I'm not dead. Promise.
Titles covered: Logan, Warcraft, Beauty and the Beast 2017, Billy Lynn's Long Half-time Walk, The Great Wall, and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
Logan (***)
17 years after the original Xmen, they are still making Xmen movies within the same continuity. Wow.
Logan promised to be a change of pace from the usual Xmen shtick. Most of the characters and cast are left behind, the movie is styled like a Western, and there is no evil mutant with a plan to destroy the world. It's also the first Xmen movie to be rated R (not counting Deadpool), so it doesn't hold back with the violence and language. Does this make for a better experience?
Well, at first I was very impressed with the movie. I liked the serious style, the new look, and the downbeat deconstruction of the entire Xmen universe. At the beginning of the movie, it's established that mutants are dying out, and Professor X theorizes that maybe mutants were never meant to be the next evolution of mankind. Maybe they were just an unstable evolutionary offshoot with showy powers that ultimately couldn't be sustained by their human physiology. We see that the Professor himself has degenerated, unable to control his powers or do much of anything. Instead, the mutant torch must pass to a young girl, the herald of a new generation of artificially-created mutants. Now these are interesting ideas!
However, we later learn that the mutants are dying because of contrived Bad Guy Machinations, which kills an interesting and thoughtful plot development. Also, despite the whole promise of being different and serious, the plot eventually degenerates to the same-old conflict of mutants vs. people who don't like mutants. Except this time, the people who don't like mutants clearly have no way to actually defeat the mutants, so it seems kind of pointless. The climax involves a disposable bad guy army trying to grab the deadly mutant children with their bare hands. Seriously? At least the under-equipped forces in previous movies had dart guns.
All-in-all, Logan is a satisfying (if very over-rated) movie. The style is effective, the acting is good, and the concept is interesting if unfulfilled. I liked the idea of Logan having a surrogate daughter, though her lack of dialogue made the character something of a cipher. Overall, an interesting effort, but not one of the best Xmen movies.
Warcraft (**)
The first scene of Warcraft features an orc chieftain taking care of his pregnant wife and thinking about the future. “Oh,” thinks I, “I guess they're making the orcs sympathetic in this movie.” Then in scene two, all the orcs (including the ones in the previous scene) are gathered around their leader, who proclaims that he will murder a bunch of helpless creatures so that he can open a portal, and then all the orcs can use the portal to genocide other weaker races so that they can open more portals, and murder more people, and so on and so forth. “Yes!” scream all the orcs, “That is totally an awesome plan! Let's go kill everyone smaller than us!”
Um... What?! Are the orcs supposed to be sympathetic characters, or merciless monsters worthy of extinction?
I know what you're thinking... Warcraft is a videogame movie, so of course it's bad. But hold on... this one actually had potential. The Warcraft universe is broad enough to allow the development of a workable movie storyline while incorporating characters and elements of the games. Furthermore, the movie is written and directed by Duncan Jones, son of the late David Bowie, and also the creator of Moon and Source Code. If anyone could make a solid videogame movie, surely Zowie Bowie can!
Or... maybe not. Warcraft has fine production values, but is marred by unethusiastic acting and a plot lacking both pacing and a main character. The human characters are boring, with the lone exception of the apprentice mage guy. So we're stuck with the boring humans and the horrible orcs. Whee!
You'd think that if Warcraft got anything right, it'd be the battles. Warcraft was a battle strategy game once upon a time (before World of Warcraft took over), so you'd expect some intricate and elaborate battle scenes. Instead, most of the battle scenes are mediocre, as if you're watching someone play a game with only footmen and grunts. There is a decent climax to the final battle, but even that gets ruined by a weird series of twists and turns that wreck the flow (the humans are winning, until they suddenly aren't, and then the king does some gambit that accomplishes nothing, and then some other guy shows up, and there's a duel, and... what was the narrative goal of this movie?!)
Warcraft isn't awful, but aside from the CGI on the orcs, it's fairly mediocre and generally not worth your time unless you're a big Warcraft fan. Disappointing.
Beauty and the Beast (2017) (*** and a half)
Beauty and the Beast is a hard movie to review. Oh, it's not hard to say whether I liked it; I did. But it adheres so closely to the 1991 original animated movie that I don't know whether it makes sense to review it as its own movie, or do a point-by-point comparison. Instinctively, I lean towards the later. I didn't face this dilemma with other recent Disney remakes. Malificent, Pete's Dragon, and Alice in Wonderland were radical departures from the original films, while The Jungle Book and Cinderella owed at least as much to their original literary sources as they did their animated counterparts. But 1991's Beauty and the Beast is considered one of the greatest animated movies of all time, so the live-action remake keeps it mostly intact, with a few added scenes and songs.
That leads into the key question: what is better about this version than the 1991 original, or the Broadway play? Probably the biggest improvement is the character of Maurice, Belle's father. Kevin Cline's rendition of the character reverses the pattern of Disney Dads who are domineering, incompetent, or absent. Rather than being a goof, the new Maurice is a wise and gentle soul whose single-dad status is finally given emotional weight. Meanwhile, the enchanted servants now play more of an ensemble cast, rather than letting Lumiere and Cogsworth hog the show. Other than that, the improvements to the story are mostly small, with a few plot-holes being addressed (sort of), and some extra nuances given to the Beast.
