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.

This is ingenious because being on a team of special ops badasses is much cooler than being on a team of super heroes. And on a team like this everybody has to have a specialty, you have the demolitions guy, the sharpshooter, etc. When it’s mutants they have special powers instead of specialties, it’s a nice fit. And then Wolverine starts to grow wary of having his body made into a weapon of imperialism, doesn’t agree with his missions or something, so he goes AWOL. But you don’t just leave a family like that, so they come after him. He’s a one man A-Team! With claws!

Unfortunately for me that stuff in the trailer is not really what most of the movie is about, that’s mostly the setup. Wolverine fights in five different wars, but all during the opening credits. The team goes on one mission and it’s kind of cool but not classic material or anything. They do have the ol’ “soldiers on a helicopter giving each other shit” scene which introduces the various members of the team, most importantly Ryan Reynolds as the wiseass swordsman Wade Deadpool (basically his same character from BLADE: TRINITY but with less screen time). There’s also kind of a Randall Tex Cobb type dumb strongman character that I liked, but he’s not as cool when he shows up later wearing a fat suit. Anyway the mission is over quick and then Logan quits.

Later on Sabretooth pulls some shit that really pisses Logan off, so in order to get his revenge he allows the military guys to hook him up to a machine that gives him his metal skeleton. But then they try to betray him so he runs away naked. He announces that he’s gonna kill Victor and Danny Huston’s character Stryker, and as a rule hit lists are always a nice structure for a movie. But this is the rare prequel exception to the rule since we know both characters on the list are gonna survive into the other movies. So it doesn’t have that same thrill.

Stryker sends a Korean soap opera star after him in a helicopter and this is the best part of the movie, a little motorcycle vs. helicopter chase, partly given away in the trailer. But that’s the action movie portion of the proceedings. The rest is more like an X-MEN movie, with Stryker up to his anti-mutant shenanigans, cameos by various mutant characters I guess from comics or young versions of characters from the other movies.

I understand that they’re not necessarily trying to make the kickass action movie I was hoping for, so you can forgive them for not going all the way with that. But I feel like they didn’t go all the way with it being an X-Men movie either. They got the fun of the different characters and powers and what not but part of what’s great about those is the whole issue of the X-Men versus the Magnetos. Magneto goes too far but he’s right about wanting to protect mutants from humans, and Professor X is right that mutants and humans should co-exist, but sometimes he crosses the line in fighting extremist mutants, like when he lets them use the mutant cure as a weapon against Magneto.

I like that it’s a series where I care about some of the bad guys more than some of the good guys, and that acknowledges there is some grey area even though its comic books and good vs. evil and shit. And part of what I liked about part 3 that nobody gave it credit for was the parallels it had with various issues involving race and sexual preference. The kid whose dad can’t accept that he has wings, the mutant hero who is willing to be “cured” of what makes her unique because she’d rather fit in. It’s mostly a silly movie about different super powered guys strategically using their powers against each other, but it also has these little things worth thinking or feeling about. That makes them stand out from the other super hero movies.

WOLVERINE has none of that. I do like the story of these two brothers who are kind of out for each other’s blood but also kind of aren’t because they always remember they are brothers. And they get caught up in this military conflict. I think this would be a good enough story if it was tying together a bunch of knock-you-on-your-ass set pieces, but it’s not, most of the big scenes are only okay and some of the effects look pretty cheesy. Therefore, it needs to excel at the soulful side of things, so you can say “well, the action scenes aren’t that spectacular or anything but it’s not really about that, I was really moved by the relationship between these two brothers” or whatever. But they didn’t really go all the way with the drama either. And to be honest I’m not exactly sure what Victor’s motivation is, he’s just mad at Wolverine for quitting the military or something. I don’t get it.

So it’s not really the great action movie or the great comic book drama. They were going more for the comic book crowd but I ended up liking it better than they did, even though it wasn’t great. The lesson for studios is for now on to cater all movies to my tastes. Those whiners aren’t gonna like it anyway so just make it COMMANDO with claws. thanks guys.

It’s a pretty half-assed script. The one smart touch I can think of is that (SPOILER) Logan finds his lover dead and mourns over her body, but it later turns out she wasn’t really dead. Then he finds her actually dead but this time doesn’t feel anything because he doesn’t remember who she is. Other than that most of the ideas are pretty obvious, or presented in a too-obvious way. Like, he’s gotta lose his memory by the end of the movie, right? I was worried they would do some corny brain-wipe machine. Instead he gets shot in the head with adamantium bullets. His brain can grow back but it’s just cells, he’s not gonna retain all his memories. That was a cool way to do it, but did they have to have Stryker announce that he would shoot him in the head in order to remove his memories? Wouldn’t it be cooler and more believable if he shot him in the head trying to hurt or kill him, and the memory loss was a side effect?

