Review: "Missing Link"

Ten years ago I was amazed by the stop-motion animation film “Coraline” from Laika, stating that it took a practiced eye to even tell it apart from standard animation. The action was so smooth and the world it occupied so vast, it was hard to believe it was made by infinitesimal changes to puppets photographed one frame at a time, 24 per second.

The newest from Laika, “Missing Link,” puts that film’s technical achievements to shame. This movie is so visually stunning that I again watched in disbelief. If not for some making-of sequences over the credits showing the painstaking process of putting it together, I might’ve thought the filmmakers were fudging.

They do use CGI animation for some of the backgrounds, but all the characters, clothes and sets are actually miniatures. Astounding.

Alas, I wish the story was a little stronger. Laika movies have been notable for their darker themes and complex narratives. (See -- especially if you already haven’t -- “Kubo and the Two Strings.”) “Missing Link” follows a rather conventional “finding your own path” story with a bigfoot creature.

Aside from similarities to other cinematic tales of late, including last year’s “Smallfoot” and “Abominable” coming out this September, the story makes the mistake of shunting the bigfoot character to sidekick status and putting all the attention on his human companion, a self-involved British explorer, Sir Lionel Frost, voiced by Hugh Jackman.

I’m reminded of the recent “Dumbo,” in which a bunch of humans took over the tale and the little flying elephant lost the spotlight.

The setup is that Frost has been trying and failing for years to be admitted to an elite club of adventurers, but the nasty leader, Lord Piggot-Dunceb (Stephen Fry), is determined to keep him out. Then Frost receives a letter alerting him to sightings of a bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest of America. This is the discovery that will finally secure his status, he figures.

Finding the bigfoot isn’t a problem -- turns out he wrote the letter himself. Resembling an 8-foot orangutan, the mild-mannered creature is voiced by Zach Galifianakis. As the only one of his kind, he’s always felt terribly alone, and wants to enlist Frost’s help in transporting him to the Himalayas to seek out the yeti, whom he feels are his long-lost cousins.

Dressing him up in a comically undersized suit so he can pass as a man, they refer to him as “Mr. Link,” short for missing link, though he later acquires an unexpected nickname.

Along the way they pick up an antagonist in Willard Stenk -- love that name -- a pint-sized shootist with claw marks across his bald head, and some (reluctant, initially) help in Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana), a vivacious former girlfriend of Frost who holds a map to Shangri-La, where the Yetis reputedly reside.

The basic dynamic is that Frost is a self-centered jerkwad who only thinks of himself and his reputation, rather than relating to Link as a person with feelings and longings of his own. Adelina doesn’t have much to do but point out to Frost his missteps.

Writer/director Chris Butler previously helmed the excellent “ParaNorman.” I liked a lot of things about “Missing Link,” but it reads like a deliberate attempt by Laika to make a picture that has more mainstream commercial appeal.

Despite its glorious visuals, its lack of originality leaves it as a little better than middling bit of animation.

Review: "The Front Runner"

“The Front Runner” is an unflattering portrait of American politics, but even more so of the media.

Based on a book by political journalist Matt Bai, who also co-wrote this screenplay, it examines the moment when tabloid and mainstream news intersected, merged and never really looked back. This was Gary Hart’s 1987 campaign for the presidency, when the U.S. senator from Colorado was seen as the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination, only to have it all unwind in less than month when his serial philandering was reported.

For decades, Washington politicians held the journalists who covered them to a gentlemen’s agreement: look the other way when young ladies are seen going in and out of our doors, and we will give the access you need to do your jobs. It was a nearly all-male environment, both in the corridors of power and the newsrooms charged with checking them -- so the Faustian bargain was accepted.

Consider that just two years before Hart’s implosion, Teddy Kennedy was witnessed assaulting a waitress along with his protégé, Chris Dodd. It went unreported for five years, and only then in a chuckling passage in a men’s magazine.

That was the mentality held by Hart, a wonky and charismatic politician played by Hugh Jackman. Hart is a man of big ideas and enthusiasm for the future who was laid low by clinging to the unsavory practices of the past. He is annoyed, then outraged, that his philandering is not swept under the rug as it always has been.

“This is beneath you,” he seethes at a young Washington Post reporter (Mamoudou Athie) who dares bring up rumors of his affairs. “Follow me around, put a tail on me. You'll be very bored.”

This line has entered the lore of politics, but like a lot of legends it’s mostly fiction. Hart did not challenge journalists to follow him and then openly dally with bimbos. Reporters from the Miami Herald, acting on a tip from a friend of one of Hart’s conquests, staked out his D.C. townhouse and witnessed model/pharmaceutical saleswoman Donna Rice (Sara Paxton) going in and out. They only heard about the “follow me” line after the fact.

(It should also be noted that the Herald reporters, played by Steve Zissis and Bill Burr, did not “hide behind bushes” as Hart contended, which also became part of the erroneous mythology.)

Directed by Jason Reitman, who co-wrote the script with Bai and Jay Carson, “The Front Runner” is an ambitious, contemplative movie that asks hard questions without offering easy answers.

Was it unseemly for reporters to lurk around during Hart’s downtime to see who he dallied with? Should they have looked the other way, as had been practice? Was it fair for Hart’s talents and ambition to be the price our nation paid for demanding more of our politicians?

One female journalist gives a poignant speech pointing out that Hart, for all his blessings, was still just another man willing to employ his power to use and dispose of women who cater to his whims. There’s also a nice sequence where one of Hart’s campaign workers (Molly Ephraim) is charged with “handling” Rice as the story explodes, knowing she is about to be fed to the wolves.

The film reminded me a lot of early Robert Altman movies, with large casts of characters moving in and out of the frame as the camera slides past, their conversations overlapping and receding. It lends a sense of documentary-like authenticity.

There’s too many supporting actors to mention, although Vera Farmiga and J. K. Simmons stand out as, respectively, Hart’s wife, Lee, who is willing to overlook his dalliances until they become an embarrassment her, and the campaign manager who has spent years building a political machine only to watch it turn to ash virtually overnight.

