Reel Entropy

Beta decay: Rogue Cut a disappointment

Posted on August 4, 2015 by reelentropy

*Nerd Stuff — There was a very good reason to include Rogue in Days of Future Past. The sentinels of the future can seemingly take any mutant power they encounter, and we are told this is because of breakthroughs made researching Mystique’s DNA. However, this doesn’t really hold up — Mystique cannot take other mutant’s powers, only their shape. To do this, the sentinels would also need Rogue’s power-absorbing abilities. The thinking was that’s what this plot would revolve around — the sentinels have captured Rogue and somehow need her alive to continue using her powers, and the group had to get her back in order to make the sentinels beatable. That’s not what happened. Photos courtesy 20th Century Fox.

X-Men: Days of Future Past, with its cyclone of conflicts and powerful, emotional rejection of violence quickly became one of my favorite superhero movies last May, but it is far from a perfect film. There are bad pacing problems in the first act, and the audience never really gets to see the holocaust the characters are fighting to prevent. Rumors swirled immediately after the film’s release of a longer cut that would be released on home media more prominently featuring Rogue (Anna Paquin), whose role was reduced to a brief cameo. The thought among fans was that this longer cut would solve some of the movie’s problems.

Well, The Rogue Cut arrived about half a month ago, and that’s not the case at all.

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Posted in Beta Decay | Tagged #anna paquin, #colossus, #days of future past, #hugh jackman, #ian mckellan, #iceman, #james mcavoy, #jennifer lawrence, #magneto, #michael fassbender, #mystique, #nicholas hoult, #patrick stewart, #professor X, #rebecca romijn, #rogue, #shadowcat, #shawn ashmore, #the rogue cut, #wolverine, #X-Men, #x-men: days of future past -- the rogue cut, X-men: Days of Future Past | 1 Comment

Rogue Nation as good as any Mission: Impossible — not great by 2015 standards

Posted on July 30, 2015 by reelentropy

Tom Cruise, despite the Scientology, despite the public, super-weird obsession with Katie Holmes, is still the textbook definition of everything a Hollywood superstar can and should be, but frankly, that concept is starting to look as dated as the Mission: Impossible movies. Photos courtesy Paramount Pictures.

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation delivers the goods, I guess. I mean, if that’s what you call “the goods.”

The movie follows Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, who also produces), after he is disavowed FOR THE THIRD TIME by the U.S. government, which disbands the entire IMF after the events of Ghost Protocol. Despite this, Hunt continues to follow the Syndicate, a multinational crime organization he just heard about at the end of the last movie. After seeing the Syndicate leader (Sean Harris) murder a record shop girl in cold blood, Hunt follows him from Vienna to Casablanca, Morocco to London, picking up old IMF hands still loyal to him personally (Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner and Ving Rhames) along the way.

Making the trip to the fifth Mission: Impossible movie is a lot like making the fifth trip to the same amusement park. You’ve been planning this for months, you’re excited, it’s going to be so much fun — but when you get there, the rides are all the same. The stuffed animals have been switched out, but the games are the same. They even have the same host to guide you through it all.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #, #babies, #casino royale, #daniel craig, #die another day, #evolution, #jeremy renner, #mad max, #mad max: fury road, #metro goldwyn meyer, #mission: impossible, #mission: impossible -- rogue nation, #pierce brosnan, #quantom of solace, #rebecca ferguson, #simon pegg, #skyfall, #the raid 2, #the raid: redemption, #tom cruise, #ving rhames | 1 Comment

Southpaw an acceptable boxing flick with bizarre title

Posted on July 27, 2015 by reelentropy

You know what? No. This guy is clearly right-handed. Photo courtesy the Weinstein Company.

In boxing, a southpaw is simply a left-handed boxer. Having seen Southpaw, the question remains — is Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) left-handed? It’s never addressed in the movie. He even signs a contract at one point, but I don’t remember which hand he used. It’s the title of the movie, someone has to think it’s important. Right?

