X-Men: Days of Future Past

Twentieth Century Fox

Rated PG-13

Running Time: 131 Minutes


Click below to watch a movie  trailer of X-Men: Days of Future Past




In Twentieth Century Fox's X-Men: Days of Future Past, the near future has most mutants, and the humans who helped them, placed in internment camps, while the rest of the mutants are hunted down and killed by mutant hunting robot Sentinels. In order to save what's left of the mutant X-Men - Professor Charles Xavier/Patrick Stewart and Magneto/Ian McKellen sends Wolverine/Hugh Jackman 50 years into the past to change history.

After traveling back into the past, Wolverine/Jackman returns home to a run-down Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters to try to convince a young broken and disheveled Xavier/James McAvoy to free and recruit Magneto/Michael Fassbender from the Pentagon and join them to stop Mystique/Jennifer Lawrence from changing history.

The movie is basically The Avengers meets Captain America: The Winter Soldier and just as political as Captain America. The seventh film in the X-Men series, and the third X-Men film Directed and Produced by Bryan Singer, X-Men: Days of Future Past is based on the X-Men story line by Chris Claremont and John Byrne in the comic book The Uncanny X-Men issues #141-142, "Days of Future Past" published in 1981. The first issue of the story line was voted in 2001 as the 25th greatest Marvel comic. It is great that Claremont was brought in as a consultant to this film.

While I have not read "Days of Future Past" since it was published in 1981, I am pretty sure the movie followed the story fairly closely with some minor changes - or major changes depending on your point of view, since in the original story it was Kitty Pryde/Sprite who went back in time. But Wolverine/Jackman is the more popular protagonist character to the audience and can be used as an ageless immortal time travel character since he does not age. Also in the comics, the key time character was Senator Robert Kelly who was the head of an anti-mutant platform. In the movie, the key time character is cyberneticist Bolivar Trask/Peter Dinklage who created the robot Sentinels, since Senator Kelly/Bruce Davison appeared in X-Men.

With Bryan Singer's casting of Dinklage as Bolivar Trask, there could have been a lot of characterization developed on Trask and to why he had created the Sentinels. As a writer, I would have asked Dinklage's opinions of why Dinklage himself would have done something like creating the Sentinels. Too bad there was hardly any characterization developed for Trask/Dinklage. A new enemy and a new weapon for this war is not enough characterization.

The X-Men from the future you never get to know at all, aside from their powers. As a fan of the X-Men, I knew who these future X-Men all were - but even then, I have not read the books since the eighty's and I do not know if these characters have been prominent in the books since then. So the general public would most likely not have any connection to these future X-Men aside from appreciating their powers - which were pretty kick ass. The movie is basically Wolverine's/Jackman's movie. In the books, the dystopian near-future was the year 2013, which was last year as of this writing in 2014. It is good to know that near-future did not come to past in this reality.

Several people from the previous X-Men movies reprise their roles, like Nicholas Hoult/Beast, with most of the people being in cameo roles. The movie includes footage from the previous X-Men movie for these characters - as well as people appearing in some surprising live-action cameos.  The new character in the movie, who was also the most fun character in the movie, was Pietro Maximoff/Evan Peters. Too bad Maximoff/Peters did not have a larger role to offset some of the heavy drama that would play out in the rest of the movie. I am looking forward to Maximoff/Peters future connection to Magneto/Fassbender. It was sad to hear from Magneto/Michael Fassbender that several characters from the X-Men movies had been killed off. It was heartbreaking to hear Magneto/Fassbender yell at Charles Xavier/James McAvoy because it was Xavier/McAvoy as the one who had abandoned those who were lost. Mystique's/Jennifer Lawrence's character is the one character in the movie who was the most tragic after all the things that had happened to her, although we never really get the reason why Mystique/Lawrence was really after Trask/Dinklage aside from the obvious. The real reason is too subtle to pick up. Halle Berry's/Storm's character presence was reduced in this film due to Barry's pregnancy.

I liked the DNA graphics that were shown during the opening credits, which stresses the idea of genetics, leading into the theme of mutants. The prototype Sentinels in the past look just like the ones of which I am familiar with from the comics, and visually look pretty cool, while the Sentinels from the future are the ones that are the most dangerous. While X-Men: First Class used historical footage of President John F. Kennedy as part of the film to help make it believable, X-Men: Days of Future Past casts actor Mark Camacho as an historical figure. Using an actor for this historical figure loses credibility to the reality of the role, especially considering everyone's perceptions of this historical figure. The international implications of mutants as well as the news coverage of the mutants added to the reality of the situation outside of this figure.

There was no Stan Lee cameo in this movie, so don't bother looking for him, like I was doing. You can concentrate on watching the movie instead and not worry about missing something important like Lee.

While the events of this movie might change the events of previous X-Men films, Singer believes in multiverses and that certain events would be part of the history of alternate universes. This will help the fans keep from being so upset that things keep changing. I know it would help keep me from being so upset. There are a lot of good stories from the alternate universes in the 50 years of X-Men history.

