X-Men: Days of Future Past

Well, my hubby and I got our first movie date last week since A’s birth and decided to watch the X-Men: Days of Future Past. We both were so excited about the new addition to the X-Men franchise and it is a perfect follow up after the X-Men: First Class which gave us a little hope after few absurd sequels, especially the X-Men: The Last Stand. I didn’t have a high expectation for the movie plot, but was very excited about the cast. You don’t get to see these handsome men (Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender) and gorgeous Jennifer Lawrence together in the big screen every day, not to mention their awesome interviews all over the media.

The movie starts with a scene of future world and a narration of how mutants and humans (who has the ability to give birth to mutants) are fading from the earth by Sentinels’ hand, robots that were created by humans to destroy mutants. To prevent the war and save mutants and humans, Professor X, Magneto, Kitty and the other young mutants who remains fighting, altogether are sending Logan’s consciousness back in time to change the past and secure the future world from sentinels.

There are few continuity errors in this sequel, or we can say few plot fixes for the previous X-Men movies. We all know what happened to Professor X in the X-Men: Last Stand and he is still alive in his own body in this movie. Kitty didn’t have a time traveling ability in previous movies, and her power of phasing through objects doesn’t even connect with time traveling ability. And how we can forget Wolverine’s Adamantium claws? Last time I checked, he didn’t have adamantium claws, also he met William Stryker during the Vietnam War, not afterwards. The X-Men team didn’t even bother to spend few minutes explaining these things, so I didn’t bother to overthink these facts. I just sent a massage to my mind that think this as a reboot for X-Men. However, I’m so glad that X-Men team has removed all those horrible scenes from the previous movies, it seems as those movies never existed.

Apart from those continuity issues there are few plot holes that I managed to grasp from the first watch. I still can’t understand why Magneto has to be released from the prison to manipulate Mystic since Charles is capable of dealing with her even without his powers. Also why they introduce a character like Quicksilver and not taking advantage of his power for the main mission. They could have saved from lots of trouble if they use Quicksilver to prevent the murder scene of Trask and it can be led to a more complicated plot. Not to mention this whole time traveling aspect of the movie, though Singer managed to present the concept without jumbling the plot line, it still confuses my mind, especially the last part of the movie where Wolverine wakes up to a whole new timeline and wondering what has happened. But these plot holes didn’t stop me from enjoying the movie.

One of the most exciting and the strength of the movie is its cast. Each and every one of them are great as their respective characters. My only regret is that new mutants don’t have much of screen time to show their personality and to introduce themselves. Yet, within those few minutes Blink managed to stole everyone’s eyes with her splendid teleportation portals and Quicksilver stole the entire movie with his funny and superfast jailbreak scene, the best scene of the movie, though I’m still wondering about how he listens to those normal speedy music when his whole world is superslow. Hugh Jackman is great as always as Wolverine. James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence, all of them have done a marvelous job portraying their respective characters. I can’t think of any better cast that could have portrayed Professor X, Magneto and Mystic’s younger selves better than them. Peter Dinklage is great as Dr. Bolivar Trask, his future Sentinels are super scary with mimicking and absorbing the power of mutants.

All in all, the X-Men: Days of Future Past is the best X-Men Movie so far. The choreography, the CGI, the cast, all perfect. Even though there are few plot holes in the script, you can still enjoy the movie without asking too many questions. You wouldn’t miss much if you watch it in 2D since Bryan Singer still have to harness his 3D abilities. With this fantastic cast, action-drama sequels and wonderful visual effects, The X-Men: Days of Future Past is a perfect cup of coffee for a warm summer evening.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

P.S.  Sit tight, don’t get ready to leave yet. There is an end credit in the movie that gives a glimpse of the next X-Men movie. I am not going to elaborate it since I guess I gave enough spoilers to the movie 😀

Pompeii

We have seen few movies based on and inspired by true historical disasters before. Among them Titanic and The Impossible had successfully captured love, horror, greediness, and fear of those moments that we almost felt we were living in the middle of the disaster in those few hours of journey through those movies. Jack and Rose still live in the depth of our hearts, and the Henry family who survived from the Tsunami still gives tears to our eyes. After watching all those disaster movies, could Milo and Cassia be able to imprint their love in our heart? Could Pompeii be able to give the horror and the glimpse of the real disaster of the eruption of Vesuvius?

