This action packed sequel quickly fell upon us and without knowing what adventures would come next, it was a pleasant follow up to the first X-Men movie. With more mutants than you can shake a stick at, it was great to see some new characters being introduced, along with rejoining several of our favorites. As the mutant problem has become a worldwide issue, there is a new player in the game that is looking to eradicate it before they are able to gain too much power, but he is only inciting a war that no normal man will be able to win.

As Logan returns to the mansion after his long road trip, he is surprised to discover that he will be left alone with all of the children in the school and when meeting Rogue’s boyfriend Bobby (Iceman), he is given a somewhat cold reception. While hearing about the assassination attempt on the President of the United States, the Wolverine does not know what might be coming for him and his fellow mutants, but quickly finds out as a face from his past enters the school.  After William Stryker receives the go ahead to handle the mutant problem head on, he will stop at nothing to capture and study all of the mutants he can get his hands on, especially the one that left him in his prime.

Storm and Jean have been sent off to Boston to track down the mutant that tried to kill the President and while they don’t know who or what they will find, they wind up in an abandoned church that is said to be haunted.  Seeing their target, the two teachers are able to convince Kurt Wagner also known as the Nightcrawler to come back home with them. But the group does not know what is happening at the mansion and what has happened to the rest of the X-Men and without being able to get a signal on the phone, they are flying blind.  All the while, Jean is having problems focusing and is starting to release her inner fire that has been kept away for so long.  Not knowing what is happening to her, Jean tries to hide it as best that she can, but she can only do so much as lives are being put on the line.

While visiting Eric Lensherr in his plastic prison, Professor Xavier and Scott Summers are captured by William Stryker who only has one plan, to kill all of the mutants. With Stryker in possession of a mind control serum that works on mutants, he is able to command any mutant that is in the vicinity. Being able to break into the mansion, Stryker gains the components and knowledge to Cerebro necessary to realign it for a more nefarious purpose. With one of the most powerful mutants in Xavier in his grasp, Stryker is ready to put his plan into action, but when he sees that there are visitors at his lake side hideout, he will have to move even faster. With Lady Deathstrike by his side, Stryker and his men will have to battle off the mutant menace for long enough to allow Xavier and Cerebro to finish the plan that he started.

But this movie is not all about the action on the screen, it focuses on family, love and finding some place to belong. While Logan, Rogue, Bobby and John are able to find safety at Bobby’s house, you find out that John (Pyro) never had one growing up. While he is doing everything to try and fit in, he knows that he has the power of the gods at his fingertips and will not allow harm come to himself or his friends. While he loses his grasp on being the ‘good guy’, meeting Magneto and Mystique may be the best thing for him. Bobby in the meantime sees how much his mother and father love him, but he also finds out how jealous his little brother is of him. Fitting in with humanity is not the problem, being allowed to live their lives as who they are is the issue and with the world trying to single them out, the fight may never end.

As sequels go, this movie is aces in my book. I loved seeing new mutants come to the screen and showcase their powers, but this is just a taste of what is coming up next. I do not know why there has not been an origin story for Eric Lensherr (Magneto) yet, he is one of the most prominent characters in the series and who would not want to know more about him and his backstory.  One of my favorite parts about this movie is watching the foes unite for a common cause. Even though Magneto wants to end the war before it could begin, he values the lives of his fellow mutants and will use his abilities in any way that he sees fit to protect them. The breakdown of Jean is key in this movie as well, since she is no longer able to control her abilities, but she is still able to make it work to protect her friends and family, even if it means that she will be killed. I really enjoyed the story between Stryker and Wolverine as you find out his origin, but not why he has lost his memory.  Well, the next movie on the docket is The Last Stand, time to get fired up.

