Yesterday

YESTERDAY

** SPOILERS **

Danny Boyle's Yesterday posits an alternate reality where The Beatles never existed, which turns out to be both great and terrible news for Jack Malik (Himesh Patel). Mostly terrible, really. Jack, a struggling musician living in Clacton-on-Sea, UK, is run over by a bus during a global blackout that lasted for 12 seconds. When Jack comes to, he soon realizes that no one understands the Beatles references he drops, nor do his friends recognize the song "Yesterday" when he plays it for them. Panicked Google searches soon reveal the stunning truth: somehow, the blackout wiped The Beatles from history (among other random things like Coca-Cola, cigarettes, and Harry Potter). 

From this wacky high concept, Boyle and his screenwriter Richard Curtis hang a sweet, awkward, but frothy story of a man who is nothing particularly special seizing the opportunity to pretend that he is the sole author of some of the greatest rock songs ever. At first, Jack performs and records the Beatles' music just to preserve them but soon, the magic of the Beatles' hits lands him TV spots, which leads to Ed Sheeran himself showing up at Jack's door to invite him on tour. Poor Ed is exceedingly jealous of this nobody who somehow writes and performs songs that are instantly legendary, and Jack is quickly scooped up by an L.A.-based record label. Jack's record deal comes with a new, ball-busting manager (Kate McKinnon), but this means Jack has to leave behind his previous manager Ellie Appleton (Lily James), who has unrequitedly loved and supported Jack since they were classmates together in 2004. 

While Yesterday is an unabashed lovefest for the Beatles and their music, the film is clever enough to recognize and poke fun at the fact that those songs are from the 1960s and come off as dated in 2019. On one hand, "Let It Be", "Yesterday", "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", etc. remain as powerful as ever, but they're from an entirely different era, which is what makes them refreshing juxtaposed against today's heavily sampled and remixed pop music. And yet, some of the film's best jokes come at the expense of the Beatles' eccentricities: the album titles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band makes no sense and The White Album comes off as racist. Ed Sheeran also insists "Hey Jude" would be better and more contemporary if it was changed to "Hey Dude". McKinnon also hilarously (and correctly) sizes Jack up as "not attractive, out of shape" i.e. not a rock star. However, the novelty of one man supposedly writing and performing so many incredible songs in such a short period of time rockets Jack Malik to global stardom, but the guilt of being a complete fraud rips his soul apart, as does his realization that he also loves Ellie, who can't join him on this journey and has moved on romantically.

Boyle and Curtis wisely don't explain the hows and whys of the new reality, nor do they go into detail about the whereabouts of the surviving Beatles, and this lets them drop a huge surprise in the third act when the last Beatle anyone expected to see turns out to be alive. This leads Jack to finally listen to his conscience and tell the truth about being a fraud but, fortunately, he's not a fraud about loving Ellie. While James and Patel share an easy chemistry and she is at maximum Lily James-level charm, but Yesterday itself isn't Danny Boyle at his Danny Boyle-iest - the director only fleetingly dips into his bag of distinct cinematic wizardry. Rather, Boyle lets the actors and the music of the Beatles carry the load, and it all fuses into a lovely climactic montage of Jack and Ellie's life happy life together set to "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da ". While Yesterday isn't quite all it could have been, it packs enough irreverence, joy, wit, heart, and music that you recognize its deficiencies but just let it be.

Anna

ANNA

** SPOILERS **

"I work for the KGB, baby," Anna Poliatova (Sasha Luss) snarks to KGB chief Olga (Helen Mirren) at her job interview, but the truth is she doesn't want to. A former junkie and aspiring entrant to the Russian Navy (like her dead Soviet sailor father), Anna was recruited by Dracula Alex Tchenvok (Luke Evans) because she fits the profile for Hot Blonde Female Assassin in an Action Movie. And, since Anna looks like a fashion model, et voilà! She is both! As part of her deal, Anna must spend 5 years (1 in training, 4 in the field) serving her country as a government-sponsored assassin so the KGB sets her up with an ideal cover as a model in Paris. Anna books jobs, she has a Parisian girlfriend named Maud (Lera Abova), and when a shoot wraps, she jumps in a car, takes out a target, and reports her mission status to Olga via payphone. It's a great life but Anna hates it with a passion. She hates being a model and hates being a killer. What's option C for Anna?

