Escape from Tomorrow Review

Watching Escape from Tomorrow, the much buzzed about film from last year’s Sundance Film Festival, I was reminded of a test Gene Siskel coined for judging movies.  The test is this: “Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?”  For Escape from Tomorrow there has to be some version of that rule where instead of the cast eating lunch, it’s the behind the scenes story of how the film got made.  The film, shot without permission at Disney resorts, certainly has audacity when you think of all the work that had to go into making it.  Unfortunately, all that effort went into making a film that is unwatchable.

Escape from Tomorrow is about a married father of two (Roy Abramsohn) who finds out he’s lost his job just as his family begins the last day of their vacation at the resort.  As the day wears on, he slowly loses his mind, leading to bizarre, Lynchian imagery and scenes.  What sinks the film is the complete lack of any cohesion.  Is the film supposed to be a black comedy?  A satire of the contrived pleasure of theme parks?  Horror about the dark side to “the happiest place on earth”?  The longer the film goes, the more it falls apart.  They even introduce science fiction late into the movie (it may still be taking place in his head).  It feels like it changes dramatically every five to ten minutes.

One of the primary problems of this film is that there is no one to sympathize with.  In theory it should be on the father, but he quickly spends that good will by leering at and stalking two teenage girls (Danielle Safady and The Americans’ Annet Mahendru).  Perhaps it is commenting on how vacations can bring out the worst in us, but doesn’t work because we can’t see things his way.  It shouldn’t be this hard.  He’s stressed out trying to have fun on an expensive vacation, but he’s burdened by the thoughts that this trip cost him money he now desperately needs to stay afloat while he looks for work elsewhere.  That’s all you need for a baseline, and knock it off with him being creepy.

Also, perhaps to avoid legal trouble, they sometimes blink.  The only time I remember Disney said aloud by name is bleeped out.  Sometimes it feels like they go out of their way to avoid saying it.  Probably the biggest cop out is that some scenes are clearly shot in front of a green screen.  It tampers the danger that garnered this film so much of its buzz.  It is amazing how much of what is shot on site looks like a legitimate movie, but clearly they couldn’t quite get what they wanted.

Some movies, like Fitzcaraldo and Apocalypse Now (whose backstories were made into documentaries), have behind the scenes stories that rival what the film audiences saw.  Sadly, Escape from Tomorrow is one of those films where the story about how it got made is miles beyond what we ended up seeing.  The characters are horrible, the story is incoherent and there a little too much gross out stuff that isn’t earned (a scene late in the film in a bathroom is the low point).  Ultimately the biggest problem is likely that to get this any release, it had to be neutered, leaving a pointless mess in its wake.  For such a risky endeavor, it’s a shame that exciting behind the scenes story never made it to the screen.

Grade: D-

X-Men: Days of Future Past Review

Ever since The Avengers made all of the money two summers ago, every other studio with rights to a superhero property has been trying desperately to catch up, whether it’s rushing reboots into production to keep the rights from falling into Marvel’s hands or figuring any movie that does well can be the foundation for an Avengers sized franchise.  The results have been iffy: The Amazing Spider-Man was unnecessary and forgettable (and apparently the sequel wasn’t much better) and the more I hear about Batman V Superman, the more I’m convinced it’ll be the film that’ll burst the superhero movie bubble.  However, Fox is the only one doing it right with their treatment of X-Men.  X-Men made some pretty lousy movies (Last Stand & Origins: Wolverine) to keep the rights, but ever since the Marvel Cinematic Universe started gaining traction, the X-Men series has stepped up their game.  X-Men: First Class was the type of relaunch any franchise owner dreams of: while the prequel format could’ve easily just been a reboot, they decided there was enough good from the previous films (namely the first two) that they could build upon it.  While I would still love to see some type of collaboration with Marvel Studios and Fox, I am OK with them keeping the rights, so long as they continue to make films like First Class and its latest, Days of Future Past.

Days of Future Past, arguably the most famous X-Men story, is the perfect story to mine for inspiration.  It ties the original trilogy cast, stuck in a dystopian future where they are being hunted down, to the new series, as Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, the constant between the two casts) is sent back in time to stop this darkest timeline from ever beginning.  Specifically, he has to stop the assassination of an anti-mutant scientist Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), the inventor of robotic mutant hunters the Sentinels, by Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), who has gone rogue after Magneto (Michael Fassbender) was detained.  Needless to say, Magneto isn’t detained for long and both sides race against time to change the future, albeit directed by their different philosophies.  On top of that, Wolverine is working on a deadline: he has to avert this dark timeline before the sentinels (in 2024) arrive and take out the surviving X-Men.