I admit I had low expectations coming into this film. The trailers pretty much gave to me the impression that this film was going to be a solid one on the “Good to Madagascar” animated film scale. That is, we’ve been in a climate of CG animated features coming out of every single studio for about a decade now, and while there are some truly lovely, thought provoking, intelligent animated films with appeal for all ages; there are just as many that, like the 2005 Dreamworks film Madagascar, are filled wall to wall with potty-humor and the dirty ad-libs of its entirely adult-comedian based voice cast. It is important for me to, above all else, emphasize the fact that The Angry Birds Movie is did absolutely nothing to raise my opinion of it in the entirety of its 90-minute runtime, which is a shame, because of all the things this film was meant to stand for.

I didn’t realize until the lights went down in the movie theater that this film was developed by Sony Imageworks Animation, one branch of the multi-tentacled beast that Sony Pictures Animation has become after the massive resource re-shuffling it had post-Hotel Transylvania 2. Sony had the earlier release of Ratchet and Clank at the beginning of this month, which I’ve already reviewed. I noted that film was completely outsourced to Canada’s Rainmaker Entertainment, while The Angry Birds Movie was actually developed by an internal Sony studio, effectively “putting all their eggs in one basket,” when it comes to hoping which of these two films was going to succeed at the box office. There was some definite risk involved, as it has been reported that Finnish mobile games developer Rovio had put forward $73 million, practically the entirety of its current corporate bankroll, in hopes that this film will be a success.

Eventually, Rovio is going to get what it wants. This movie is going to end up a success, but when you compare its success to the release of Ratchet and Clank, which is now reporting a $10 million loss at the box office, its only crime being that it was too terribly close to the video game it is based on. We can now look forward to seeing a future of video-game based animated features that will “copy” the success of The Angry Birds Movie.

Which is very, very, bad, because this film…is very, VERY, bad.

You can pretty much scrape together the overall plot from the trailers which have already been released: Jason Sudekis plays Red, the only Type-A personality dwelling on a small island populated by birds deeply ensconced in the cult of positivity. After a very slapstick incident involving a party clown, an agitated father figure, and a premature egg-breaking, Red is ordered into an anger management class populated by the other stars of the video game: Matilda (Maya Rudolph), Chuck (Josh Gad), Bomb, (Danny McBride) and Terence. (Sean Penn, an actor wasted by having the character only growl.) Red becomes the lone savior of the flock as he’s the only one not to trust the approach of a colonizing pig named Leonard (Bill Hader) who predictably distracts the happier birds until he can find a moment to steal all of their eggs. 

I can speak about these characters with a certain amount of familiarity. Rovio had once gone far and away to make sure Angry Birds is always on our mind in its heyday, at one point producing hundreds of its own animated shorts, which you may now find streaming on Netflix. Those 2-D flash shorts were subtle and charming, with emphasis on the Angry Birds never speaking a word in order to create international appeal along the lines of Tom and Jerry. 

The exact opposite approach is taken in this movie, with every single character having their personality magnified to the point of hideousness. The film certainly suggests that you should be on Red’s side, but he’s simply too antagonistic in order to be a relatable good-guy. Chuck is the campy sort-of gay stereotype that you should never see in any sort of modern film, let alone one that’s rated PG. The high note of his played-for-laughs orientation emerges when he has a leather-daddy fantasy about the legendary Mighty Eagle, (Peter Dinklage) who in turn is revealed to be a self-obsessed fraud played well past his prime.

So, it ends up being up to the birds to chase the pigs to the island and blah, blah, blah. The last thing you can expect in this movie is a subversion of the paper-thin plot that served the original games. It’s too busy showing pigs in ass-less chaps, mother birds vomiting into their kids’ lunch bags, and multiple instances of characters getting bashed in the groin. That 11 minute sequence of Mighty Eagle taking an 11-second piss that so gleefully punctuated the trailers is made just a wee bit longer and a wee bit more uncomfortable.