Luc Besson's Anna is a stylish, efficient, Cold War assassin's tale. Set in 1990-1991, with flashbacks to 1985, 1987, and 1988 (the film keeps circling back onto itself to explain its various twists and turns), Anna's dangerous world of glastnost keeps her very busy. Though she's a reluctant killer, Anna is highly trained and can take out a room full of soldiers all by her lonesome without any type of superpowers. But what she really wants is to be free and not have her destiny dictated to her by men or women doing the bidding of their governments. Anna's dream is to go to Hawaii and live in the idyllic image of the postcard her father once brought home and stuck on their refrigerator; when she returns from a vacation in St. Tropez, she gives a similar postcard to Olga, who pretends she isn't touched by the gesture. Olga can't and won't make retirement in Hawaii happen for Anna - but the Americans can.

Enter The Scarecrow Leonard Miller (Cillian Murphy), a CIA agent working a long range plan of vengeance against the KGB. In 1985, the new KGB chief, Vassiliev (Eric Godon), asserted himself in his new position by executing 9 CIA agents in Moscow and sending their heads in boxes back to Miller at Langley Gwyneth Paltrow-in-Se7en-style. Five years later, Miller catches onto the tall, foxy, blonde killer the KGB has installed in Paris and sets a trap for Russia's best honeytrap. Anna then becomes a double agent, informing the CIA of her KGB-sponsored activities. Meanwhile, Miller personally walks into Anna's honeytrap himself, unaware that Anna has also had a longstanding relationship with Alex, her man in Moscow. The odd lover out is poor Maud, who is frozen out by Anna and kept totally in the dark (although why Anna remained in her cover in Paris after she eliminated the target she was sent there for in the first place remains a mystery). Soon, Miller makes Anna an offer she can't refuse: kill Vassiliev for him in retribution for the 9 heads-in-boxes and Miller will send her to Hawaii (though she can't pick which island). 

What results is an engaging spy thriller held together by the solemn but sincere charisma of Sasha Luss, who is a real-life former Russian model discovered by Luc Besson. Luss's Anna is ably supported by the acting firm of Mirren, Murphy, and Evans, three skilled veterans who make this whole enterprise work. While Anna is a B-movie, it's a sexy and entertaining one that includes a terrific montage of Anna's assassinations set to INXS' "Need You Tonight" and some amusing Eurotrash caricatures who evoke the over-the-top drama queen Chris Tucker played in Besson's The Fifth Element. Amidst the violence, there are indeed a few laughs, like Miller having to give a green light to Anna chopping off the index finger of her target. But the best joke in Anna is right before she kills Vassiliev during a game of chess: the old KGB spymaster compliments Anna on her successes and notes that usually, the KGB doesn't hire beautiful women like her because they cause problems. "That's why we hire the ugly ones," he explains, before adding, "Speaking of Olga..." Obviously, Vassiliev never saw Excalibur and how hot Helen Mirren was - she gave Anna a run for her money back then. Ask Merlin.

Dark Phoenix at Screen Rant

DARK PHOENIX AT SCREEN RANT

Dark Phoenix is the final X-Men film of the Fox era. The X-Men saga has lasted for 19 years and I was there since day one. In the long buildup to Dark Phoenix's release, I've been fortunate to write a lot of Screen Rant Features about the film and the X-Men franchise as a whole. Here they all are collected below:

JESSICA JONES SEASON 3 IS MARVEL NETFLIX'S DARK PHOENIX

THE X-MEN CHARACTERS WITH THE MOST MOVIE APPEARANCES

DARK PHOENIX'S SCATHING REVIEWS WERE UNFAIR TO THE FINAL X-MEN FILM

OUR 10 BIGGEST UNANSWERED QUESTIONS AFTER DARK PHOENIX

WHO'S OLDER: WOLVERINE IN LOGAN 

OR CAPTAIN AMERICA IN AVENGERS: ENDGAME?

