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Fantastic Four

After a lot of bad buzz, Fantastic Four hits the screen with hopes of generating some good oldfashioned summer blockbuster magic here in August. The movie summer is officially dead. It has been punched in the neck. I seriously doubt it will get any blockbuster air back in its lungs after this one. Yes, the Marvel franchises have had a few misfires in the past. Daredevil, Ghost Rider and its sequel, the Amazing Spider-Man films and, of course, the two—actually three, counting Roger Corman’s never released effort—Fantastic Four movies. Those films blew, but they had some sort of coherence to their badness. Director Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four is nothing short of the most epic of discombobulated cinematic messes. It’s as if the people who wrote, directed and edited this thing never talked to each other about what they were doing with the material. Get ready for another origin story. This one goes way back to when Reed Richards was a little kid making teleporters in his garage with tin foil and his scrappy pal, Ben Grimm. It then jumps ahead to a high school science fair, where Reed (Miles Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) are being mischievous. Their teleporter causes a basketball backboard to blow up so, naturally, Reed gets a full scholarship to the prestigious Baxter Institute. Reed spends his school days working for Dr. Franklin Storm (a completely terrible Reg E. Cathey). Storm’s adopted daughter Sue (a detached Kate Mara) assists Reed in making a bigger version of his science project, as does Storm’s son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) after he crashes his car and is forced to help out by

his pop. Reed’s team also includes the rebellious Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), and that last name should be a red flag, right? When NASA and a gum-chewing Tim Blake Nelson look to take over their project, a drunken Reed and his boys, including Ben, decide to try out the teleporter thing, and they wind up in another dimension on Planet Zero by Bob Grimm (the Negative Zone in the comics). This is a dimension where everything is dull and gray, bgrimm@ laid out as if somebody had intended to make newsreview.com a 3-D movie but pulled the plug and went 2-D when they realized the film was piss. 1 Things go wrong, Victor gets left on Planet Zero, and the Fantastic Four is born when everybody returns all fantastically screwed up. Sue, who stayed behind at the lab, still gets transformed because she gets hit with blue light from the teleporter thing, proving my theory that a blue light bath from a teleporter thing often results in controllable invisibility. So Sue is invisible sometimes, Johnny is the flammable Human Torch, Ben Grimm is the rock pile The Thing, and Reed is the stretchy guy. Mind you, very little action with these powers actually takes place. The film doesn’t even really allow the characters to acknowledge what has happened to them. It’s a leaden build up to an even more leaden, tackedon finale. Trank made a recent public statement implying that the studio hijacked his film, and the movie we’re seeing is not really his vision. Given how disjointed this film feels, I’d be inclined to believe him, although his Chronicle was nothing to get all that excited about. I’m not of the belief that, had Trank been left untethered for the entire production, the movie would’ve been any good. I do believe it might’ve been less heinously awful. Apart from the terrible acting, dung heap dialogue, and plot problems, this movie possesses some of the worst special effects and makeup you will ever see in a modern big studio picture. For terrible makeup, look no further than Von Doom after he transforms on Planet Zero. He looks like a seventh-grader who tried to make a C-3PO costume out of melted silver Crayola crayons, then, while mushing the thing together, was introduced to low-grade meth. Stan Lee doesn’t do a real cameo in Fantastic Four, and he shows up in almost all of these things. When Stan Lee doesn’t show up, you’ve been disavowed. This film deserves to be disavowed. Ω

"Please! Mister Fantastic was my father's name. You can call me fired." 1

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3Ant-Man After a shocking directorial exodus and a series of rewrites, Marvel’s Ant-Man makes it to the screen as a reasonably enjoyable piece of summer fare thanks to the total charmer playing the title character. Paul Rudd is Scott Lang, a wisecracking professional thief given a new lease on life when Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) shows him the wonders of his incredible shrinking suit. Rudd was given the job by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), who left the film as its director after working on the project for years. While Wright still gets an executive producer credit and some writing credit, Peyton Reed (Yes Man), a virtual stranger to big budget blockbusters, wound up at the helm with a script rewrite from Adam McKay and Rudd himself. Reed does a good—although not outstanding—job in Wright’s place. The framework for the movie plays it mighty safe, with an emphasis on family viewing and very little of the offbeat touches that are the hallmark of a Wright affair. Still, Rudd is great as the title character, and some of the shrinking sequences are a blast.

3The Gift Joel Edgerton writes, directs and stars in this capable thriller about the perils of bullying and moving back to your home state. Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall play Simon and Robin, a married couple returning to California where Simon has a new job. While shopping for throw pillows, they run into Gordo (Edgerton), a high school pal that Simon doesn’t seem to remember at first. Gordo goes out of his way to welcome the new couple, dropping by the house uninvited, stocking their pond with fish and basically creeping out Simon. As the film progresses, more is revealed about Simon, his past with Gordo, and his current dishonesty. Bateman, who usually opts for more comedic roles, is very good as a man who thinks he has control of his domain, and thinks he can get away with habitual fibbing. Hall is terrific as the wife who can’t help but feel a little sorry for Gordo. Edgerton is creepy and, somehow, sympathetic as the strange man of the past who wants Simon to remember him in the worst way. Edgerton shows that he can write a screenplay with some good twists, direct it so there are plenty of surprises, and act it so that it’s good and scary. A true triple threat.

3Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt. This time around, he’s hanging from airplanes, performing overly long tasks underwater, and riding a motorcycle again. Everything he does is in service of a convoluted plot involving some sort of evil syndicate of international agents. All sorts of nationalities are in on the evil, but the United Kingdom is especially nasty in this one, giving the whole thing a little bit of a James Bond vibe. Simon Pegg’s role is increased this time out, his computer analyst guy becoming Hunt’s sidekick. Newcomer to the series Alec Baldwin gets a couple of good scenes as the CIA guy trying to eradicate Hunt’s agency. Rebecca Ferguson is impressive as an English agent who may or may not be a villain and, yes, is quite decent-looking in a bikini. Jeremy Renner is around to crack wise as he messes with Baldwin’s character, while Ving Rhames still gets to collect a paycheck. As for Emilio Estevez, sadly, he’s still dead after his elevator accident in the first film. This is my least favorite M:I yet, but it’s still a good film. Things feel a little by-the-numbers, but Cruise is a crazy bastard willing to go all out for his movies, and this installment is no exception. The dude is nuts, and we, the movie-viewing public, benefit from this.

4Mr. Holmes Ian McKellen is shockingly good as the infamous Sherlock Holmes in this decidedly unorthodox twist on the sleuth’s story. McKellen plays him as an aging man in his 90s, fighting memory loss and struggling to recall the details of a case that caused him to walk away from the detective life. He does this on an estate accompanied by his housekeeper (a typically wonderful Laura Linney), her son (the charming Milo Parker) and his bees. The film features flashbacks to 20 years earlier (which has McKellen playing somewhere in the vicinity of his actual age), with Holmes trying to remember the circumstances involving a beautiful woman, her husband and a Japanese man. Things are a little slow-going at first, but when the pieces all get put together, it’s a nice payoff. Director Bill Condon (miles away from his pitiful stint on the Twilight series) has made a film full of sumptuous visuals, splendid acting and good humor. McKellen plays Holmes as a dignified, if sometimes nasty, older man who never wore that silly hat or smoked that huge pipe. In an interesting twist, his character is actually world famous and the subject of movies he considers garbage. The year has been a little light on great performances so far. McKellen’s is certainly one of them. His interactions with Linney and Parker are classically good. Condon and McKellen worked together before (Gods and Monsters). This stands as a much welcomed reunion.

3Southpaw This is one of the better boxing movies in many years. Jake Gyllenhaal transforms himself as Billy Hope, a boxer at the top of the world with a beautiful wife (Rachel McAdams) and daughter (Oona Laurence). He loses everything, Rocky V style, and must fight for redemption and the custody of his child. Forest Whitaker plays Billy’s unorthodox trainer, reminiscent of the role Burgess Meredith played in the Rocky films. Yes, I’m comparing this movie to Rocky in many ways because it is clear director Antoine Fuqua draws much of his inspiration from that series. Gyllenhaal, like Robert De Niro in Raging Bull before him, put himself through a rigorous training process to become a convincing fighter, and he certainly looks the part in the ring. Out of the ring, Billy mumbles a lot, which makes sense considering the amount of blows he’s taken to the head. It’s a typically great performance from Gyllenhaal, who rises above the moments where the script becomes a little too conventional. Laurence, who’s reminiscent of a young Natalie Wood, does strong work as the daughter who has to put up with a dad who can’t seem to get his act together.

3Trainwreck The hilarious Amy Schumer gets her first starring vehicle with a screenplay she wrote under the directorial tutelage of Judd Apatow and costarring Bill Hader. I would say this movie signals the arrival of Schumer as a cinematic force to be reckoned with. She plays Amy, a magazine writer playing the field in New York and doing it rather sloppily. When she’s assigned a story covering a sports medicine doctor (Hader), she unexpectedly falls for the guy, which puts into flux her whole plan to just fool around with a lot of people. Schumer has crafted a pretty run-of-the-mill romantic comedy plotline with her screenplay, peppered with sometimes beautifully shocking profanity. She shows that she has the ability to nail the laughs, but she can also bring the emotional stuff, too. She has a funeral scene that is, dare I say, sublime. Hader is his always-terrific self as the shell-shocked boyfriend just trying to bring some stability into Amy’s life, and Colin Quinn is terrific as her retirement home-dwelling father. The story is a little weak and predictable, but Schumer and Hader are awesome together, so that makes this very much worthwhile.

5Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp One of the summer’s best bets isn’t even in theaters, but gracing Netflix. David Wain and Michael Showalter have finally birthed their Wet Hot American Summer prequel as an eight episode Netflix series, but I see it as a four-hour movie feast of dick fart humor. The film takes place in the same year (1981) as the camp in Wet Hot, but this time it’s the first day rather than the last day. Everybody has returned and there has been no effort to make the likes of Showalter, Janeane Garofalo, Bradley Cooper and Amy Poehler look any younger. (Paul Rudd, A.D. Miles and Michael Ian Black somehow look younger than they did in 2001.) New additions to the cast include Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm and Jason Schwartzman, and they make the day at Camp Firewood all the more special. Ken Marino’s character is even more of a virgin than he was in the original, and Christopher Meloni’s Gene the Cook is living a lie in a secret identity. (We also find out how his can of vegetables attained its voice.) Because it’s set in the 1980s, toxic waste, bad gym shorts and Weird Al Yankovic all play prominent roles. If you hated the original film, you will hate this, and I feel sorry for you. If you regard the original as one of the funniest movies ever made, as I now do, then this stuff is heaven, and we need more. New songs include the Pat Benatar-like “Heart Attack of Love” and Paul Rudd’s searing rendition of “Champagne Eyes.” (All eight episodes are available as a first-run series on Netflix.)

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