A Million Ways to Die in the West

Seth MacFarlane is one of the most love-him-or-hate-him figures in comedy. Aside from the morality police and all the other groups he’s offended (sometimes seemingly intentionally and jovially), he has many detractors quick to point out his material is heavy on random gags and relatively weak on story or character. Generally, he makes me laugh. And I sometimes think he doesn’t get enough credit for the cleverness of some gags, especially when he dabbles in musical comedy periodically.

But there are times when he’s just off. Sometimes his gags just aren’t very funny. Sometimes he stretches good jokes out for way too long until the humor is completely drained from it. Sometimes both happen at once, making an excruciating few seconds seem like hours. Fortunately, we don’t get any needlessly long knee-grabbing in A Million Ways to Die in the West, but unfortunately, most of the humor we do get is of the bad MacFarlane variety.

MacFarlane writes, directs, and stars in the picture as a meek sheep farmer in 1882 Arizona. After his girlfriend (Amanda Seyfried) dumps him for the local mustache retailer (Neil Patrick Harris), he tries desperately to win her back in a duel. But since he has no gunfighting skills, he enlists the help of an out-of-towner (Charlize Theron), and the two start to fall in love. Which is a problem, because Theron is unhappily married to the most feared gunslinger in the West (Liam Neeson). Yes, even with all the vulgarity and surprisingly bloody shootouts and other violence, the movie is a romantic comedy at its core.

MacFarlane is as affable as ever. Even when he’s at his most vulgar and profane, the man’s charming and hard to be disgusted with. And Neeson and Harris chew their scenes like pros. But the rest of the cast, including several of MacFarlane’s regular collaborators, aren’t much more than just there. It feels like one of those movies where the production is simply an excuse for everyone to hang out. This only seems to be an advantage in the case of Theron and MacFarlane’s dynamic; any romantic chemistry is out, but they at least know how to play off each other. But mostly, this results in a lot of phoning it in. Especially Giovanni Ribisi and Sarah Silverman, whose running gag—She’s a hooker, he’s a virgin, and they’re saving themselves for their wedding night! HAHAHA!—doesn’t get any funnier as it goes on.

All would have been forgiven if the film was funny, but the jokes are mostly misfires. The sexual, scatological, and otherwise offensive jokes aren’t very offensive at all. Everyone expects MacFarlane to be dirty. But here, instead of turning it into something clever, he’s content just to show it and stop there. Similarly, there are cameos in the picture, but instead of taking advantage of them, the movie doesn’t go any further than include them, as if it were enough to say, “Hey, remember this guy? So do we!” Other times things are too thought out and go on too long, whereas subtlety would have worked. And the jokes about how different and primitive the West was compared to today don’t translate to much laughter. I did laugh a few times, once or twice pretty hard, but I can’t tell if these parts were really good or just better than all the times I didn’t laugh. The old cliché about how the best parts are in the trailer is actually true this time, but by now we’ve seen them so much they’re not funny anymore.

The picture’s not absolutely horrible. It’s like a mediocre episode of Family Guy. But a mediocre episode only burns a half hour. The movie’s four times that length, which is a little too much to ask for what it has to offer.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

The X-Men movies more or less started the 21^st Century influx of superhero pictures, and are still one of the better comic book film series. But, for all it’s done right, the franchise committed one major blunder: The Last Stand. The third installment completely fumbled “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” one of the two most famous and important runs from the comic. Now, after years and a couple movies building up to it, the series tackles “Days of Future Past,” the other most famous and important run from the comic. This time, they absolutely nail it.

The film opens in a bleak, desolate future, where the world is ruled by mutant-hunting robots called the Sentinels. While most of humanity is held captive, the remaining X-Men—both familiar faces like Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and now-ally Magneto (Ian McKellan) and some newcomers—deduce that the only way to save the world is to alter this nightmarish future. This entails sending the consciousness of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time into his younger body in the 1970s to stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating the Sentinels’ creator (Peter Dinklage). To do this, Wolverine must enlist the help of the younger Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) that we met in X-Men: First Class.

Sound confusing? Well, it’s not at all. The crowded and convoluted plotline is streamlined into a narrative that’s easy to follow and breathlessly paced. But for all the serious stuff and complicated time-travel structure, it still leaves time for clever lighter moments (the best being courtesy of Evan Peters as a mutant whose appearance has caused controversy). Not stopping there, it even tries its best to fix continuity errors and atone for lackluster plot points in previous movies. It doesn’t completely succeed (although it seems the series is content with just pretending the disappointing X-Men Origins: Wolverine never happened, and I’m happy to go along with that). But after marveling that a movie with so much packed in is not only comprehensible, but intelligent and engaging, you can forgive a few mistakes.

And intelligent and engaging it certainly is, not some mere summer explosion fest. Sure, there’s plenty of action and cool special effects. After years of rumors and speculation about when the Sentinels will finally appear on the big screen, they do not disappoint. The designs pay tribute to their classic and other looks in the comics while integrating some new ideas, too, making for the coldest and most effective killing machines since Terminator. But the film’s best elements are its explorations of its characters and its sociopolitical eye. The timeless, malleable allegory for any persecuted group that mutants represent is clear as ever. More specific to this story is the continuing evolution of the characters, whose arcs deal with redemption, maturity, free will, and courage.