Pompeii starts with a scene of Romans murdering a whole tribe of Celtic horsemen, and the only survivor of this massacre is a little boy named Milo. Later this little boy, Milo, becomes a slave and end up in Pompeii to fight with gladiators. On his way to Pompeii he meets Cassia, the daughter of the Pompeii’s ruler, and they both fall in love with each other at first sight. A corrupted Roman senate, Corvus who is responsible for the death of Milo’s tribe, forces Cassia to be his wife. In the middle of all these dramas there is a life-or-death battle and eruption of a great volcano.

The script is neither surprising nor appealing. The two parallel stories of love and gladiator battles are a stereotype of any other gladiator or ancient Roman movies. The love story, rich-girl-loves-poor-boy, is cliché and there is no time to build a relationship between Milo and Cassia. The love story lacks the strong depth feelings, dialogs and characteristics of tragic love story. Instead the movie has given more time to build a relationship between two gladiators, Milo and Atticus. That relationship is somewhat interesting thanks to the character of Atticus.

There are so many mistakes, plus inaccurate data in this movie. The rain of lava bombs which destroyed almost all the city when the volcano exploded is like a meteor shower. The effect is a bit tempting though it’s not how it happened. There were no lava bombs when the Vesuvius erupted but an ash and pumice rain and it was very hard to breath because of the air was thick with ash. But the Pompeii has not captured how hard people tried to survive through this rain of ash and how they escaped from the city. Instead, it gives you nice visual effects of a volcano explosion with lava bombs. Also there was no evidence for a massive tsunami which brought ships into the city, the arena wasn’t destroyed during the eruption, there were no cracking grounds in the middle of the Pompeii city, and list goes on. There were so many inaccuracies in this movie, but it captured the ancient Pompeii city, buildings, costumes, and the culture fairly impressively though I doubt women in this ancient time wore slits up dresses. After all this is not a documentary about Pompeii, this is a historical fiction with good visual effects.

That being said, the acting is just good enough but not impressive. There are no memorable lines except for the repeated lines of previous movies of this genre. But the cinematography is really good. The Pompeii city which has buried nearly for 2000 years was pretty much alive with a magnificent view. The graphics and visual effects of the volcano and the disaster are excellent but not realistically visualized.

So the answer for those two questions I asked early in this post is, NO. Milo and Cassia couldn’t dive into my heart and I didn’t feel the horrific feeling of death through this movie. Pompeii failed in almost every aspect, the writing, acting, characters, and historical aspects. If you are a fan of good visual effects you’d be able to enjoy this film without massive complaints. But if you are a fan of history, especially about Roman history, you might have to switch off your brain if you want at least slightly to enjoy this film. And for the fan of disaster love stories, you’d be disappointed too.

My Rating: 2 out of 5

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

After being frozen for half a century, Cap is back to save the world. Welcome back Captain America for your second solo, “save the world” battle. When I saw the first trailer of Captain America: The Winter Soldier I was so excited and couldn’t wait till it hit the cinema, though the first Captain America movie isn’t in my “fantastic movies” list.

It has been two years since the New York battle and Steve Rogers is slowly adapting to the modern world of digital era. The black and white world he used to live no longer exists, no one can clearly separate the good guys from the bad guys. It seems that his superior Nick Fury also has his own agenda and Steve cannot trust anyone. With the death of Nick Fury, Captain becomes a fugitive and teams up with Black Widow and Falcon, and with few people he knows he can trust, to unravel the conspiracy that has been hidden behind the S.H.I.E.L.D for nearly 70 years.

Steve Rogers is a trustworthy military veteran who always value nobility. What Marvel did with the character was, threw him out from his comfort zone. Steve always want everyone to be trustworthy, have a black and white morality and Marvel tossed him into an espionage, politically savaged, gray world where no one can be trusted. So the battle of “save the world from Hydra” is not just some scenes with actions to kill the bad guys, it is more of a personal mission to the character as well as an emotional journey to the audience. It is good that Steve reads a lot on internet and making to-do lists to catchup those 70 years that he had been missing, though I wonder how many years he would have to spend on history and pop culture lessons with his busy schedule. Chris Evans has never been better as Steve Rogers, with a heroism physical and stunt actions. After watching Fantastic Four, I was disappointed to hear Marvel’s decision of casting Chris Evan as Captain America. But now I am so glad that they picked Chris Evan for the role of Steve Rogers.