DARK PHOENIX IMPROVED ON X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

(SO WHY ISN'T IT A BETTER MOVIE?)

EVERY X-MEN CHARACTER IN DARK PHOENIX

DARK PHOENIX'S ENDING SETS UP A FINAL X-MEN MOVIE THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN 

EVERY X-MEN MOVIE RANKED, WORST TO BEST (INCLUDING DARK PHOENIX)

WHICH X-MEN MOVIES TO REWATCH BEFORE DARK PHOENIX?

FOX'S X-MEN MOVIES ARE BETTER THAN MARVEL FANS WILL ADMIT

 EVERYTHING DARK PHOENIX HAS COPIED FROM X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

DARK PHOENIX IS THE FIRST X-MEN MOVIE WITHOUT WOLVERINE

DARK PHOENIX IS JUST X-MEN: THE LAST STAND AGAIN
(BUT THAT MAY BE A GOOD THING)

HERE'S HOW OLD THE X-MEN ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN DARK PHOENIX

WHAT IS THE SONG IN THE DARK PHOENIX TRAILER?

Dark Phoenix

DARK PHOENIX

** SPOILERS **

"We're all that's left, the last of the First Class," Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) tells Beast (Nicholas Hoult), and we feel the significance of how long these X-Men have known each other and how long we, in turn, have known them. Though you'd never know it by looking at them, Mystique and Beast, along with Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), have known each other since 1962. They are indeed the last of X-Men: First Class, which rebooted the X-Men saga into a new continuity. Like the four X-Men founders, writer-director Simon Kinberg's Dark Phoenix is the last of this quadrilogy of films and also the last of the 19-year saga of X-Men movies from Fox. It's both a continuation and a finale about endings, rebirths, and... evolution. The film strains and teeters under all of that weight and it never truly takes flight (it tries but can't quite). And yet, it's still a pleasure to be with these X-Men after all of these years.

While it seems so on the surface, Dark Phoenix is thankfully not a retread of X-Men: The Last Stand. Instead, it feels like a glorified TV episode, which is both a good and bad thing. Good because at least it strives to be Peak TV and hits some of those dramatic notes; bad because it still feels undercooked and it could be grander, but it isn't. What is here, though, is rather interesting. We know the beats of the Dark Phoenix Saga story by heart, even if you've never read the comic: Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) is a powerful mutant psychic with a tragic past (in this telling, her powers caused the death of her mother when she was 8) who is imbued with a cosmic force from outer space that she can't control. The Phoenix Force (though it isn't called that) feeds on her rage and trauma, which was kept in check by psychic walls secretly built by Professor X, and transforms her into a malevolent, god-like being. The X-Men try to bring her back to the Jean they know and it ends in tragedy.

Dark Phoenix's first act is its best: the year is 1992 (though you'd never know it from the fashion or music) and the X-Men are beloved, rock star superheroes on call from the President of the United States. (Xavier even has an X-Phone hotline to the POTUS.) When the space shuttle Endeavor is damaged by a solar flare, Mystique leads her team of X-Men, including Beast, Jean, Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) into space on a rescue mission. The X-Men save the astronauts but Jean is struck by the solar flare, which is actually the cosmic Phoenix Force. Instead of dying, Jean's powers grow "off the charts" and the walls in her mind Xavier built come crashing down. The cool thing about all of this is seeing something we've never seen before: the X-Men outright loved by the public. They get a standing ovation from the young students at the Xavier School and they even have a party in the woods with Dazzler (Halston Sage) as the entertainment. Meanwhile, Xavier soaks up adulation with all of the false modesty he can muster at a black-tie gala. All of this is accompanied by a groovy Hans Zimmer score that alternates from heroic bombast to eerie foreboding as the Phoenix grows Dark. 