Thirty years later, Hart’s fall seems almost quaint now in this day of presidential porn star mistresses, handsy politicians of all stripes and a media that has grown both quantifiably smaller and more meager in its ambitions.

Making do with the errors of the past is bad, but sometimes in reaching for something better we degrade ourselves. “The Front Runner” is the cautionary tale of our collective rise and fall.

Video review: "The Greatest Showman"

“The Greatest Showman” was perhaps the quietest blockbusters of the past year. Released around Christmastime, it garnered respectful but not gushing reviews, and opened to modest buzz and box office. But this energetic musical, starring Hugh Jackman in a (very) fictionalized portrait of circus pioneer P.T. Barnum, kept staying around -- it “has legs,” as they say in the biz -- and ultimately grossed more than $400 million worldwide.

It’s a solid picture, filled with Broadway-style spectacle and songs, the sort of thing where the characters look right at you and belt their stories out in crescendoing first-person power ballads. It doesn’t feel particularly fresh or new, but it’s hard to deny the sheer entertainment value.

In this telling -- original screenplay by Bill Condon and Jenny Bicks, directed by rookie Michael Gracey -- Barnum is a dreamer who wants to spread joy to the world, as well as give a home to those who have been cast out and kicked aside as freaks. Michelle Williams plays his long-suffering wife, Charity, and Zac Efron is Phillip Carlyle, the young business-minded fellow who becomes his right-hand man.

The circus performers are a rogues’ gallery of bearded ladies, strongmen, Lilliputians and the like. A few stand out, notably Keala Settle as Lettie, the furry-chinned woman who can also knock the barn doors down with her voice, and Zendaya as Anne, a trapeze artist who dares a mixed race romance with Phillip.

Jackman, who also closed the book on his Wolverine character last year, is back in his element as a song-and-dance man, charismatic and haunted. During the course of the tale, Barnum goes from low to high and back again, tempted by a famous songbird (Rebecca Ferguson) he signs to a contract to show the world he’s not just a purveyor of oddities.

People keep saying “the musical genre is back,” until it goes away again. As long as we get a good one every few years like “The Greatest Showman,” I’m all in tune.

Bonus features ae pretty good with more than two hours of extras, including a sing-along edition and music machine “jukebox” function. There’s also a making-of documentary, dance tutorial, feature-length audio commentary with Gracey, still photo galleries and a featurette on the Barnum family.

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Video review: "Logan"

As the superhero genre enters middle age, we’re seeing more films break out of the mold of the standard origin/call to duty/existential threat storyline. “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Deadpool” explored the comedy end of things. “Logan” goes the other way -- an uncompromisingly grim, sad and angry drama.

I heard one person describe it as the “Unforgiven” of Marvel Comics movies, and that wraps it up neater than I ever could.

Very loosely based on the “Old Man Logan” limited comics series, “Logan” is set a few years down the road in a dystopian future where nearly all the super-heroes (and villains) have been exterminated by a tyrannical government. Wolverine himself (Hugh Jackman) is a wreck: his fantastical healing power has withered, he walks with a limp and is racked by coughing. But he still has those freaky metal claws and a skeleton of unbreakable metal.

He’s staying incognito as a limo driver, earning money so he can buy a boat and put to sea, permanently. Logan is acting as protector/imprisoner of his old mentor, Professor X (Patrick Stewart), now in his 90s and suffering from dementia that causes him to go into fits – bad news for others when you’re talking about the world’s most powerful telepath. Puttering around as the help is Caliban (Stephen Merchant), an old enemy turned ally.

The threat is familiar: Mad scientists are experimenting with a new generation of mutants so they can harness their powers to do nefarious bidding. Laura (Dafne Keen), a mute young girl with abilities very similar to Logan’s, turns up to join their not-so-merry little band, which is soon being chased by mercenaries and… something else.

Once again, Logan acts as if he just wants to be left alone. But he’s constantly compelled to put others’ needs before his own.

Director/co-writer James Mangold gives us a relentlessly tragic film in which mankind has lost touch with its humanity, and the would-be savior is a self-hating fellow who slices people up with his claws. It was always an odd fit, trying to sandwich Wolverine into comics for preteens and PG-13 movies. Finally, the gore matches the character’s feral ferocity.

They needed three tries, but they finally got a Wolverine movie right – just in time to bring his grim saga to a close.

The most interesting Blu-ray bonus feature is “Logan Noir” -- an entirely black-and-white version of the movie. It also comes with a feature-length audio commentary track by Mangold, deleted scenes with optional commentary by Mangold, and a making-of documentary.

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Review: "Logan"

Death to the super-hero. Long live the super hero movie.

Movies based on comic books have been a going concern for 20 years now. That’s middle age for film genres, and we’ve witnessed movies agitating to break out of the mold. “Guardians of the Galaxy” was a straight-up comedy, and “Deadpool” ratcheted things up to gross-out laughs and self-aware spoofing. “Batman v. Superman” brought intra-hero beefs to the forefront of the story.

Audiences have grown tired of the same old thing, which is why when they tried to reboot another big comics team, the Fantastic Four, with yet another same-old origin story, people stayed away in droves.

“Logan” is an elegy -- for one of the most popular super hero characters, Wolverine, but also for the first blossoming of this kind of movie-making.

If films based on comic books are to have a viable future, then this is a good step toward reinventing themselves. And by that I don’t just mean casting a younger actor to take over, as they’ve done with the other X-Men characters.

This movie is dark, depressing and dreary. I mean that as a compliment. It’s not about super-powered nobility saving the day against an end-of the-Earth scenario. Nothing otherworldly comes dropping out of the sky. This is a fight played out in the dirt over the withered scraps of humanity.

It’s also the first Wolverine movie that’s rated R -- something which, given the berserker nature of the guy with foot-long claws, is long overdue.

Based very loosely on the “Old Man Logan” comic series, “Logan” takes us a few years down the road into an increasingly morbid future. All the big supers have been killed or banished; the government has become dictatorial and removed from the will of the people.