Hope, a punch drunk boxer of questionable handedness, is on top of the light heavyweight world, entering the film as the 43-0 world champion. However, his world is turned upside down when his wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams), is killed by a stray bullet when a fight breaks out with Miguel “Magic” Escobar (Miguel Gomez), an upstart boxer who crossed a line taunting Hope into a bout for the title. Hope quickly loses the title to another boxer, then his career after headbutting the referee, then his daughter after driving himself into a tree while actually drunk. With no income, Hope falls into poverty and resorts to training under Tick Willis (Forest Whitaker) in an attempt to clean his act up, get his daughter back and reclaim his title.

That synopsis? What was revealed in the trailer? That was more than half the movie. It isn’t unnecessary in terms of story flow, but the 123 minute movie feels like a lot more when you’re waiting more than an hour for the second-billed actor to hit the screen. This is Southpaw’s biggest problem.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #boxing, #forest whitaker, #hell's kitchen, #jake gyllenhaal, #jersey, #left handed, #leonardo dicaprio, #nightcrawler, #rachel mccadams, #southpaw, #the revenant, #wolf of wall street, J. Edgar | 2 Comments

Paper Towns tears down long-disavowed trope

Posted on July 27, 2015 by reelentropy

Another reason the film succeeds is it’s easy to get the obsession. Delevingne lights up the screen as a mysterious, throaty teenage dream. Photos courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Like last week’s Trainwreck, Paper Towns isn’t any kind of genre trailblazer, but it’s charming enough to make up for all the things you’ve seen before. It even throws in some things you may not have.

The movie is narrated by Q Jacobsen (Nat Wolff), who, in elementary school, witnessed the miracle of Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevingne) move in across the street. They share adventures early, but Spiegelman moves on quickly because of Jacobsen’s aversion to taking risks. Now, in their senior year of high school, she suddenly reappears at his window, needing his help in her revenge plot against a cheating boyfriend. The next day, she vanishes, and Jacobsen becomes determined to find her.

Paper Towns will satisfy viewers with short attention spans because of this narrative shift. It’s really two movies in one — a traditional love story and a coming-of-age bromance road movie. It accomplishes this odd four-act structure deftly, without shifting tone at all. This narrative, as well as the first-person perspective, allows the movie to explore its subject — deconstructing the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope — in newer, greater detail than before.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #(500) days of summer, #bromance, #cara delevingne, #john green, #manic pixie dream girl, #nat wolff, #paper towns, #the fault in our stars, #the new girl, #trainwreck, #zooey deschanel | Leave a comment

Pixels is tolerable, not great, everybody calm down

Posted on July 24, 2015 by reelentropy

President Paul Blart? There are a lot of things about Pixels’ premise that are hard to accept, but that is by far the hardest. Photos courtesy Columbia Pictures.

Critics are going absolutely apeshit about Pixels, and it’s a gigantic overreaction.

The movie follows Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler, who also produces), a competitive arcade gamer in 1982, into the present day as an abject failure — divorced, installing other peoples’ entertainment systems for a living. However, the 1982 world video game championships were sent into space as part of a package on global culture from that year intended to communicate with alien life. Aliens had found the probe and mistook it for a declaration of war — and, somehow, the terms of engagement for said war. Every couple of days or so, the aliens send down a squad to play out a life-size arcade game, and the first planet to win three games gets to destroy the other one. Brenner’s life-long friend Will Cooper (Kevin James), now President of the U.S., recruits him to fight off the invasion, alongside fellow childhood friend Ludlow Lamonsoff (Josh Gad) and rival Eddie Plant (Peter Dinklage).

One would ask how they think humans will destroy their planet, but these invaders are clearly not big on any kind of communication.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #adam sandler, #ant-man, #centipede, #game of thrones, #Home, #josh gad, #kevin james, #minions, #pacman, #paper towns, #peter dinklage, #pixels, #pixels short, #qbert, #relativism, #rotten tomatoes, #sexism, #southpaw, #trainwreck, Transformers | 2 Comments

Reel Entropy

Beta decay: Rogue Cut a disappointment

Rogue Nation as good as any Mission: Impossible — not great by 2015 standards

Southpaw an acceptable boxing flick with bizarre title

Paper Towns tears down long-disavowed trope

Pixels is tolerable, not great, everybody calm down

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