And then there are just the little touches like why do they give him new dog tags right before beginning his operation, what kind of hospital protocol is that exactly? And if (SPOILER) Professor X was nearby ready to airlift the kids to safety why didn’t he show up earlier and help out? Especially since he’s not in a wheelchair yet. The fucker was probaly out playing chess somewhere, missed all the action.

But maybe we can blame the director more than the script. It seemed like a brilliant idea not to hire from the usual list of names, but instead get the director of the best foreign language film Oscar TSOTSI. But then I never saw that movie so maybe it would’ve shown that he’s not really the guy. He seems competent and at times good but since he fails to bring depth to the drama or deliver on the more visceral stuff this would have to be considered a strike out. I read on Wikipedia that Alexandre Aja (THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake and HAUTE TENSION) was one of the directors trying to get the job, I kind of wish that would’ve happened, that might’ve been interesting. He definitely knows how to do chase scenes. But maybe he wasn’t really up for it, I don’t know. I also read on Wikipedia that on the old TV sitcom Mr. Belvedere the title character was a struggling mescaline addict who in the last episode married an African tribeswoman. In my opinion that is not an accurate description of the show so Wikipedia may sometimes contain incorrect information.

I do still like Hugh Jackman in the role, and he’s channeling Clint Eastwood more than ever. I definitely think he studied the old Clint movies. He has the same kind of stoicism, same kind of smile, same kind of wry comeback or exasperated complaints. He’s got a couple funny Clint type lines and a great moment where another character says a corny hero line and he sighs “Oh Jesus.” He’s a working class Clint character like Philo Beddoe, driving an El Camino and carrying a chainsaw and ax to work (because he’s a lumberjack). He’s not an underground fighter though like he was in the beginning of part 1, and doesn’t really seem like as much of a tough guy, come to think of it.

I liked Liev Schrieber in the role, would’ve been nice if there was a little more to it though. I was bummed when they replaced Tyler Mane, because I like that guy and wanted to see him in a role that was a little more challenging. But actually I don’t think there’s a whole lot of depth to the character in this version either, I don’t think Mane would’ve had much trouble pulling it off. Oh well, some day he’ll get a good one.

The guy I really was excited to see in the movie was Scott Adkins, the excellent British martial artist from such Isaac Florentine DTV joints as UNDISPUTED II, SPECIAL FORCES, THE SHEPHERD: BORDER PATROL and the upcoming NINJA, where he plays a ninja. In case any of you are not familiar with his kicking and flipping I have provided this handy embed of highlights. (Warning: cheesy song. Volume control is advised.)

It had been previously reported that Adkins played a character named Weapon XI. Turns out that’s what Ryan Reynolds turns into after an operation – in other words, he’s the stunt double for a big fight at the end. The weird thing is that Adkins looks kind of like Ryan Reynolds and would make a good double for him (and probaly did some of the swords and stuff at the beginning) but Weapon XI is under makeup where the resemblance doesn’t matter. Oh well.

He does get some moves in but nothing as memorable as in those straight to video movies, and one of his powers is to teleport. I don’t know if I’ve ever brought this up before, but I believe teleporting is one of the least cinematic super powers. I never saw that movie JUMPERS but it really struck me when that came out – sure, to be able to zap yourself into a bank vault would be cool in real life, but to watch it in a movie is just not cool at all. The idea of a movie is to see somebody do something. It is not to see a guy standing in one place and then in the next frame – HOLY SHIT! – standing in a different place. The whole point is getting from point A to point B, you don’t just want to see the two points separately. That’s anti-movie.

So having that power helps him in the fight but sure makes the fight less exciting. They hired this guy for all the kicks he can do but then he keeps disappearing. You can’t kick somebody when you’re disappeared.

For the best super powers award I’d have to go with the girl whose skin turns into bullet-proof diamonds. That looked pretty cool. Not a major character but hopefully she will show up either in another X-MEN ORIGINS picture or in a video on the arm of Ghostface Killah or somebody.

Also, almost forgot to mention this, but I gotta say it’s sad that Stryker was not held accountable. Not only does he pour a half billion dollars into Logan’s skeleton, he also has these adamantium bullets. And those make sense to use against Wolverine, but he tries to use them on his girl too! Are you kidding me, man? In this economy? Oh yeah, but this is a prequel, which explains why the guy apparently went on trial for murder but was still in charge of a major military program in the 2000s. He’s like all those Iran-Contra criminals that ended up in the Bush administration.

