1/9/2015 The Argonaut – Grand slam for Singer – “Days of Future Past” is a truly great film that rectifies past X-Men failures

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Submitted by Andrew Jenson on 05.27.2014 – 7:40 pm

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Grand slam for Singer – “Days of Future Past” is a truly great film that rectifies past X-Men failures

This isn’t just a movie about the X-Men, this is a movie about a director taking back thereigns of his beloved franchise.

Andrew Jenson | Argonaut

Bryan Singer (“X-Men”,”X2: X-Men United”) returned to helm in the newest installment of X-Men.

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1/9/2015 The Argonaut – Grand slam for Singer – “Days of Future Past” is a truly great film that rectifies past X-Men failures

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“X-Men: Days of Future Past” combines the cast of “X-Men: First Class” with the cast of the original trilogy in a truly thrilling time-travel story.Things are not going well for our heroes in the future. Large, powerful and destructive machines called Sentinels have wiped out all but a fewmutants. Only a handful remains, including Professor X, Magneto, Wolverine, Storm and Iceman. With little time left before their own inevitabledestruction, the remaining mutants decide to send Wolverine to the past to stop the creation of the Sentinels and save the world from utterdestruction.

It’s great to see the cast in their roles again, even if some of them were under-utilized. And the Sentinels made for fantastic villains. They arenearly indestructible, and quite terrifying.

I still do have qualms with James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as Xavier and Magneto. I never could see them growing into Patrick Stewartand Ian McKellen. And while Stewart and McKellen have such natural chemistry together, it felt like McAvoy and Fassbender were forced intotheir relationship.

Despite this, the film’s premise works well. Typically, I don’t like it when films go with the time-travel-to-the-past-to-make-things-better angle.But I can give it a pass with this film because it’s used in a way that quite literally rectifies the franchise and puts everything right. This film isessentially making up for the sins of previous X-Men films.

Here’s what I mean. Look at how the plot of the film mirrors the plight of the franchise. Since Singer left the X-Men after “X2: X-Men United,”the films following it have been largely disappointing and rightly despised by fans and critics. Filmically speaking, things have not been good foranyone since “X2.” And it’s thanks to Singer’s return to the past in this latest movie that saves the future of the franchise.

Similarly, the film has our favorite mutants — or, the ones from previous films — pitted against an enemy that will ultimately destroy them in theend. Of course, the enemy is machines who can imitate the X-Men and use their powers against them with deadly results — much like directorBrett Ratner. And it takes our heroes going into the past and changing it to save the future. See where this is going?

This film is not just about the X-Men. It’s about a director reclaiming his beloved franchise. And he uses the opportunity to go into the past andthwart the “bad guys” who nearly destroyed the X-Men film legacy with their dangerous ability to imitate it.

This makes “X-Men: Days of Future Past” a great film on an entirely new level. And it is a must-see for any X-Men fan, especially if you found“The Last Stand” distasteful.

Andrew Jenson can be reached at argonaut@uidaho.edu

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1/20/2015 The Argonaut – Scrapped metal – The new “Transformers” movie isn’t good enough to be mindless fun

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Submitted by Andrew Jenson on 07.09.2014 – 4:00 pm

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Scrapped metal – The new “Transformers” movie isn’t good enough to be mindless fun

“Deliver Us From Evil”, a horror movie based solely on the jump scare, reminds us howuninventive many films are today. “Transformers: Age of Extinction” not only confirms this sad fact, but it seems bent on making sure it holds a placewith its uninventive brethren.

There’s no point in summarizing the plot. The filmmakers didn’t care enough to have a plot – let alone an original one. All that’s needed arekeywords: Optimus Prime, Mark Wahlberg, sexy teenager and explosions.

This film could have been fun. You can’t expect a Michael Bay film to be anything more than mindless, but you can hope to be entertained. Andwith their incredibly cool premises, you’d think Bay’s “Transformers” movies would stand above other films, like the Transformers themselves, astowering mechanisms of awesome. They do not.

Instead, they stand out as inept, incoherent, thoughtless, convoluted and, above-all, boring pieces of cinematic vomit.

The same applies to the fourth installment in the series. There is no passion in “Age of Extinction.” You feel trapped while watching the film. Youthink to yourself that you’ll have a good time while watching it. Then three hours of passionless directing, acting and visual effects goes by and youwant to bang your head against a wall just to be sure you can still feel and haven’t become as robotic as the film’s protagonists.