When the vulgar sight-gags aren’t assaulting your eyes, the dialogue is doing the same to your ears, as though the writers were trying to win a bet as to how much profanity one can get away with in a PG-rated film. The word “flock” is used as a stand-in for another familiar “F” word. The movie tries to play off its potty-mouth by juxtaposing the lines with funny dialogue, but it only comes off more Family Guy, than genuinely charming. Red leads a charge against the pigs by shouting “All-right everyone, drop your nuts and grab your butts!” Cut to a bird spitting out a mouthful of walnuts. Again, this film is rated PG.

It’s a real shame that this is the film’s overall repertoire, because you really do see some glimmers of its overall potential. As a Sony pictures film with the pedigree of Hotel Transylvania, the characters are well designed, the expressions are wonderful, the CG is lovely, and the slapstick is well timed and occasionally amusing. The movie makes it hard to appreciate even its technological merits though, as ten minutes in you’ll get a bird making a joke about their ass, if not showing it to you outright.
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It isn’t that I wanted this film to be good. Hell, if it even had the polish of a film in the Madagascar series, it would still be serviceable in the vast plain of animated feature films that already exist. Sadly, a great deal of people will be going to see this. Sadly, a lot of people are going to look upon this and laugh, more often it is the adults in the audience who will be having a family meeting once the film lets out. But any fan of the games on mobile, any self-respecting nerd, or any fan of the cinema, even on the kid-friendly animated level, is going to take a cue from the theme of this film, and be pretty flocking mad. 

As I slowly start to get excited for the only successful Marvel Property that is not owned by Marvel, I need to catch up on my X-Men viewing.  I admit it, I was hesitant about Days of Future Past and skipped it in theaters and deeply regret it, and I will not let that happen again. Although it appears that Apocalypse will have many of our favorite characters dying off in one way or another, I think that it is better to remember the good times when nobody died, they only got locked up in mutant prison so they could escape at a later date. So let’s just dive into the movie that started it all, X-Men.

A new plague is starting to show itself around the world, but it is created by something that is inside of everybody. The Mutant Gene has been passed down to every generation and while it should be embraced, there are many people that feel like it should be controlled. Senator Kelly is one of these people that believes that the mutant problem should be addressed and taken care of in a timely manner and with all of the publicity he is receiving, along with standing ovations when he leaves the podium, he may have started a war against his fellow man that he had no idea was coming. 

Eric Lensherr is preparing for the war he was born to fight.  Since his powers came to him at a young age, Eric has embraced what has been given to him and will use it to his complete ability to make sure that the world knows that mutation is its future. Creating a weapon that will unlock the mutant gene in everyone, Eric is waiting for the perfect time to unleash it upon the human race. With a world summit coming to New York City, there is no better time to show its power to all the world, as well as making a statement by taking out most of the city. But the cost could be deadly to him to start up the machine on such a high level and Magneto needs to find a way to control it without causing himself any harm since he will have several more followers when all is said and done.  Being able to find a young mutant named Rogue who can borrow the life force from anything living, he has his target, but it will be more of a fight to bring the girl into greatness as since she has been taken in by his old friend Charles Xavier.

Living his life one day at a time, Logan wants nothing to do with anybody. Losing his memory after having his skeleton coated with Adamantium, he is looking for a way to get by, but gets drawn into a fight that he was not expecting. When seeing that Rogue needs someone to help and look after her, Logan knows he is up to the job and after almost being blown up and waking up in the Professor’s school, he sees that there is much more going on in the world than he ever knew. Staying at the school for two days, Logan has another reason for not wanting to leave as Jean Grey catches his eye. Seeing that she likes him as well, Logan will do anything to get her to notice him, but the X-Men are called into action before anything is able to formulate. After Rogue is kidnapped by Magneto, the Wolverine is ready for action and will do anything to protect the girl that is not afraid of his powers.

Professor Charles Xavier has been able to fly under the radar and run his school without any problems from the government, which is quite a feat seeing as to how he caters to young mutants. With Jean Grey, Scott Summers and Ororo Munroe helping him keep it together, they also serve another purpose, maintaining the safety of the world as a group called the X-Men.  Trying to keep Magneto and his gang away from the public, the group needs all the help they can get and even though Xavier is able to control people’s minds, he cannot get into his old friend's head anymore. When the X-Men figure out what Magneto is planning to do, they have to suit up and try to stop him before all of New York becomes another failed experiment.  Being led by Cyclops; Storm, Jean and Wolverine are ready to stop Magneto from completing his plan, along with saving Rogue from the certain death that Magneto has promised her.