As you can imagine, DOFP is ambitious because it is so risky: they have two large ensembles, a complicated timeline & the rules of time travel and they have to update us on what the First Class crew have been doing in the decade since their first movie.  Luckily the source story is so short.  It could’ve easily failed under the tremendous weight, but manages to be breezy fun, in part of knowing what to emphasize.  While the original cast serves as a framework, it is more a film continuation of First Class.  Unfortunately they run into the problem of trying to cram so many characters into a movie, like Mystique’s arc is a little underserved (perhaps a result of how far Lawrence’s star power has risen since the first film) and I would’ve loved to see more between Xavier and Magneto, whose relationship has always been the X-Men series’ most compelling story.  However, it never becomes a significant problem.  Not to mention having Jackman as the top billed and ostensibly the main character helps: 14 years on and he is still fun to watch.

As much as this film is about averting a disastrous future, it is also about a broken man finding his purpose again.  When Wolverine finds Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) in the 70s he is a broken man: a man who saw his ambitious dreams crumble.  He’s getting loaded on a drug that allows him to walk, but at the expense of his telepathy.  Unlike the usual hero’s journey many comic book films employ, prequels give us a chance of seeing the modern day elder statesman as one plagued by many of the same doubts his future students will grapple with.  However, unlike Obi-Wan in the Star Wars prequels, we see Xavier on journey bouncing back from his disappointment.  While I wanted to see a little more between Xavier and Magneto, as their long, complicated history is the richest element of this world, seeing Xavier get his mojo back was satisfying.

After the disappointment of Godzilla and skipping Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days of Future Past feels like the real beginning of the summer movie season.  Although it isn’t as good as First Class, it pulled off a difficult arc and shows the prequel’s quality wasn’t an accident and like everyone else, they are setting up plans for the next one in this film.  Certainly I would love to see Wolverine pop up in an Avengers movie (like just about anyone), but if Marvel can’t have the rights, I’m OK with Fox keeping it.  There’s no need for them to catch up: they’re already there.  All they have to do now is maintain it.

Grade: B+

Miscellaneous (SPOILER ALERT!)

-I don’t want to get into the scandal director Bryan Singer is involved in (the whole art from the artist is a can of worms), but I wonder how it will affect the series going forward.

-As for the question who is the better Quicksilver (the character is the only one so far in both non-Marvel and Marvel films not counting the possible Scarlet Witch cameo in this film), Fox is off to a promising start with Evan Peters.  The “Time In a Bottle” sequence was a high point.  Like many people I had issues with Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Godzilla, but maybe with Joss Whedon’s touch he could be a formidable version.

-I guess one of the selling points Fox has with their properties is they go a little further content wise.  Marvel’s movies are generally mild PG-13, knowing full well a good chunk of the audience is under 13.  DOFP has more swearing (including the one PG-13 f-word PG-13 movies can use), the violence is a little more graphic and I think this is the first PG-13 comic book movie with nudity in it.

-It was kind of nice to have all those excessive characters from the first one bumped off in between movies.  I guess Emma Frost had to go because her planet needed her (and she subsequently died on her voyage back).

-So Anna Paquin is on screen for like 10 seconds, has no lines, and gets billed above Ellen Page.

-Magneto and Xavier must be in their 90s in the darkest timeline portion.

-The timeline for this, needless to say, is pretty confusing.  Besides whatever they retconned from The Last Stand and Origins (before Wolverine seemingly retconned the whole thing), I’m not sure where The Wolverine, and it’s mid credits scene, stand in the chronology.  I’m sure someone is creating a fun video detailing the timeline.

-I don’t think the post-credit scene, which features a young Apocalypse single handedly building a pyramid and being worshiped as a god, is going to resonate much with casual filmgoers.  Certainly he is powerful, but we also saw Magneto lift an entire football stadium and drop it over The White House.

-To be honest, I bumped up the grade because it more or less means The Last Stand & Origins: Wolverine are no longer canon.  Even if this is the swan song of the original cast, I’m OK with it.  It’s hard not to read this film as an apology for those two other films.

Godzilla (2014) Review

Well this summer is off to a rough start, huh?  First we had The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which is fading fast at the box office due to toxic word of mouth.  Now we have Godzilla which went from being one of the summer’s most anticipated films to being one of the most polarizing.  A lot of people are simply happy it isn’t the 1998 version, which admittedly I’ve never seen, but going in having seen only one Godzilla movie (the 1954 original) I have to say this one left a lot to be desired.