What's worse? Well, some things just don't work as well in live-action as they did in animation. Much of the cartoony slapstick and silliness had to be omitted (aside from the fight at the end), so the film gets very few laughs. The Beast is also less “beasty”, requiring a more human and relatable form. It makes sense, but still lacks the impressive presence of the original version. Also, the adaptation of the musical numbers varies in quality. I loved what the live-action remake did with “Be Our Guest” and “Kill the Beast,” but other songs like “Belle” and “Gaston” felt somewhat stagy and artificial. Also, I may be alone in this, but I didn't buy into Luke Evans as Gaston. His physique is too slender, his wooing of Belle is more annoying than threatening (making Belle's response song seem like an over-reaction), and I didn't get a sense that Gaston had loyal followers outside of Le Fou.
(Oh, and in case you missed the controversy obvious marketing ploy, Le Fou is now gay. It's also a very small part of the movie, so there's really nothing to get excited about one way or another.)
Curiously, even though the music selection is expanded, the songs from the Broadway musical are not featured. To be fair, the new songs are generally good, though the Beasts' song doesn't measure up to its equivalent (“If I Can't Love Her”) from the stage version.
Overall, I'm not sure that this movie needed to exist, but it is a very solid remake of one of the greatest animated films, so it gets a thumbs up from me.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (**)
I could just make this review short by saying that it's Oscar bait that didn't take, but I'll describe a bit more.
Last year, Ang Lee swung for another Oscar with this odd drama about a group soldiers who served in Iraq. One of the soldiers is seen as a hero due to a viral video, so the squad gets invited to appear at a football half-time show. I guess the idea of the movie is to contrast the glitz and glamour of American entertainment and propaganda against the realities of war.
A problem I had with this movie is that it's scathing without actually being thoughtful or constructive. The continuous ongoing conflict involves the soldiers encountering various people (fans, press, promoters) who try to sympathize with them. Ultimately all these people are mocked or eviscerated because they just don't understand the pain of war. Um... alrighty then. So, how exactly should one interact with a returning vet? Should we all avoid eye contact and just not talk to them? That's pretty much what I got out of this movie.
It is kind of interesting seeing the backstage mechanisms of a football game, as the event plays out throughout the entire 2-hour movie. We tend not to think about this, but there actually are a lot of things going on beyond what we see on TV, and I did appreciate the movie's attention to detail in this aspect.
Unfortunately, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a swing-and-a-miss. It flirts with greatness in a few scenes, but overall doesn't quite entertain and doesn't quite enlighten. The actors do well, but the weird concept never really gels or assembles into a coherent theme.
The Great Wall (** a half)
“Oh noes! A movie set in Asia with a few white people in it! I'm sooooo offended! Hollywood is soooo racist!” -People who act like PC Principal from South Park.
Is The Great Wall a good movie? Of course not! Don't be silly. Did I enjoy it? Yes!
Here's the delightful absurd premise of this crazy movie: a magic meteor crashed in China, spewing out hoards of reptilian monsters every 60 years. The monsters have been getting stronger and more numerous with each invasion, so the Chinese gradually built The Great Wall to contain them, and assigned a secret military order to fight them off. The story is told from the point of view of a mercenary black-power trader who accidentally stumbles upon the wall.
It would have been simple enough to turn the battles into rip-offs of “Helm's Deep” from Lord of the Rings, but The Great Wall gets much crazier than that. Besides the usual archers and swordsmen, the Chinese also have repeating ballista, bungee-jumping spear women, and all sorts of rube Goldberg contraptions built into the wall that unleash flaming balls and giant scissors and such. It's stupid, it's ridiculous, and I was entertained.
That's really all you need to know. Yes, this movie is stupid as hell, but the battles are reasonably fun, the costume design is awesome, and the main girl is super hot. If you're going to make a bad movie, do it like this.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (***)
As many have pointed out, the “Miss Peregrine” story is basically a Gothic version of X-Men. The titular character is the headmistress of a school for “Peculiars” (i.e. mutants) with superpowers, and she keeps them safe from a group of rogue Peculiars led by Samuel L. Jackson who are hunting the good guys. I guess the major difference between this idea and X-Men is that the villains only care about other Peculiars, so the broader world is left out of the conflict. Also, the mythology of the Peculiars is based on vintage trick photos of spooky children, which gives the film a unique flavor.
The film actually starts in present day, when the main character investigates the mysterious death of his grandfather, only to spot a monster in the fog. Following a set of clues, the protagonist finds that Peculiars hide inside 24-hour time-loops, and Miss Peregrine has hidden her school in a particular day during WWII. This may sound confusing, but it's actually illustrated quite well.
If there's a major criticism of this movie, it's that these characters don't really “pop”. They have cool concepts, but they're also pretty one-note and simple. Part of the problem is that the film doesn't give them much interaction beyond the action scenes and one romantic subplot (which is pretty cute). The film sort of jumps quickly from the introduction of the world to the final fights against the baddies, with not much in between.
To be fair, the baddies are pretty freaking awesome. Samuel L. Jackson gives an odd but interesting performance as a mad scientist. He's menacing, but he and his cronies also have this sense of detachment, having lost their eyes and souls. Meanwhile, the henchman-level monsters are big, creative, and scary, combining the Gothic stylings of Tim Burton with the weird biology you'd see in a Resident Evil videogame.
Miss Peregrine isn't one of Tim Burton's best works, but it's a fun movie with a cool premise and awesome bad guys. I wouldn't expect to get lost in the characters, but the plot moves at a quick pace and the fights with the monsters are suitably satisfying and creative.