The X Factor

Ding dong, the summer movie season is done.

Thank Gwyneth.

Don’t get it twisted: I very much enjoyed taking sides in the two superhero civil wars that we got to witness (Team Marvel, though). It was a blast to see Ralph Fiennes create A Bigger Splash in a supporting turn none of us should soon forget; ditto to watch how director Justin Lin reset things to take Star Trek Beyond (and how he set certain shots to create a surprisingly immersive experience). I also wholeheartedly bought Andy Samberg as a Popstar, then, in rapid fashion, forgot all about his Never Stop Never Stopping.

Oh yes – I’m doing a fire sale. Why? Because I honestly didn’t feel like the lot of the stuff I saw was worth spending hours thinking up s--- to write for the sake of writing, knowwhatImean. Except for A Bigger Splash, but oh well...hindsight.

I mean, Independence Day: Resurgence? It was big and loud and unfocused, and made me think of the original as grand cinema. And I guess The Nice Guys were kinda cool (OK, the chemistry between Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling was pretty palpable, but their story meandered and went off the rails during the second half, no?), and The Shallows was an intensely serviceable time at the beach, albeit one that jarringly flirted with the absurd and the pandering.

Blake Lively’s lean girl-against-shark yarn fared infinitely better than the uninventive, unengaging hodgepodge that was Suicide Squad, though, and she did kinda outshine Woody Allen’s stunningly photographed, yet hopeless Café Society. Only bright spot in that whole mess.

Speaking of quote-unquote grown-up options – almost done with this train of thought – Meryl Streep’s bad Florence Foster Jenkins singing was piercingly divine, but I am not about to sing her praises in the name of a potential record 20th Academy Award nod. Not until the heavy hitters of fall and the Decemberists make their mark, anyway.

All this to say you gotta catch Sully.

Politics aside, Clint Eastwood generally succeeds at making audiences use their heads to think about what they’re seeing and their hearts to feel for whom they’re watching up on that silver screen, and he excels at it with his take on the Jan. 15, 2009, “Miracle on the Hudson.” You know, the real-life feat of heroism whereby Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger – portrayed here by Tom Hanks, in a performance worthy of, at least, an Oscar nod – and how he incredibly saved the lives of the 154 other people on board his LaGuardia-to-Charlotte US Airways flight, after a flock of geese knocked out both of the plane’s engines.

Eastwood takes the subtle, yet informatively propulsive script by Todd Komarnicki (who based it on Highest Duty, the tome co-authored by Sullenberger in the ordeal’s aftermath), and delivers a film that doesn’t give up all the goodies you wanna see upfront à la Flight. Instead, the filmmaker parses the profound enormity of Sully & Co.’s circumstances – btw, Aaron Eckhart is pretty stellar in a supporting turn as Jeff Skiles, Sullenberger’s first officer and co-pilot that fateful day – with the help of a non-linear narrative that clues us in on the career pilot’s earned prowess...and ramps up to a sustained what-happened-up-in-the-air moment.

Sully is quietly engrossing. I mean, it’s quite som’in’ to go into a movie about a plane crash and see nothing like, explode. And that’s what makes this film special because it truly is a story about survival, as well as an essential account of American compassion. When Sullenberger’s plane hit the frigid Hudson, anyone who could sprung into action to get the frightened passengers to warm safety.

No joke, I got seriously misty watching the sequence because it was as if I was watching America embrace those who need it most.

Now, Sully is a film. One that beautifully captures a deed worth celebrating, and that shines a light on the investigation that inevitable had to follow the incident. The National Transportation Safety Board, as embodied by a hardass Mike O’Malley and a smug Jamey Sheridan, is the antagonist here – but y’ know, those guys, the real-life ones, they were doing their job...so I use the word with a caveat. Eastwood certainly seems to have gone to great lengths not to vilify them, so, in that regard, it all comes down to Hanks, and the actor doesn’t go for the jugular.

Not his style.

The two-time Oscar winner does portray Sullenberger with the utmost dignity, and if you think that he is taking some pleasure when the questioning of his actions comes to a head, well then, perhaps, that’s on you. However, what I will put on Eastwood and Komarnicki is not finding a more interesting use for Laura Linney, a three-time Oscar nominee, who, as Lorraine Sullenberger, only can prop up Hanks’ performance via heartfelt phone conversations.

