We chose our “teams” for fantasy summer box office on last week’s Frotcast, a game which will hopefully make these box office-wrap up posts a little more interesting (again, thanks to the Masters of None guys for the idea).  We each chose four movies and one bomb pick, person with the highest combined numbers based on domestic opening weekend (plus the inverse of your bomb pick’s budget minus opening) wins.  You can see the standings thus far here, but long story short… it looks like I’m screwed.

My second pick, X-Men: First Class opened this weekend, and although those horrible posters and generally terrible marketing campaign didn’t affect the reviews, they do seem to have affected the numbers, with X-Men pulling its weakest opening of the franchise, an estimated $56 million.  That was behind Thor ($65.7 million) and comparable to The Incredible Hulk or Watchmen.  Not exactly a disaster, unless you count making Brett Ratner look good through no fault of his own yet again a disaster, which it kind of is.  Said Ratner, “Huh?” and scratched his balls, when reached for comment. Read the rest of this entry »

WEEKEND PREVIEW: There are a couple new films I haven’t covered coming out if you live in New York or LA (Beginners, Submarine), but for most of us, it’s just X-Men: First Class (and Tree of Life and Midnight in Paris, but I covered those last week and the week before).  But good news, blue titties.

X-Men: First Class: An ungodly combination of prequel, reboot, origin story, and Fox project, but from the director of Kick-Ass.

RottenTomatoes: 88%

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

“The movie feels smarter and more ambitious than many of its brethren, not to mention more thrilling and flat-out fun. The central performances by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are unusually nuanced for a superhero flick, somehow vulnerable and badass at the same time. This is how it’s done, folks!” -Eric Snider, Film.com

“The best acting in “X-Men: First Class” is by President John F. Kennedy, who in his Thanksgiving 1962 message to the nation, expresses gratitude for the successful end of the Cuban Missile Crisis while suppressing what he surely must know, that American and Soviet missiles spent a great deal of time flying back and forth while mentally controlled by the awesome powers of mutants.” -Roger Ebert

“I suppose a ridiculous yarn about how a group of superhuman genetic mutants in silly costumes intervene to resolve the 1963 Cuban missile crisis (after starting it in the first place) fits the bill, somewhat. But I’m pretty sure that those who are claiming that “X-Men: First Class” is actually good are engaged in the kind of brainwashed magical thinking that goes along with a culture where the entire media and most of the public have to behave like savvy insiders all the time.” -Salon

I can’t even remember the last time I agreed with Ebert. I enjoy the guy’s writing, but I think I agree with Armond White more than him.

ARMCHAIR ANALYSIS: Well, you already know what I thought of it.  Probably more than you ever wanted to.  There were some plot holes and it gets major negative points for stealing a dumb subplot from X3, and January Jones had that bitchy, non-facial expression that she always has the entire time, but overall it was pretty entertaining.  Best superhero movie since, well, Kick-Ass.  Plus Michael Fassbender is dreamy.

Michael F. Assbender, assbending like a boss

X-Men: Born This Way

X-Men: First Class is about one obnoxious subplot away from being the movie Watchmen always wanted to be, the huge-budget, over-the-top superhero epic that has as much insight into the human condition as it does spandex and… grunting. Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn manages to turn a Muppet Babies concept with a disastrous marketing campaign (HURRR, DIAGONAL ORIGIN STORY!) into something a lot more ambitious than your basic retread of the superhero story. And that’s good, because X has as its source material a layered allegory for the Civil Rights movement, whereas, say, Thor was mostly an excuse to watch a buff guy hit sh*t with the hammer (though Brett Ratner still can’t tell the difference). Look, I was as surprised as you are.  DON’T FIGHT IT! YOU’VE BEEN ASSBENT!

X opens in flashback, telling two parallel backstories. One starring over-enunciating James McAvoy as smarmypants overichiever Charles Xavier; the other, ass-bending Michael F. Assbender (Michael Fassbender, to other people) as hard-knocks Polish concentration camp orphan Erik Lehnsherr. One part of this supposed origin story that’s never explained is Xavier’s British accent, which he already has at the age of 10 when we catch up with him at his palatial estate in, uh… Westchester, New York.  Did rich kids speak in British accents in the 40s?  Because JFK was a rich kid in the 40s and I’m pretty sure I heard him call a country “Cuber.”  In any case, rich Xavier is already a powerful psychic, while penniless Lehnsherr possesses mutant genes that make him far less Jewy than his parents.  Later he learns he can control metal when Kevin Bacon shoots his mother.  (That’s Kevin Bacon, Nazi Scientist, by the way, before he morphs into Kevin Bacon, international playboy — but I’m getting ahead of myself).  As Erik discovers during a mother-murdered-in-front-of-him induced rage, his ability to attract metal is directly related to the intensity of his emotions.  Why, if only he had one person on whom to pin all his most intense hatreds! And another who could literally enter his mind and help him sort out his feelings! Why, all that’d be left is some giant metal sh*t to control.

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(via GammaSquad, click to engorge. Er, enlarge.)

I caught a screening of X-Men: First Class this morning, and while my review is embargoed until the release date, as far as I know I’m not barred from divulging anti-spoilers of things that didn’t happen.  So in the hopes of saving you and the staff of your local theater some time and hassle, I can report that there is no post-credit Easter egg at the end of X-Men: First Class (presumably because it’s a 20th Century Fox production and not a Disney/Marvel one).

On the plus side, I did have the privilege of sitting through a good seven minutes of absolutely fascinating factoids about X-Men: First Class.  For instance, did you know that they had a separate production crew for London, LA, and Georgia, all with their own assistant directors, grips, and production managers?  It’s true!  They must have enough staff to run six aircraft carriers.  I even chose a favorite crewmember (which will soon become a recurring feature):  Second Unit Director Brian Smrz.  That’s right, Smrz.  Like the mutants in the film, he seems to have been born without need of vowels.  And according to his IMDB bio, his brother is stuntman Brett Smrz, with whom he once performed a motorcycle jump over the Los Angeles river.  So today we drink to you, Brian Smrz, our first ever Non-Famous Crewmember of the Day.  How do I pronounce that, anyway?  Do I have to plug my nostrils when I say it?

As the old family saying goes, “once you go Smrz, you never brtdsz schlxrsz.”

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Matthew Vaughn and 20th Century Fox’s X-Men: First Class opens in just a few weeks (June 4th, to be exact).  New clips from the film, once rumored to be a behind-schedule disaster, are now coming fast and furious (as I’ve been known to myself).  The latest centers on Hank McCoy, aka Beast, played by Nicholas Hoult, who shows off his mutations for the first time, to the instant pantie moistening of Mystique, played by the lovely Jennifer Lawrence.  Oh yeah, baby, you turned on by a man with toes on his feet?  What say we go somewhere more private and I show you the meaning of “prehensile.”