Logan has gone underground, using the name James Howlett (the one he was born with, according to some iterations) to drive a stretch limo for cash. He’s hiding out Professor X (Patrick Stewart) in the Mexican desert, as the ancient teacher and telepath is prone to seizures that cause everyone in the area to go into a crippling palsy.

Less caretaker than prison guard, Logan is keeping his old mentor under lock and key until he can save up enough money to buy them a boat so they can take to the sea, leaving their troubles behind. Puttering around their hideout is Caliban (Stephen Merchant), a former mutant-hunter who resents being treated as the chambermaid.

This is not your father’s Wolverine. Although it takes place in the year 2029, the seemingly immortal mutant looks like he’s aged 50 years in that span. Hugh Jackman personifies the character’s rapid decline, coughing constantly and shambling about with a limp. His healing factor, which made him able to heal almost instantly from nearly any wound, has diminished to the point he’s not much tougher than a normal human.

“You’re dying. You want to die,” another observes of the scarred wreck of a man, and not inaccurately.

The threat is a familiar one: nefarious science/military types looking to exploit mutants for their abilities. This brings Laura (Dafne Keen), a young girl who doesn’t speak, into the tiny circle of Logan and Xavier. She has abilities much like Wolverine’s, raising sticky issues of her progeny, about which I’ll say no more.

Boyd Holbrook plays Pierce, a mercenary with a cyborg hand who relishes the role of huntsman. Richard E. Grant plays the mysterious Dr. Rice, who apparently has his hands upon the reins. There’s also another x-factor that shows up to taunt Logan about his younger, wilder exploits.

Director James Mangold, who also helmed the last Wolverine movie and co-wrote the script for this one, seems to have finally stumbled upon the essential tragedy of Logan. He’s the ultimate killing machine who has come to abhor death. Now he races toward it, snarling that he’s no longer a hero but always drawn toward redemptive acts.

It’s been said that everything has a beginning, a middle and an end. With “Logan,” the end of an iconic character marks the passage of super-hero movies into a grimmer stage of relevance.

Review: "Eddie the Eagle"

“Eddie the Eagle” looks at first glance like a standard sports underdog story. Indeed, it’s a virtual remake of “Cool Runnings,” the 1993 film about the Jamaican bobsled team that competed at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

In fact, “Eddie” is set at the same time and place and involves another unlikely competitor who got his ticket punched to the Olympics only because of a complete absence of competition from their home country. With both the Jamaicans and British ski jumper Eddie Edwards, the goal was not to win but simply to earn a place in the competition.

They even recycle the made-up character of the washed-up, alcoholic athlete who reluctantly takes on the mantle of coach and mentor -- played by John Candy then and Hugh Jackman now.

But scratch but a little deeper, and you’ll find a story that’s actually about bullying, and overcoming it.

Director Dexter Fletcher and screenwriters Sean Macaulay and Simon Kelton see in Eddie, a humble working-class plasterer played by Taron Egerton, an awkward kid who’s been picked on his entire life, and smelts that negative energy into determination to prove everyone wrong.

“I was kicked off every team I ever tried out for even before I had a chance to prove myself,” Eddie says.

A lot of the fascination with Eddie, and the reason that gives power to his redemption, is that he’s homely. With coke-bottle glasses, pinched features, horsey teeth and strangely angled jaw, Eddie gets written off by most everyone he meets. He wore braces on his legs as a child, and there’s still a quality of ungainliness about him. Just standing still, he looks awkward.

Earnest and not bright enough to be called a nerd, Eddie is the guy everybody laughs at.

The British Olympic selection committee certainly laugh him off, declining to let him try out for the skiing team despite being one of the top amateurs in England. Later it’s the veteran ski jumpers from Finland or Norway who titter when Eddie decides to take on the sport. They’re all long, lean Vikings, and here’s this stumpy, half-blind guy who resembles the antithesis of athleticism.

But Eddie is determined, declining to listen even to his father, who orders him repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) to give up his Olympic dream and settle down in a stable trade. Mum (Jo Hartley) is more supportive, slipping him money and the even more valuable currency of absolute affection.

Eddie selects ski jumping because Britain hasn’t had one in Olympic competition in more than 50 years. That means there’s no community to train him up -- but also no one he has to try out against.

It might seem easy to be the best at something that no one else is doing. But this is a sport where mistakes lead not to disgrace, but a coffin.

Jackman plays Bronson Peary, a legendary former ski jumper who got kicked off the U.S. team for his drinking and carousing. Now the old lush who runs the snow plow, he becomes Eddie’s only friend and trainer. He doesn’t want the job, but reckons that if he doesn’t help, Eddie is liable to wind up dead.

Fletcher stages the jumps engagingly, showing us the soaring beauty and almost insane danger of the sport. The decathlon may be the measure of the finest overall athlete, but nobody routinely ends up with a broken body.

Egerton, who played second fiddle to Colin Firth in last year’s “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” gets more of a chance to shine here as the gullible but sweet Eddie. He shows us how this remarkable young man turned derision into cheers, and how triumph does not necessarily mean receiving a medal.

Video review: "Pan"

File "Pan" under biggest flops of the year that deserved much better. This delightful, rousing adventure is the Peter Pan origin story, how a spirited English orphan first found his way to Neverland and learned how to never grow up.

Levi Miller plays Peter, who gets kidnapped from his London orphanage by some henchmen of the dread pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman) to slave away in his mines, searching for lost fits of faerie dust. It seems Blackbeard, who looks like he was dug up out of the ground 10 minutes ago, defeated Tinkerbell & Co. and is now ruling Neverland as a semi-sane despot.

With the help of an incorrigible rogue names James Hook (!), Peter manages to escape from the pirate's clutches and falls in with Princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) and the Indians, leading to yet more adventures.

It's a mishmash of wildly disparate story elements -- part J.M. Barrie, part Indiana Jones, and even something of a musical with a couple of interludes put to modern tunes like "Blitzkrieg Bop" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

If all this sounds loopy and unhinged, that's because it is. Director Joe Wright ("Atonement") and script man Jason Fuchs have essentially used Barrie's novels as a mere jumping-off point for their own industrious imaginations. They've essentially "retconned" one of the most enduring fantasy tales of all time, stealing inspiration and turning it to their own purposes.