This is one of the most excruciatingly boring action films, period. It goes on and on without an intermission or even so much as a visual break. Thefilm can’t sit still and it throws everything it can at the audience. But it fails to throw us anything in the way of humor, joy, fun or anything resemblinghumanity.

The only thing you feel anything for throughout this nearly three-hour picture is a cute little dinosaur that barely escapes death by evil metal lava. Andit has less than a minute of screen time.

You certainly don’t feel for the characters – if you can call them characters. They only exist because Bay thinks we need to connect with someonewho looks human. Unfortunately, none of these people are allowed to be human. Any sort of character development or emotional moments are cutvery short in order to get back to the “plot.”

For example, just before the film goes into its second act, Mark Wahlberg’s daughter (played by Nicola Peltz) is almost killed by federal agents. Hewatches helplessly as a man takes a gun to her head and she cries in terror. Later, Wahlberg reflects on that moment when he almost lost his daughter.His reflection takes up less time than is given to that cute little dinosaur from earlier. Gotta keep on the move!

Optimus Prime even goes a little psychotic. He shoots at federal agents when they turn against him and the other Autobots. But that’s boring too.You’ll find yourself wishing Prime would actually kill a whole bunch of humans just to keep you from falling asleep.

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1/20/2015 The Argonaut – Scrapped metal – The new “Transformers” movie isn’t good enough to be mindless fun

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“Age of Extinction” is too long and boring to even be considered mindless fun. It’s mediocre tripe that takes itself way too seriously.

Here’s hoping this franchise goes the way of the dinosaurs.

Andrew Jenson can be reached at argonaut@uidaho.edu

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1/20/2015 The Argonaut – Scrapped metal – The new “Transformers” movie isn’t good enough to be mindless fun

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1/20/2015 The Argonaut – Chaos on top of chaos – “The Purge: Anarchy” can be entertaining, but lacks drive and indulges in mindlessness

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Submitted by Andrew Jenson on 07.28.2014 – 1:46 pm

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Chaos on top of chaos – “The Purge: Anarchy” can be entertaining, but lacks drive and

indulges in mindlessness

You can’t expect much from a film like this. It’s loud and exists mostly to give audiencessome gritty action. It’s meant to be an entertaining distraction. That doesn’t mean it has to be bad. But it is.

“The Purge: Anarchy” follows a completely different cast of characters as they find themselves on the city streets during the annual Purge. FrankGrillo stars as Sergeant, a man set out to avenge his son. However, his vengeance is put on hold when he finds and rescues others dragged into thePurge. Realizing the people he saved will die without his help, he tries to find a safe haven for them so he can continue on his merry way.

This isn’t one of the year’s worst films. “Anarchy” was more entertaining than it should have been. But still, the movie was unpleasant, didn’t makemuch sense and ruins a perfectly good opportunity to make a clever statement about contemporary American culture and politics. All it manages to dois demonstrate the Purge is wrong – whoop-tee-doo.

At least the movie knows what it wants to be and it doesn’t waste time getting the characters into the Purge. But it would have been nice to havesome form of character development. Sergeant had something resembling a character arc, but because we don’t really get to know him it doesn’tmean much in the end.

When it comes down to it, you can’t deny the Dodge Charger Sergeant drives is the best character in the movie. Unfortunately, the vehicle is put outof commission early on in the flick and it was sad to see. The Charger could have been in cool car chases or used to mow down anyone purging. Itwas a wicked car – even though it was the four-door model – with armored plating and everything. At one point, Sergeant had to switch off theCharger’s headlights so he wouldn’t be spotted as he crept along the road and it looked so cool. Why does it have to suffer so?

The other characters – aside from Sergeant – were about as bright as a box of hammers. They whined and cussed a lot, making you think thesecharacters were supposed to be played by teenagers. Plus, they didn’t know how to fend for themselves – even though they live in a world wherethey can be legally murdered one day a year.

Surprisingly, the film had very few jump scares. Maybe the filmmakers realize that jump scares don’t really work and should be used sparingly, if atall. Good for them.

However, the filmmakers made sure to give us plenty of shaky cam. What they don’t seem to realize is shaking the camera doesn’t make anythingmore intense or suspenseful. It’s just annoying. If they tried building atmosphere and making the characters more interesting, then they wouldn’t haveto resort to cheap tricks to scare the audience.

At the end of “Anarchy,” the filmmakers warn us that another Purge will soon be coming. At least they’re willing to give us a head start. How kind

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of them. Now we should all run away as fast as we can from this travesty and never come back until they shoot a real movie.

Andrew Jenson can be reached at arg-arts@uidaho.edu

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