With the huge success from the cartoon, Fox took a shot and was able to stumble upon gold when it came to brining the X-Men to life. This was the first box office smash of a live action superhero movie from the Marvel Universe and although I would like to credit Blade or Howard the Duck with doing that, sadly the numbers do not comply. The one thing that I always loved about the X-Men cartoon is that the characters seemed so relatable and now being on the big screen, you can see it much clearer.  Everyone seems to like to gravitate towards Wolverine the most and I can see why, he is just an everyday guy that happens to have the power to regenerate. But there are so many more good characters in the series, and I only hope that you are willing to give them all a chance, especially Bobby since he has caught the eye of Rogue and you know there will be some frostbite there.  Well on to X-2.

Ratchet and Clank, that wonderful long-running platform-shooter game series from Insomniac, which has graced our Playstation consoles since 2002, dazzling us with amazing e-rated shooter gameplay, smooth as butter 3-D platform controls, and cutscenes possessing quality CG, superior voice-acting, and the overall polish of a well-made animated film. That last element of the series is most likely the reason that this movie was even made and released to theaters. The folks down at Sony and Insomniac have most likely heard the phrase “Pixar-quality cutscenes” in so many video game reviews, they finally decided to bite the bullet and see how well the franchise actually runs on the big screen. Thus we have us Sony’s first entered attempt at feature film franchise-manufacturing: the first animated feature film based on a video game. Y’know, besides Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

In retrospect, the numerous decisions that were then made to actually bring this film to the 3-D appropriated silver screen were regarded as strange by people familiar with the series on Playstation. The animation is 100% handled by Rainmaker, the studio that once brought us the cult TV series Reboot, but has since brought us a dozen lackluster direct-to-video CG cartoons based on random franchises like Inspector Gadget and Popeye. The less initiated video game fanboy would wonder out loud why Insomniac doesn’t just do the animation themselves, but the clear answer to that would be because they were busy creating the video game that ties in with THIS movie.  Still, there are plenty of oddities involved in the production of this film, such as the fact that screenwriter T.J. Fixman, doesn’t want any credit for actually writing the film, given that he’d worked on two other films at the same time, and a great deal of the characters and inspiration came directly from the video games anyhow.   

This all isn’t to say that Ratchet and Clank is a bad film. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. If you want a film to potentially launch a Hollywood trend, it should be a film like this: action-packed, and sincerely funny, with characters and a story that lines up one-to-one with every other film in the animated feature genre. You might even say that Ratchet and Clank waited for just the right time to be released, so it can capitalize on the success of animated action comedies like Big Hero 6. But such a concept doesn’t seem particularly part of Sony’s plan. More likely, Sony had to use this film to fill a gap left behind after the re-shuffling of its animation department, hiring a new president, and subsequently alienating Hotel Transylvania director Gennedy Tartakovsky. Someone in the Sony brass said aloud “We need something campy with cutesy characters all over it by this summer,” and Ratchet and Clank just walked into the boardroom holding a tray loaded with coffee or something…

​But whatever happened to possess the executives, we nonetheless have this film, which does a spotless job translating the Playstation-exclusive characters to the visual medium. So spotless in fact, that there’s nothing that would make this movie any different than say, watching a fan-made video which glues all the video game cutscenes together on YouTube. It is essentially a re-telling of the first game’s story: we meet Ratchet, a garage-mechanic dwelling on a desert planet, ambitious and eager to spout the catchphrase “I can fix that,” like the latter-day Jimmy Neutron that he is. Ratchet gets instantly booted out of an audition for The Barney Stinson-esque Captain Qwark’s Galactic Rangers team for being too small, and the unexpected escape and crash landing of defective war robot Clank’s ship on his planet serves as a convenient excuse for him to insert himself into the center of a galactic war.