Scarlet Johansson perfectly embodies the role of Black Widow. She is mind blowing with her sarcastic comic attitude, and complex martial arts movements. This time Black Widow has quite a long script than her previous scripts, and her tools, intelligence, and stunning combats are quite impressive. Though she is working with Captain, she always has her own mission and goes through her own emotional journey rather than just being an eye-candy to the plot. She is indeed a superhero and I expect a Black Widow solo movie soon from Marvel since there is so much to tell about this amazing character.

The other member of the “Team Cap” is Falcon. This is the first time Falcon has introduced to the Marvel cinematic universe. I cannot think anyone better for the role besides Anthony Mackie and I’d definitely like to see him in more movies in the future. Nick Fury gets more screen time in this movie and Samuel Jackson is great as always embodying the role of Nick Fury giving a lot more power to his scenes. Robert Redford, giving a calm and gripping performance, portrays Alexander Pierce who leads the Hydra activities inside the S.H.I.E.L.D with high authoritative powers. Marvel introduces two more comic characters in this movie, Brock Rumlow and Sharon Carter, a.k.a. Agent 13. Frank Grillo’s performance as bad-ass S.T.R.I.K.E agent is remarkable. Even though Agent 13 has a minor role in this movie, Emily VanCamp steals those few scenes with amazing performance portraying Agent 13.

Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. The Winter Soldier is brainwashed and doesn’t know his true identity and he has a more personal connection with Steve Rogers than the Hydra lets him believe. Sebastian Stan is remarkable as Winter Soldier and performs well with his limited amount of screen time. I expected more scenes of Winter Soldier, after all the movie is named after him, but we don’t get to see much of him and it feels like he is more of a window dressing to the plot. Even in those few moments he manages to scare them all since his humanity switch is off, yet, he is having some soft spots here and there. I always like villains but here it’s different and I feel sorry for him. You can’t blame him for his ruthless assassinations when he has been brainwashed and frozen for time to time for nearly 70 years. Do we get to know more about him, his personal life, and his motives in the next Captain America movie? Fingers crossed.

In many superhero movies and comic book adaptations we can see lots of plot holes and silly plots. To my surprise, I didn’t see major plot holes in the first watch. The writing is pretty much good and smart in this movie. Also Captain America: The Winter Soldier has the best hand-to-hand fight scenes as well as best heavy action scenes. The most disappointing scene for me was to know that the Councilwoman who kicked Alexander’s ass is turned out to be Black Widow. It would have been more excited if it was really the Councilwoman. And the most predictable scene was the last battle. Captain and Falcon manage to replace chips on the first two helicarriers and here comes the Winter Soldier to the third halicarrier to stop them. It would have been more intense if Winter Soldier appeared in the first or second helicarrier and fought through the last one. Also I knew from the start that Alexander Pierce cannot be trusted, he always had that villainous look in his eyes.

I don’t want to spoil this post anymore by describing the post credits. But I can say those two post credits give some clues about next Avengers and Captain America movies. All in all Captain America: The Winter Soldier is all you want from a superhero movie: actions, thriller, comedy, and little bit of drama well balanced in a one movie.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

12 Years a Slave

Movies are not just for an entertainments, movies can educate people on various things such as history, culture, science. This film, 12 Years a Slave, is about slavery that took place in the recent history of 1800s. It is based on the autobiography of Solomon Northup who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. It reveals the truth about one of the darkest times of human history.

Slavery is a very delicate subject and still occurs in the modern world, though it is not as brutal as past. Even though it is hard and depressing to watch such stories, I am happy that McQueen and the team revealed the cruel reality of slavery by creating this movie. It shows the brutal events that followed during Northup’s 12 years as a slave.

12 Years a Slave has an incredible cast with renowned as well as obscure actors. As Patsy, Lupita Nyong’o brings a new face to the big screen with marvelous performance. Chiwetel Ejiofor is perfect as the main character, Solomon Northup. Michael Fassbender is truly excellent in this movie. His character is the most barbaric, lunatic and evil soul. I almost hit the screen when I watched him play as Edwin Epps.