Somehow, I think Peter Pan's rascally heart would approve of the appropriation. This is one flight of fancy worth booking.

Bonus features are decent, though not expansive. The DVD comes with only one making of featurette, "The Boy Who Would Be Pan."

Upgrade to the Blu-ray combo pack and you add three more featurettes: "Wondrous Realms," "The Scoundrels of Neverland" and "Never Grow Up: The Legend of Pan." Director Wright also provides a feature-length commentary track.

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Review: "Pan"

The latest big-screen iteration of the Peter Pan legend is rather a mess, but it’s an exhilarating mess. “Pan” mixes astonishing CG action, plucky kids, goofy musical interludes with modern pop songs, and Hugh Jackman as a fey villain who looks like he got kicked out of a “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” audition.

The result is a thrill ride of a movie by parts giddy and scary, a joyful exercise in prodigious imagineering. It’s the rare kids’ movie that parents may actually prefer.

The story – screenplay by Jason Fuchs, based on the J.M. Barrie characters -- is essentially a prequel/retcon of the Peter Pan mythology. We’re pre-Wendy & Co. here, focusing instead on how a cheeky British orphan first became the tights-wearing, flying, smirking never-grow-upper.

Most of the familiar gang is here: Smee, Tinkerbell, Lost Boys, Princess Tiger Lily, etc. But they’re living in a despoiled Neverland much grimmer than what we’re used to. The biggest curveball is James Hook, still young and unhooked, who throws off the shackles of his innate cynicism to become Peter’s ally and best friend.

(No hint as to how their relationship and his hand came to be, uh, detached.)

It’s a corker of a performance by Garrett Hedlund, who manages to suggest some of the verbal idiosyncrasies and vanity of Captain Hook, but with a cowboy American bent. He wears a long duster coat and an Indiana Jones hat, flirts shamelessly with Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) and regards Peter as a wayward kid brother.

Levi Miller plays Peter, and he’s solid in the role, blue eyes perpetually wide, though the character as written is a bit generic and bland. He’s the window through which we experience this fantastical world, and -- as is so often the case with this kind of moviemaking -- the frame is not meant to draw the eye.

The real head-turner – and scratcher, as some will see it – is Jackman’s pirate Blackbeard. He’s just… well, his own thing. He wears extravagant Renaissance-style costumes, has a ghostly pallor and feral teeth, and the dark circles around his eyes are so deep it seems like he’s staring at you from out of a graveyard hole. He’s part tyrant, part fop, all wicked.

Blackbeard, having defeated the faeries of Neverland in a war, is mining every speck of the island for remnants of their dust, or pixin, which he uses for his secret and nefarious purposes. He dispatches his flying pirate ships into the “real world” – England during WWII – to nab orphan boys to be used as laborers in his mines. Peter, who was left as a babe on the steps of the Lambeth Home for Boys by his mum along with a pan flute locket, is one such snatchee.

His introduction to Neverland is ostentatious, and odd. In a vast mining pit where boys toil with pickaxes, they pause in their labors to exalt Blackbeard with an a capella rendition of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” with the great pirate joining in himself. The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” gets similar use for a battle scene.

Usually in movie musical scenes people sing to address somebody else, or narrate their own actions, but here Blackbeard and crew are essentially serenading themselves for its own sake. Maybe it would’ve worked better if it was more consistent, but just those two tunes are employed.

To paraphrase Robert Downey Jr.’s character in “Tropic Thunder,” you should either go full musical, or not bother.

Peter bumps into James, who possibly has been mining there since he was a boy himself, and is rather sour about it. They soon bust out together, with perennial sidekick Smee (Adeel Akhtar) tagging along, fall in with Tiger Lily and the Indians, who here are a full multicultural gamut of castoffs. Peter, who has demonstrated nascent flying abilities, is embraced as their Chosen One who will free the banished faeries from the secret hidey place.

Director Joe Wright is best known for costume dramas like “Atonement,” “Pride & Prejudice” and “Anna Karenina.” But he seems to have found his inner child with this film, relishing high adventure and fantasy without reservation.

I don’t doubt some will find “Pan” weird and off-putting. But if you’re willing to view Barrie’s writings as inspiration rather than sacred text, you’ll find a delightful spree that captures the quintessence of childlike wonder.

Video review: "Chappie"

It’s fairly common for a young filmmaker to have an incredible debut film and then stumble in subsequent outings. Perhaps there’s a lot of pressure on them to replicate their early success. Often they recover with better movies.

But then there are others who keep cranking out underwhelming films, one after another. How long does it go before you ask, “Did they only have one good movie in them?”

I’m starting to ask that about Neill Blomkamp, the writer/director of the terrific “District 9,” in which alien refugees settle on Earth and become second-class citizens. He followed that up with the confusing “Elysium,” and now the tonally all-over-the-place “Chappie.” It’s the story of a robot that develops sentience, and gets ill-used by the humans around him.

Sharlto Copley provides the voice and motion capture for Chappie, a police robot in a future South Africa where society is divided between the haves and the have-less. It’s a wonderful creation, lacking traditional eyes but with insect-like antennae. Chappie is child-like and hesitant, but quickly begins to emulate the personalities he encounters -- for ill or good.

Dev Patel plays the benevolent scientist who creates Chappie and mentors him. Hugh Jackman is a hot-tempered rival who wants to see him turned into junk and replaced with his own lumbering war machine.

Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser -- a real-life rap music duo whose names and identities overlap with those of their characters -- are a pair of low-life criminals who sort of adopt Chappie in to their little outlaw family. Soon the robot is wearing gold chains, carrying a gun and strutting around like a gangsta.

Weird, occasionally touching, “Chappie” may represent Blomkamp’s last chance.

He seems to have intriguing ideas about how technology tends to alienate humans from one another. But he needs a coherent story to build around those themes, and the last two times out of the gate he’s lacked that.