By the way, there are two different post-credits scenes, and of course I got saddled with the shitty one. Mine just tells you that Wolverine moved to Japan and became a drunk in a hotel bar. So the sequel could be a crossover with LOST IN TRANSLATION. I don’t know man, Japan is cool and everything. If Wolverine is gonna join the drifting scene I’m all for it. But the idea of these types of post-credits scenes is supposed to be to imply something exciting to keep you wanting more. Like some ninjas jump out and he pulls out the claws and it goes to black. Go watch the end of BLADE for more information. (The other ending is about the Ryan Reynolds/Scott Adkins character, maybe setting up another movie. I would call it X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE ORIGINS: DEADPOOL.)

I would call this a disappointed review more than a negative one. I enjoyed watching it but I just can’t be passionate enough to write the “come on guys, it’s not that bad” defense. It’s true though, it’s not that bad. It’s ridiculous for people to be talking about this as a terrible movie when it’s in the same genre as DAREDEVIL, FANTASTIC FOUR, BATMAN FOREVER, BATMAN AND ROBIN, GHOST RIDER, SPAWN, and other ugly, moronic movies. It’s never that embarrassing, that stupid, that laughable or boring. But there’s the other side of the coin too, that this is  the genre that gave us IRON MAN and THE DARK KNIGHT just last summer. So we can expect better than this.

I’d still like to see more of these movies. But how bout some more elbow grease next time, mutants.

[ratings]

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.

Now, I said this was a girl movie, and therefore I’m not gonna relate to it as much as I would, say, a movie starring a WWE wrestler I never heard of. However, I don’t mean that in a bad way and let me just say I don’t go for this horse shit where any movie from a woman’s perspective is written off as a “chick flick.” Just because it rhymes doesn’t mean it’s fair. There just aren’t enough lady directors in business and I for one am glad that Coppola makes feminine movies, instead of just trying to copy what the dudes are doing. She would never have directed POINT BREAK, in my opinion. She clearly has her own voice.

So she has a completely different perspective on this story than anybody else would do. Most people think of Marie Antoinette as that rich bitch who said “let them eat cake” and got her head cut off like she fuckin deserved. Not Sofia. I don’t want to say she shows Marie as a victim, but she definitely shows her as one part of a ridiculous system that she can’t be expected to control. The movie starts with her riding in a carriage with some of her girlfriends and her portable dog prop. You can’t help but think of Paris Hilton. When Marie gets to her destination they explain that she is being given to a dude she’s never met as a symbolic gesture of friendship between Austria and France. She is naive enough that she seems okay with it, admiring a portrait of her future husband saying that he has “kind eyes.” But she seems surprised when they explain that she has to leave behind everything of Austria, including her clothes, her friends, and even her dog. They strip her naked and re-dress her in different, more French clothes.

Now all the sudden she’s married to this dumpy chump (Jason Schwartzman from RUSHMORE, also Coppola’s cousin I think). After the wedding the King (Rip Torn) and various religious leaders and their entourage accompany the barely legal newlyweds to the matrimonial fuck palace to do some kind of ritual and heavily imply that it’s time to get it on and squirt out an heir as soon as possible. But of course, as history tells us, King Louie couldn’t get it up for 7 years. Apparently he didn’t see that part in SPIDER-MAN where her shirt got all wet in the rain. So Marie has to put up with her own mother and various mother figures and gossips openly scorning her talents as an automatic baby manufacturing machine. There are scenes where she walks somewhere in a fancy dress and you hear various women talking shit about her, and sometimes you don’t even see them at all, they are just offscreen voices like the people saying “Holy fuck!” and “Forrest’s here, that fire is as good as out!” in ON DEADLY GROUND.

So there’s all this pressure and humiliation, but on the other hand they’re also pampering her to ridiculous extremes. When she wakes up every morning there’s a whole posse there staring at her, ready to pick her up and ritualistically put her clothes on for her. It doesn’t make it clear but I’m sure they must wipe her ass for her too. Then a candle light vigil marches the wipings ten miles so they can set them adrift at sea in a carved ivory coffin.

The meals she eats every day look like they took a team of designers and sculptors weeks to create. To make her a sympathetic character Sofia has her say “This is ridiculous!” She’s uncomfortable with this stuff but after a while she says fuck it and starts indulging herself. There’s a montage of her and her friends eating fancy desserts and drinking champagne, set to the song “I Want Candy.” This is also the name of the movie’s production company and I think it’s sort of the general idea of the movie.

