The X-Men Movies Comes To A Close With The Grim Snooze Dark Phoenix

"Make way for the X-Men, an outdated metaphor for racism from the 1960s!" - Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) in Deadpool 2

The X-Men movies have had an erratic track record in their nineteen years of existence but their highest points showed an admirable level of ambition that fit these audacious comic-book characters. Creatively gusto spin-off's like Logan or Deadpool took the American superhero movie into unique terrain while X-Men: First Class used a period era setting and a zippy tone to breathe vibrant life into a tired franchise. In that context, the already disspiriting low-quality of Dark Phoenix becomes extra sad to see, it's such an all-around lackluster production that's as groggy and lifeless as a hungover college student. All of the ambition that marked the best entries in this series is gone, replaced with all the enthusiasm of a new kid forced to publically introduced themselves to all the students in the class.

Song to Song Is Out of Tune And Devoid of Substance

Here we go again...here we go again.

Yes, Terrence Malick returned to the silver screen this year with Song to Song, his fourth directorial effort in the last eight years, a stunning turnaround in terms of output considering the long gaps of time between projects in his filmography prior to 2011. Now he's just churning these things out like a madman and while his work ethic that's rivaling Ridley Scott or Takashi Miike is admirable, the quality of his recent efforts suggest he should maybe chillax, take a breather and come up with some kind of imagery or atmosphere he wants to exude before filming a movie instead of just tossing a bunch of major actors into a number of disparate locales and calling it a day.

The Snowman Is A Frosty Murder Mystery Misfire

Do you want to build a snowman? C'mon, your snowman can't turn out any worse than Tomas Alfredson's new thriller The Snowman, a film that clearly was meant to be a snowy Silence Of The Lambs but ends up being more incoherent than anything else. The premise of The Snowman, alas, does not revolve around a crime-solving snowman, but rather Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender, and yes, multiple characters solemnly intone that name throughout the film) taking time away from his favorite past time of drinking booze and passing out on playground equipment so that he can concentrate on a local missing person case, with the individual that's missing being a mother who's having marriage troubles.

Good Actors Get Saddled With Bizarre Tonal Shifts In Trespass Against Us

You would think combining Michael Fassbender with Brendan Gleeson would result in pure cinematic bliss, right? These two are great actors, surely pairing them up could only end up making something awesome! Oh, I would have thought that too about a year ago, but last December brought these two European actors together for the first time in that utterly forgettable Assassin's Creed movie. Their second collaboration, the crime thriller Trespass Against Us, is better than that video game movie dud but it's still a mixed bag of a film that still can't quite live up to the sort of quality a Fassbender/Gleeson movie really should obtain given the two's track record.

There's Just Not Enough Brains Or Good Scares In The Underwhelming Alien: Covenant

Ridley Scott is a master of his craft. Like fellow 1970's filmmaker trailblazer Steven Spielberg, it's awesome to see him still out there making large-scale movies and pushing boundaries in the modern age. The guys made his modern-day duds for sure (The Counselor has its notable fanbase for sure but I just couldn't get into and Exodus: Gods And Kings was a total snoozefest) but his most recent film, The Martian, demonstrated why we al fell in love with him in the first place. All of that praise having been said, I won't lie; Alien: Covenant, his newest directorial effort, does make me think it's time for some new creative (acid) blood to get injected into this franchise on some level.

Well, Add Assassin's Creed To The Ever Increasing Pile Of Underwhelming Video Game Movies

2016 was actually a pretty strong year for cinema as a whole, but good Lord, it was an outright disaster when it came to video game movies, a subgenre that just can't catch a break. The Angry Birds Movie may have made coin at the box office (a rare occurrence for a video game movie) but it was absolute garbage while Warcraft was a shockingly low-quality and borderline incoherent effort from a director as good as Duncan Jones. I didn't even see that Ratchet & Clank movie that came and went in a flash in April 2016, but word-of-mouth on it was dismal and I've encountered people who actually saw it who scarcely can believe it actually came out as recently as just this past Spring.

The Light Between Oceans Isn't The Brightest Bulb When It Comes to Cohesive Storytelling And Directing

When Disney and DreamWorks partnered up for a distribution deal back in 2009, visions of their future together were filled with hope and glory. And while some noteworthy effort emerged from Disney distributing DreamWorks movies for them over the past five years (most notably in top-notch Steven Spielberg efforts like Bridge Of Spies and Lincoln), mostly it led to forgettable films like Real Steel , The Help, Delivery Man and Need For Speed. Now, the final film in the two studios deal, The Light Between Oceans, ends their distribution arrangement on a sour note. At least we'll always have War Horse.

Film On The Television (9/24/2015): You're Next on Epix Hits

The history of cinema is littered with box office flops that didn't deserve such a dreary financial outcome. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, The Iron Giant, and a notable entry in that category is of course the 2013 horror film You're Next. It's a crime that the infinitely more cookie-cutter The Purge grossed so much that same summer while You're Next (which deals with a family being attacked by masked invaders) faltered, but whatever, that's in the past. What matters now is that Adam Wingard's excellently frightening feature exists, and hey, you can watch it tonight!

