Posts Tagged ‘Hugh Jackman’

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

tn_wolverineBy special request, and because I was planning on doing it anyway, here is my review of X-MEN 4: X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE: THE PREQUEL.

Word on X-MEN ORIGINS WOLVERINE has been toxic ever since some prick leaked it onto the internet a month ago. Nerds hated it, critics hated it, my buddy who was looking forward to it as much as I was hated it. I heard nothing but bad news. When I checked the San Francisco Chronicle for a followup on that kook that says her dad was the Zodiac I instead found a WOLVERINE review with the headline “Lower your X-pectations.” So I did. And it was a bummer because I genuinely had been X-cited. I enjoyed the X-MEN pictures… ALL THREE OF THEM. Do you find that shocking? EVEN PART THREE, MOTHERFUCKERS. I am 33% more into X-Men than most nerds.

This one seemed promising because first of all, Wolverine is obviously the second best character of the X-Men movies after Mystique. So it makes sense to do this as a warmup to the real spin-off movie, Brian De Palma’s X-MEN VILLAIN SPIN-OFFS: MYSTIQUE. Second of all, the trailer led me to believe this was gonna be the character transported to an ’80s action movie kind of setup. At the beginning of X-MEN part 1 Logan Wolverine walked in as a Clint Eastwood character. He looked and sounded like young Clint Eastwood and reacted to all the X-Man business with the kind of cynicism Clint would. He even took Rogue under his wing the way Clint did Clyde the orangutan.

So this is a great idea for Wolverine’s X-Men origins to be in the form of an action movie, even if it’s more of a Schwarzenegger than an Eastwood. Logan Wolverine and his brother Victor C. Sabretooth (Liev Schrieber, unethically stealing the role from Tyler Mane) are soldiers who get busted for gutting a superior officer, they survive the firing squad so they get transferred to a secret special forces team of mutants. (more…)

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Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 45 Comments »

Marie Antoinette and The Prestige

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

THE PRESTIGE and MARIE ANTOINETTE double feature

This week was one of those ones that start coming up toward the end of the year where there’s just too many movies you want to see all coming out on the same day. And me being an obsessive motherfucker I try to tackle them all at once. We got three reliable directors all hitting the same day here. #1 priority for me was Clint’s FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, but I already saw that at an early screening. So that left Chris Nolan’s THE PRESTIGE and Sofia Coppola’s MARIE ANTOINETTE. So I watched them both in a row, liked both, also fell asleep during both. (You gotta go to sleep the night before one of these double-headers, it turns out.)

To be honest I wasn’t even gonna review MARIE because, let’s face it, I am not a girl. This is not only a girl movie but a long, arty, low on plot girl movie. I think some of you cinemasters are gonna love the shit out of it but alot of my readers would probaly never be able to sit through it. Still, I’ve read so many reviews that clearly didn’t fucking GET this movie that I decided I had to comment.

Ms. Coppola’s take on Marie Antoinette is not your typical stuffy historical drama costume movie. She tries to emphasize that Marie was a teenager (14) when she became French royalty, so this movie is about giggly teen girls hanging out like they’re having a slumber party or something. If you saw the trailer you know that some (but not all) of the movie is set to ’80s synthesizer pop music that white people used to listen to due to the brain damage caused by the popularity of cocaine at the time. Also, since the movie is in English anyway and nobody’s speaking French, she decided to dump the artificiality of everybody faking French accents, so you got Rip Torn and people in there talking how they normally would. But wearing wigs. Other than that though they’re trying to be fairly accurate to the times and like most of these types of pictures they get some beautiful imagery that seems inspired by old paintings. (more…)

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Posted in Drama, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »

X-Men: The Last Stand

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006

X-MEN 3: THE THIRD AND LAST STAND OF THE X-MEN

Fellas,

In the talkback for my review of last week’s big movie, SEE NO EVIL, Brycemonkey requested that I review X-MEN 3: X3 THE THIRD X-MEN. As someone who strives for excellence that puts me in a tough position because on one hand I want to make the newsies happy by reviewing the movie, but on the other hand I’m not sure they’ll like it because I don’t know jack and/or shit about the X-Men outside of these movies.

Ordinarily that would be okay, most movies you’re not expected to do twenty years of preparatory research before you are allowed to have an opinion about them. But X-Men is different. I don’t know if anybody else has ever noticed this before, but through my personal experiences here and there I’ve made an observation that some people take this comic strip shit VERY seriously. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about you. You’re cool. But those other guys are fuckin NUTS. what a bunch of nerds, am I right? ha ha we’re different though.

