Posts Tagged ‘Tye Sheridan’

X-Men: Apocalypse

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Rose Byrne, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Olivia Munn, Josh Helman, Ben Hardy, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Lucas Till, Evan Peters

Director Bryan Singer’s latest film forms the conclusion of a prequel trilogy. X-Men Apocalypse is a pastiche of 80’s paranoia even though the main villain Apocalypse originates from Ancient Egypt and is set upon decimating the world of man and mutants circa 1983, having risen out of a gold pyramid in modern day Egypt and decides annihilation is in order.

Reassembling much of the cast of X-Men: First Class, X-Men Apocalypse stars Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games Trilogy) as Raven/Mystique, James McAvoy (Victor Frankenstein) as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender (Macbeth) as Magneto, Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast and Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner as a young Jean Grey and Rose Byrne returns as Moira Mactaggert who first confronts the devastating power of Apocalypse in Cairo and alerts Charles Xavier and his band of mutants to the imminent danger.

Despite some of the mutants not wanting to be drawn into another conflict, they soon all bandy together when they realize how dangerous Apocalypse is, in his unrelenting quest to destroy human civilization circa 1983 and along with that eighties world, the parallel community of the mutants.

X-Men: Apocalypse is more mutants versus a more formidable mutant, than man vs mutant, although like always Magneto has several changes of conscience especially after seeing his young wife and daughter accidentally killed in a Polish forest. Soon Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto unleashes all his anger and becomes the perfect ally for Apocalypse’s annihilating antics.

Much of the action alternates between America, Poland and Egypt and whilst X-Men: Apocalypse does not have that some groovy retro feel as the seventies set X-Men: First Class, there are some distinct 1980’s signifiers including a collage of Reagan material, nuclear armament as well as stock images pointing to the last decade of the cold war, where mistrust defined global politics.

Bryan Singer knows how to direct such a large ensemble cast even though audiences at times might get a sense of Mutant overload, but then again this is X-Men: Apocalypse and the more superhumans the better. X-Men: Apocalypse is definitely a case of the Unusual Suspects.

Clearly the cast of this film had great fun making it and the visual effects are truly inspiring especially the Egyptian sequence when the Mutants take on Apocalypse with his band of malevolent mutants including Psylocke played by Olivia Munn and birdman Angel played by Ben Hardy.

Audiences should also watch out for Tye Sheridan as a young Cyclops and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the turquoise teleporter Nightcrawler, who Mystique discovers in a cage fight in East Berlin.

X-Men: Apocalypse is recommended viewing for those that enjoyed X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past, all three films now make up the prequel trilogy. Marvel is certainly milking a lucrative franchise for all its worth and audiences are lapping up the ever expanding mutant universe.

The Tree of Life

Capturing the Universe’s essence

Reclusive American film maker Terrence Malick’s visually evocative epic The Tree of Life centres on a Southern American family living in the then idyllic town of Waco, Texas in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. A strict and religious father, a loving and luminous mother and three boys is intimately shot and interwoven with a larger meditation on the existence of God, the universe, Birth and Death and the arc from a more pastoral existence to the technology filled society which has defined the 21^st century. The father is played brilliant by Brad Pitt and the mother by Jessica Chastain each representing the balance in nature between order, discipline and change with beauty, grace and tenderness.

Malick’s vision is of a true auteur and is entirely uncompromising, creating a cinematic experience in The Tree of Life which is visually astounding, intimately beautiful and prosaic enhanced with amazing cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki. Using a non-linear narrative, multiple levels of sound combining breathtaking music with snatches of interior monologue from his characters, the audience has to piece together the progression of this journey of a family who suffers a loss by way of nature.

There are no structured scenes but rather a series of visually sublime and breathtaking scenery intercut with a larger vision of the universe’s origins, the development of life on earth and the natural order of selection. Where Malick excels are the scenes of the three brothers innocently playing, focusing on the eldest son, Jack’s viewpoint who is deeply affected by his father’s discipline, balancing his own aggression by acts of affection for his younger siblings. Jack also appears as an older man, played by Sean Penn as an architect in Houston, still affected by the earlier grief which defined his family.

The Tree of Life is not a commercial film and if viewers enjoyed Malick’s two previous films, The Thin Red Line and The New World, then they will appreciate this beautiful yet bewildering meditation on the origins of existence on earth, yet his latest visual offering did impress the jury at Cannes walking off with the 2011 much coveted Palm d’Or. See it to make your own impressions.