First Image Of Michael Fassbender As The Lead Of The Assassins Creed Movie Revealed!

It's taken years of development, but it looks like the Michael Fassbender starring feature film based on the Assassins Creed video games is officially a-go. Set for a Christmas Day 2016 release, 20th Century Fox has today released the first image (via Yahoo Movies) of the films main character being played by Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender. Check out the image as well as the name of this new character (yes, he's all new to the universe of Assassin's Creed) below!

Slow West Review

Shrubbery covers the land as the brisk air of the morning enters your lung. The sound of your boots crushing the dirt flows into your ears while you make your way across the unforgiving terrain. Thirst clenches your body, rendering your mind capable of only exerting one thought: survival. To make it to another day is a victory worthy of being encapsulated in poetry. Welcome to the West as it really was, a callous realm that Slow West depicts in an engrossing manner.

Frank Review

Head To Head

A great artist can come from anywhere, as Ratatouille said so eloquently, and it's a statement brimming with truth. Who knows where the next great artist will come from? In the world of music, talent pops up all the time, with some artists being well and truly distinctive. The titular character Frank could give any given artist a run for their money in terms of idiosyncrasy, as you might expect considering he's a man who constantly wears a giant head over his normal head 24/7.

Aaron Sorkin Written Steve Jobs Movie Loses Home At Sony, But All Hope Is Not Lost

It's been a rough road for the Steve Jobs biopic written by Aaron Sorkin. David Fincher was supposed to direct it, make it a nice Social Network reunion, but he passed. Then, Danny Boyle came on as director, only for lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio to pass. Christian Bale, who had been floated around as a lead for the project when Fincher was directing, reattached himself to the project, and then left it. Michael Fassbender was in talks to play the lead of Steve Jobs, while Seth Rogen, Jessica Chastain and Scarlett Johnansson were in discussions for roles in the feature.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past Review

Welcome to The Future

The X-Men face their most terrifying threat yet; Sentinels...and bad photoshop

The future is very rarely an idyllic place in the world of movies. Even family movies like WALL-E make sure it looks terrible, while R-rated movies go to the most extreme ways possible to prove just how deplorable the future is. The X-Men likely think everybody from Max Mad to Robert Neville got it easy though, as their future consists of giant adaptive robots killing every mutant in sight.

The opening scene of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which introduces us to those robots (called Sentinels), is a thing of beauty, as it beautifully sets up how miserable this future really is, as mutants are killed off in a casual manner that makes one sick. Besides setting up an impressive action and tone-defining sequence, the opening also shows off one of the movie’s greatest assets; it’s ability to make any character that pops up immediately memorable. The unique powers that comes with each of the many mutants we meet in the film are so darn cool that it’s hard not to root for them (my personal favorite is featured in that opening; Bishop, played by Omar Sy).

Soon though, Wolverine (still played terrifically by Hugh Jackman) is off to 1973, where he hopes to get younger versions of Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to help prevent the creation of those pesky Sentinels. The arc Wolverine’s undergone in six of these seven movies has had it’s ups and downs, but it all culminates nicely here, as he has to take responsibility and be more of a helpful presence to the younger versions of Xavier and Magneto. Jackman handles this thoughtful side of the character in fine fashion, while also delivering an immensely quotable one-liner and awesome fight scene in similarly successful style.

The 1973 seen in this movie is a dazzling place that sucks one in due to the insane amount of detail here. That year really wasn’t that long ago, yet it feels like an entirely different world compared to the one we have today. Thankfully, they play up these differences to their maximum potential, as everything from Pong to Richard Nixon is given time to shine.This era also gets us to McAvoy who absolutely brings it as young Xavier, a tortured soul who’s now a drug addict and a recluse. McAvoy does do an excellent job making sure his character comes off across as damaged, but not unlikable, a tough balance that he pulls off nicely.

McAvoy and Fassbender had some terrific chemistry in X-Men: First Class (for me, still the best X-Men movie) and perhaps the film’s only disappointment is the lack of time the two spend together. The one major scene they do get is gripping, but soon Fassbender does some things that feel abrupt and unwarranted; I get why they did him, but they could have been executed better, especially since they come at the cost of Fassbender interacting with the spectacular ensemble cast. It doesn’t help that Fassbender does some stuff in the finale that feels….weird and a little over the top considering the circumstances he’s acting in. Add in some questionable actions involving Beast and Wolverine, and some of the climax of this feature does slightly underwhelm, though it’s saved by some final few set pieces that being the film back to glory.

Oh, and lest I forget, the rest of the ensemble cast, by the way, is thankfully well balanced, with Halle Berry and Ellen Page getting nice cameos while (contrary to the public consensus) Jennifer Lawrence does a superb job handling all the complexities Mystique has to endure in this film. By the way, you’ve likely heard by now about Evan Peters landmark action sequence as Quicksilver. Spoiler Alert: it more than lives up to the hype.

Really, some underwhelming aspects of the finale notwithstanding (which still pale to The Wolverine, which I was overly generous with last summer) X-Men: Days of Future Past is still excellent moviemaking that shows how good storytelling mixed with superb action is an extremely potent mix.