X-Men: Days of Future Past

I loved this movie. It was a fun romp with more mutants than you can shake a stick at, including both the young and old versions of Magneto and Professor X. It had great action sequences, enough character development for me to get emotional, a huge set of Easter eggs for comics fans, and an understandable time travel plot.

And best of all, it achieved a satisfying reset of the movie franchise that should give us new X-Men movies featuring some of my favorite characters.

Certainly there were holes in the script that would seem to contradict things established in other movies, making the original timeline a little unclear. But those were minor quibbles in the face of the monumental task of making a "let's go back and change time" plot understandable to the movie audience.

The plot isn't overly complex, and the fight scenes showing off the mutant powers are clear and wonderful to watch (the best scene is when the mutant Quicksilver deals with a group of armed guards at super speed). 

I'm having a hard time writing much more about the movie because it was such a wonderful experience for me, and I don't want to give too much away. It's a big movie and there's a lot going on, especially when the story goes back and forth between the future and the past. 

Godzilla

I just saw Godzilla with Harriet on Sunday night. It's rare that she's willing to see one of my "genre" films (she looks at me cross eyed when I use the term kaiju), but she expressed an interest after seeing a commercial, so ... date night. I think having Bryan Cranston in the film helped, she's a big Breaking Bad fan and we both loved him in Malcom in the Middle. And based on a recommendation, we saw it in 3D!

I enjoyed the film. It was interesting, made some sense (other than it being ridiculous), and seemed like a pretty good portrayal of how the world would react to these giant monsters. The effects were spectacular, and I think it really captured the size of these things. It was why the 3D version was recommended, and I think that was right on. The depth perception of the 3D effect made the monsters blundering and fighting among the buildings really effective.

The story really follows Ford Brody (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a bomb disposal expert in the military, as he tries to get back to his family and keeps crossing paths with all the monsters. His performance was a little stiff, but that was somewhat in keeping with his military character's background, so not too off-putting.

You can probably tell that I'm not entirely enthusiastic about this film. Although I enjoyed it, I was a little ... well ... bored.  It seemed like the human characters were often fairly passive. That's not true throughout the film, and frankly, with creatures this size, that's probably the point, but I found I was most engaged when they were actively trying to stop the monsters, and not just follow them to see what they would do or making huge leaps of logic figuring out what was driving them.

I recommend the film, but it's not one I'll rush back out to see. It'll be fine to watch again with friends or family, but I doubt I'll even use it as background entertainment when I'm doing chores at home. That's one of my threshold tests for movies. 

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

I really wanted to love this movie. The second installment in the recently rebooted series has a fantastic cast, great chemistry between the leads, and (some) amazing effects, but it just couldn't pull together into a great experience. By the end, I enjoyed it well enough (although the more I think about it, the less I like it), but I have no interest in seeing it again. And I was depressed at the end.

Look, any comic geek worth his or her salt knows the fate of Gwen Stacey, so it's no surprise. But one of the few things really going for this rebooted franchise is the amazing chemistry between the main actors - Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey. They both have a great presence on screen individually, and they really clicked together. So, to have that end leaves me even less interested in further stories.

Some of the other things I like in the movie are: the amazing shots of Spider-Man web-slinging through the city, Spidey's banter during fights, the interaction between Peter Parker and Aunt May (played by Sally Fields). And, I enjoyed the sappy ending scene with the kid who was willing to take Spider-Mans's place, especially the way Spider-Man handled the situation.

However, the bad stacks up pretty high. The Green Goblin look is amateurish. The development of that character is even worse. The Harry Osborne alter ego is played like a bad Keaneu Reeves surfer dude having a temper tantrum. Jamie Fox is poorly abused with the badly written Electro character, especially the confusing alter ego character Max Dillon and his "motivation" to become a supervillain. The Electro effects were uninspiring. Although it was fun to see Paul Giamatti as a supervillian, his character wasn't developed at all, and I felt like he was give short-shrift as a set of bookends to the film. I assume we saw Rhino as is a setup for the third movie, where we're going to see a supervillain team-up.

And what was up with the weird, effeminate, German, mad-scientist who tortured Electro? That wasn't just bad - it was offensive and took me completely out of the movie. WTF!

I guess it just felt like the movie let me down. So much potential on paper, but just poorly developed and portrayed. I guess I blame the director Mark Webb? I know every geek is going to have to see this movie, but once is enough. And if you can wait until you can stream it, or see it as part of some subscription service, or even on an airplane, then wait.