IT: Chapter Two (3/5 Stars)

I read Stephen King’s IT in high school and remember it provoking a couple of sleepless nights. It was a very good book, but it had certain flaws. For one thing, it was incredibly long, over 1000 pages. It seemed to me at the time, then and now, that the book had no editor. Noone at the publisher ever thought to read the manuscript and suggest that any portions of the book be cut for time. By this point, Stephen King had more than a decade of bestsellers behind him. Maybe as a rule the printers felt his words, all of them, were sacrosanct. Secondly, I never really understood IT. I wasn’t sure whether it was a form of imagination whose power would wane if someone didn’t believe in it, or whether it was a real thing that could kill you whether you believed it was real or not. And then there was the general weirdness of IT, which I will explore more later.

The movie “IT: Chapter 2” is a good movie whose sum is less than its parts. It has problems, and to its credit, they are the same problems of the book. The movie is too long with too many scenes of two many characters that the Director Andy Muschietti did not have the courage to cut. And it isn’t really clear what IT is or how it really functions. And its weird. So the movie has the same problems of the book, which in turn make it a mediocre movie. However, if what you wanted to see was a faithful adaptation of IT, well, you got it, weirdness and all.

The book has been wisely separated into two chapters. The first chapter came out a few years ago and told the story of the main characters as kids. They had an initial victory against IT, personified by a nasty clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgaard), but did not ultimately vanquish IT. Then six of the original seven kids left town and generally forgot about their haunted town of Derry, Maine. As grown-ups they receive a message from the one person who stayed Mike Hanlon (played by Isaiah Mustafa). IT is back. The others don’t quite remember yet, but they all show up in Derry. Their numbers include Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain), Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy), Richie Tozer (Bill Hader), Ben Hanscrom (Jay Ryan), Eddie Kasparak (James Ransome). They called themselves the losers club back then and each had their pet “loser” qualification. Bill had a stutter, Ben was fat, Mike was black, etc. Of course, there were also seven of them and they were all friends, so how much of a loser could each possibly be. Like the heroes in Stranger Things (shout out to the cross-over Finn Wolfhard), who played ceaseless hours of Dungeons and Dragons together, I felt like this Losers Club had a lot of fun and support, besides, of course the evil town and its murderous clown.

It is hard to describe what IT is because it seems to have extraordinary capabilities (it can show up anywhere and look like anything) but weirdly unable to kill people when it really wants to. To put it another way, a lot of non-main characters die horrible deaths by IT. The main characters get put in the exact same positions but generally escape through no particular kind of sustained logic. Whether IT is harmful or harmless seems to gyrate wildly in the movie (as it did in the book).

IT the movie like IT the book is of a highly episodic nature. The talented cast are together in a few scenes, but generally move on to do their own things. Something that from a character development standpoint, is welcome, but when it needs to be done six times, takes a long time to do. It is interesting though how in the first chapter the most interesting characters were Bill, and Ben. The most interesting characters in this chapter are Richie and Eddie, who coincidentally also provide most of the comic relief. There are plenty of computer-generated effects in this movie. If it weren’t for the multitudinous amount of fantastical episodes, I could point to this movie as a good way to use special effects to develop character.

Then things get weird. It think Stephen King may have smoking a good deal of peyote when he wrote the ending to IT. There are giant turtles and weird rituals and at least one scene that would be very very illegal if it was adapted for the movie screen. The movie doesn’t get as weird as the book, but it certainly does get weird. I’m glad for it even though the weirdness makes the ending a whole bunch of nonsense. I rather they did it this way, got as close to the weirdness in the book, without breaking any laws, then to see something stupidly simplistic. The ending is not going to work either way because IT never really makes any realistic sort of sense. At least then you can make the climax memorably weird.

One last general observation: What is a movie star anymore? This is a very good cast with leading actors who I have seen in many movies. But is any one of them what you think of when you think of a movie star? Do we have movie stars anymore? The biggest movies out there are franchises with giant casts (James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain’s biggest movies sales-wise were in the X-Men franchise). Who do we have left that is a genuine movie star the way that Humphrey Bogart or John Wayne were movie stars? Perhaps Tom Cruise, Leonardo Dicaprio, and Brad Pitt. But they are all getting relatively old. Do we have any young movie stars? Such a thing has perhaps been lost with the general splintering of entertainment and culture.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (5/5 Stars)

The Great 20^th Century Mythos

X-Men: Days of Future Past is the seventh X-Men film and like nobody has ever said before, the sevent movie finds the series really hitting its stride. It is made special not only because on its own particulars but also because it feeds off the goodwill of several previous good films and because it seems to completely ignore (as if it didn’t even exist) the worst movie in the series, “X-Men: The Last Stand.” I actually wrote a review for X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. Here is what I wrote then, “This movie, the third installment of the X-Men series, literally killed the franchise. I mean seriously, everyone's dead.”

