Movie Review: Stonehearst Asylum (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

"Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see." That's a piece of advice offered in Stonehearst Asylum to the film's ostensible hero, Dr. Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess). It's also the most important suggestion made by author Edgar Allan Poe to his reader in the droll short story that the movie is loosely based on, "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether." Directed by Brad Anderson (The Call), Stonehearst Asylum is more clever than scary. But there's a lot to be said for a well plotted thriller in a time when too many horror movies hinge more on shocking their audiences instead of getting under their skin.

The X-Factor

How X-Men: First Class Made Michael Fassbender a Star

by Tony Dayoub

Just out on Blu-ray and DVD, X-Men: First Class is Matthew Vaughn’s clever 1960s-era spinoff from Fox’s popular mutant superhero franchise. Based on the Marvel comics created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, X-Men posits a world where the infinite variety of super-powered homo superiors, the next step in human evolution, are being persecuted by the increasingly suspicious homo sapiens — us. Though the initial two films helmed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) tied the mutants’ quest for acceptance to the same battle being fought by today’s LGBT community, X-Men: First Class backtracks to its most primal disagreement, the one between its two lead characters. Appropriately enough, the movie this time finds its thematic touchstone in the civil rights struggle: telepath Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), like Martin Luther King Jr., believes humanity will only accept mutants through peaceful coexistence, at least as peaceful as it can be when fighting dastardly super-villains like Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon); Xavier’s friendly rival and master of magnetism, Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender), is closer in spirit to the more militant Malcolm X, who believed coexistence must be fought for “by any means necessary.” Lehnsherr, the man who would be Magneto, is automatically then a far juicier role, and for Fassbender, a star-making turn.

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Movie Review: X-Men: First Class (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

Given the decline of the X-Men movie franchise—which peaked fairly early with Bryan Singer's X2: X-Men United (not just one of the best in this series, but one of the best superhero films, period) before ending up in the execrable X-Men: The Last Stand and the disappointing X-Men Origins: Wolverine—one would be justified in choosing to avoid the latest entry sight unseen. But the anomalous X-Men: First Class turns out to be one of the most surprising summer blockbuster hopefuls in quite a long time. The cheesy comic-book costumes glimpsed in the preview hinted that this may have initially been planned as a slapdash film hastened to the box office for fear that studio distributor 20th Century Fox's rights to the series would revert back to Marvel. However, director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) turns the inherent camp quotient into a virtue, giving us a stylized, period look at the secret history of the mutant group and its origins, at times channeling the espionage-laden eccentricities of the early 007 films.

Movie Review: Hanna (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

One online review compares Hanna, the new actioner by Joe Wright (Atonement), to the story of "Little Red Riding Hood," a rather facile analogy based on the appearance of a giant Big Bad Wolf's head at a Grimm's Fairy Tale-themed amusement park in the film. But one need only look at the film's eponymous albino heroine to see that the more apt analogy is to Grimm's "Snow White." Like in that story, a heroine must initially depend on the protection of a huntsman in order to evade an evil stepmother who plots to kill her. Where it differs is that the self-reliant Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) never needs a dashing prince to rush to her rescue. She, instead, capitalizes on the survivalist education imparted to her by a rogue spy, Erik Heller (Eric Bana), in order to outmaneuver her pursuer, Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), a lethal CIA operative who holds the key to Hanna's genesis.