There’s been a lot of cool stuff that has made its way onto the internet following the big San Diego Comic Con this past weekend.  My favorite so far?  Well, any fan of Lost who knows who Marvin Candle is should surely check this out immediately!

“Perhaps you’ll be able to find a way to save us.  To change the past.”

One of the movies I’ve been most anticipating this summer, and also one of the movies I’ve been most concerned wouldn’t meet my expectations, is the long-awaited second X-Files feature film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

My father introduced me to The X-Files mid-way through the first season.  By my recollection, I was hooked pretty immediately.  I quickly became an enormous fan of the show, and I have fond memories of catching a midnight showing of the first X-Files movie (which was titled Fight the Future on all the posters, although that title did not appear in the opening of the movie itself even though that phrase was used throughout the film).  That first film was disappointing in that it was marketed as delivering the answers to many of the long-standing questions of the show, which it most certainly did not.  However, the film also in many ways encapsulated everything that was great about the show (the Mulder/Scully dynamic, the cigarette smoking man and government conspiracies, aliens, chases, explosions, creepy meetings with shadowy people in dark alleyways, etc etc etc), while also really amping things up to a movie-level: the chases were more exciting, the aliens more violent and dangerous, the visual effects more elaborate, and more.  Its definitely a film that I have watched and enjoyed many times since.  That movie’s release was, in many ways the high-point of the show.  It was followed by two very strong seasons (the 6th and 7th), and then two fairly mediocre seasons (the 8th and 9th, which were almost completely without Mulder).  The show ended, at least for me, in a very lousy way.  I recall finding the two-hour finale, “The Truth,” to be incomprehensible and, even worse, something the show NEVER had been for me before — a total bore.

So now, years later, the launch of a new X-Files movie gave me a lot of hope of a return to the glory days of the show.  When Chris Carter announced that this film would be a “stand-alone” monster story, not tied to the show’s labrynthine conspiracy stories, I had mixed emotions.  I liked the idea of jettisoning a lot of the complex baggage that had weighed down the series in its final years — and yet, I really LOVED the so-called “mythology” episodes of the show, and wasn’t sure a movie not dealing with any of those stories would be worth anyone’s interest.

So, what did I think?

Well…its mediocre.

(I’m going to try to stay clear of spoilers in the below review, but I suppose that anyone who wants to see the movie without knowing anything about it should probably come back to this posting only after seeing the film.)

There is a lot I really enjoyed about the movie.  First of all, its just terrific to see Fox Mulder and Dana Scully again.  These are two wonderful characters, and its very enjoyable to get to watch the two of them in a new adventure.

The movie did a great job at, on the one hand, not ignoring the weird place Mulder and Scully were left at the end of the series (in love, on the run from the FBI)…they’re not magically back in the FBI after five minutes.  And yet, the movie doesn’t get too bogged down in all of that back-story.  Mulder and Scully’s new status quo is set up quickly and efficiently and then we’re able to jump right into this new tale.

There are some really interesting ideas in the story, particularly when it grapples with the issues of god and faith that I always found so fascinating in the show.  Billy Connoly’s Father Joe is a great “guest star,” and his character provides and excellent focal point for these issues.

There’s some nice suspense, some great creepy atmopsheric moments in the snow and ice, and a terrific classic X-Files Mulder foot-chase about two-thirds of the way through the film, that really captured a lot of the fun of the old TV series.

And yet…

The movie feels “small.”  The mystery that is the centerpiece of the movie doesn’t feel like enough of a reason for the FBI to reach out to Mulder and Scully…and it also doesn’t feel like enough of a tale to warrant this story being a movie.  If we’re going to revisit these characters in the form of a feature film, it seems to me that the story being told should be one of more CONSEQUENCE to the long-term lives of these characters, and the long-term story being told by The X-Files…not just one more monster story.

(Speaking of that, there really isn’t much of a monster at all.  There are actually very few paranormal goings-on at all, other than Father Joe’s supposed psychic visions.  I really was expecting more of a fantastical, X-Filesy bent to the story, and was surprised that we didn’t really get that.)

