X-Men: First Class

2011 // USA // Matthew Vaughn // June 8, 2011 // Theatrical Print (St. Louis Cinemas Moolah Theater)

Now that a fifth (Really? Fifth?!) X-Men film is upon us, most fans of the long-running, perpetually evolving, multi-titled comic series have likely accepted that the appearance of their favorite mutant in the films amounts to little more than a shout-out intended to elicit squeals of delight. The characters and stories from the source material have now been so thoroughly scrambled in the films that the franchise can barely be regarded as an adaptation at all. (Not that fidelity to the comics is that salient when said comics are laden with reboots, relaunches, reimaginings, and parallel universes.) What's left is that tonal and thematic core that's often called "the spirit" of the comics, and although the quality of the X-Men films has swung about fairly wildly, they have at least been consistent in their evocation of that spirit.

Accordingly, I'm not especially interested in parsing exactly what X-Men: First Class gets "right" or "wrong," vis-à-vis the comic series. Nitpickers will doubtlessly hash it out ad nauseam somewhere on this Internet thing, as comic fanatics are wont to do. As a film, The First Class is a perfectly serviceable little actioner, one that pivots on its most simple, superficial components. These include the slick retro design by Chris Seagers, a criminally rousing score by Henry Jackman, and the charisma of a few lynchpin actors: Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, and an unexpected Kevin Bacon. Their agreeable presence is key, since the performances are nothing to write home about--even, lamentably, Fassbender's--hobbled as they are by the expected silliness of the dialog. Certainly, none of the principals have mastered the gratifying blend of credibility and camp that Ian McKellan and Hugh Jackman brought to earlier entries, a balancing act that allowed them to rattle off the goofiest lines with aplomb and still menace the ever loving hell out of a room.

This prequel of sorts to the filmic X-Men saga tells the secret history of a Cuban Missile Crisis packed with mutant meddlers, most prominently Sebastian Shaw (Bacon). Shaw is a cocky mastermind with the tastes of a Bond villain, who thinks World War III will make for an atom-smashing good time. Luckily for both the U.S.A. and the Evil Empire, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Fassbender) are on hand to stop him with a nascent team of young mutant heroes. Helming this chapter in the franchise is Matthew Vaughn, who last year delivered the incongruous and strangely overrated Kick-Ass. Vaughn at least conveys that X-Men spirit capably, and maintains a vigorous sense of momentum (often to the detriment of narrative clarity) that has thus far been lacking in the series. Unfortunately, four writing credits (including Vaughn) and two story credits (including original X-Men director Bryan Singer) is practically a recipe for committee-born tone-deafness. Hence the film's creaky aura of determinism; its typically overstuffed roster of ancillary, paper-thin characters; its suspect, should-goddamn-well-know-better treatment of minorities; and its sporadic corniness. (I counted two ironic gags about Professor X's future baldness. One is too many!)

Still, one five-second cameo and one F-bomb made the price of admission worthwhile.

Hobo With a Shotgun

2011 // Canada // Jason Eisener // June 3, 2011 // Theatrical Print (Hi-Pointe Theater)

Hobo With a Shotgun is an acutely loathsome film, but I'll be damned if it isn't 110% committed to its loathsomeness. Compared to Robert Rodriguez' cheeseball neo-exploitation revenge picture, Machete, Jason Eisener's gleefully skuzzy effort is nasty in an authentically foul way. It doesn't soft-pedal a thing, splattering daft characters, outrageous gore, and demented flourishes all over the screen for 86 depraved minutes. Both films originated as fake trailers for Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse, but where Machete plainly wants us to cheer for its righteous hero as he slaughters his way through the racist powers-that-be, Eisener's film balances queasily on the knife-edge between subversive thrills and moral revulsion.

Rutger Hauer is credible in the role of the vigilante vagrant, in that he looks and sounds for all the world as if just he wandered onto the set after finishing his third bottle of Thunderbird. Disembarking from a boxcar in "Scumtown," Hauer's nameless Hobo encounters corrupt cops, bloodthirsty criminals, and everyday assholes, all of whom delight in humiliating a target as powerless as a homeless old man. Spat upon and degraded by even the lowest elements of society, the Hobo does what any right-thinking American would do: He picks up a gun and starts shooting.