The reboot of the iconic movie monster series brings the franchise into the modern era, though this film owes a lot to the series’ origin.  The original, which came out 60 years ago, was a serious reaction to the atomic bomb dropping in Japan at the end of WWII.  They even had Takashi Shimura, a mainstay of Akira Kurosawa’s films, star as the lead.  While the Cold War is over, incidents like the one in Fukushima in 2011 show that our fears about nuclear power are alive and well.  From the beginning it’s clear that was a key influence on the new one as nuclear tests and power plants help bring about the title monster, along with some as far as I know new ones to do battle in several metropolitan areas.

The script is a mess.  Though it has two people credited (one for story, one for screenplay), it has the feel of a script that went through a few doctors to polish it up.  It’s not really clear who the main character is until around a half hour in, when they finally get around to his nonsensical “save the cat” moment.  His arc at the beginning shifts dramatically when the main motivation for his character gets tossed out, after that he’s a mostly forgettable hero archetype (for a better version of what they were going for, look no further than Chris Evans’ Captain America).  Certain characters, like Ken Wantanabe’s & Sally Hawkins’ characters, just pop up here and there as if the writers forgot they were in the movie and needed to put them back in occasionally.

The only time the movie came to life was when Godzilla was on it, especially doing his signature roar.  When the camera pans up, it’s hard not to think “Oh man, here we go!”  But it never pays off satisfactorily.  Unlike the 98 version, this version’s appearance is true to the Toho version, but brought to life with some stellar effects.  Sadly, Godzilla isn’t in a whole lot of the movie (we don’t see him until about the hour point).  I knew that coming in, but I didn’t know just how little Godzilla we were getting.  As the film wore on it really felt like the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead of monster movies, which would be OK if the characters were worth investing in.  The shark isn’t in much of Jaws, but this Godzilla has no Brody, Quint or Hooper.  As much as I don’t want to be the guy who complains about not seeing a lot of action, it’s called Godzilla, and we go see Godzilla movies to see monsters fight.

Perhaps this is a result of timing: it’ll be hard to see destruction like the kind featured here and not think of 9/11, and although it is not as overt as the nuclear themes, the idea of global warming devastating civilian areas (we see several areas flooded as the monsters create massive tidal waves) is extremely potent idea the film taps into, although it never quite gets there.  Maybe, like the original film, it will be different in tone to future installments, which will be more about who Godzilla is fighting and what other monsters are there.  Whatever the case is, I just want to see more of him next time.

Grade: C-

Observations: (SPOILER ALERT)

-When you have a character who has a contentious relationship with his father and set it up to be a huge part in the story, don’t kill off the father a half hour in, especially when he’s played by Bryan Cranston.

-That Cranston has such a small role really reinforces my usual behavior of avoiding trailers.  It’s hard not to think he would playing a pivotal role in the entire film based on it and the part he’s in.  Not to mention the rather unceremonious way they dispatch him.

-Not to mention Juliette Binoche is in the movie for what couldn’t have been more than five minutes.

-I kinda wish Godzilla had been a villain in this one as he was in the original: that would’ve been truer to the mission statement the film set out with.  But then again, it’d put the kibosh on sequels.  Although the way he killed the MUTO by opening his jaw and breathing that electric fire or whatever was the kind of awesome moment this film needed more of.

-The film in general looked very good.  In particular the scene where the soldiers parachute in to the city with the streams of red smoke lead to the best imagery.  The score in this scene was also very effective.

-So does Aaron Johnson’s character Ford just get in with the troops because they take him at his word?  I’m sure they could do some background check off camera, but this still felt very weird.

-I see Godzilla has followed Pacific Rim’s example of shooting many of the creature fights at night and/or in the rain.  Godzilla’s effects were better and there were a few more scenes during the day, but c’mon, I want to see some more action like in Pacific Rim.

-Random detail that bothered me: BS on there being a news report on in a casino.  Casinos are designed so you have no idea what time of day it is, much less what’s going on in the outside world.

-I couldn’t quite see it, but there was a Mothra Easter egg when they’re in the abandoned city (it’s a sticker on a fish tank).

-This issue I had with Ford’s “save the cat” moment was while he was concerned about helping the kid, he didn’t seem as concerned about the other people in the train car who plunged to their deaths as he did about this kid, not to mention there really wasn’t any satisfying payoff to this bit.

-Better luck next summer Aaron Johnson and Elizabeth Olson.