There also was an observation I wanted to make about Eastwood’s treatment of the media circus that ensued at the time – nearly imperceptible jabs I may have imagined, to be honest – but that would be taking more away from Sully, and that man deserves that this particular moment be all about him because without him, we’d be having a much different discussion. (But Eastwood has gone out there and talked to chairs for the media-thirsty GOP, so...look out.) And I will say two more things.

First, we need more movies like this one. Too often we get movies about wartime heroes (like Eastwood’s own American Sniper), and those can be awesome, but they always involve death. This one’s about life.

Second, maybe, now the director and Hanks can find a project on which they can reunite with Linney and prop her up, for a change?

Just a thought.

My Rating ***1/2

Photo: HollywoodReporter.com.

Live Food

You guys. You have to see Sausage Party at the movies this weekend...and you gotta promise you’re gonna laugh.

If you don’t, then, trust, you’re a special kind of humorless dolt.

This is some funny s---.

From the moment earlier this summer that I saw the trailer for this Seth Rogen-co-produced-and-co-written computer-animated comedy co-directed by first-timer Greg Tiernan and animation vet Conrad Vernon – about celebrity-voiced supermarket food who get to pondering their reason for being and their destiny – I just knew. I knew that this...this was gonna be unlike anything I’d seen before, plus hilarious (highlarious?) and surprisingly deep.

Which – whaddya know – it is.

I boldly will even go as far as to say that this is Top 10 material for 2016. If anything, Sausage Party is the best party of the year.

So suck on that, donkeys and elephants. You wish.

Featuring an all-star cast of funny character people (including leading lady Kristen Wiig and key in-on-the-joke-yet-thoroughly committed supporting players like Jonah Hill; Bill Hader; Michael Cera; Danny McBride, from HBO’s Vice Principals; Craig Robinson, from TV’s The Office; Paul Rudd; Edward Norton; and Salma Hayek), the film zeroes in on hot dog sausage Frank (Rogen), one of the many dwellers of the Shopwell's store who is eagerly awaiting to be picked by a god – i.e., a human – so he can move on to what he and his call The Great Beyond.

Little do they know.

Frank, as he would, sits near a package of buns that contains the object of his affection, a knowingly flirty, yet virginal lass named Brenda Bunson who’s expertly brought to life by Wiig. Their pure-kismet relationship, as written and as played, is beautifully and raunchily chronicled, ups and downs and all. Like double entendres and this material, sausage and bun, they were made for each other, and so were Frank and Brenda. If only they could finally come together to fulfill the plan for their lives....

Lucky for them, one day a god decides it’s like, their turn to live happily ever after, right – except what awaits them is a painfully WTF eye-opening reality-check moment filled with torture, certain death, and definite death at the mouth of a merciless, hungry deity.

Oh yeah. Rogen and his fellow writers (Evan Goldberg, his longtime friend and collaborator among ’em) haven’t delivered simply a laugh riot but a rich and complex and layered story about survival that is, somehow, phenomenally told through the eyes of the food we eat.

These who’d-had-thunk-it characters fully mirror and echo our own differences and similarities, not to mention our fears and insecurities. There’s a warring bagel (Norton) and a lavash (David Krumholtz), who find common ground only in their shared love of hummus. A gay twinkie. A pining lesbian taco (Hayek). An old bottle of Firewater (Hader), who dispenses wisdom. Several helpless baby carrots. And a veritable douche (Nick Kroll) of a villain dead-set on making Frank suffer for getting in the way of penetrating boldly territory the way he’s been lusting about for ages. Needless to say, it is a hoot and a half to watch them work as a team to avoid succumbing to a god that doesn’t hold the fate they were promised at all, and stand up to that douche en masse.

They make it look so easy, it kinda makes you wonder why we can’t figure it out, already.

At its core, Sausage Party is a love story, but it’s also David and Goliath...an enlightened simplification of current human affairs and conflict...an adventure that cheekily tips its hat to all that inspired it (you will have a grand ol’ time spotting a number of cinematic references)...and the most human examination of modern interaction I’ve seen committed to the silver screen in a while.

You will laugh (and laugh and laugh). You’ll get sad (ish).

You’ll be disturbed (James Franco lends his talent to a twisted scene involving bath salts and an unavoidable accident that gives the food an advantage over man), and you’ll go, “oh boy.” A lot.

You won’t necessarily believe your eyes (especially when Frank & Co. redefine your concept of food porn), but you won’t be able to avert them, either.

Most of all, you will be sooo glad you RSVPd to this shindig.