What an astute observation, Max, because in that movie several very main characters died amongst them Cyclops, Jean Gray, and Professor Xavier. So many died in fact that the next several movies either focused solely on Wolverine while he was not part of the X-Men or took a trip back in time to when everybody was still alive. Now ten years after that fateful movie, Bryan Singer, the original director of the very good first two X-Men films, has presented the audience with a bit of revisionist history. “Days of Future Past,” simply pretends that “The Last Stand” never took place. There is Professor Xavier still alive and breathing as if he wasn’t torn to a million pieces ten years ago. Does anybody care? The answer: a resounding no. “The Last Stand” has faded like the general multitude of inferior movies into the world’s collective amnesia unmourned. This is a hopeful thing. I think we can all think of a couple of movies in our favorite series that were just plain bad and should never have existed in the first place. And now “The Last Stand,” doesn’t. Thank you Bryan Singer.

The Last Stand’s inferiority stemmed from its assembly line of mutants and lack of depth. It had plenty of special effects but had no moral weight. It broke the promise of the X-Men series made when Bryan Singer decided to open the first X-Men movie in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Magneto, as a young child, realizes his powers for the first time at the moment his parents are taken away to the gas chambers. He reaches out to his parents and the metal concentration camp gates between them twist and bend to his budding mutant power of magnetism.  That scene is strong serious stuff and it is also acts a promise that the following movies will be good enough to deserve such drama because if they turn out to not be very good movies it is a dishonor to the memory of the Holocaust.

“Days of Future Past” makes good on that promise. That even though it is a action blockbuster with plenty of special effects and extraordinary mutant powers, it is also a sober metaphor for intolerance whether it be racial, religious, or class. The mutants are beset with persecution by the outside world for their differences. They are viewed as dangerous threats to humanity. Professor Xavier, in a wheelchair like FDR, has a mentality of Martin Luther King Jr. and works pragmatically to heal the divisiveness of the world. Magneto, using terms that parallel Malcolm X, speaks of doing whatever is necessary to achieve protection for mutants even if that means violence with humans. Mutants line up on either side, some attending and teaching at Professor X’s academy and others arming themselves and joining Magneto’s army. Take away all the boyish dazzle of a comic book blockbuster and you have a great 20^th century mythos tackling the most important questions of the last 100 years. How do we live peacefully with people who are different from us?

Of course this is a boyish comic book blockbuster so we also get to have lots of fun as well. There are outlandish spectacles based on mutant powers, big action pieces, and at least one Nixon impersonator. But at its heart ‘X-Men’ is great because it is a series that focuses on character. The mutations work like all great science fiction as an exploration into what regular people would do faced with extraordinary decisions. A person has character and now they are presented with these powers usually upon puberty that expose them to a hostile world. Almost none of the powers are welcomed. In the first movie, Rogue realized her mutant power of power absorption by almost killing her boyfriend with a kiss. Wolverine’s power of regeneration basically makes him immortal, not necessarily a good thing.

Because the characters are so strong and the movie is so big, we are treated to some of the best actors in the world all in the same movie. The movie covers two time periods. One in the future where a Sentinel army with mutant powers are covering the world in epic darkness and one in the past (1973) when the events that brought on the bleak future come to pass. This actually brings together the cast from the first two X-Men movies and the last X-Men movie that took place in 1963. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, giants of great dramatic parts, are the elderly Professor X and Magneto now facing extinction and united in remorse of past choices. With the help of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) they send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to the past to stop an assination. It has to be Wolverine because he is the only one that could survive such a trip. His mission is to pull together the young Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) at a time when could not have been further apart to stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating a scientist named Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) whose work would lead to the Sentinels.

Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Peter Dinklage are some of the most interesting actors to watch on screen for the past five years. They exude screen presence, i.e. the ability to draw your eyes to their part of the screen by simply being there. Mystique larger role in the story comes from perhaps the rising star of Jennifer Lawrence in general who has become in recent years the largest female star in Hollywood not only by being annually nominated for Oscars (winning one) but also by being a box office heavyweight with the “Hunger Games” series. Perhaps no actress since Sigourney Weaver in the 1980s had this kind of streak and I’m pretty sure it is okay to say Jennifer Lawrence has eclipsed even that example. Unlike many other actresses that have their day and fade away, J-Rentz has a dangerous edge to her. In fact, I don’t remember the last time she played someone who wasn’t desperate or veering off in some wild direction. Like Meryl Streep, she seems to have monopolized most of the great roles in her age group and some outside of it. Her normal state is a skin of blue scales, cat eyes, and wild red hair. Her mutant power is her ability to transform into the likeness of anyone she sees. This makes her perfect for anarchy and at heart Mystique is an anarchist.  