Again, the movie felt “small.”  I know it was made for very little money (around 30 million, reportedly), and very quickly…unfortunately, the film feels that way.  This is especially evident in the end of the movie.  The first film built to an enormous, exciting climax with a buried space-ship in Antarctica.  This movie builds to Scully knocking someone out with a beam of wood.

I also found the storytelling to be a rather inconsistent.  Some scenes and sequences seemed truly excellent – suspenseful and exciting.  And then some other scenes just fell totally flat to me.  I’m not sure if the problem was the writing, the directing, the acting, the music, or some combination thereof.  But there were some moments in the film just didn’t work for me at all.  The most egregious example of this?  OK, spoilers here, so go away if you don’t want to read.

Still here?

About 45 or so minutes into the movie, things are going well.  I was enjoying the building suspense, and also the return of the great Mulder/Scully dynamic, and the way they were slowly getting sucked into this new case.

Then, suddenly, we cut to Mulder and Scully in bed.

And I was like, say what now?  Apparently, Mulder and Scully have been living together all this time.  But NOTHING in the first 45 minutes of the film gave me that impression.  When Scully goes to find Mulder, at the behest of the FBI agent who reaches out to her, I had no idea she was going to HER OWN HOUSE, and that the two of them had WOKEN UP IN BED TOGETHER that morning.  And nothing in their dynamic in all the scenes that followed lead me to that conclusion, either.

So either the film-makers deliberately withheld that information until this scene, intending it to be a shock and surprise to the audience — which I find to be foolish because it totally threw me out of the film for a while — OR they thought it was CLEAR that Mulder and Scully were together — in which case they failed utterly because that was totally UNCLEAR to me.

Either way, that scene was a major failure of storytelling.  (I also found it to be rather, well, icky — I just didn’t want to watch Mulder and Scully canoodling in bed.)  A few other moments like that bring down what is otherwise a very fun, tense, and interesting story.

I feel like I’m dwelling on the negatives, and I don’t want to do that.  There was indeed a lot that I really enjoyed about the movie.  This is no Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, by any stretch of the imagination.  It’s just, I wanted a lot more from the first new X-Files story in 6 years.  And if this is the LAST X-Files story, I don’t think this was a particularly storng way to end.  (Although I guess it IS a lot stronger than that last episode of the show!)

Here’s hoping we’ll get at least one more X-Files movie, and that it’ll deal with the upcoming date of alien invasion, as indicated in the last season of the show — Dec. 22, 2012.

Seeing as how The Dark Knight has already made two kajillion dollars, I guess most of you reading this have probably already caught the flick.  If so, you quite likely also beheld the magnificent Watchmen trailer.  For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity, behold!

“Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”

There’s a weird phenomenon that affects me sometimes (and I know I’m not alone in this) where I so fall in love with a story, or a group of characters, that I will watch those characters even in something really really bad.

I know Star Trek V is a terrible movie.  Terrible.  The story is weak (A search for God?  Spock suddenly has a half-brother?), the special effects are terrible (the ending really suffers…and compare the Bird of Prey shots with the much superior effects in Star Trek III made several years earlier), and the beloved characters are treated very poorly (Uhura’s “fan dance,” Scotty knocking himself out in an Enterprise corridor, navigators Checkov and Sulu getting lost in the woods, and, oh yeah, Kirk, Spock, and Bones singing “row, row, row your boat”).  And yet I so love those characters, that every now and then I’ll watch Star Trek V, somehow hoping that this time I’ll find something I sort of like about it.

This is also what happens with me and Episode I.  I’ve probably seen the movie 6 or 7 times now.  (About every 2 or 3 years I’ll make my way through all the Star Wars movies, usually in the order they were made:  Episodes IV-VI, and then I-III.)  And always I sort of hope that maybe this time I’ll be able to focus on the positives about Star Wars: Episode I.  The visuals are, mostly, pretty sweet.  I like Watto.  Darth Maul is cool.  The climactic three-way lightsaber battle is pretty dynamite.