The overly pompous nature of Captain Qwark, a breakout character from the games, and his team of overly macho, shoot-first, gung-ho Galactic Rangers ultimately create the central theme of this film. Every attempt by Ratchet and Clank, along with a few other supporting characters, to solve problems using brains rather than brawn, are constantly thwarted by Qwark and his cronies, to the point where they are almost more detrimental to the heroes than the actual villains: Chairman Drek, an evil middle manager who is destroying planets for real estate agents, and his chief henchman Doctor Nefarious, a character who is known to become Ratchet and Clank’s greatest arch enemy in games, and possibly movies, to come. 

The movie thoroughly and serviceably pays homage to every concept ever introduced in the games, and does so within its 90 minute runtime without ever spoiling the pacing or leaving behind anything that would be misunderstood if you had seen the movie before playing any of the games. They even manage to fit in a montage showcasing all the weapons from the original game, set directly against a montage of Ratchet comedically maiming himself while trying to use them. The remainder of the film is devoted to traveling through space, infiltrating Drek’s red-lighted, robot henchmen riddled bases, discovering the evil chairman’s true plan, and saving the day, all while blowing up hundreds of robots in the process. Once you’re well past the climax of the film, you realize the truly sad difference between watching this as a film and playing it on Playstation: you’re not the one who gets to fire all the guns.

In a way, it is wonderful that this movie translates the overall appeal of the games so well. This movie was out a full three weeks before The Angry Birds Movie, the next bidder for the games-as-animated films genre, just raring to replace the central themes for its game in exchange for fart-jokes and sexual innuendo. We at least have the opportunity to watch a film that appreciates the fact it is derived from a video game, and didn’t try to jazz itself up with all the common conventions of animated feature films. Ratchet, Clank, Captain Qwark, and most of the main cast even have the same voice actors from the video games. There is a small amount of celebrity stunt-casting though. John Goodman is the most obvious celebrity, in the role of Ratchet’s garage boss, Razz, but just try to guess where they hid Paul Giamatti, Bella Thorne, Rosario Dawson, and Sylvester Stallone.

All in all, if you can wrap your head around how strange it is that this film even exists, you’ll have an awesome time watching it. You’ll be glad to know that the bar has been set reasonably high for animated films based on video games, and some far away day, when you see the DVD collecting scratches inside a Dropbox kiosk, you may actually regret failing to watch it in a theater, in 3-D…

Battling memory loss is a real problem these days and with nobody knowing what really causes it, we have to do our best to keep those memories alive. I for one am not a huge fan of taking pictures and putting them in photo albums, yes I am that old, I like to rely on the pictures in my head. When these start going away, I will be out of luck when it comes to telling stories about what I did and how beautiful the landscapes were. I hope not to forget anything and I keep up on memory training as time goes on, I don’t care about the little things like what I had to eat this morning, it is more about my time in haunted hotels and trips overseas that I have been fortunate enough to be able to take.

Waking up in a strange room, John Murdoch does not know who or where he is. While getting dressed, he receives a strange phone call from a doctor that knows what is happening to him. While not believing a word that the doctor says, Murdoch sees a dead boy on the floor and knows that he needs to get out of there as soon as possible. Doctor Schreber knows that John will struggle since he was not able to give the man his new injection to change his memories and needs to do everything in his power to find the lost man. Not knowing what will happen to him with the Strangers, his employers, Schreber tries to find out what little bit of information John might stumble across and where it may take him.