Eisener presents the film's urban wasteland as the apocalyptic, PCP-addled twin to the Gotham City in Chistopher Nolan's Batman films, a Nightmare Town so bent that justice has become a bitter punchline. The strange blend of shattered ugliness and garish stylization in Ewen Dickson's design, meanwhile, suggests an NC-17 version of the psychotropic nuttiness that characterized Joel Schumacher's reviled Batman & Robin. This is fitting, given that Hobo pokes a filthy, yellow-nailed finger in the eye of every Superhero Movie, from the breeziest summer popcorn flick to the grimmest neo-noir fable. If nothing else, Hobo With a Shotgun possesses a crazed fervor that was utterly absent from Matthew Vaughn's parody of the subgenre, the wooly, underwhelming Kick-Ass.

The punk ambition that underlies Hobo is admirable, but it unfortunately can't overcome a story that dithers and staggers around to a rather unforgivable degree, given the straightforward brutality promised by the film's title. In lieu of narrative momentum, Eisener offers a succession of grisly spectacles and a tone of unrelenting shrillness, where every line of dialog is studded with profanity and shrieked at maximum volume. And, hooboy, is that dialog dreadful. (Sample: "Can't you just let it slide?" "The only thing I'm going to let slide is my dick into your pussy.") Satirical or not, the sheer awfulness of the script recalls Enid's remark from Ghost World: "This is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again."

The film's over-the-top violence is discomfiting, but not because that violence is fundamentally objectionable. Hollywood's glib treatment of societal breakdown and the glamorization of vigilantism are worthy targets for satire, but Eisener's approach is ham-fisted, as though spattering everything in sight with blood, bone, and brains constituted an anarchic kind of commentary. The filmmaker's resolve to shatter bourgeois taboos lacks clarity, and the result is an aimless, smug sort of rebelliousness. Witnessing atrocities like, say, a bikini-clad woman writhing in the arterial spray from a freshly decapitated victim, or a school bus of children roasted alive with a flamethrower, I was put in mind of British journalist Johann Hari's recent interview of Larry Flynt. Asked about a Hustler spread that featured women in a mock concentration camp, the venerable pornographer lamely replied that it was "satire". Harri was incredulous: "But how is that a concept that needs satirising? How is that even a concept at all?"

The House of the Devil

2009 // USA // Ti West // June 1, 2011 // Netflix Instant

It's a tricky thing, executing a feature-length homage. Single-minded resolve to recreate the look and feel of a particular era and/or genre of filmmaking can result in an embalmed bauble that functions inadequately as a work of entertainment. The House of the Devil, Ti West's hat-tip to the cheap-but-chilling supernatural horror and slasher flicks of the 1970s and 80s, avoids this trap quite capably. The film succeeds first and foremost as a work of lo-fi atmospherics and astonishingly unhurried suspense. I didn't have a stopwatch or anything, but I'd guess that about a third of the film's 95-minute running time consists of little more than naïve coed Samantha (Jocelin Donahue, evoking a Black Christmas-era Margot Kidder) poking around a dark, creepy house. Said house is the abode of the equally creepy Mr. and Mrs. Ulman (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov), who have conned / bribed the cash-strapped Samantha into "babysitting" dear old Granny for a few hours. She'll probably sleep through the night, and almost certainly won't emerge from her room. Did I mention it's the night of a total lunar eclipse?