But its hard to get over just how boring the movie is.  For a movie called Star WARS, there’s not a heck of a lot of action to be had.  Just a lot of talking.  There’s a terrific assemblage of actors – a far stronger ensemble, I would argue, than in the OT.  Ewan McGreggor.  Qui-Gon Jin.  Natalie Portman.  Terrence Stamp.  Ian McDiarmid.  These are fine actors, and they are WASTED.  And that’s what’s most frustrating to me about Episode I (and, frankly, the entire prequel trilogy). It just seems like such a wasted opportunity.  I wanted to see more of the Jedi in their prime – kicking ass and taking names.  I wanted to learn more about the Sith.  (In one of Darth Maul’s few lines of dialogue, he speaks of having his revenge against the Jedi.  Revenge for what?  What happened between the Jedi and the Sith thousands of years ago?  How did the Sith now return?)  Most of all, I just wanted another fun, exciting chapter in the space adventure series that I grew up loving.

And it still sort of bums me out that that’s not what I got.

So.  Sigh.  The Star Wars Prequels.

Its interesting to me to look back now, some years distant, on Episodes I-III.

For someone like myself who grew up with the Original Trilogy but who has no memory of seeing those films released, it was an incredible thing to be able to experience the release of three new Star Wars films.  At the time, of course, the tremendous excitement of the build-up was also accompanied by the crushing disappointment of actually seeing the films.  Especially Episode I.  I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed sitting in a movie theatre.  Going in, it really never occurred to me that the film would be bad.  That notion just never crossed my mind.  And yet, only 5 minutes in, when suddenly those Japanese-sounding Trade Federation aliens in very fake-looking rubber masks came on screen, I have a distinct memory of starting to shift uncomfortably in my seat.  Then Qui-Gon and Ob-wan find themselves on Naboo, and they meet Jar-Jar…and then they go to the city of Jar-Jars…and then they travel through the planet’s core which is filled not with molten lava but with water…and then they’re attacked by a fish but a bigger fish eats that fish and Qui-Gon says “there’s always a bigger fish” and then two minutes later the exact same thing happens and oh my god we’re only 25 minutes into this movie and it is BRUTAL.

But, watching that film for the first time, I was still filled with hope that, OK, the introduction is slow, but maybe Lucas was thinking about the saga as a 12-hour, 6-movie saga, and so the opening of a 12-hour saga would be a little longer than the opening of a 2-hour movie, so I should relax and be patient.  No, I didn’t give up all hope until about an hour and a half into the movie, when our motley band of heroes visited Coruscant.  Finally, FINALLY we were getting to see Jedi in their prime – and not just ANY Jedi, but the Jedi Council.  And what happens?  They sit and talk.  And they are not just boring, but they are stupid.  I don’t mean stupid as in, “its silly to take grown men wearing lightsabers who talk about vergences in the Force seriously” kind of stupid.  No, I mean stupid as in I have been totally emotionally involved in the world of Star Wars and Jedi since I was a kid and here we finally meet the greatest of the great of the Jedi and they are so colossally stupid and inept that, after Qui-Gon reveals to them that he’s discovered the existence of the first known evil Sith Lord in thousands of years, what do they decide to do?  Do they send hundreds of their best Jedi to comb Naboo in order to confront and eliminate this new menace?  Nope!  They decide it’s a better idea to just send one rebellious Jedi, his apprentice (who, by the way, we’re told over and over again is reckless, but who spends the entire movie just saying “yes master” to Qui-Gon), the boy they just proclaimed too dangerous to train, and one spastic Gungan.  THAT kind of stupid.

And my mind was still trying to wrap my head around that when our heroes boarded a space-ship and Jar Jar shouted “weesa going home” and I turned to my buddy sitting next to me and said something like “hoo boy.”  And I’ve spent the subsequent 10 years of my life trying to figure out what exactly went wrong that resulted in the existence of this terrible movie.