Retrieving his lost wallet, John Murdoch is able to figure out what his name is, but with a handful of newspaper clippings in his pocket talking about murder, he does not believe who he has become. Being pursued by the Strangers, an albino race of human looking beings, John is on his own until he is able to get help from his wife Emma. But while running for his life, John finds that he has the power to tune, like the ones that are chasing after him. Not knowing how or why he has this ability, John is able to get in touch with Doctor Schreber to find his answers. But the police are also on his tail and want to lock him up for the murder of now seven working girls. Only wanting to get his memories back and finding out that everybody has the same sort of memory loss that he has, John will have to control his feelings and show that there is more to a person than their memories, they have to have a soul to survive in the unrelenting city.

I remember watching this movie after I bought it in 1998 and thinking it was a crazy purchase. Thank goodness I do not throw anything away, because when I watched it again, it is a great piece of work. The story is sound, but it is the acting that makes it believable. As John is forced to make decisions that will change the outcome throughout, he still has no idea who he is and that has to be the genius behind the magic that you see on the screen. With no motivation to do the right thing, John is able to make a new reality out of nothing and then by gaining the power to transform the city like the Strangers have, it is one man against the world.  Not giving up and being able to control his destiny, this movie should make you realize that no matter what funk you think that you are stuck in, you can still make a difference, no matter what problems are standing in front of you.  Happy Viewing.

Over the past eight years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has more or less brought forth the hopes and dreams of every geek out there by bringing super heroes into the mainstream like never before. Everywhere we turn now, super heroes are a giant focus in pop culture and that's largely in part to the un-paralleled success of the MCU.

​But it goes beyond simply blowing stuff up for this particular franchise. One of the reasons these stories have managed to resonate with all of us is the sheer fact that we always get a quality and engaging story that we can relate to in some form or fashion and the latest entry in the series, Captain America: Civil War is no exception to this rule. But this particular film signaled something new for Marvel as well. In many ways Civil War is Marvel's coming of age story because not only was it fun and relatable, but it truly dealt with some heavier themes and concepts; one of which just so happened to be fear. 

One could debate that the consequences of our actions and guilt are the central focus of this film since the events of Age of Ultron weigh heavy over everything in this story, but when you truly boil it down and strip away the Battle of Sokovia; it all comes down to fear. Take Tony Stark for example. While he is indeed haunted by the lives lost on his watch and stunned by finally seeing a face and a name of someone lost in his last conflict, it is fear; specifically of what these heroes can accomplish without rules or regulation in play, that drives him to push for the Sokovia Accords to become the gold standard for the Avengers, and what drives him to battle his friends and surrogate family.

But perhaps the biggest surprise of making fear one of the central thematic concepts of this film, is the fact that it is not entirely focused upon in negative light. The movie also presents us with the positive side of fear by way of Steve Rogers' side of the story. He too is afraid, but more so of what evil can accomplish once he discovers that Zemo is headed to Russia to potentially unleash the super soldiers waiting there. It is his fear of what these soldiers can do, and the havoc they bring upon the world that drives him to abandon the Accords, do the right thing and do whatever must be done at any cost to save lives. 

While fear and its consequences and benefits are explored in depth in this film, it is not the only driving force behind the story. Another surprising concept that rears its head are the dangers of fury and revenge. This primarily applies to Zemo and Tony since they both exhibit those two things on different levels. Zemo answers the call of these emotions by setting a grand plan in motion to destroy the Avengers from the inside, and while Tony's battle with this is more primal and reactive and doesn't arrive until the climax of the film, the message is obvious as to what happens when you let it consume you. Yet once more the film is happy to show a counterbalance to the problem by way of T'Challa, who recognizes the danger and refuses to let it take control of his actions when he realizes that Zemo has worked to manipulate every hero out there.

Either way, this is by far the most mature Marvel movie to date, dealing with ideas and concepts that are often reserved for the pages of comic books and it's truly a wonderful thing to finally see them on display on the big screen, especially in a summer blockbuster film where thoughtful concepts often times are never present. It represents a bold new direction from Marvel as we begin Phase Three of the MCU and seeing as to how super hero films are still an incredible draw at the box office, Civil War included, one can hope that this film serves as an evolutionary marker for the genre where cerebral storytelling and deeper concepts become the standard for the future.