Don’t worry I’m not gonna turn this into some attack on comic strip fundamentalism, but I just want to establish that some of you will still hate this movie, even though it’s good. Because I’m not looking for the same things you are. I don’t even know what to look for. But as someone who was surprised to enjoy the first two pictures (hell, read my review of part 2, RIGHT HERE it’s literally a love letter) I was satisfied with part 3. To my ignorant eyes, it’s just as good.

The movie picks up a little bit after X PART 2. Jean Grey is still dead underwater (like Godzilla) and Cyclops (remember, the whiny douchebag with the sunglasses) is real grim and brooding. You can tell he has been deeply changed by this tragedy, because he has stubble. However things seem pretty good otherwise because the president of the US was so impressed by Professor X-Man stopping time and making a big speech at the end of part 2 that he appointed a furry blue mutant to his cabinet as the Secretary of Mutant Affairs. This is of course Kelsey Grammar from ‘Cheers’ and although he does a good job this is probaly gonna be pretty controversial. The writers took alot of poetic license with his character, he doesn’t eat cookies or have googly eyes anymore and they call him “Hank.” (more…)

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Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 7 Comments »

X-2: X-Men United

Friday, May 2nd, 2003

Dear Mystique,

Hey sugar it’s me Vern. Remember me I reviewed your first movie “the x-men” and even though I don’t read that comic strip shit, I enjoyed the picture. Well I gotta say although the title “x part 2 x-men united” is pretty terrible I also enjoyed your part 2. It doesn’t have the same “I can’t believe this isn’t total shit” surprise factor but instead it has these characters that I enjoyed in the first picture and it tries to add more depth and drama and convolutedness to their adventures and what not. like a comic strip book.

But the reason I’m Writing to you mystique is because you are my favorite mutant now. Don’t get me wrong, I still think Young Clint Eastwood is great as Professor Logan Wolverine, the art teacher at X-Men Community College. There is another X-Man called Rogue but she’s not really a Rogue, she always sits at the same table as Iceman and Fireman. Professor Wolverine is the real rogue, he wanders around in the snow by himself uncovering his past and going on adventures and shit. Who knows what happened between part 1 and part 2, he could’ve saved an injured baby polar bear, or he could’ve gotten in a fight with a yeti, or got buried under an avalanche and had to melt his way out by banging his metal freddy krueger claws against each other to create heat. I mean anything could’ve happened, as long as it is snow related. Anyway he’s the real rogue, so when he goes to the X-Man school to try to find beer, all the kids follow him around because he’s cool. I liked when he said “You picked the wrong house, bub.” That was pretty tough.

Most improved X-Man goes to Storm, played by Halle Berry. Her wig looks alot better and I guess the oscar made her try harder. She’s actually kind of scary this time when she gets the weather control going. (more…)

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The Return of Clint

Monday, July 17th, 2000

First of all guys I would like to apologize for last week’s abbreviated type column. To be frankly honest I was excited to get working on this 100 Greatest Badasses of All Time list and didn’t have it in me to write a halfway decent column.

Well you get what you put into it and I guess that’s why karma decided to fuck me in the ass and make sure nobody will respond to my survey. Well, I shouldn’t say nobody. I got responses from about four of my most dedicated. The rest of you, we need your help. This is an important and historical type list and we need all the input we can. You gotta send me a list of the most badass movies you ever seen, with the name of the badass performer in parentheses where applicable.

Now, I don’t need to tell Mike D’Angelo this, but yes, you can vote for ladies. Don’t expect me to be pulling none of this chauvinistic type garbage and saying it is not allowed. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I wouldn’t want to shoot something that big out of my pussy and I don’t want to fuck with anybody that does.

Don’t take that too literally by the way boys I am not a hermaphrodite. It’s a figure of speech fer christ’s sakes.

Anyway thanks to those of you who already helped out but I’m gonna need more. Right now I’m not even sure if we have 100 movies in the running yet. We need some more competition.

One individual who is having a pretty good showing in the survey so far, and rightly so, is Mr. Clint Eastwood. Now I believe this individual to be perhaps the greatest Badass icon of all time, and as a director himself I consider him to be a Badass laureate. I am a fan of all of the action stars who choose to direct, from Bruce Lee right on down the line to Steve Seagal. But I’m not sure any of them, even Mr. Lee, has come up with anything quite as soulful as Clint’s Unforgiven. This is one of the all time great films about that classic dilemma of the Badass, “I really want to stop killing all these motherfuckers but jesus the situations keep coming up and I keep killing them.” (more…)

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