One last thing needs to be about Peter Dinklage but not necessarily about him. Peter Dinklage is a little person but is in this movie playing a character that was not a little person in the comic books. That is to say, the part did not call for a little person to play it but Peter Dinklage got the part anyway. Moreover, upon the presence of the Peter Dinklage in the movie there is not the ubiquitous quip or joke or surprised reaction of another character that generally coincides with the presence of a little person in a movie. Peter Dinklage is simply in this movie as this character, period. As far as I know, that is the first time it has ever happened in a movie before. I remember watching the DVD commentary of the “Manchurian Candidate.” The director, John Frankenheimer, was especially proud of this army psychiatrist that was not written as a black person, but for which he decided to cast a black person in the role anyway. Nobody in the movie pays any attention to the man’s race. Frankenheimer said he was proud because never in a Hollywood movie had a black person been cast in a role that wasn’t specifically black. I think Bryan Singer can be proud of casting Peter Dinklage and yes it fits perfectly into the X-Men mythos of tolerance for those of us who are different. 

Atonement 01/01/08

Remember those old farts that wax nostalgic and comment that they don't make movies like they used to in the good ol' days. Well they're full of shit. If this fall season is any indication, movies are not in danger of a decline anytime soon. In fact I would argue they are as good as they ever were, and movies like Atonement make the case that they will be for some time to come. 
The most impressive thing about this movie (besides the movie itself) is that it is young cinema. This is only director Joe Wright's second movie and the two stars Keira Knightley and James McAvoy are in their early twenties. The best performance is by Saorise Ronan who is only thirteen. With life expectancies as high as they are, these people could be making movies for the next fifty years. Isn't that exciting. 
Atonement plotwise is a very simple story. A young girl commits grievous harm to an innocent romance. There are two parts and an epilogue. The first takes place in 1935 and consists of the tragic misunderstanding. The second takes place during World War II. The epilogue (The only weak part) is disruptive jump fifty years into the future. I'll talk more about that later. The brilliance of this movie succeeds on the way that this simple story is told.
I call it right now, and I will be very surprised if it doesn't happen, that this movie will get Oscar nominations for Directing, Editing, Original Score, Sound, and Cinematography. It may also get nominations for Costumes, and Best Actress (Keira Knightley). The movie flows in and out sublimely through a mix of clever editing, musical themes, typewriter keystrokes, and superbly choreagraphed film shots. The plot weaves around itself in time and space but it is never explicitly explained to the viewer because the direction does such a good job of relating it subtlely. And there is one long shot, that I'm sure everyone will be talking of, that takes place during the British retreat on Dunkirk beach. It is five minutes long and wowed me with its complexity. Better yet, it works both ways, as a superb piece of technical direction but also an emotionally charged spectacle. This shot alone should gain Wright a nomination for directing. 
Knightley and McAvoy are the two leading stars of young British cinema. Here they do a great job. In my eyes, they both matured greatly on screen through this movie. McAvoy especially has a more adult look to him. Knightley continues on her insane streak of good to great movies. Having said that I believe the best performance goes to Saorise Ronan, the naive pretentious little girl. I'll go a little farther and say that her costume direction is the best of any this year. You can tell just by looking at this charachter what she is all about.
Unfortunately this movie has a really weird epilogue tacked onto the end of it. I don't think I should give it away, but it was bewildering to me how so many talented people could make such a great movie and than spring this sort of ending onto it. Just the visual contrast in it was odd. That and the fact that it jumped the movie timeline fifty years and than gave us a fakeout that nullified a good quarter of what we just saw. What they should have done is give us some warning to this sort of thing. A brief snippet of the interview at the very beginning of the movie would have made it all right I believe. That way the surprise wouldn't take us completely out of the story.
Can I give a thumbs down to a great movie because of a bad ending. I choose not too, but do I request that Joe Wright make his next film a true cinematic masterpiece. I am convinced he can and should do so.

The Last King of Scotland 03/15/07

This is as good of a true story as Fargo was. Only difference is that Fargo was made up. This actually happened. The truth sometimes makes a better story than any fiction. It's rare of course, but so is the main charachter of this story. An African dictator Idi Amin, played in an oscar winning role by Forest Whitaker. Probably the Ugandan Lyndon Johnson, he is a behemoth. A large man with a smothering personality. He's the friendliest man alive until he uses and abuses you. Under him, 300,000 Ugandans died from his paranoia. 
Like all movies about Africa, we see this story through the eyes of a journeying white man, this time a Scottish doctor by the name of Garrity. He gains personal access to the dictator by the simple fact that Amin happened to have a distinct fetish for everything Scottish. The man wore kilts for crissakes. Here we have a fantastic film, with distinct charachter arcs for everyone involved. Amin stays the same, it is only Garrity interpretation of him that changes. Children of course are great to play with, but sometimes they can be the cruelest people in the world. There's a great quote at the end, "You're only a child, that's what makes you so scary." It sums everything up perfectly.
I know that Amin is a real person, but I don't know how exact the character of Garrity is. If he is indeed made up, then it's as good a fabrication as the story in Fargo. He plays an essential role in this move (His story presents the inside track on Amin's personality) and it works perfectly. I only wish they had provided some information on what happened to the man at the end of the movie. (Was he a real person?)