Prisoners (2013) - For about an hour, Denis Villeneuve looks to be crafting a fascinating study of post-9/11 America. Or at least a really interesting mood piece or, at a minimum, a cautionary tale. And then this film devolves into a second rate piece of shit cliché. The climax is ridiculous. The artistic statement here is noxious. It is not a critique, but a defense of America's 9/11 debasement. A character advises us at the end that, sure we did some bad things, but she's still glad we did them and hopes we get away with it, too. And let's not forget the ridiculous devil worshiping villain. Villeneuve is a talented filmmaker with potential that shines through even here. But, in the end, this is not a good movie. Screened on Blu-ray.
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - If you've seen all of the X-Men movies you will no doubt get all of the countless allusions to plot developments from previous movies. I haven't seen those other movies (except the first X-Men movie 14 years ago), so they were mostly lost on me, although director Bryan Singer shoots the thing so that it is obvious that an in-joke is being made every two minutes. It is also pretty blatantly a classic use of a time-travel gimmick to erase all that has happened before in the franchise so that the whole thing can be rebooted for even more money without having to fret about canonical details. Time-travel logic is famously a problem for movies, and it doesn't add up here, but Singer wisely throws in just enough material on the matter to let you know what is happening and then tries to steer clear of it afterward. If you know absolutely nothing about the X-Men, stay away from this movie, as it absolutely demands that you know the general gist of the characters and their back-stories. For people caught in the middle such as myself, this is just another absurd spectacle that doesn't make much logical sense but that provides a few interesting or fun set-pieces. Kudos to the filmmakers for finding a way to make it seem semi-plausible that the heroes would break the villain out of jail, even if it turns out that, actually, it mostly just ends up causing our heroes problems. This film is professionally rendered and technically solid, but it is also meaningless and has a cynical heart that beats with the sound of the cha-ching of franchise value. Perhaps the biggest reason to see this one is inertia: if you've seen the rest, why stop now? Screened in the theater.
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