Mystique and Charles have been friends since the 1940s but they've never really seen eye-to-eye. She thinks his lifelong patriarchy and ego-trips (she even calls out the sexist "X-Men" name) will lead to disaster - and she's right. He argues that he's finally achieved his dream - humans trusting mutants and regarding them as heroes - and he's also right that mutants are only one bad day from becoming public enemy number one again. That day comes immediately when the newly Dark Phoenix-ed Jean escapes the X-Mansion; she realizes that Xavier has lied to her for 17 years and that her father is actually alive. Just like in The Last Stand, there's a confrontation at Jean's childhood home and an X-Man dies, but this time it's Mystique, whom Jean kills (and not accidentally). Jennifer Lawrence's reluctant but heroic shapeshifter dies with a whimper and this splits the X-Men apart, with Beast blaming Xavier since they are two of the three men who have loved Mystique since 1962. 

Meanwhile, Jean seeks out the third man who loved Mystique: Magneto, who now runs a mutant refuge on the island of Genosha. Unlike Ian McKellan's Magneto, who wanted to seduce Dark Phoenix into his Brotherhood, Fassbender's version doesn't want anything to do with Jean. But someone who does is Vuk (Jessica Chastain), the leader of shapeshifting aliens called the D'Bari, who lost her whole planet to the Phoenix Force. Vuk plays the role of seducer to Jean, offering to teach her how to control her power, but what she really wants is the Phoenix Force itself, which she is somehow also strong enough to absorb. The movie is unclear about how Vuk can also be its host, but Vuk doesn't mince words that she doesn't care about humans and she wants the Phoenix Force so the D'Bari can take over our planet. The whole thing ends with a mutant brawl on a block outside Central Park West, which leads to all of the X-Men captured on a train by the US Military, which then leads to a big train fight between the X-Men and the D'Bari where Jean fully evolves into the Phoenix Force. Unlike the comics or The Last Stand, Jean doesn't die. Rather, Dark Phoenix fulfills the original voiceover by Patrick Stewart's Professor X in the first X-Men movie: "Mutation. It's the key to evolution." Jean transcends her mortal form and embraces her destiny as a cosmic being. While it doesn't quite stick the landing, it's still a better ending to this story.

Just as Charles argued in favor of Jean despite the chaos she caused, I would argue that there is a lot of good in Dark Phoenix. There's more intimacy between Tye Sheridan's Scott and Sophie Turner's Jean than there ever was between Famke Janssen's Jean and James Marsden's Scott (it's easier when there's no Wolverine at all in Dark Phoenix). Cyclops even drops the F-bomb - "I will fucking kill you!" - at Magneto. Alexandra Shipp's Storm also has more to do and is a better fighter (and lightning thrower) than Halle Berry's version, while Kodi Smit-McPhee's Nightcrawler is the MVP and has some cool action moments - the X-Men could not have accomplished anything in this film without his BAMFs. Alas, Evan Peters' Quicksilver is short-changed; Dark Phoenix doesn't attempt a three-peat of the superspeed rescue sequences set to a pop song that were memorable highlights of X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse. However, there's a clever reversal of one of McKellan's signature quips: "You homo sapiens and your guns!" This time, Fassbender's Magneto uses a trainful of guns as weapons and opens fire on Vuk.

As the centerpiece of the film, Turner has much more inner turmoil to play and she digs deep. Also - this is important - no X-Man has to save Jean as she can save herself, thank you very much. Still, Jean isn't exactly a witty conversationalist and she doesn't have much of a personality, whether or not she's malevolently powerful. Dark Phoenix ends not unlike The Dark Knight Rises, with Charles Xavier retired in Paris and Magneto still looking to play his old friend in a game of chess. It's a low key and muted ending to the grand, messy, but weird and wonderful X-Men saga, but Dark Phoenix also contains a meta-joke for the X-Men's future: when the military captures the X-Men and transports them to the Mutant Containment Unit. The X-Men didn't make it to the MCU in Dark Phoenix but they'll get there regardless soon enough. And when the next evolution of the X-Men begins in the MCU, we hope it'll also be first class.