Especially good is Fassbender as the younger Magneto. Instead of emphasizing the character’s more brutal tendencies, he’s so understated and charismatic in his beliefs, however extreme they may be. McKellan’s Magneto has a point once in a while, but it’s still clear he’s a bad guy. With Fassbender, it’s almost hard to tell. The entire cast is exceptional, but he is by far the most interesting player, as he brings a new spin to the character, an ambiguity that was less apparent before.

The movie is not only possibly the best self-contained entry in the whole franchise (I’m still unsure whether or not it outranks X2), but it’s also satisfying as a passing of the torch from the older cast to the younger. True, there’s no official indication that this will be the last time we see the original cast, but the picture has an aura of finality to it. Plus, Jackman has hinted at hanging up the claws. If this does turn out to be the final outing for him or other series regulars, it’s a worthy curtain call.

Godzilla

Japan’s most famous contribution to cinema has long been slated for the big, expensive Hollywood treatment. The last stab at it in 1998 was almost universally considered a failure, memorable only for its complete and thorough badness. Well, fans can rest easy knowing that this Godzilla treats the King of the Monsters with respect and utmost seriousness. The only question is, is that totally a good thing, particularly the latter?

For the most part, yes, it’s definitely good. The darker tone matches the sense of the unknown and dread of the very first picture from 60 years ago, if not its allegory (Godzilla was originally a metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The special effects finally, finally measure up to the awe those feelings suggest (unlike back in ’98). And the film respects the mythology, incorporating it into the new plot while updating and rewriting it in creative, not destructive, ways.

The story begins with a nuclear power plant in Japan being destroyed by an earthquake. 15 years later, however, an American nuclear engineer (Bryan Cranston) whose wife (Juliette Binoche) was killed in the accident believes that something else destroyed the plant. After some illegal snooping at the site of the disaster with his son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a bomb technician in the U.S. Navy, he’s proven right: it wasn’t an earthquake, but an enormous ancient creature that feeds on radiation. And it’s not the only one. As these colossal predators make their way to the West Coast, a secret multinational agency looks to another prehistoric giant (you-know-who), one they secretly encountered six decades before, to aid in destroying them.

The big green guy is actually used sparingly for much of the picture, as his foes are the bringers of most of the property destruction. These are solid monstrosities, making up for what they lack in originality (they look a bit like the creature from Cloverfield) with some cool, innovative abilities and the far superior agility that CGI allows. But surprisingly, the lack of clear looks at the monsters is more effective as buildup. Scenes of just before the destruction and the aftermath create as much tension as towering shots of the monsters’ size as they knock down buildings. And the new Godzilla looks great (though complaints about him hitting the buffet do look a little warranted), but seems even more impressive because he’s revealed slowly, piece-by-piece. His tail, his feet, his full behemoth figure, his trademark roar, his atomic breath, making its way up from his tale on his spiky spinal plates like a bomb fuse. The movie masterfully plays with the viewer, and knows what people came to see.

Except in one department: the monster-on-monster battles. They’re there, but they’re relatively few. One incredible sequence culminates in finally seeing Godzilla in all his glory, spoiling for a fight, only to cut away. All we see are small glimpses of this encounter on fake news reports. The big climactic battle in San Francisco is better, with both feral beast-like combat and hand-to-hand brawling like the classic Toho monsters that were clearly guys in suits. But the monsters have to share the screen with the human characters and their military action flick subplots. No disrespect to the cast, but the actual people in a Godzilla movie should only be there for exposition, and not have their story overshadow the real stars of the picture. Last year’s Pacific Rim was a much lighter and goofier take on the genre, but it understood why people watch giant monster movies, and delivered the goods in its fight scenes. They were crazy and ridiculous, but who cares? They were tons of fun.

That’s about my only complaint, the fights, not that they’re bad but that there’s not more of them. In every other respect, this is probably the best Godzilla imaginable. I just hope that now that this film gets all the introductions out of the way, if there’s a sequel, it’ll have plenty of room for more, and bigger, monster matches.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Fans may recall that the last Spider-Man series didn’t end so well, with the final entry taking on so much that it collapsed under its own weight. The second entry in the Amazing Spider-Man saga likewise packs in a few too many things for its own good. The final result is still much more watchable than that aforementioned franchise killer, but it never quite coalesces into a solid whole. It’s more like pieces of several different narratives stitched together haphazardly.

This problem doesn’t stem from the film’s obvious priming for the upcoming Sinister Six movie, surprisingly. The stuff that’s clearly and directly setting up further entries in the franchise is limited to a few fleeting references and Easter Eggs, and one short sequence that plays much like a typical post-credits scene. Except it’s edited into the film proper, but in a way that doesn’t disrupt the flow of everything else. Or rather, what flow it does have, because it’s everything else that’s so inconsistent.