I saw this movie on an opening weekend matinee and the theater was pretty full. At the end of the movie, the audience applauded. While most of the audience left, those who had stayed while waiting for the closing credits scene were sitting around talking about X-Men as the end titles credits music played. The closing scene character, while different from the drawings from the comics - so much so that I did not recognize the character, suggests the story that I am looking forward to in the next X-Men film - X-Men: Apocalypse coming out in 2016. I should point out, that while the scene at the end of the credits in the movie The Wolverine teased at what was going to happen in X-Men: Days of Future Past, that scene does not appear in Days of Future Past.

Rated PG-13 for violence, language, and nudity. Running Time: 131 Minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

Pancho's Movie Reviews

THE CALL

TriStar Pictures

Rated R

Running time: 94 Minutes



Click below to watch The Call trailer.



In TriStar Pictures The Call, 911 operator Halle Berry receives a call from kidnapping victim Abigail Breslin and must find her.

In this high concept thriller, Berry works in a 911 emergency dispatch center - otherwise known among themselves as "The Hive" - dealing with various 911 calls, from the mundane to the intense. After making a mistake during an intense home intrusion call with teenaged victim Evie Thompson  - a distraught Berry gives up fielding calls and becomes a 911 trainer, giving a jaded view of what being a 911 dispatcher is like to her students. In the middle of the training, rookie operator Jenna Lamia gets a kidnapping call from Breslin - and is too overwhelmed and can not handle the call. Berry takes over the call, doing everything she can to help Breslin - who is locked in the trunk of a car.

After listening to the voice overs of the 911 calls at the beginning of the movie, I liked going behind the scenes of a 911 public-safety answering point (PSAP). I do not recall seeing this much detail with the 911 system before. These are real people dealing with intense situations, thus the necessity of a quiet room to decompress and the availability of psychiatric help if they need it. Berry herself was a wreck while during her research in watching them and said that she could never do this job. Berry having the support from 911 supervisor Roma Maffia in the movie was nice. I never realized that the not knowing of the results at the end of a call would weigh on an operator's mind - but when I think about it, not knowing would weigh on my mind as well.

What I did not like was that the movie went from an intense police procedural with the 911 and police resources - into a Hollywood thriller along the lines of the TV series Profiler during the last act of the movie. While by itself, the last act was good as a thriller and I was pulling for them, it was disappointing to watch stylistically after watching the technical aspects of the rest of the movie. I liked the idea of Berry using the resources of 911 - with the computer programs and communications with the first responders, like police officer Morris Chestnut - and wish that the movie would have taken the 911 resources to the ultimate level. Considering how ingrained cell phones are with people, especially with teenagers, this movie shows the much more important role that phones have in our society.

The manhunt for kidnapper Michael Eklund reminded me of the recent manhunt for former LAPD officer turned killer Christopher Dorner. The movie also reminds me that police officers are people with lives of their own too, especially with the relationship between Chestnut and Berry.

Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 94 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

MOVIE 43

Relativity Media

Rated R

Running time: 94 minutes



 Click below to watch the Movie 43 trailer.

 

In Relativity Media's Movie 43, filmmaker Dennis Quaid tries to convince movie producer Greg Kinnear to buy his movie script. As Quaid does his pitch of what the movie is about, the film turns into a series of 13 short raunchy films and commercials of what Quaid's movie is supposed to be about.

Make no mistake, this is a raunchy film that will have something in the movie to offend everybody. While everyone complains that this is a bad movie, the audience I saw the movie with was laughing throughout the entire movie - so there is an audience that would appreciate this movie, like me. I will admit, however, that the short film I was uncomfortable with was "Machine Kids" which was about children working inside machines. This was especially relevant to me, as we had just replaced a numbers of copiers at work.

While Quaid did lead the movie from one segment to another initially to describe his film - the many film shorts, each one directed by a different director, eventually ran into each other making me feel like I was at home watching TV with commercials coming on. I had to remember - I am in a theater watching a movie.

Apparently the framing story of the movie is different in other countries. Instead of a movie pitch, the films are connected by teenagers searching for the most banned movie in the world apparently online. As a result of which, the title of the movie refers to the forty-third rule of the Internet - you can find anything on the Internet if you are willing to look for it long enough.

While everyone laughed at the movie, no one laughed at the Hollywood jokes except for me. That was mainly because the Hollywood jokes were not raunchy, but more of a satire on Hollywood which only the Hollywood industry people like me would get.

The movie had a lot of stars in the movie. I think one reasons the producers were able to get such an ensemble of stars to act in this movie is because the actors might have liked the idea of doing a short film for their segment, similar along the lines of a student film, which will not take up a lot of time for them to do. Although apparently Richard Gere tried to get out of being in this movie and that the actor's agents did not want their big client actors working for scale. I can imagine how Halle Berry's agents would feel having their beautiful client winding up in huge ugly makeup, or Hugh Jackman with his makeup.

When the end credits start to roll concerning the various short films - stick around as there is one more short film to be shown after the preliminary end credits that stars Elizabeth Banks and a raunchy animated pet cat, which is basically a raunchier version of the movie Ted. Actually when the preliminary end credits started to roll, I felt that the movie was short. The extra short film at the very end filled out the movie, making the entire movie feel like the right length of time to be watching a movie.

Rated R for sexual situations, language, nudity, violence. Running time: 94 minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

Pancho's Movie Review