The bonus features are pretty good, though you’ll have to splurge for the Blu-ray edition to get them. The DVD comes only with a single featurette, an interview with the three main actors.

The blu-ray contains eight more featurettes covering various aspects of the production, including casting, visual effects, real-life robotics and so on. There’s also an alternate ending, one extended scene and a photo gallery.

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Review: "Chappie"

I'm not going to write a full "Chappie" review, because I don't have time and the Yap duties are in Nick Rogers's capable hands. But a few thoughts.

It's a movie of profound inventiveness and profound silliness. The Chappie character, a childlike robot voiced and motion-captured by Sharlto Copley, is a tremendous creation. But just as he gets ill-used by the humans around him, so too does writer/director Neill Blomkamp take Chappie's journey to places that are ridiculous, with some where-does-the-soul-reside type of musings near the end that are laugh-out-loud awful.

Some weird secondary characters that distract and discombobulate the story. Start with Hugh Jackman as a robotics engineer who, for some reason, wears shorts, a mullet and a gun amidst his suited, nerdy colleagues. He's jealous because his ED-209 ripoff got overlooked in favor of the Chappie-style police droids.

Then there's the bizarre duo of Ninja and Yolandi, a real South African rap duo who got cast in the the movie as themselves. With their weird haircuts, tats and chirpy Afrikaans accents, they're like a pair of replicants who wandered in from "Blade Runner" after a stop in the white ghetto to pick up some cultural swag.

Bizarre, occasionally touching, a humanist story that gets hijacked by an action flick. After the brilliant debut of "District 9," Blomkamp is 0-for-2.

Video review: "X-Men: Days of Future Past"

Once storytelling franchises have been around while -- especially ones involving science fiction and/or super-heroes -- it can be hard for filmmakers to find enough creative real estate to let their imaginations sprawl. After all, histories have been set, great and terrible deeds done, characters evolved or killed off, and it's a bad notion to retread over familiar territory.

So what to do? More and more, these movies are going retcon.

Retconning is when a new set of creators essentially reboots everything we know about a mythos, blanking the slate so they can start over from a zero point of their own choosing. "Star Trek" did this recently, and now the X-Men comic book heroes have, too.

This bold new film, the best super-hero flick since "The Avengers," looks at a post-apocalyptic world where nearly all mutants have been destroyed by the menacing robotic Sentinels. Clawed, nearly unkillable warrior Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent 50 years into the past to occupy the mind of his younger self, and must convince the Professor X of that era (James McAvoy), who is wallowing in a pit of self-pity, to take action to prevent the terrible tide.

That means diverting power-mad frenemy Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and shape-shifting skulduggerer Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from their mission to make mutants the master of regular humans rather than the object of their hatred. Needless to say, they're not happy to go along.

There's one scene that may just be the most entertaining action sequence of the summer, and it involves a new mutant named Quicksilver who is so fast he practically lives in his own dimension of time.

A satisfying mix of action, convincing characterizations and plot twists, "X-Men: Days of Future Past" delivers one for the ages.

Video extras are quite hefty, and include deleted scenes with audio commentary by director Bryan Singer, a gag reel, gallery and several making-of featurettes.

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Review: "X-Men: Days of Future Past"

I am the guy who has been known to complain about superhero movies being too somber and serious. But I don't think it's a contradiction to celebrate that same quality in the new X-Men film.

In other comic books and movies, superheroes were usually regular folks who acquired powers through happenstance. Even if they might struggle with controlling them or the implications of their newfound responsibilities, these stories rode an underlying fantasy about becoming special.

The X-Men were always different. They were mutants, born the way they were, and their powers were not a source of joy but an instrument for prejudice and even hatred. And the stakes were always higher: X-Men comics were the only ones I read as a boy where people died on a pretty regular basis.

"X-Men: Days of Future Past" is based on the concept of a 1981 storyline in which a future was envisioned where mutants had lost the war against their kind, with most of our favorite characters having been killed by monstrous Sentinel robots. It also attempts -- quite successfully in my estimation -- to combine the original X-Men trilogy from the last decade with the 2011 "First Class" movie that depicted the nascent days of the mutant movement in the 1960s.

Pop culture aficionados will recognize this as "retconning," in which storytellers retroactively alter the mythology of a franchise to fit their new schemes. (They recently did this with the "Star Trek" flicks.) But this is the mother of all retconning, in which both the present and future of the X-Men, as established in the previous films, are cleverly made to go kerbloowie.

In tackling this ambitious new project, they brought back original director Bryan Singer, who along with screenwriter Simon Kinberg manage to make a movie that is at once entertaining and sobering.
There's a darkness and a grandiosity to "X-Men: Days of Future Past" that has been missing from these movies.

Initially set in the near future, we witness a world where telepath Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his few surviving students fight against the Sentinels, which can adapt to and even copy the powers of mutants. Losing seems inevitable, so they hatch a plan to send the consciousness of animalistic warrior Logan (Hugh Jackman) 50 years into the past, inhabiting his younger self in 1973.

There, he must convince a distraught Xavier (now played by James McAvoy) to join with his friend-turned-arch-enemy Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to prevent the assassination of a power-mad scientist named Trask (a terrific Peter Dinklage) that sets off the war against mutants.

At the center of the mission is heading off Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), a shape-shifting assassin whose loyalties lie somewhere between the just-get-along sentiments of Xavier and the them-or-us creed of Magneto.

What makes this movie work is that even as we bounce through all these intrigues about robots and time travel and telepathy, the filmmakers never forget to focus on the characters. So the emnity between Xavier and Magneto feels personal, and Logan's battle between his berserker side and his better instincts has a tragic note.

Not that they forgot to include some terrific action scenes. Some of the best involve Quicksilver (Evan Peters), a super-fast teen who lives in a world that's almost another dimension, since he can do dozens of things in the blink of an eye. One scene where the team is breaking Magneto out of an impregnable prison is an utter delight.

Where do the X-Men go from here? Wait until after the credits for a (vague) glimpse. All I know is this movie blows up the franchise while also delivering the best film we've seen in the series.