In the film, Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) has taken pretty well to being Spider-Man. But not so much to being Peter Parker, as he’s afraid to love Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) because he doesn’t want to risk putting her in danger. Further complicating their relationship is that fact that she’s moving away for school. Peter’s also still looking into why his parents (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) abandoned him as a child. And on top of everything, two new figures come into the mix: engineer-turned-electric leviathan Electro (Jamie Foxx), and Peter’s friend and Oscorp heir Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan).

As the plot moves from thread to thread, the tone shifts quite jarringly. As Spider-Man, Garfield is having a ball, cockily taking down crooks and showing off like he’s actually enjoying being a superhero, instead of being so righteous and serious. But out of costume, with Stone, the mood turns sad as the two are distraught at their relationship not working. Then in their next scene together, their relationship will suddenly be going great, and the tone turns happy again. Then, when Peter’s alone and looking into his parents’ past, he becomes sullen and determined. None of these plot points segue from one to the other smoothly at all, and the tonal inconsistency is bothersome. The villains aren’t exactly worked in so seamlessly, either. Peter and Harry are apparently old friends, though the film introduces them as such without any explanation. True, anyone even slightly knowledgeable of the comics can surmise that going in, but it’s still a sloppy bit of plotting. And Electro only seems to be swept up in the action because they needed another villain, because he doesn't play much of a role except battling the title hero.

But, even though all these pieces don’t really gel, by themselves they are mostly well done. The only arc that truly doesn’t work is Foxx’s; the socially inept, obsessed fanboy act does little to establish any depth, and only manages a few easy laughs. But when he becomes Electro, it makes for some good fights and special effects. As for DeHaan, despite sporting the worst haircut ever to curse the head of a supervillain, he gives us a tortured, desperate, almost sympathetic Harry Osborn. His plunge into evil is much more plausible and compelling than the incarnation in the previous series.

The best part isn’t the superhero action or character mythology, however, but the romance between Garfield and Stone. The two have a powerful chemistry, sweet, funny, and real. Never once does it feel forced and obvious like the average blockbuster’s romantic subplot. And as for that giant plot turn fans knew would be coming sooner or later (spoilers here), the film caries it out with solemnity and respect. Maybe not with the epic grandeur you’d expect from such a major event in comic book history, but the emotion is there.

So, while it may not be the new series' Dark Knight moment, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has plenty to enjoy. Except for...well, if you're a fan of Spider-Man, you know.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Even though superhero movies are at a historic high point in both quality and commercial viability, the genre appears to be falling into a rut. They remain solid entertainment, but they’ve settled into a rather assembly line format. The first entry always follows the same arc: introduce the hero and their powers, bring in a bad guy, and have the hero defeat them. For sequels, they bring in a new villain or two, possibly add a personal problem for the main character, and have them overcome both by the end. Every superhero picture across all studios and comic lines follows this pattern, with the only exceptions being those that are meant as lead-ins to other films (like Thor for The Avengers).

Fortunately, Marvel seems to have noticed, and acted. Last year’s Iron Man 3 brought some substance by having the title character suffer PTSD. It still fit snugly into the standard sequel mold, but the film had a bit more dramatic weight as a result. But Captain America: The Winter Soldier not only breaks out of those parameters, it knocks down the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe structure and changes things completely. This is the first superhero film in a while that’s actually engrossing, rather than just an adequately entertaining distraction.

The film catches up with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), still working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and still getting reacquainted with the present after his seven-decade frozen slumber. But when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is killed and S.H.I.E.L.D. becomes compromised, Cap and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) find themselves on the run from both the agency and a master assassin known only as The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).

That’s a rather lean synopsis, but saying any more would ruin the surprises, and there are a lot of them. What I will say is there’s a real sense of drama to the narrative and characters. All of them. Evans is as charismatic and righteous as ever, shining even brighter than before in such a dark and uncertain world. The new faces big and small are strong, and the villains effectively menacing. And the story finally has Johansson and (especially) Jackson play direct, meaningful parts, rather than relegate them to secondary characters or, in Jackson’s case, merely a thread to connect the franchise’s many entries. Fans of the comics who know what’s what will be pleased that the characters they love are utilized in equally strong roles, while those who’ve only seen the movies will get a yarn full of shocking and unexpected turns. Almost every plot development you expect in a comic book movie goes a different route, always for the better.

Winter Soldier is also the most politically astute blockbuster in years. A plot point involving S.H.I.E.L.D. gunships is clearly aimed at the United States’ drone policy. The main plot of a whole government agency being secretly under control sounds preposterous. But, is it so unbelievable amidst talk of a shadow government watching over our elected leaders? It’s potent stuff here and now, completely obvious yet also hidden in plain sight, a snapshot of our times but unspecific enough that the movie won’t become immediately dated.

But while at its heart the film’s a smart and compelling paranoid thriller, it’s also a Marvel movie, with all the hard-hitting action and humor that have made them so entertaining. Given, it also has all the flaws that come with that, like obvious plots holes, too-convenient plot resolutions, and a few eye-rolling lapses in logic. But the fact that it has intelligence, edge, and a sense of the times makes it so much better. Just when it looked like the modern superhero movie had started its decline, this makes it clear that at least Marvel may still have ideas left.

Then again, their next movie has a talking raccoon…