Back Seat Producers

Our setting is a small Ohio town of Lillian in the late 70s.  Young Joe Lamb has just suffered through the death of his mother and has difficulties dealing with his father, who’s one of the deputies on the town’s police force.  Joe has a group of friends who he makes short movies with shot with a Super 8mm camera.  He and his friends are currently making their own zombie movie, somewhat inspired by George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. One night, Joe and his friends are out by an old train station shooting a scene.  As they’re getting ready to shoot this key scene, a train passes by.  Joe looks out in the distance and sees a truck driving towards the tracks.  The driver of the truck takes his vehicle right on the tracks on a direct collision course with the train.  A devastating impact occurs that in turn unleashes some unknown entity upon this unsuspecting community.

That’s the basic premise to Super 8, the newest movie from director J.J. Abrams, the creator of the TV show Alias, one of the creators behind TV’s Lost and the director of such movies as Mission: Impossible III and the wildly successful Star Trek reboot.  This is the first time, as far as I know, that Abrams has teamed with producer Steven Spielberg.  With a pedigree like that, you certainly hope for the best with this movie, the promise is certainly there.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t quite all come together in a satisfying way.

I was really looking forward to this movie.  In a summer filled with sequels and comic book movies (not that there’s anything wrong with that), Super 8 looked like it was going to be something a little bit different than what was coming down the road.  Abrams has basically stated that this was somewhat autobiographical for him and working with Spielberg, it gave him the chance to homage some aspects of Spielberg’s 70s films.  The early trailers for the film were very promising being mostly pure teaser and not really giving a whole lot away.

Super 8 references other movies that Steven Spielberg made both as a director and a producer.  Those movies include Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E. T., The Goonies and Poltergeist. On the surface, there’s really nothing wrong with doing that but the way it’s mixed together here just never quite comes together for me.  As the events unfold, there’s a pretty hard terror aspect involved which actually is quite nice, but it’s resolution tries to put a heartwarming spin to the whole thing that just feels forced. A very clunky explanation is given to the true nature of this entity that terrorizes the area.  That story in itself is a little too big to be satisfyingly told in the space of this film and still have a proper emotional resonance.  This would’ve worked better had Abrams decided to go either all the way with either pure terror or with heartwarming sense of wonder.  As it is, he’s trying to mix the two and both get short-changed.

The kids themselves are fairly engaging when they’re all together.  It’s when we’re seeing a couple of them deal with their own personal issues is where things start to fall apart.  Joe (played by Joel Courtney) and a young girl who he’s attracted to, Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning), both have issues with their fathers (Kyle Chandler as Joe’s father and Ron Eldard as Alice’s) as a result of what caused the death of Joe’s mother.  Neither relationship has a whole lot of perspective attached to it in regards to what things were like before Joe’s mother was killed.  Things are somewhat resolved between both parents and their kids by the film’s end, but that resolution feels entirely forced without having any sort of idea of what it used to be.

Noah Emmerich plays Colonel Nelec, the leader of a military force that’s been sent to Lillian to contain what’s happened.  Now there’s really nothing wrong with anything that Emmerich does, but it’s the general portrayal of the military that gives me some issue here.  They’re pretty much presented as nearly the same sort of malevolent force that they’re trying to quell and it’s all just on one simplistic note.  Again, I think that’s a result of trying to mash-up two distinct tones for the overall movie and not having enough time to get them all to adequately pay off.

To it’s credit though, I think the movie does have a good look to it, even though sometimes I think Abrams takes things a little too far in trying to reference the look of a Spielberg movie from the 70s.  Michael Giacchino produces another terrific score for the film and the visual effects are pretty well done.  The initial devastation with the train is particularly well done.

But still, I cannot give this Super 8 a recommendation.  The premise is certainly decent, but it goes to the extremes for the two tones that it’s trying to mix without the proper filler to make it all seem really cohesive.  I’m sorry to say that as I’m a big fan of J.J. Abrams.  Here’s hoping things fare better when he returns to the future with the ext Star Trek movie.

X-Men: First Class is a prequel film to Marvel’s and Fox’s highly successful X-Men series.  The first two movies (X-Men and X-Men 2), both directed by Bryan Singer, are terrific films.  While I like the third film in the series, directed by Brett Ratner, I’d also be the first to tell you that it falters behind the first two movies.  I also include X-Men Origins: Wolverine directed by Gavin Hood, with this bunch as well, and like X-Men 3, I thought it was entertaining, but nowhere in the same league as the first two movies.

Now director Matthew Vaughn has been given a chance at the reins of the series, working under a story with Bryan Singer as part of the credits.  Matthew Vaughn has previously directed Kick-Ass, Stardust and Layer Cake. Prior to this, he was first connected to Thor which he dropped out of to be replaced by Kenneth Branagh.  But still it looks like someone was bound and determined to get him connected with a Marvel Comics movie…

…and thank goodness they did.  X-Men: First Class is a winner and I can’t wait to see it again.

As our movie opens, it’s the 40s and we’re shown the parallel stories of Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier as young boys, first learning about their mutant abilities.  Lehnsherr is being forced by the Nazis to use his talents, while Xavier has more academic concerns, including meeting the mysterious Raven as a little girl (who later becomes Mystique).

We move to 1962, and now both have grown to young men.  With the war long over, Erik Lensherr is in pursuit of the Nazis who killed his parents.  Charles Xavier and Raven are following their academic roots, until they’re contacted by CIA operative Moira MacTaggert for help with the CIA’s work.  Eventually Xavier and Lensherr finally meet, and both discover common ground in their pursuits with mutantkind.

Looming in the background though is Sebastian Shaw and the Hellfire Club and their plans are at extreme odds with those of the CIA.

Now, I know I’m being real vague here about the overall story, but honestly, I don’t want to spoil a thing.  X-Men: First Class is a movie, for an X-Men fan, to be savored.  There’s nice little story turns and Easter eggs throughout this film and remarkably it all ties in well with the previous movies.

X-Men: First Class absolutely looks terrific.  Matthew Vaughn isn’t afraid to play with bright colors here at all and setting this primarily in the 60s also plays with the shooting style of the film, including some nice montage areas.

This is one packed film and nothing feels wasted.  The pacing is terrific and right when you think something’s been forgotten about, they come right back to it.  Henry Jackman’s musical score is perfectly suited to this film and nimbly helps with the pace.

It also helps that you have a terrific young cast.  James McAvoy plays Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender plays Erik Lehnsherr.  McAvoy is both smooth and smart, and right from the word “go” ably projects the same authority that Patrick Stewart did in the prior movies.  I’ve become quite the fan of Michael Fassbender and he does not disappoint in the slightest here.  He manages the same sort of regality that Ian Mckellan had in the prior films, but also brings a real physical joy to playing a character with super-powers.  I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Rose Byrne plays Moira MacTaggert and Jennifer Lawrence plays Raven.  Both ladies are fantastic in their parts and I really like just how well lawrence works with McAvoy in the early parts of the movie.  Oliver Platt plays an unnamed (but important) CIA liason to this crew and delivers the right amount of authority.  Rounding out the rest of Xavier’s core team, you have Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy, who’s also the mutant who becomes known as the Beast, Caleb Landry Jones as the sonic-powered Banshee and Lucas Till as Alex Summers, also known as Havok.  All are great, but I really have to give some high marks to Hoult, who in many ways to me seems almost the heart of this film.

On the villains side, we’ve got Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, and he just looks like he’s having a great time being part of this film.  January Jones plays Emma Frost, extremely loyal to Shaw and really quite the knockout.  Alex Gonzalez and Jason Flemyng round out the villain side, as the mutants Riptide and Azazel respectively, and though they don’t get the lines that everyone else has, they both have real physical presence.

And there’s even more, especially two very nice cameo appearances, but I don’t want to say any more than that.  Matthew Vaughn has assembled a terrific ensemble cast and you can’t help but want to see this same assemblage come together again.

Like I said, X-Men: First Class is a winner, and I even enjoyed it more than Thor.  Out of the big four comic book movies announced for this summer, I thought X-Men; First Class was the sleeper of the bunch.  The more I kept seeing of this in trailers and the news, the more I was looking forward to it.  The sheer idea of taking this series back in time to the 60s is brilliant and to me anyway, really helps bring in huge sense of wonder.  Don’t miss this one…