
10. So Hank McCoy created an anti X-gene serum that in
addition to temporarily deactivating the X-gene, had the strange side effect of
curing spinal injuries? That's just weird, but I thought it even weirder at the
end when McCoy took several syringes worth of the serum to temporarily
'deactivate' his X-gene to avoid being targeted by a sentinel. I don't see that
working so quickly and effectively. It's not like a switch in your brain, DNA
runs through every cell of the body. Think about how long it takes for aspirin
to take effect, you think an increased number of shots of the serum will speed
things up?
In the end, I did enjoy X-Men: Days of Future Past. My
expectations were low, but I was pleasantly surprised and despite my
complaints, the negatives didn't outweigh the positives for me.
So will Channing Tatum have to grow out his hair to play
Gambit or will he wear a wig?
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