It: Chapter Two (2019)

Directed by: Andy Mucshietti

Notable cast: James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, Bill Skarsgård, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Andy Bean

It: Chapter Two serves as a really good reminder of why people remember and celebrate the childhood half of the story. That may seem harsh, but if anything, this movie does deserve praise for making the material as interesting as it’s possible to make it. The adaptation of the story and some of its more esoteric elements are at the very least bold and interesting. I’m a long-time devoted King reader, and I grew up with the Tim Curry miniseries, but I’m going to take this film strictly on its own merit. For a record of my potential bias, the miniseries doesn’t really hold up, and probably wasn’t that good in the first place, and the book is definitely upper tier King but admittedly kind of a mess. Especially the ending…

Dark Phoenix (2019)

Director: Simon Kinberg

Notable cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Jessica Chastain, Sophie Turner

As a lifelong comic book nerd, and Marvel zombie specifically, I cannot understate the importance of the Dark Phoenix Saga to the landscape of my youth, especially the animated series’ take. Now, that doesn’t necessarily color my review the way you might think, as I’m also a deep believer in adaptation and some of the hidden beauty that can be drawn out of it. Say what you will about Constantine, for example, as a translation? Not even a little bit close. I mean… damn. They cast Keanu as a Brit. Again. At least he didn’t even try the accent this time, instead, they adapted it. And for my money, one of the finer action films of the aughts. So, what about Dark Phoenix, the deeply delayed swan song for Fox’s X-Men franchise? In a strange way, it serves as a great backdrop for a general post-mortem on the series as a whole. It’s extremely shaky with high highs, and low lows, and is better at the time than you remember it, albeit not necessarily good. There are less absolutely bad films in the franchise than you remember (X3, Origins: Wolverine, and Apocalypse being the only actually irredeemable ones).

Glass (2019)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Notable Cast: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sarah Paulson, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woordard, Luke Kirby, Adam David Thompson

Even five years ago, Glass was an unthinkable film. If you told me that we would be on the third part of an Unbreakable trilogy and the third film in M. Night Shyamalan’s renaissance with a theatrical audience just five years ago I would have probably laughed myself into a heart attack. Yet, here we are in 2019 with Glass, M. Night’s third superhero film and the third film of his in a row to see a significant box office success. It’s unexpected and, while I often think M. Night’s early career can be a bit overblown, something of a welcome return to see him return to genre films and produce interesting pieces of cinema. Glass was something that I ended up being very excited to see.

Oddly enough, I’m not the biggest fan of Unbreakable, the first part of this trilogy. It’s seemingly anti-superhero style to delivering a superhero origin story is both wildly bold and awkwardly disconnected which, while massively respectable, doesn’t inherently hit me the way it did for so many other critics. Split, the surprise sequel/side-quel, is another story. Split was a film that I adored. It was rooted in a fascinating blend of genre concepts and intimate character work. Glass is strangely enough very much a sequel to both Unbreakable and Split in tones, delivering some oddly cold material, but stemming from a punchy genre concept that once again massively benefits from a riveting performance from James McAvoy. While the mixture at times can be a bit different than expected, actively avoiding some of the tropes of the genre while taking a flank to embrace others, Glass is a massively entertaining film that ends up being much more of a hybrid and natural progression of seeing its previous two entries melded together. It’s easy to see why many critics are lambasting the film for that mixture, but by the time the end credits rolled it felt like it was exactly where this series wanted to go even if some of the choices can be outlandishly hit or miss.

Atomic Blonde (2017)

Director: David Leitch

Notable Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Til Schweiger, Eddie Marsan, Sofia Boutella, Toby Jones, Bill Skarsgard, Sam Hargrave

It wasn’t that long ago that the action genre got a well-deserved injection in the mainstream consciousness from the first Taken film. It hit all the usual action tropes, but it struck a chord with audiences who bought into it with vigor. This same burst happened again with John Wick a few years ago, but this time it was less about fine tuning the action film style that was popular at the time and more about using style, simplicity, and an old school approach that made the connection with audiences. Call it what you will, but action right now is being propelled by the ‘John Wick Effect’ which itself was still riding a bit on the Taken and Bourne momentum. It has launched the creative careers of the members of 87 Eleven and made a stylistic impact. So when the two directors of John Wick decided to go their separate ways, it only meant that fans would get more. From Chad Stahelski we got the just as impressive John Wick: Chapter 2 and from David Leitch we got the graphic novel based film, Atomic Blonde. Now, the reason this brief recap of the events leading to Atomic Blonde is important is that it’s the measuring stick that this film will judged and it’s one of the reasons that it ultimately feels like more of a mixed effort. Atomic Blonde features some dynamic visuals, a fun classic action concept, and the usual impressive action, but it also suffers from one key problem: forced narrative, leaving the film feeling a bit more uneven than initially expected.

Split (2017)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Notable Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Brad William Henke, Sebastian Arcelus

The M. Night Shyamalan story is going to be one for the books. At one point in his early career he was being called the next Steven Spielberg, but those diehard fans accumulated and endless amounts of praise started to waver with The Village, came into question with Lady in the Water, and were extinguished by The Happening. Since then, he’s almost been a blight on his own movies as his twist heavy writing and direction was called heavily into question by critics and fans and it fell as far as to even see his name mysteriously disappear on all marketing for After Earth. However, 2015 saw him go back to his roots with the comedic horror film The Visit and it indicated that perhaps his career wasn’t completely dead. By the time the credits had ended on his latest feature Split, I felt like perhaps he will be a phoenix rising from the ashes. This is because Split, for all of its gimmicks, is a remarkably effective thriller, fringing on horror and yet remaining impressively thoughtful at how it approaches its sensitive subject matter. It’s a film that delivers on its promises, going beyond that with strong characters and fantastic narrative, and establishes Shyamalan as a director who still has the touch to sucker punch his audience like he was known to do in his early career. Split is a rebirth.