It really is one for the books.

My Rating ****

Photo: Columbia Pictures.

In from the Cold

He wastes zero seconds taking his shirt off and knocking out an opponent. His chest is hard, his tummy beyond-taut, and his punch.... My, his punch? It packs a wallop (as it always did).

Of course, at this stage in the summer I’m talking about Jason Bourne, who, as portrayed by Matt Damon, still has it going on, alright. His hair, much like the star’s, might have greyed a touch since we got The Bourne Ultimatum nine years ago, but the once-amnesiac spy’s instincts and flair for survival are as on point as ever.

So is Jason Bourne, for that matter – but then again.

This third collaboration between director Paul Greengrass and Damon in a franchise spawned by a sleeper hit back in 2002 is testament to the power of this filmmaking duo. By now we all know that Damon would not reprise this role without Greengrass at the helm (ergo Jeremy Renner’s The Bourne Legacy), so this movie is very much a labor of love. An end, as I will explain in a moment, but also a beginning, yet, more pressingly, also fairly status quo.

Damon and Greengrass, they make good action movies together – but I can see the wires in their latest effort. Bourne’s still having trouble remembering his past, so the plot at hand begins to illuminate more secrets for him as it plucks him from his off-the-grid loner life, which he spends taking part in dusty illegal fights out in the middle of nowhere in Greece.

Meanwhile, a cadre of people chases the guy all over the world on the command of CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones), an old hat who really wants the rogue assassin eliminated once and for all, lest he learn more about the program that made him who he is or about the new and, ahem, improved course of action the agency has embraced since he exposed its practices almost a decade ago. Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl) joins in on the fun as a tech-savvy new hat Heather Lee, a complex upstart in a male-dominated world who plays it close to the vest and who, in the end, represents a new dawn at the CIA. (The gender politics at hand between Jones’ character and Vikander’s are a bit of a throwback-y hoot to watch.)

Not a spoiler: It all ends with a signature shaky car chase through the Vegas Strip and with Damon and Vincent Cassel beating the living s--- outta each other because A) you have seen the trailers for Jason Bourne and B) of course and duh, Cassel’s part is one that requires a good ass-whoopin’. Just be like, grateful I haven’t touched upon the fate of Julia Stiles’ also-returning Nicky Parsons because I have a theory about women and age and job security vis-à-vis the needs of the story that, honestly, is a conversation best had in another format and within the proper context. Not to mention, to say little to nothing of the subplot that links a Silicon Valley social-media unicorn (Riz Ahmed, from HBO’s The Night Of) to the CIA that’s quite of the times (I don’t want to get into a conspiracy theory because that aspect of the movie was really scary).

Look. I love that we have Jason Bourne and that we got Jason Bourne as two of its key powers that be intended it to come to be.

Jason Bourne is my James Bond, and I am super-thrilled Damon and Greengrass have claimed proud ownership of his journey. However, with this one they make it clear that, while they can still deliver that which we’ve grow to love and anticipate, a little innovation won’t hurt in the future. Perhaps, they should pull a Tom Cruise and call upon a new director to freshen things up?

They def ought to stand clear of any further yarns that require that Damon & Co. read or connect or get info from mobile devices because that’s sooo boring to watch up on a silver screen.

Bourne is larger than life, but, somehow, this movie often feels as though it is asking that we appreciate it the way we do something we see on Facebook: narrowly.

We were Bourne for grand(er).

My Rating **1/2

Photo: Universal Pictures.

Girls Trump Ghouls

The all-female Ghostbusters is finally here, ladies and gentlemen, and lemme say this one’s an essential summer comedy.

Not because this Paul Feig-directed offering is particularly original; it couldn’t be, since it’s the reboot of a basically sacrosanct 1984 example of cool and funny. However, the thing that makes this a must is its cast.

You know ’em all. They are all ace stars, and, yes, four of them are women. And that’s just fine – and necessary, especially in this day and age in America, when sociopolitical events have made it clear we are melting pot in theory, not in practice. By which I mean we are flush with a variety of colors and tastes and points of view, but only some are constantly being meaningfully and exemplarily represented, and perish anyone who dares go against the grain.

The blockbuster reunites erstwhile Bridesmaids Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig, and teams them up with SNL’s Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, who fully channels Jim Carrey to establish herself as that kind of comedian, OKRRR. To politicize the movie beyond the Hollywood arena would be pointless, but not to highlight its merits would be sorta dangerous, not to mention unfair to young girls everywhere craving some new fictional role models.