Video review: "Prisoners"

I often harp on the fact that I think most movies today are too long. And “Prisoners” is not a short flick: just a hair over 2½ hours. But it’s one of the rare films I think is exactly as long as it needed to be. It’s also one of my favorite cinematic experiences of 2013.

This psychological drama/thriller is wound tighter than an alarm clock ready to go off. Hugh Jackman and Terrence Howard play fathers and best friends whose daughters mysteriously disappear on Thanksgiving Day. Dover (Jackman) goes on a one-man crusade to follow any leads, frequently stepping on the toes of Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), the meticulous detective assigned to the case.

Suspicion quickly centers on Alex (Paul Dano), a mentally challenged man who drives an RV and barely talks. But the police have no evidence to link him to the kidnapping, so they let him go. When Dover takes matters into his own hands, it sets off a chain reaction of events with all sorts of tricky moral implications.

The characterizations are really deep and vivid, with even the supporting parts standing out. When you have performers the caliber of Viola Davis, Maria Bello and Melissa Leo in the cast, you know things are going to get interesting.

Director Denis Villeneuve (“Incendies”) and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski give us one of the most ambitious films of the year, one that raises all sorts of head-scratching conundrums while resisting the urge to provide any easy answers. This is the sort of movie were parsing out the good guys from the bad is a difficult and ultimately pointless exercise.

Splendidly acted and well-told, “Prisoners” is one of the year’s best.

Video extras, which are the same for the DVD and Blu-ray editions, are sorely lacking. They both contain a pair of featurettes focusing on the story and performances, and that’s it.

Movie:

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Video review: "The Wolverine"

So they made a Wolverine movie to spin off the most popular character from the X-Men film franchise, and it didn’t do so well. In the spirit of recent Hollywood tradition when it comes to superhero flicks -- their motto could be “try, try again” -- they decided have another go. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as the feral, be-clawed mutant with extraordinary healing powers.

As with the Superman and Hulk movies, the do-over wasn’t markedly better than the first attempt. Which begs the question of why they bothered in the first place, other than sheer naked money-making.

“The Wolverine” goes for an adaptation of a popular 1980s graphic novel set in Japan, but booted most of the narrative and replaced it with a confusing mish-mash of fight scenes, wooing and, for some reason, a cyborg.

Logan aka Wolverine is summoned to Japan to the deathbed of Yashida, whose life he saved in World War II. He is stripped of his mutant power and thrown into the middle of a family squabble between his friend’s son, Shingen, and granddaughter, Mariko (Tao Okamoto), over control of their billion-dollar corporation.

Soon Wolverine is fighting ninjas, Yakuza mob thugs, and a mysterious Western doctor with her own poisonous powers. Jackman frequently sheds his shirt for these, revealing his weird, veiny bod. Meanwhile, he and Mariko manage to fall deeply, irrevocably in love in about a minute and a half, leading to some obligatory damsel-in-distress scenes.

Some of the action scenes are engaging, but the story is such a shredded mess, it looks like a Japanese tapestry that had a nasty encounter with Wolverine’s adamantium claws.

The video release is accompanied by some nice extra features, though you’ll need to shell out for the Blu-ray version to get the best stuff. The DVD comes only with a making-of featurette.

Go for the Blu-ray edition and you add an alternate ending, an interactive mobile device app, a more in-depth look at Wolverine’s journey, and a sneak peak of the upcoming “X-Men: Days of Future Past” set.

For the most complete experience there’s the “Unleashed” version that includes an extended, unrated cut of the film: “more violent and hardcore than ever before,” the jacket promises. And you get a feature-length commentary track by director James Mangold.

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Review: "Prisoners"

The most persistent criticism I have of movies today is length. Even most films I admire could be shortened a bit, and be the better for it. "Prisoners" is the rare exception of a long movie that earns its time; I didn't begrudge it any one of its 153 minutes.

This intricately-plotted psychological thriller is like a puzzle box that seems mystifying at first, but the deeper you go the clearer things come into focus. In the end all the little pieces mesh together perfectly.

The story of two kidnapped little girls and the two men trying desperately to find them -- one an angry, grieving father, the other an obsessive police detective -- "Prisoners" defies easy categorization. On the surface it wears the clothes of a crime procedural. But also it's about the conflict between these two characters.

Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), the dad, is all gut instincts and faith. His emotions frequently get the better of him as time goes on and the chances of finding the girls alive plummet. Loki, the detective played by Jake Gyllenhaal, operates on logic and dogged determination. Early on we learn that he has never failed to solve a case, mainly because his life consists of little else but the hunt.

On an even deeper level, the film is a morality play, questioning whether extreme actions in the service of good can ever justify themselves. Keller becomes convinced that a simple-minded, nearly mute man named Alex (Paul Dano) has something to do with the disappearance of his daughter and another family's girl on Thanksgiving Day.

Alex's busted-up RV was spotted near where the girls went missing, and he initially ran from police. But they find no evidence to hold him, and Keller takes matters into his own hands. He enlists the aid of the other aggrieved father (Terrence Howard) in holding Alex hostage, which sets off a conflict between the two. There's a subtle rivalry between them: the well-off yuppie versus the blue-collar survivalist, the voice of civil reason against the "man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" individualist credo.

"He's not a person anymore," Keller insists. "He stopped being a person when he took our daughters."

Their wives react in equally different ways. Keller's spouse Grace (Maria Bello) essentially checks herself out, wallowing in pity and prescription sedatives. Nancy (Viola Davis) is front and center in the search, and then gets even more involved in a way that surprises.

Director Denis Villeneuve ("Incendies") and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski explore their characters in subtle, probing ways. For instance, Loki's tattoos on his fingers and neck hint at a hard past, and a throwaway line of dialogue suggests he's an orphan. He's an idealist grown suspicious of traditional bastions of solidity, like the church or even the scales of justice for which he labors.

Keller's collection of religious crosses, weapons and emergency rations depict a man of outward confidence who inwardly lives in fear, leading us to believe at one point he may have had something to do with the kidnapping himself.

