Today's Review: X-Men: Apocalypse

Still behind on all the stuff I wrote, but slowly gaining.

X-Men: Apocalypse - Recensie

'Third one is always the worst' says Jean Grey when leaving the theater after watching Return of the Jedi back in '83. She was right about that one, and conscious or unconscious (I doubt the writer intended for this movie to be the weakest in the second X-trilogy), she's also correct about X-Men: Apocalypse. However, also like Return of the Jedi, Apocalypse still is a whole lot of mutant fun for those who didn't expect the franchise to reach new heights anyway.

Granted, it's not the story that provides the mirth, since it's the stuff of repetition, variations on themes and lack of narrative evolution. Basically, another all-powerful mutant rears his head and threatens to destroy the world for mankind so that its stronger successors can take over. And once again, the X-Men, fighting for peace between man and mutant, must get together to stop this megalomaniacal scheme from becoming reality. This time, it's not Magneto who has hatched the diabolical plan, but rather a 5,000 year old ideological predecessor, an ancient Egyptian once worshiped as a god, with the modern moniker Apocalypse. Magneto, once more masterfully performed by Michael Fassbender, merely provides some muscle to help Oscar Isaac's semi-god with his evil shenanigans. Isaac does a decent job playing an age old villain, but he's no Fassbender and his Apocalypse is nowhere near as intimidating or intriguing as the much more relatable Magneto.

Still, the villain suffices for the cause of bringing together two generations of X-Men, the First Class lot and the new batch of young recruits, including novel takes on classic X-characters Cyclops, Jean Grey and Nightcrawler. Their performances and their chemistry make us hopeful for the future of the franchise, should the studio feel like using them for the next installment Apocalypse seems to be building up to. For although it's meant as a conclusion to a trilogy, the ground work is amply laid for more to come and these young stars succeed in making us curious about what lies ahead. The new additions to the cast are aided by snappy dialogue and light humour, making the shortcomings in the plot not nearly as blatant as they would have been in lesser hands. Nevertheless, it's clear director Bryan Singer, who has made his fourth X-movie with this title, has run out of ideas for the X-universe. Though we appreciate his work on both trilogies, new blood would be equally welcome in the creative room as it proved in the cast.

Today's Mini-Review: Trance

Trance: ***/*****, or 6/10

Danny Boyle's attempt to mindfuck us, which proves only half successful, witnesses the weaving of a stylistically elaborate mosaic but a less well conceived narrative that turns increasingly less gripping. The first 40 minutes delivers a good set-up, as we follow an art heist at an auction, where a small band of robbers led by Vincent Cassel (always a good choice to feature as a bad boy in any movie) makes off with a painting by Goya that has just sold for over 27 million pounds. At least, they thought they got away with it. In a sweeping bit of exposition the protagonist, the mentally troubled auctioneer James McAvoy (who does a fine job mixing his usual physical attractiveness with a somewhat unhinged and erratic personality), has just directly educated us, the audience, in the veritable impossibility of stealing paintings at auctions, partially thanks to the well timed expertise of art protectors like himself. Thing is, he's in on the ploy. But not really, as he has a hidden agenda all his own. That severely backfires on him as he gets hit in the head after hiding the painting prior to the robbery, thus forgetting its location, much to the chagrin of his fellow conspirators who do not take this failure lightly and soon have no choice but to turn to a cold and professional hypnotherapist (Rosario Dawson, doing a better job than usual) when their own physically uncomfortable methods of persuasion fail to reveal the knowledge they seek. Dawson all too easily gets drawn into their shady world of plots and doublecrossings, by her own testament because she's bored of the dreary routine of her work, but obviously because she's fascinated and possibly charmed by McAvoy's pained art thief. And that's when things start to go from an intriguing premise to an ever more disappointing pay-off, as we soon find something else entirely is going on, and this whole movie was never really about stealing art so much as it was about an ex-couple with an alarming past reconnecting thanks to Dawson's mental machinations (think of it as the crime thriller version of Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, just not nearly as compelling). The problem is, the art theft plot intrigued us much more than this renewed lover's quarrel does, but soon gets snowed under in favour of the latter plot line. At least strong performances throughout and the occasional solid action sequence and moment of mental shock (i.e., gore) provide some distraction from ever more jumbled and chaotically structured plot development that just can't seem to be able to let us reconnect with the movie itself when the damage is done. And just where was that darn painting? For all we care, it might as well have been shoved up Dawson's clean shaven beaver, which we get to see in close-up twice. Lucky us, but this movie would have had more resonance in terms of being memorable if it had also featured a more carefully balanced plot that doesn't end up in blatant melodrama that you can't, and don't truly care to, wrap your mind around.