Without a doubt, the goal for Feig and screenwriter Katie Dippold (The Heat) and their leads – including Chris Hemsworth, who makes the scene and tries his bestest to steal some as the Ghostbusters’ dim but H-O-T receptionist – was to say to the world, look, girls are badass...so why couldn’t they bust some ghosts, too. After all, anything men can do, women can do better – right?

In that regard, the filmmakers strike gold. As next-gen Ghostbusters, the actresses play off one another with gusto. Three of the characters already share a connection when we meet ’em, in that McCarthy’s Dr. Abby Yates and Wiig’s Erin Gilbert were college buds, if memory serves, and wrote a poorly received book that sought to prove the existence of the paranormal. After the reviews came in, Gilbert and Yates fell out of touch; the former, a tightly wound-type, distanced herself in order to become a professor at Columbia, while the latter, a looser spirit, kept on pushing the matter at a technical college with invaluable engineering assists from McKinnon’s Dr. Jillian Holtzmann, a sexual cypher (but not really) wrapped in eccentricity and speed (that chick can come up with anti-ghoul weaponry fast).

Jones’ Patty Tolan, a New York City-savvy MTA worker, joins the trio after she has a scary close encounter down in the subway tunnels, and her street smarts prove an indispensable addition to the quest to rid Manhattan of a rising phantom menace.

Dippold weaves in and out the female-on-female-on-female-on-female interaction with incredible ease so as not to belabor the dynamic. She sprinkles a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek callbacks to the Ivan Reitman-helmed original and allows room for cameos by the OG galore. She even got in these elaborate exchanges in which the girls seem to echo the conversations they probably had to have (and endure) on the road to rebooting this property.

For my money, it all mostly work (Fall Out Boy and Missy Elliott’s new take on the Ghostbusters theme does not, though). Feig’s action pieces are over-the-top CGI proton-pack spectacles that see the women bump up and down, all over that silver screen.

The magic of the original cannot be duplicated, however, and that’s the shame here. Special effects are so advanced these days, what was innovative then can’t help but come of as quite silly now. And you know what – I would argue that the young’uns, they sooo deserved a heroic foursome they could claim all their own.

My Rating ***

Photo: Columbia Pictures.

More Than They Registered For

Mike and Dave Need Weddings Dates, and you’ve gots to check out how they go about gettin’ ’em for a good time.

For real.

A harmless, yet edgy trifle for the millennial set starring the minor-superstar comedic stylings of Zac Efron; Anna Kendrick; the invaluable Adam Devine, Kendrick’s Pitch Perfect co-star; and Aubrey Plaza, who up until this point you probably remember best from TV’s Parks and Recreation, this Hawaii-set story was inspired by a legit pair of brothers who turned to Craigslist to meet young ladies they could take to their cousin’s wedding. From what I understand, the filmmakers, including the director of HBO’s 7 Days in Hell and the two main writers of the Neighbors franchise, stuck close to fact for the movie’s first act, even sending Devine’s Mike Stangle and Efron’s Dave Stangle to The Wendy Williams Show.

Oh, wait – that didn’t happen. Totally does in the movie, though.

It should have happened in real life, right?

Anyway. Hilarity obviously ensues (thanks to Plaza’s vixenish Tatiana, who is like, the embodiment of modern-day deadpan, very much like the actress herself) – and how could it not with a hot summer release date and a game cast that features Sugar Lyn Beard, a rib-busting Canadian little import who beyond-resembles celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson, steals scenes with the ease of a Zach Galifianakis or an Isla Fisher, and who earlier this week had a big moment on Comedy Central’s Another Period. In one of, I hope, many deviations from real life, Beard plays the guys’ sister.

So...the funny. It comes from the girls. Surprise, surprise.

I mean, the brothers bring it, of course – but the girls are the instigators, as is their wont, and that’s why Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates works. Because it’s an ensemble.

See, Tatiana and Kendrick’s Alice aren’t exactly the kind of good, wholesome girls Mike and Dave’s family commanded they bring to the wedding in order to stay out of trouble, which the guys never fail to bring to family gatherings. All four are...I hesitate to call them damaged goods....

Got it: They're perfectly imperfect (such a now thing to say).

Mike and Dave are not boys, not yet men; the former’s not as good-looking and he knows it thanks to their father, and the latter still hasn’t settled on a career path (words from dad seem to suggest Dave’s comeliness should have route him). Meanwhile, Alice is in a sad romantic rut after almost getting her happy ending, and Tatiana, programmed to be a badass, has made a habit out of being careless with delicate people.