Even though the events took place within 12 years, I felt like it’s based on three or four months. Solomon haven’t aged much during that 12 years of slavery. However it seems like his family has aged for more than 20 years. It’s sad to see such plot holes in this great movie and I think directors should have paid more attention to these details.

This is one of those movies that is honest about history and it takes you on a powerful and emotional journey. Honestly, I never want to watch it again, not because it is not a good movie, ofcoz it is a remarkable movie, but it is extremely painful to watch. That being said, I still think 12 Years a Slave is one of the best movies of the year.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

Julie & Julia

I didn’t get any chance to watch this film when it came out in 2009. I thought it might be boring since it is about food and cooking. I have to admit that I am not a foodie and I hate cooking. So I didn’t bother to expend 2 hours to watch it. Anyhow very recently one of my good friends recommended this movie and I thought of give it a try since that day I had nothing to do and was feeling sick.

Before watching this movie I was oblivious of these two amazing women Julia Child and Julie Powell. I have not read or heard about their books before; anyway I have never read a single cook book or chef biographies in my entire life. What glued me into this movie was Julie’s and Julia’s personalities. Their commitment to pursue their passion sends an inspirational message that anyone can be successful. Julie’s everyday constant struggle to continue her cooking project and the feedback she gets at the end excellently elaborates that consistent commitment does really pay off.

I love Julia Child’s personality and the sweet smile that never left her beautiful face. Her positive attitude towards her life and her love for her husband and food really touched my heart. They, Julia and Paul, are an adorable couple. Both Julie and Julia are really blessed to have such supportive and loving husbands.

Meryl Streep does an excellent job portraying Julia Child. While I was watching this movie I watched a YouTube video of Julia Child just to see the real person. I was impressed about Meryl Streep’s acting. She expertly impersonates the personality and mannerism of Julia Child, no wonder she was nominated and won so many awards in her acting career. Amy Adams is also amazing as Julie Powell. She is one of my favorites. Both Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina also have done an amazing job portraying respective husbands of these amazing women.

This is a nice combination of food, passion, commitment and relationship. I have to admit that this movie makes me craving for French food though I am not a foodie. Beyond just being good entertainment, this movie is very inspiring.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

Horrible Bosses

Are you stuck in a job you hate because of your horrible boss? We know that there are some bosses who take all the credit of hardworking of their subordinates, and some bosses who try to sexually abuse their subordinates. In this movie three buddies, Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day) and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) are victims of their evil superiors. And the movie goes on showing how they try to get rid of these horrible bosses.

Horrible Bosses is a dark comedy, but it wasn’t as “dark” as expected. I really enjoyed the movie. The three bosses, Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey), Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell), and Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston) are really horrible bosses. Three stars who portrait the characters are such talented and the performances are really… really… good. My favorite horrible boss is Dr. Julia 😀

I always like to watch Jason Bateman’s movies and I really enjoyed his performance in this movie. I couldn’t stop myself laughing when I was watching the scene that Dale drops thousands of dollars worth of cocaine belongs to Bobby on his carpet, and getting high by accidently inhaling them. And also the tattooed murder consultant (Jamie Foxx) is hilarious.

Horrible bosses is a simple, hilarious film, though it is quite predictable. As a woman who likes to watch pure, simple, and entertaining movies, this movie is one of the best comedies I’ve watched in this year. If you need a good laugh, grab a popcorn basket, put your feet up and enjoy.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

Source Code

I really like to watch mystery and Sci-Fi movies. So few weeks ago I watched this film Source Code and it was amazing. The whole concept is fresh, though sometimes it might sound far-fetched. You don’t have to understand the science to enjoy this movie.

Jake Gyllenhaal gives a great performance as Colter Stevens, who is harried, confused man who eventually finds out the purpose in what he’s been tasked to do. Michelle Monaghan also has a fantastic role as Christina Warren, the pretty girl in the train who attracts Colter’s heart.

There were some repeating scenes since Cotler has to go several times to the past, to the same 8 minute duration, in order to identify the terrorist. Even though those are repeating scenes, Riplay and Jone have done a good job making each scene little bit differently and it wasn’t boring.

Someway, this tremendous movie reminded me of the quote from the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

“Without this emotion, we are only robots.”

My Rating: 4 out of 5