Other characters and story threads float around the fringes. There's the priest Loki investigates with a terrible secret that may or may not have something to do with this case. And Alex's protective aunt (Melissa Leo), who wants to protect her nephew but seems to intuitively understand Keller's rage at his impotence. Or the strange, sallow-faced man who shows up at a candlelight vigil.

Slowly, methodically, the cast and crew build this crime story into something much more, a dark and disturbing tale about the choices we make in duress. We're all prisoners of those decisions, for good or ill.

Video review: "Les Misérables"

“Les Misérables” did not get the love it deserved.

Critics were respectful but not swooning. Audiences showed up but did not stampede the box office. It won Oscars in a couple of technical areas, but Anne Hathaway’s transcendent performance as Fantine is the only aspect of the film to win universal praise.

For me, it was the most emotionally transporting cinematic journey I took in 2012. This crusty old critic actually welled up several times watching it.

This the first time the stage musical version of Victor Hugo’s novel has made it to the screen, and it’s a pageant of songs, gorgeous costumes and sets, and actors pouring out their hearts.

You may have already heard about this aspect of production, but it’s still astonishing: all the singing you hear was recorded live on-set, as opposed to being dubbed in later from a studio (which is standard practice in Hollywood for dialogue, let alone song).

The story follows Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), an escaped criminal who redeems himself through helping others, though it earns him no reprieve from Javert (Russell Crowe), the wolfish lawman who hunts him.

Along his travels he encounters a gallery of characters, some pure and some foul. There’s Fantine (Hathaway), who resorts to prostitution to support her daughter Cosette (Amanda Seyfried). And the slimy opportunists the Thénardiers (Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen). There is Marius (Eddie Redmayne), the brave insurgent who loves Cosette and is in turn secretly loved by street urchin Éponine (Samantha Barks).

All the wondrous music from the stage version is there, along with one or two new songs composed specifically for the movie. The stars generally acquit themselves well in song, with Hathaway the clear standout.

Whether you’re a fan of musicals or not, “Les Misérables” hits a very high note.

The video is being released with an excellent spread of extras. Even the DVD version comes with a healthy serving, including feature commentary by director Tom Hooper and several featurettes focusing on the cast, production design and Hugo’s novel.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo and you add several other features, including the locations used during production and the battle scene. The high point is the section focusing on the challenge of delivering live singing performances on set.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Video review: "Rise of the Guardians"

The rap on “Rise of the Guardians” sure is nasty.

It didn’t get nominated for an Academy Award for animated feature, while lackluster fare like “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” did. And DreamWorks Animation recently announced layoffs after “Rise of the Guardians” underperformed at the box office. (Though it made $300 million worldwide, which is hardly bomb territory.)
Don’t buy the bunk. “Guardians” is easily the best animated movie from last year.

It might seem silly and superficial at first: Santa Claus, Jack Frost and other holiday icons band together into a super-powered group to battle evil – think “The Avengers” in rainbow-hued costumes. But they’ve got butt-kicking superpowers; for instance, the Easter Bunny is now a martial arts expert, while Santa wields a pair of swords.

Also on the team are the Tooth Fairy and Sandman. They’re up against Pitch Black, aka the bogeyman, who wants to blanket the world in darkness and bad dreams.

The animation is wonderfully detailed and crisp, and the action scenes well-staged. Alec Baldwin, Chris Pine, Hugh Jackman, Jude Law and Ilsa Fisher make up a terrific voice cast.

But what pushes “Rise of the Guardians” over the hump from good to great is its surprising emotional resonance. There’s a great subtext about finding your place in the world as seen through Jack Frost’s struggle to learn the origin of his powers.

This one’s a family-friendly treat.

Extras are decent, bending more toward the fun than the substantial. The DVD comes with a featurette on the cast and crew, filmmakers’ commentary track and “Sandy’s Dream Guide,” which helps interpret your dreams. There’s also a DVD-ROM function with printable Eastern-themed egg holders and coloring sheets.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray edition, and you add “Behind the Magic,” a comprehensive making-of documentary, plus a feature on author William Joyce. You also get two interactive games: “Rock, Paper, Scissors with Sandy” and “Jack Frost Snowball Showdown!”.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Les Misérables"

Epic yet intimate, "Les Misérables" is an astonishing cinematic feat.

Here is Victor Hugo's sprawling novel, which has been adapted to film numerous times and then turned into a smash Broadway musical, and now returns as the movie version of that stage production. It boasts the same huge cast of characters, dozens of songs and outsized production backdrop of a turbulent 19th century France, building up to the June Rebellion of 1832.

Yet, when Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) or Fantine (Anne Hathaway) or the other figures are pouring out their souls in song, the artifice of the theater melts away and it feels like they're singing not for an audience but for themselves.

Director Tom Hooper, who won an Oscar a couple of years ago for "The King's Speech," and his team have crafted a marvelous rendition of something familiar. This "Les Misérables" is fresh and vibrant, with a populist message about the people of the streets rising up against the ultra-wealthy.

But most importantly, this is the story of people about whom we come to care very deeply. It doesn't hurt that the singing stars are generally tremendous, with Hathaway the clear standout. Jackman, a veteran song-and-dance man, expertly belts his way through some big set pieces. And Russell Crowe surprises us with a resonant and heartfelt baritone.

The thing that's most amazing about the crooning is that the actors were actually recorded live on the set, and that's what we hear. Usually such things are re-dubbed in a looping studio after the fact. The result is thus imperfect in pitch, but intentionally so. Hooper's bold choice only adds to the sense that the music is happening spontaneously in front of the audience, rather than being rendered flawlessly for us.

Hathaway's scene where Fantine wallows in her misery with "I Dreamed a Dream" -- perhaps the best-known song from the musical -- is the encapsulation of this approach. Hathaway sings the entire thing in one uninterrupted take, her face filthy and her hair shorn to a horrid buzz, her voice rising from a whisper to a shout as her emotions boil over from self-pity into anger.

It's an absolutely gobsmacking moment, and one of the most arresting performances of any movie this year.