Add alcohol and you get a combustion: Exactly the opposite of what the brothers were supposed to gift their bride sister.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates concerns itself with more than delivering the laughs that would come from the arrangement that binds this foursome; it also delves, albeit here and there, with the disappointment that comes with it. The guys are not thrilled when they discover the girls were simply using them for a free vacay. Further exploring that malaise would have changed the tone of the movie, but, Efron, especially, fails to sink his teeth into that feeling (instead, bf showcases his accents, to try to make jokes funnier, I guess). It is high time he starts giving himself more credit than that and cut it out with the projects that require his goes shirtless. All of that is hot, but it grows old fast, and it will get old. Then what? Good for Devine, for effectively connecting with the silly and the humanity of his character, and for Kendrick and Plaza, who overcome trashy styling (that hair, Anna!) to own their vulnerabilities and their #boss-ness.

Look, this ain’t Shakespeare, OKRRR. It’s Wedding Crashers: The Call Is Coming from Inside the Party, and that’s just fine. And fun.

My Rating ***

Photo: 20th Century Fox.

The Blue Tang Identity

A funny thing happened on my way to see Finding Dory.

See, for whatever reason, I couldn’t quite remember why I wanted to catch this sequel to the marvelous Oscar-winning underwater adventure Finding Nemo. There was a lot of reluctance in my step from the moment I went to get ready to leave my place.

For realsies, and I’m not trying to be smart here – this had nothing to do with how discombobulating the last few days have been. It just dawned on me, as I approached the multiplex, that I wasn’t as invested in or as excited about this follow-up as I should have been. As I once would have been. Mind you, it’s not that I didn’t welcome submerging into the world of cute fish seeking once again, but I guess it simply comes down to how the lead-up today was – for me – uneventful. Like, this film was not that big a must for me.

I reckon that’s mostly because I’m not anywhere near the same headspace I was 13 years ago when the original first came out, and that’s both good and bad: Yay for growing up, but nay – nay! – for almost going and losing grip of my sense of wonder. So thank you, Disney and Pixar, for doing what you do oh-so-well and for allowing me to reconnect with that feeling we all get from watching movies.

From watching your movies.

Finding Dory, in a reprise winningly starring the voice of Ellen DeGeneres as the forgetful blue tang, is both prequel and sequel. The story – which was painstakingly co-conceived and co-written by returning director Andrew Stanton – clues us into our title heroine’s past, her condition (you will recall, won’t you, that she suffers from short-term memory loss), and where she comes from, indeed. A year after she proved instrumental in helping clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks) find his son, Nemo (now voiced by newcomer Hayden Rolence), our girl is beginning to remember. All these bits and pieces about a beautiful past she once thought lost are starting to come back to her in deeply felt flashes, so she decides that she’s gotta find hers, y’ know.

After she manages to recollect where she hails from (the California coast!), she convinces Marlin to leave the safety of the Great Barrier Reef and join in on her journey toward self-discovery, lest she forget. The trio then embarks on another trip across the ocean with the great hope that Dory may be reunited with her origins, and, of course, she eventually becomes separated from Marlin and Nemo outside this Marine Life Institute seemingly governed by Sigourney Weaver (oh yeah: Recurring Gag Alert!) to which they were led by her fractured memories. At this juncture, at this place that rehabs, nurtures, or relocates marine life, the narrative splits, and Finding Dory becomes a proposition about finding a missing fish and about fish finding herself.

You may bet that Dory succeeds in her task, with the aid of her innate audacity, the much-needed sense of family her clownfish clan has brought into her life, and unflinching allies new (Ed O’Neil steals the show as Hank, an ornery septopus with dreams of solitude and three hearts of gold) and old...ish (Kaitlin Olson, from FXX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, pops up as a near-sighted whale shark who used to sort of know Dory as a child). Meanwhile, Marlin and Nemo, in their frantic attempt to locate their friend, come across a couple of sea lions (one voiced by Idris Elba) and a veritable loon named Becky (who does not have good hair).

Given that nostalgia is so right now, I say go see the impossibly vivid Finding Dory to catch up with old friends, with characters you met more than a decade ago, but stay to ride the wave of questions brought on by surprisingly thought-provoking plot. You may end up considering if one can keep swimming without knowing why?

