X-Men: First Class

Last night finally marked the return of X-Men to the big screen. After the major disappointments of X-Men 3 *shudder* and Wolverine I did not err on the side of caution and deployed full scale excitement mode despite the cautious advices of the other 2/3 of The Nerdy Trio.

In fairness: any excuse for not working is acceptable to me

PLOT: Back in the days of yore, before Toads got struck by lightening, Rogue became a whiney little bitch and Cyclops became criminally underused, Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) were involved in a bromance to which all future bromances shall be forever compared to. The two become friends and create the first team of X-Men in order to defeat Sebastian Shaw.
The Hellfire Club spend the first 2/3 of the film running back and forth between America and Russia trying to upgrade the Cold War into a Flaming Hot War. During the final act Sebastian suddenly remembers that he has the power to start the nuclear war himself and is promptly defeated by the Xavier and Magneto.
Xavier and Magneto continue the merry dance of being best of friends/greatest of enemies. Mystique finally gets a decent amount of screen time but almost strays into whiney Rogue territory. Havok is most definitely the most interesting Summers and I discover that my hatred of January Jones runs deep. END PLOT

I was ridiculously excited for this film and it is my pick for summer blockbuster of the year so my hopes were high. I went into X-Men 3 with delirious levels of excitement and came out of the screen with worryingly suicidal levels of disappointment. I think we were all grateful that X-Men: First Class ended much more positively.

Professor X and Magneto are a strange characters as they are so familiar yet also completely unknown. It was nice that we went back to their younger days and got an insight into their backgrounds - Charles with his rich upbringing and Erik and his torturous time in the concentration camps.

Charles is the never flinching voice of hope throughout each X-Men film and although he is the most consistent character it is Magneto who is the most interesting as he is the one with the inner conflict. X-Men: First Class is essentially the telling of how Magneto joined the dark side.

James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender were fantastic choices for Xavier and Magneto. They are both great actors and did not bring shame to the performances of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan.  The two played off one another really well whether it be in the more light hearted scenes such as the traditional “bring the team” together montage or the emotional moment when Xavier brought a happy memory out of Magneto's buried subconscious.

Fassbender proved that he can act in Spanish, German and French but his English accent did slip a few times. There were several occasions when Magneto became very Irish and during one particularly mean moment of badassery he appeared to be possessed by Batman and deployed a level of growl to his voice that would scare the shit out of Christian Bale. He is fantastic and dare I say it - slightly better than McAvoy........

Kevin Bacon rocks back onto the big screen as Sebastian Shaw and does a good job. I can't think of a stand out moment though as he basically walked around and looked quite smug in his dashing suit.

The special effects were all fine. There were a few nice little moments with Banshee and Havok learning to use their powers but the big set piece was reserved for the Magneto vs. Submarine battle.

The original X-Men Trilogy suffered greatly as Wolverine and Storm got FAR too much screen time and other characters who should have been given more to do (Cyclops and Nightcrawler) were relegated to the background.

In X-Men: First Class the screen time seemed to be spread out a lot better and although there is a distinction between leading and secondary cast I didn’t feel like any actor forced their way to the front of the queue ala Hallie Berry.

This is the summer of reboots and I think with X-Men: First Class we now have a reboot which worked and can be followed up with a new wave of X-Men films which will hopefully be as strong as this one.

X-Men: First Class will not be everyone’s idea of a great film but these are characters I grew up with a kid. I absolutely love watching them in film. It gets my first 10/10 for the year. There are flaws yes - we got a bit too much Cold War stock footage and no one can be forgiven for hiring January Jones but I don’t care.

I have fallen in love with these characters all over again.


****

I have added to my original review as a friend thought that the CGI looked a bit dodgy in parts and as I didn't bother to cover it at the time I've decided to add it into my review.

I thought that the CGI was fine for the most part.  If I were to pick a fault it would be the character of Beast who did look bad - even X-Men 3 did a better job.  According to Wiki the budget is in the region of $120million so maybe they should have done better with the budget.  I read that there were quite a lot of reshoots so perhaps time became a factor.

Matthew Vaughn hasn't directed many films, but I do like the Vaughn/Goldman partnership which also brought us Kick-Ass and Stardust (another Vaughn film where the effects are poor), so I hope that his ability to work with big action set pieces which require CGI improve.

Did it dampen my love of the film? That would be no! It still gets 10/10.

Unknown

I love movies and I like to think that my knowledge and appreciation of film is growing to an almost half respectable level. **

Having said that I do spent the vast majority of my cinema going time watching very and on some cases embarrassingly mainstream movies therefore it will come as no surprise to those who know me to learn that there I was on a midweek trip to see Unknown

PLOT: Liam Neeson plays Martin Harris (or does he) a doctor of a science I can neither spell nor pronounce. Martin and his wife (January Jones) travel to Berlin and upon their arrival Martin gets into a car crash and ends up in a coma. Martin awakens four days later to find that no one is looking for him and after carrying out a brief investigation finds that an impostor has taken his place and his wife. There is corruption, there are assassination attempts on Princes and Professors, there are explosions and there is a sense of comfort and relief in the knowledge that although he is ageing Liam Neeson is still one of the coolest people to have come from Northern Ireland (after the members of The Nerdy Trio) (obviously). END PLOT.

The plot of Unknown is pretty standard fare but it doesn’t have delusions of grandeur and there are enough twists and turns involved in order to make it bearable. It is basic but entertaining and sometimes that is all you require.

Unknown was shot with the colour sapped which made Berlin look cold and run down. This suited the movie very well. Unknown did such a good job of making Berlin look unpleasant I now have no real desire to ever go there.

Liam Neeson has got the performance of the only American with a Northern Irish accent down to a fine art. Whenever Martin Harris proudly announced that he was an American in his Ballymena accent the cinema screen failed to suppress their laughter. This has become a running joke with Liam Neeson and the punchline never gets any less amusing. It is especially funny whenever Neeson is trying to portray frustration as it always screams agitated Irishman - although this is all part of the reason why we love him.

Neeson was fine as Martin Harris although the role didn’t exactly stretch him in terms of performance.

January Jones was just awful in every way imaginable and put in one of the worst performances I have had the misfortune of watching. Everything about her casting was wrong. Her character Liz also died one of the most pointless deaths in movie history by running into the room with a bomb and remaining there. Liz apparently didn’t have the strength to smash a mirror (which the bomb was behind) but she was perfectly capable of successfully taking a sledgehammer to a stone wall. It’s annoying whenever bad people in movies are killed off because bad people in film must always get their comeuppance. The death of Liz was completely amateurish.

The rest of the cast, with the exception of the also miscast Aidan Quinn, were fine but this was always going to be a Neeson movie.

The problem is my love for Liam Neeson is obscuring my opinion of this movie, the same thing happened the other week with The Adjustment Bureau. Everything about Unknown was average and run of the mile but I just can’t help but like it.

There are times when a “leave your brain” at the door movie is enough to kill two hours quite nicely and if Liam Neeson wants to add another film to his run of Taken and Unknown I wont be complaining.

Unknown gets a 7/10 (or does it). Liam Neeson can keep doing what he is doing until the time comes when he retires to the sweeping valleys and hills of the green green grass of Los Angeles.

** This claim unfortunately does not extend to the zombie genre although the day is fast approaching (my Easter break) when someone will sit me down and tell me what order to watch the Romero films in.