Hugo's story is so well-known as to be considered iconic: Valjean, hardened by 19 years of imprisonment for stealing bread, has his world turned around when a lonely old priest shows him a tremendous kindness. He becomes a man of supreme altruism and virtue, but ironically must break the law to do so.

Forever pursued by the relentless police inspector Javert (Crowe), who abides by the strict dictates of the law over true justice, Valjean leaves behind his name and identity to become the mayor of his town and the wealthy owner of a factory. Fantine, one of his workers, is discharged for dubious reasons and turns to ever sadder means to support her daughter Cosette (Isabelle Allen).

Valjean eventually learns of her plight, and pledges to care for Cosette, rescuing her from the clutches of the Thénardiers (Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter) -- purported innkeepers who employ every method, legal or otherwise, to get their percentage. He raises her to womanhood (Amanda Seyfried takes over the role) where she falls for an idealistic young rebel named Marius (Eddie Redmayne).

As their student rebellion snowballs into violence, all these disparate forces clash in one dramatic upheaval of love, loyalty and strife.

The soaring songs, the bitter tragedy, the majestic sweep -- "Les Misérables" is a standing-ovation triumph.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Rise of the Guardians"

This has been a down year for animated films, but “Rise of the Guardians” arrives for the holidays just in time to stoke enthusiasm for family-friendly movies.

This visually dazzling and emotionally affecting tale sounds gimmicky at first, what with giving Santa Claus and other holiday icons the super-hero treatment, banding them together into a supergroup set to battle evil a la “The Avengers.”

Santa certainly looks the part, morphed into a sword-wielding brute with a buff physique that’s more WWE than bowlful of jelly. He even has corresponding “Naughty” and “Nice” ‘tats on his burly arms, plus a fearsome, Slavic-tinged growl (courtesy of Alec Baldwin).

The Easter Bunny (voiced by Hugh Jackman) is even more pumped up, turned into an Australian-accented 6-foot badass rabbit with moves like Bruce Lee and an arsenal of boomerangs and other weapons on his bandolier.

And have you checked out Jack Frost? As voiced by Chris Pine, Jack is depicted as an impish teenage skater-boy rapscallion, using his magic staff to spread sudden blasts of cold air and mischief wherever he goes. With a flyaway platinum hairdo, bare feet (brrr!) and contemptuous smirk, he resembles every parent’s worst apprehensions for underachieving offspring.

Directed by first-timer Peter Ramsey based on the books by William Joyce, “Guardians” would at first appear to be nothing more than an action-packed thrill ride for slightly older kiddies – the sort who prefer Wii games to “Sesame Street.” But screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire (“Rabbit Hole”) adds subtle layers of heftier thematic elements that lift the material to a higher plane.

The result is a terrific blend of PG-rated battles and soulful character dynamics.

The story begins with Jack Frost’s birth as a creature of magic, and subsequent induction into the Guardians – powerful beings who protect the children of the world. In addition to Santa and the Easter Bunny, the other members are the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), who resembles a multi-hued hummingbird, and the Sandman, a mute little fellow whose golden sands send out happy dreams.

The Guardians derive their powers from the belief wee ones invest in them. Alas, that makes them susceptible to dastardly types like Pitch Black, aka the Bogeyman, who specializes in sowing cynicism and turning dreams into nightmares. He launches his attack on the outposts of the Guardians one by one, turning Easter into a dud and leaving all those teeth waiting under pillows unexchanged.

The filmmakers make a bold choice by making Pitch, voiced in a devilish purr by Jude Law, as alternately soothing and threatening. He’s even somewhat sympathetic, since his big beef is that he’s perpetually forced to hide in the shadows where no one believes in him, or even acknowledges his existence.

This is the same challenge facing Jack Frost. He moves unseen amidst the human world, gifting children with closed schools and snowball fights, but never receiving acknowledgement for his efforts. It’s a simple yet powerful metaphor easily grasped by child and adult alike – finding your place in the world so you won’t be ignored.

The computer-generated animation is a dizzy delight, filled with lots of kinetic energy and audacious camera moves. I adored how Santa’s elves resemble little pointed hats with bells, and serve more as amusing mascots while yetis do all the real work of building toys. Ditto for the Bunny’s enchanted forest, where the eggs help decorate themselves for the Easter hunt.

I went into “Rise of the Guardians” not expecting very much, and walked out convinced I had just seen the best animated movie of the year. What a gift.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Real Steel"

Every year spawns a few movies that fall into the "love-it-or-hate-it" category, or in the case of "Real Steel," the "like-it-or-hate-it" flick of 2011. Several of my local film critic colleagues have even seen fit to toss it onto their "Worst of the Year" list.

Though hardly a cinematic knockout, I found it to be an amusing, if admittedly overly sappy father/son redemption story with impressively cool robots -- "The Champ" with Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

Actually, since the movie came I finally figured out why the boxing robots in the movie are so evocative: they bear a startling resemblance to the iron football goon used in promotional bits for NFL games on Fox. People who might abhor the visceral thrill of boxing and other human blood sport can safely revel in watching two automatons turn each other into scrap metal.

Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a former contender in the ring who became a manager of robots when human boxing was outlawed. (The story is set in the near future.) Through a series of unlikely circumstances, Charlie is forced to take Max (Dakota Goya), the son he never met, on the road with him, where they bond through a sequence of misadventures.

Their fortunes take a turn for the better when they uncover a mysterious robot fighter buried in a junkyard, dub him Atom, and before long they're headed to the championship bout.

The CGI battles hit that sweet spot where the robots are just humanistic enough that the audience feels like it has a stake in the outcome, but can safely cheer on the mayhem. We certainly feel more for Atom than we did any of the Transformers in their movies.

"Real Steel" may be overly maudlin, but as lightweight entertainment with a little heart, it's the real deal.

Extras for DVD are fairly OK: a blooper reel, two making-of featurettes, and audio commentary by director Shawn Levy.

The blu-ray edition includes a few upgrades, the centerpiece of which is an interactive "second screen" with videos and behind-the-scenes tidbits. Plus deleted and extended scenes and two more featurettes, including one about Sugar Ray Leonard, who served as boxing consultant on the production.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars