Film

After the last two X-Men installments (X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine), I expected this new one to suck, but such is not exactly the case. X-Men First Class teeters on the brink of redemption. Then again, this movie is not excellent by any means – its flaws still outweigh its high points. At least it made me realize there's still hope.
XFC reveals the backstory of Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) before becoming mortal enemies as Professor X and Magneto, respectively, the antagonists who were played by old guys Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in the first films. The saga of Professor Xavier and Magneto begins in a Nazi concentration camp, intertwining their relationship and juxtaposing images of both their lives before they meet, sealing their all-too-bittersweet bond before the story jumps to 1963 in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Whatever your feelings are about the original 2009 The Hangover, let's all agree on this: As a basic comedic premise, it's pure genius, because it wasn't obviously a comedic premise at all. Put a bunch of characters in an unfamiliar location with no idea how they got there or what they did along the way, but turn the tone sideways, and instead of a raucous crowd-pleaser, you've got Flash Forward.

What's more ironic: That Morgan Spurlock, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Super Size Me, sets out to make a documentary about product placement by funding the film entirely with product placement, or that the products hinder what the film could have been? Maybe that was the point all along. Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold sets out to be a telling expose on the world of product placement and co-promotion, but tell us anything we didn't already know.

In the abstract, I'm kind of giddy that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has reached its fourth installment, On Stranger Tides. Critics aren't supposed to think such things, let alone say them out loud, because Hollywood franchising is killing our souls and destroying real cinematic creativity and making baby Jesus cry, etc. But take just a moment to contemplate a series of multi-multi-million-dollar action blockbusters built entirely around a protagonist who's vaguely effeminate, frequently cowardly and generally disreputable – not just an anti-hero, but an anti-the-whole-idea-of-what-a-hero-can-be.
Yes, Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow is the kind of character who should be too idiosyncratic to become a pop-culture icon, yet here Depp is once again donning braided beard and smudgy guy-liner. We should all be kind of delighted that there's a space for him in the summer-cinema universe – in the abstract.

About a third of the way into The Beaver, I realized that the only humor I was going to find in this flick was to count all of the missed opportunities for beaver jokes. But no, Beaver is not pornographically humorous or all that weird. The only strange part is how serious this movie takes itself. Actually, the puppet itself delivers some one-liners in a Cockney accent, but that's pretty much the only spice in this dismal stew.
A chronically depressed father/husband/executive aptly named Walter Black (Mel Gibson… taking a break from his life as a racist maniac to return to acting), adopts a beaver hand-puppet as his only means of communicating to try to get his life back on track. With this oddball therapy, Walter seems to be getting better: his toy company excels and even gets a blast of positive media attention. But that dang puppet eventually gets in the way of real life and takes a toll on the family.

Bridesmaids succeeds where others have failed in portraying the necessary evil of being a bridesmaid, and does it on comedic steroids. There's one thing anyone who has ever been a bridesmaid can tell you, but would never tell the bride: being a bridesmaid is a certain kind of punishment saved only for the kind of friends who will forgive you for it later.
In Bridesmaids, Annie (Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig), a broke victim of the recession just trying to get by, becomes her best friend Lillian's (Maya Rudolph) maid of honor. Annie, along with four other colorful bridesmaids, rounds out the “stone cold pack of weirdos” Lillian has selected to be part of her bridal party.

What's with Hollywood's fixation on vampires and graphic novels? It seems every time I turn around, there's another wasteland apocalyptic tale of desolation and bloodsuckers. And what's with Paul Bettany's decision to suddenly become an action star? Wasn't he just a skinny British actor there for a while? Now, he seems to always be some sort of muscular angel/demon/hero with religious overtones.
With a storyline taken straight from John Ford's classic The Searchers, Priest features a warrior/priest (Bettany) from a dystopian wasteland who sets aside his sacred vows, disobeys church law and embarks on a quest to track down the vampires who kidnapped his niece. He's joined on his crusade by a trigger-happy young wasteland sheriff (Cam Gigandet sporting a really bad haircut), and a former warrior priestess (Maggie Q).

There were plenty of films that made an impact on me during last year's BendFilm festival, but none stuck with me like Meek's Cutoff. The film, about a group of families heading dangerously off course thanks to a big-talking guide in the early days of the Oregon Trail, has finally made it to wide release after a successful festival tour.
In fact, when Meek's Cutoff screened at BendFilm, it was one of the first showings of the film. Still, by the film's end, it was tough to say that this film, directed by Portland's Kelly Reichardt (who also brought us the touching Wendy and Lucy), wasn't going to make some waves. Sure, it's incredibly quaint and quiet with little stylistic flare, but that's the beauty of it. Reichardt, with a great script from Jonathan Raymond, allows the desolate eastern Oregon backdrop to serve as a blank canvas on which Michelle Williams (in one of her best roles since Brokeback Mountain), Paul Dano and the rest of the cast paint a picture of heartbreak, misery and mystery with their stunningly believable characters. Another nod goes to a grizzled Bruce Greenwood who played the film's eponymous and impossibly inept guide, eliciting plenty of frustration from both the other characters and ultimately, the audience.

Near the end of this movie, to relieve the tedium, I started thinking about what could have been done to save it. And I came up with the answer: Ragnar the Pirate.
The name Ragnar the Pirate appears in a newspaper headline at the beginning of the movie and he's mentioned in passing later on, but that's all. The screenwriters could have done a lot more with Ragnar the Pirate.
For instance: The two principal characters, railroad heiress Dagny Taggart and steel tycoon Henry Rearden, are in Rearden's office having one of their intimate, sexy chats about steel smelting when Ragnar the Pirate (Johnny Depp) swishes into the room, skewers Rearden with his cutlass, picks Dagny up in his arms and carries her off to his pirate stronghold. That would wake up the audience.

I'm calling BS. I know my Mighty Thor and he did not have a beard. Nor did he look like some kind of male model lumberjack hunk. As his mortal alter ego, he was the kindly Doctor Blake who walked with a cane, but when he pounded that sucker to the ground, he turned into a powerful god-like warrior from Asgard. I know these things because I was a bonafide Marvel comic book geek back when Thor was penned by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby. I was also a complete Norse mythology nut, finding the Viking heroes far more exciting than those pansy Greek gods. I know all about Thor, Loki and Odin and where they resided in the heavens across the rainbow bridge of Asgard.
I thought there might be hope for humor in this Marvel installment with director Kenneth Branagh, whose over-the-top version of Frankenstein had me laughing from start to finish. Sadly, that's not the case. The saga of the fallen Norse god has been revamped into a tidy tale of good-versus-evil… versus an awful storyline… versus special effects.