So that was my experience of seeing Episode I in the theatres for the first time, in May of 1999.  Have my thoughts about that movie changed with 10 years’ distance?  Come back tomorrow and we’ll chat.

I am almost speechless.

For the past two and a half hours I had my brains pretty much blown out the back of my head by the The Dark Knight in IMAX.

This is a SPECTACULAR film.

It is dense. It is dazzling. And boy oh boy it is dark. It is SHOCKINGLY dark — not in terms of gore but in terms of how brutal it is towards all of the major characters in the film. I’ve heard people compare this sequel to The Empire Strikes Back (sort of the geek Mount Olympus in terms of a sequel), and one way the two are very much alike is that both films are not afraid to pretty much beat the hell out of “our heroes,” both physically and emotionally, for pretty much the entire running time.

This is a Batman story. And the best Batman stories, in my opinion, are the downbeat ones. But the Batman movies to this point, even the very excellent Batman Begins, have always seemed to be rather afraid to veer too far away from the happy ending. In the films we’ve seen previously, Bruce Wayne and co. always seem to be able to find fairly painless ways out, narratively, of the troubles they find themseves in. But not here. Time after time in The Dark Knight, our characters are faced with difficult situations and impossible choices, and no easy exit is presented to them. This makes for an extraordinarily compelling film.

There’s great action in this movie, no question. But this movie isn’t driven by action set pieces. It is driven by STORY, and by CHARACTER. The scenes that I can’t stop thinking about aren’t the car chases (they are awesome) or the fight scenes (they are bone-crunching). Its moments like the scene in which Batman and Jim Gordon must confront a deranged, hopeless man with a gun to the head of an innocent. Or Bruce Wayne’s dinner with Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent. Or the Joker talking about his scars. Those are the scenes that are staying with me long after the lights went up in the theatre. And it is those sorts of intense emotional moments that propel the plot forward, rather than just fight scenes leading to more fight scenes.

Its a long movie, but I was on the edge of my seat right from the opening bank heist through to the absoultely note-perfect ending. Seeing the movie in huge, loud, glorious IMAX certainly enhanced that, but I simply cannot imagine anyone watching this movie in any sort of movie theatre not being intensely gripped by this film. I suppose some might complain that the film is too downbeat. But for me, this is the most perfect filmed realization of Batman I have ever seen. Can I say again that this film is SHOCKING? There are some narrative turns about two thirds of the way through this movie that had me absolutely FLOORED. I will say no more about that.

Instead, let me take a moment to praise the cast. As you’ve certainly heard by now, Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is astounding. When Batman Begins ended with the promise of the Joker in the sequel, it seemed impossible to imagine any actor trying to compete with Jack Nicholson’s iconic performance in Tim Burton’s Batman. But after seeing Ledger’s depiction of the character, Nicholson’s version seems as silly and light as Cesar Romero’s. This Joker is SCARY. I loved the look of the character. I loved the way his origin was dealt with. I loved his laugh. This IS the Joker.

Similarly, Aaron Eckhart to me IS Harvey Dent. This is not a background, wink-at-the fans cameo the way Billy Dee Williams’ Harvey Dent was in Burton’s Batman. No, Harvey is CRUCIAL to the story being told, and the way the narrative weaves the tale of his fate with that of the Joker is very clever and very powerful. THIS is the way to incorporate multiple villains into your movie, all you Batman and Robins and Spider-Man 3s out there!! Eckhart brings such life to the character, and such charisma, that it is positively torture (in the best way, of course!) watching Harvey Dent slip down the path that we know is his destiny.

Everyone else is great as well. Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and of course Christian Bale as Bats himself, are all excellent. Once again let me lavish praise on the script — not only are all these actors terrific, but each character is given a strong arc to play. Each character has his or her own journey in this movie, and none are extraneous — every one is, in his or her own way, essential to the story being told.

And what a story.

In case you couldn’t tell, I was pretty much giddy watching this film unfold. This is the Batman movie I always wanted to see. I don’t know when I’m going to see a movie next, but I know for damn sure what I’ll be seeing: The Dark Knight, for a second time.

Oh! And!! Before the movie was an AMAZING trailer for Watchmen! I am still dubious that this extraordinarily complex graphic novel — probably the greatest graphic novel ever written — can be faithfully adapted into a feature-length movie…BUT wow was this trailer stupendous. I will post a link once this beauty finds its way on-line..

I always like my super-hero/fantasy flicks to have a touch of melancholy. (Probably why I enjoy Superman Returns so much, as I’ve written about previously on this site.) One of the things I really appreciated about the Lord of the Rings movies, and the original books, was that touch of sadness in how, even in victory, magic was slowly leaving the world.

That’s a theme explored, also to great effect, in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. The idea of a monster who hunts down and kills other monsters is a not just a great “hook” — its also a notion with a great deal of inherent drama and conflict for the story-teller interested in exploring that. Thankfully, director Guillermo del Toro certainly is.

Hellboy 2 tells the story of the fairy-tail Prince Nuada, furious at the way all of the magical creatures have lost their stewardship of the world to mankind, and our pollution and our strip malls and our parking lots. As in the best of adventure tails, this villain isn’t a bwa-ha-ha moustache-twirling bad-guy — he’s a compelling character with a legitimate point of view. This captures the audience’s interest in the story, and also provokes some tough “am I really on the right side?” questions for our hero Hellboy.

As in the first film, the title character is magnificently embodied by Ron Perlman. I really have never seen a comic book character so perfectly captured on the screen as Perlman’s Hellboy. His big red demon-punching, cigar-chomping, cat-loving paranormal investigator is truly a unique creation. Mike Mignola, the creator and writer-illustrator of the Hellboy comics gets a huge amount of credit for that, but it is Perlman who brings the lovable guy to big-screen life.

What else is good about the movie? The fish-man Abe Sapien gets a lot more screen-time than in the first flick, which is great. Selma Blair is terrific as the pyroteknic Liz Sherman — tough and extremely adorable. One of the mainstays of the comic who was absent from the first flick, the gaseous medium Johann Krauss, is introduced here. Of all the characters, his is the most changed from his comic-book counterpart — or, at least, the way I always pictured the character. He’s a lot more aggressive and by-the-book here (in contrast to the impulsive Hellboy). But, despite those changes, I really loved the character in the film. The “clickety-clack” constant motion of his costume (a sort of hazmat-looking containment suit for his ghostly form) really brings the character to life, as does the bizarre voice given him by Seth MacFarlane (whose vocal stylings you might recognize from almost every character on Family Guy).

And the creature effects — WOW. There are dozens upon dozens of beautiful, bizarre, wonderful fantasy creatures on display in this film, and they really bring to life the fantasy world that Hellboy inhabits. My favorite new creature is the Angel of Death that Hellboy & co. encounter towards the end of the film. Its an incredibly creepy character, one totally unlike anything I’ve ever seen on screen before, and its brought to vivid life by Doug Jones (who also plays Abe Sapien). Also adding to my appreciation of the character is the way its featured in a pivotal scene that reminds us that Hellboy is a demon fated to bring about the destruction of the world. This time its Hellboy’s friends who are presented with the question of whose side they should be on — that is, whether they should try to save their friend, even though they know about his destiny. Remember what I wrote above about enjoying melancholy moments? Great stuff.

Is there some not-so perfect stuff to be found in the film? As in the first flick, there is. A few of the comedic scenes (such as a mid-movie drinking scene) didn’t quite land with me. And I thought that Hellboy was a bit too over-the-top self-absorbed at the start of the film (a plot device to start him bickering with Liz Sherman) — I mean, putting her toothbrush in a can of cat-food? A bit too silly.

BUT, over-all, the film is really terrific. I never expected there to be a sequel to the first film…and frankly, I never really felt that film NEEDED a sequel. But now that one has arrived, I’d love to see a third installment. Del Toro will be busy for the next five-or-so years working on the two-movie adaptation of The Hobbit with Peter Jackson…but maybe when he’s done he’ll gather the troops for a return visit to Hellboy? I certainly hope so.

Coming up next week…The Dark Knight! Can’t wait.

I had a rare two-days off from my summer job last week, and so I of course took the opportunity to go see a whole bunch of new movies currently playing in theatres. I had a lot of fun, but I must report that everything I saw was pretty solidly mediocre.

The Happening — Its not as horrendous as all the reviewers say it is. But its still pretty bad. Boy, what happened to the film-maker who made The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs??? After The Village and Lady in the Water, this is the third straight bust for Shyamalan. There are definitely a few good moments, and I sort of like the environmental theme that Shyamalan was shooting for. But not only is the film not remotely scary — its downright boring. After the first 15 minutes, you have a pretty good idea of what’s going on, and the whole rest of the movie just repeats the cycle of the characters running…meeting people…those people die…they run some more…they meet some other people…those people die…and on and on. Not exactly a nail-biter.

Hancock — Somewhere in here is a good movie about an angry, misanthropic super-hero. This isn’t it. The movie tries to paint Will Smith’s Hancock as a scoundrel in the early going, but its clear from the start that he has a heart of gold, so there’s no real arc to the character. Surprise surprise, he turns out to be a good guy after all. Shocker. As with The Happening, there are some fun moments to be found. Some of Hancock’s antics in the first 30 minutes are amusing, and there’s a great sequence about two-thirds of the way into the film when an adversary appears to battle Hancock in the middle of the city that suddenly had me involved in the movie again. But its over far too quickly, as are all moments of conflict in the film. One gets the sense that the film-makers were falling all over themselves to make this a “family” film, up to and including the really quite laughable happy ending for all. Oh, and just the fact that there’s a joke over the end credits about how Hancock’s super-hero costume is a total knock-off of Wolverine’s from the X-Men movies doesn’t allow me to ignore or forgive the fact that HANCOCK’S SUPER-HERO COSTUME IS A TOTAL KNOCK-OFF OF WOLVERINE’S FROM THE X-MEN MOVIES!!! Lame.

Wanted — Like Hancock, here’s another example of an idea with real teeth that, whether intentionally or not, has become a completely de-fanged, neutered film. Wanted is based on a graphic novel by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones that is gleefully violent and a little bit perverse, about a world where a band of super-villains secretly defeated all the heroes and took over the world back in 1986. The main character is Wesley, who discovers that his father was a major super-villain who has just been assasinated…and the story follows Wesley’s journey to become a super-villain himself. The movie excises all references to super-heroes and super-villains, and makes the story about a group of assassins. I was disappointed in that decision. But even worse is that these assasins are NOT bad-guys, like the villains of the comics. No, these assasins are really GOOD guys, only killing people who are evil and need to be taken out for the greater good. And thus, the central idea of the comic — that its a story all about the BAD GUYS — is totally washed away. How sad. As with the two above flicks, there is plenty of entertainment to be had here, don’t get me wrong. The action sequences are phenomenal (albeit preposterous), and there are a couple of moments when the film manages to capture the anarchic soul of the comic (such as the scene in which Wesley quits his day job). But far too much of the flick is just dumb action-movie silliness.

I sure did have fun watching these big dumb movies, but I would have really loved it had any of them seemed to exhibit a bit more intelligence. I’m not discouraged, though…these May/June flicks are just warming up audiences for the fun ahead of us in July. The next three weeks see the opening of three movies that I am desperately waiting to see: Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Dark Knight, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe. I can’t wait!

It’s still got a dumb title, but holy cow the trailer for the next Bond film is awesome:

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/quantum-of-solace/26922/main

Please please please let the bad-guy organization be Spectre!!!

Also, if Bond is taking things personally, Felix had better keep his eyes open for any shark tanks…