For my part, I shall try to answer by taking in the dear advice: What would Dory do? It’s more than a catchphrase. It’s wisdom.

My Rating ***1/2

Photo: Walt Disney Studios.

OG Mutant in Revolt

No end and no beginning....

Those lyrics by Madonna came to mind almost immediately upon leaving the theater, having properly kicked off the summer season – so sowy, Captain America et al., and Batman and Superman! – by catching X-Men: Apocalypse, the threequel to the prequel-sequel-movie-with-the-mequel. Y’ know (don’t act like you don’t), the second Bryan Singer-directed follow-up to 2011’s X-Men: First Class (the first being X-Men: Days of Future Past, which opened two Memorial Day weekends ago).

But why – why did that particular thought cross my mind?

Because, as the seminal and successful franchise stands, the future participation of new-gen stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence is completely up in the air (all three were contracted for a reboot trilogy), yet that of next-gen X-Men like Sophie Turner (HBO’s Game of Thrones), Mud’s Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), Alexandra Shipp (she played Aaliyah for Lifetime), and newcomer Lana Condor – who respectively join the action as young Jean Grey, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Jubilee – is all but assured.

Also, because Simon Kinberg’s screenplay allows for quite the neat resolution to the destructo-drama that Oscar Isaac’s villain of the title brings about – no spoiler, since, after all, his character is named Apocalypse. Trust me, folks, to say this doesn’t constitute a betrayal. You don’t really believe that the mythical OG mutant the actor portrays – or tries to under a beyond-misguided, if necessary thicket of purple-ish blue make-up and armor like – comes out on top, right?

If you do, I have a bridge I’d like to talk to you about.

While it gets thisclose, the end of the world doesn’t take to be in this one, ’cause of the X-Men – although a heckuva lot of collateral damage is produced. Most of our young heroes live to see the rest of the ’80s (the action picks up in 1983, a decade after the events of the last blockbuster), and all is well on Earth, at least until the post-credits scene gets to rollin’ and you get to wonderin’ again).

X-Men Apocalypse has great strengths and greater weaknesses. It wisely gives J. Law’s Mystique a leadership role to sink her teeth into, albeit reluctantly, before she realizes who Apocalypse is or that he has awoken from a millennia-long slumber – a smart move that makes us think of Katniss Everdeen. It effectively introduces a new crop of X-Men that swiftly and somewhat smoothly becomes ready for battle (and good at it, too); Turner, in particular, is a standout. It even throws it back to First Class by giving us more Rose Byrne, whose CIA agent Moira MacTaggert becomes a grounding, welcome sight for sore eyes (an abundance of pop-y-colored visual effects will do that to ya) even if she’s made to repeat clumsy exposition, if memory serves.

Plus, there’s a sharp cameo at the halfway point everyone’s gonna love.

What’s cringe-worthy is how truly indistinctive the bad guy turns out to be – no fault of Isaac, for I am sure it wasn’t his idea to style the peacock, not to mention the character, to within an inch of his immortal life.

Potentially interesting baddies like Olivia Munn’s Psylocke and Ben Hardy’s Angel are treated like stock, barely uttering any dialogue and clearly in it to win it through sheer CGI-aided athleticism. (Actually, few characters handle the dialogue.)

To say that X-Men: Apocalypse is uneven would be obvious. It’s clear that, overall, this trio of movies has been better, much more thoughtfully conceived; the relationships among McAvoy’s Professor X and Lawrence’s badass shapeshifter and the Fass’s Holocaust-survivor Magneto have been a treat of intricate conflict that have chronicled actual growth. Ditto that this one’s just a tad overstuffed.

At least three storylines worthy of expansion compete against one another, what with Mystique out on her own in the world, rescuing oppressed mutants and Magneto trying to assimilate to regular Joe life with tragic results, and, of course, Apocalypse rising and the professor and his gifted pupils setting out to stop him (again, keep your eye on a certain redhead).

And at least one theme could have been further explored: feminism. Given that the powerful women in this are the ones to respect.

At face value, X-Men: Apocalypse is too much and, surprisingly, all fine and dandy. Just take it for what it is and you will enjoy. Fingers crossed, Singer, Kinberg & Co. will learn from their indulgences (Evan Peters is back as Quicksilver) and – paging Ms. Turner – triumphantly deliver the streamlined Jean Grey-centric new entry we all want in a few years.

My Rating **1/2

Photo: 20th Century Fox.