The House of the Devil builds upon a grab-bag of vague urban legend and ghost story motifs: the terrorized babysitter, the local eccentrics in their sinister house, the menacing stranger out for a nocturnal stroll, and the unsuspecting woman lured to a terrible fate by a mysterious ad. Most prominently, the film plays upon the Satanic panic of the 1980s and the attendant fear that every town held a cabal of Lucifer-worshiping, Bible-desecrating, baby-eating Luciferians. (I wonder what proportion of the film's likely audience is old enough to even remember the era when Dungeons & Dragons was allegedly the diabolical gateway hobby of choice?) If the film's Big Reveal feels a tad underwhelming and goofy, it has less to do with the Black Sabbath trappings per se than with the contrast to the moody discipline that prevails elsewhere. West exhibits sharp affinity for eliciting scares from naught but dark spaces and weird sounds. The film works quite well on its own terms, and one is doubly thankful that the director approaches the retro style and setting with absolute sincerity. Who needs irony when you have a pretty girl in a dark, creepy house?

Kung Fu Panda 2

2011 // USA // Jennifer Yuh Nelson // May 30, 2011 // Theatrical Print (AMC Esquire)

I admired Kung Fu Panda quite a bit when it burst onto the scene in 2008, perhaps more than its screwball cartoon sensibilities or wearisome believe-in-yourself message warranted. Bear in mind, please, that it featured a portly panda bear in little shorts. I'm not made of stone, people. Beyond its visceral appeal, the film served as encouraging proof that Dreamworks could, in fact, produce a charming, frothy work of feature animation without resorting to atonal pop culture references, repugnant musical numbers, or scatological humor.

This hopeful sign was buttressed by an even better animated feature from Dreamworks last year, How to Train Your Dragon, a vanishingly rare example of a film that utilized 3D to excellent, enriching effect. However, in the past three years, the studio has also given us Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Monsters vs. Aliens, and Shrek Forever After, films which I'm quite comfortable dismissing as rubbish, based solely on the good judgment of trusted critics and the assurances of a wife who attends a lot kiddie flicks. Also: Fuck you, Dreamworks, for forcing me to type that execrable title, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.

Whatever enthusiasm I had going into Kung Fu Panda 2 was therefore tempered by wariness about whether the film would preserve the funny, frisky, wholesome qualities of its predecessor, or resign itself to flickering in and out existence as an opening weekend cash-grab. Happily, first-time director Jennifer Yuh Nelson and returning scripters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger are keenly aware of original film's strengths. They ably pull off a tricky balancing act: maintaining a sense of stylistic and tonal continuity with Kung Fu Panda, while refraining from ratcheting the successful formula up to the point of shrillness.

The humor is still an appealing blend of slapstick and gently subversive deadpan gags that routinely deflate the film's most solemn moments. The design and the martial arts action are just as spectacular as in the previous outing. (Seriously, can we strap down some contemporary live-action directors and show them these movies? Maybe they'll learn how to make action sequences engaging and coherent again.) Even more admirably, the filmmakers actually manage to present a honest-to-goodness sequel. The film doesn't push the reset button on the events of its predecessor, but instead advances and deepens the ongoing story, mainly by exploring the mystery of Po's origins.

Not everything works. The peacock villain, Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) is menacing enough, but the film's odd fascination with his psychology bumps up against the crudity of his Take Over the World scheme. The story gets a bit wooly in places, and the Taoism-for-Tots gestures are a little half-baked, even if they are a welcome change of pace from the usual Western fairy tale tropes. Still, it's hard to find fault with a sequel that so successfully fulfills its own promise. Marvelously satisfying cartoon fun.

13 Assassins

2010 // Japan // Takashi Miike // May 27, 2011 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

My familiarity with the absurdly prolific, genre-defying Japanese director Takashi Miike is, predictably enough, limited to the two films for which he is most notorious in the West: Audition and Ichi the Killer. His new film, a rough remake of an unfamiliar 1963 samurai film from Eiichi Kudo, does not represent the first feature foray into period action-drama for Miike--that would be, apparently, Izo--but this particular nexus of director and genre is, as they say, new to me.

Unsurprisingly for a director best known for bloody, stylized yakuza pictures, 13 Assassins is a lean, mean sort of samurai film. It gets right down to the business of establishing the utterly diabolical character of its villain, Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), the brother of the shogun and also a ice-hearted sociopath, the kind of entitled monster who calmly murders and rapes his way across the countryside because... well, because he can, I suppose. Miike complicates things a touch by providing Naritsugu with an honorable and conflicted lieutenant, Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), but in general the viewer is expected to side overwhelmingly with the titular ragtag band of assassins who take aim at the depraved lord.

