American Animals

First Hit: Interesting in that it shows, how many under 25-year-old men think and act. 

Friendships among young men can be very influential. As childhood friends Warren Lipka (Evan Peters) Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan) are still friends as they enter college. Warren was the more wild, entertaining, and reckless of the two. Together they had a symbiotic bond.

With Warren supposedly going to college on an athletic scholarship and Spencer being drawn towards art, they still hang out, smoke pot and try things together. When Spencer goes into the special collection book room at the Transylvania College Library, he’s struck by the amazing paintings in the displayed Audubon books. Thinking they are valuable, along with others in the collection, including one by Charles Darwin, kiddingly he wonders outloud to Spencer about their value and what he'd do with the money.

Hatching a plan to steal and fence the books, the plan starts a life of its own. Throughout the planning process, Spencer thinks that they will come across an obstacle that will require them to quit thinking they can pull off the job. They don’t. For each obstacle, they find a solution including bringing on two others to help them; brainiac Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson) and rich boy Chas Allen (Blake Jenner).

The film follows them as the plot and work their way through the obstructions from making this robbery work. One of those items was who was going to neutralize the woman guarding the special collections, Betty Jean Gooch (Ann Dowd).

All their planning, partially induced by watching robbery films, turns out to be not as through as they had hoped, which resulted in poorly executed robbery.

One of the better things in this film were the occasional interviews with the real thieves, Gooch, and parents of the boys. What made this even more interesting was that I thought the real young men might have made a better film as they were all personable and film friendly, especially Warren.

Peters was good as Warren. He didn’t quite have the wild-eyed look of the real Warren, but it worked. Keoghan was strong as the conscious one of the group. His hesitating nature make his role work. Abrahamson was strong as the quiet, smart, and a slightly dark brooding Borsuk. The real Borsuk ended up becoming a writer. Jenner as the amped up Allen was intense and supercharged. I thought he did a good job in this role. Dowd was very good as the special collections librarian. Bart Layton wrote an effective and interesting script. He also directed the film. Although I liked the use of having interviews with the real young men, it didn’t help the film because they might have been good in their own roles.

Overall: This was an interesting film especially because it was a true story.

X-Men: Apocalypse

First Hit:  Much better than the other Marvel (Comic) film “Captain America…” but it felt worn and reaching.

The beginning is a set up based on some past historical idea about a demonic force called En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) wanting to finish his evolvement which will give him total world domination. But to complete this task he has to usurp the powers owned and inherent in Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), the leader of the X-Men (and women). By obtaining this power he can rule the world.

The film fails to make this important task engaging enough thereby making the film uninteresting, let alone believable by any stretch of the imagination. The other story is that Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto (Michael Fassbender) has distanced himself from the other X-Men(women) and Professor Xavier.

In this distancing, Magneto has joined with Apocalypse and will execute his commands to rearrange the planet by removing the metal structures of the earth thereby making earth’s inhabitants helpless. The interplay between the X-Men is good and does make this film interesting in ways that has some depth.

The most fun part of the film has to do with Quicksilver/Peter Maximoff (Evan Peters) because his scenes are lighthearted, well-conceived, and simply fun to watch. He brings a humorous element to the whole film and when he’s on the screen, I was engaged.

What seemed pressed were scenes with Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) as it seemed she really didn’t want to be in this role and is done with the X-Men series of films. I’d be surprised to see her in another, unless she needs the money.

Isaac created a good enough demonic Apocalypse character, and the makeup helped a lot. Fassbender was OK as the aloof, isolated Magneto. McAvoy was strong as Professor Xavier. Peters was fantastic and the best part of the film. His tongue-in-cheek and cavalier representation of the character was appropriately in-line with my view of what Marvel Comics were originally about. The rest of it has become too serious and seems only there to extract more money out of the public. Lawrence seemed done with the whole thing and her performance and character lacked inspiration. Simon Kinberg wrote the sometimes witty and sometimes labored screen play. Bryan Singer brought some interesting visual scenes to the screen but the attempt to make this story real falls on deaf eyes (yes I mean deaf eyes).

Overall:  Although fun enough, this franchise has to make more and more unrealistic set-ups to attempt to make the stories continue to work into the future.