Secretly tasked by the shogun's loyalists to eliminate this black sheep, out-of-work samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) sets about recruiting twelve other swords, plus one unlikely forest barbarian, for his Hail-Mary mission. At bottom, 13 Assassins is not really a martial arts showcase or a gritty war picture, but a heist film in the spirit of Ocean's 11, and the beats will be familiar to Western viewers. Accordingly, once Naritsugu's singular wickedness is established, the film's action is more or less divisible into a Putting the Team Together section, followed by a Last Big Score section.

In this case, the latter is mostly comprised of a 45-minute battle in a muddy village, pitting the assassins against two-hundred-plus bodyguards. There's no doubt that Shinzaemon's band will ultimately succeed, but as with any heist picture, the pleasure lies in watching their scheme unfold. Most of the assassins' preparations for the ambush occur off-screen, such that the tactics they use to demolish Naritsugu's entourage are genuinely unexpected. Unlike most heist films, however, the overall tone of 13 Assassins is grim rather than lively, and the context for all the blood-soaked action is the growing difficulty that Shinzaemon and his fellow ronin have had finding their place in the world as the Edo Period wanes.

I'm a tad reluctant to call such a brutal, melancholy film "fun," but it's unquestionable that 13 Assassins' raison d'être is the sheer giddy spectacle of a small band of guys on a righteous mission slicing their way through hordes of enemies. It's elemental, to be sure, but fashioned with such effortless regard for pacing and visual crackle, there's no doubt one is watching a seasoned action director operate on all cylinders. Miike delivers the kind of thrilling and straightforward tale of against-all-odds heroics that is a rare beast from Hollywood in the current era.

Audition

2000 // Japan // Takashi Miike // May 24, 2011 // Netflix Instant

Audition cries out for a "cold screening": I would love to find a friend who has never even heard of Takashi Miike and sit them down for a viewing without revealing a thing about the film they were about to watch. Of course, depending on the disposition of the person in question, our friendship might not survive the evening intact. Despite the film's reputation for a sudden, third-act U-turn into wrenching horror, Miike actually tips his hand quite early, revealing in cutaway scenes that the former ballerina and aspiring actress Asami (Eihi Shiina) is more than a little touched, as they say. When she finally pulls out the needles and wire saw, it doesn't elicit stupefying shock, but squirming revulsion at what is plainly about to unfold: a vivid lesson in the depths of this woman's fractured and sadistic psyche. The gore that follows is unsettling, to say the least, but not half as disturbing as Asami's expression of utter glee as she slices into her lover's flesh and bone. She enthuses over her gruesome work the way a schoolgirl might over a new Hello Kitty sticker book.

Audition is in part a scathing riff on the treatment of sex and gender in Japanese culture, although, not being Japanese, I'm fairly confident that some of the film's nuances sail over my head. However, it's abundantly clear that what Miike is attempting is far more ambitious than merely carrying the psycho girlfriend thriller epitomized by Fatal Attraction to its nihilistic endpoint. The film's style signals as much, as Miike frequently interrupts the main narrative with unhurried flashbacks that expand on previously presented scenes, and with fever-dreams that reveal back story and off-screen events. It's surprisingly elliptical and unsettled, especially in its final forty minutes or so, which has apparently led to wildly differing interpretations as to what "actually" happens. My reaction is the same sense of awed revulsion I experienced when I first encountered the film years ago, enhanced with a bit more admiration for Miike's approach. Remarkably, the majority of the film consists of just pairs of characters in conversation, which is a gratifyingly lean way to advance the story in an ostensible horror film. Much of the dialog seems anodyne at first, but it artfully reveals the witch's brew of suffering, entitlement, contempt, and self-deception that runs through the story and, by extension, through all manner of real-world romantic and sexual kabuki.