The genius of the movie is that it focuses on wanting candy and not on the French Revolution. This is also the part that seems to have flown over a few heads. For some reason some of these jokers in the critical establishment have decided that if somebody makes a movie called MARIE ANTOINETTE, even if the logo is pink and designed to look like it was cut out of a magazine and glued onto a notebook, it has to be a serious attempt at an A-Z history Channel retelling of Antoinette’s life and the beginning of the French Revolution from all perspectives. But that’s what libraries and wikipedias are for. If you know the basics of the story (or read it on wikipedia before going to the movie, not to mention any names but some people may have done that) you can see what’s going on. This isn’t an overview of history, it’s from the I Want Candy POV. When Marie hears that there is a bread shortage and the peasants are starving, she doesn’t say “let them eat cake.” She does decide to stop buying diamonds. It’s a pathetic gesture but obviously sincere. But she makes this decision from the grounds of her fancy garden and made-to-order private rich lady village. She never sees a starving peasant, and neither do you. At the end you don’t see the people who storm the castle, you just hear them. Some critics of the movie apparently think Coppola is stupid and did this by accident. They have described the movie as “shallow” as if having a shallow character makes the movie shallow. (By that logic, THE MARINE is muscular.)

I’m sure everybody else has compared Marie of this movie to modern Rich Ho Celebrities like Paris Hilton. Marie is famous here in the states for supposedly thinking peasants without bread can still eat cake, just like Jessica Simpson is famous for thinking Chicken of the Sea is chicken. Our modern pop culture is inundated with these rich daughters who are born into fame and fortune. The dumber, less talented and more fashionable the better. Have you ever seen those shows on MTV about the rich girls having multi-million dollar sweet sixteen parties? Or did you hear that some guy hired 50 Cent to play his daughter’s bat mitzvah? That shit makes me sick because they act like that’s something to aspire to. Even though there is no way to aspire to being born rich. I think there really are teenage girls today who want to live that life. MARIE ANTOINETTE doesn’t argue that anyone should. You know the revolution is coming eventually to piss on the parade. It just doesn’t entirely blame Marie for enjoying the parade while she can. She didn’t start it.

I’m sure fifteen other critics must’ve already pointed out that in today’s world Marie would definitely have a reality show and a sex tape. (In fact, the real life Marie Antoinette was depicted in outrageous sex acts in Tiajuana bible type tracts, so she almost did have a sex tape.) These girls are given this world of luxury that they have done nothing to earn, their agents and entourages convince them that they deserve it, and they indulge it left and right without a clue that other people in the world are suffering. But Ms. Coppola makes us realize that it’s not entirely their fault. If we don’t want our daughters to be stupid then we shouldn’t make them stupid. If you want her to be down to earth don’t sell her off to the royal family when she’s 14 and feed her sugary edible art pieces. Don’t give her her own TV show and album and put her on the cover of magazines and then act like you’re mad when she continues to make an idiot of herself. The whole fuckin system is insane. But then they grab Marie and cut off her head and for hundreds of years people act like all of it was her fault. Don’t worry, we got the bitch who did it.

I wouldn’t want to compare somebody as smart and talented as Sofia Coppola to Paris Hilton, but it’s obvious why she can sympathize with these girls. I mean do the math, her dad directed THE GODFATHER. I’m sure she had her share of candy growing up. And the gossip Marie puts up with in the movie is tame compared to what Sofia still gets when people talk about her performance in GODFATHER III. Like it’s her fault Winona Ryder quit and her dad decided to put her in. I didn’t pick up on this until it was pointed out by somebody else but you also got Dario Argento’s daughter in the movie, John Boorman’s daughter, John Huston’s son, Bill Nighy’s daughter, and Schwartzman is Talia Shire’s son. Marianne Faithfull is in there and apparently she’s the daughter of a baroness. And obviously Kirsten Dunst can relate to this lifestyle a little bit since she’s been a celebrity since she kissed Tom Cruise (or was it Brad Pitt?) in a movie at the age of 12.

I don’t think Coppola’s letting Marie off the hook. She definitely has some of that Condoleeza-shopping-for-shoes-during-Katrina vibe about her. One of the taglines for the movie is “The party that started a revolution.” But Coppola relates to her too, she’s sympathetic, and since when has it been wrong for a director to care about her characters? In real life I’d want to be with those peasants storming the castle, so when Coppola made me feel bad for Marie Antoinette I knew she had made a good movie.

The more masculine movie I saw this weekend was THE PRESTIGE, aka BATMAN VS. WOLVERINE. This one has Christian Bale and Huge Ackman as stubborn, competitive assholes in the world of old timey magicianery. Basically these two fucks hate each other and are always trying to steal each other’s audiences, secrets, women, etc. And they do magic tricks.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot because 1) you want to be surprised and 2) I dozed off in the beginning so I would probaly say something wrong and embarrass myself. But it starts out with Ackman on stage doing his magic, and Christian Bale is chosen as a volunteer from the audience. He sneaks backstage only to find Ackman drowning in a container of water. He goes to jail, accused of murdering Ackman by sabotaging his trick. It doesn’t really seem like he did it, but he might have, we don’t know.

Then, like FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, the whole thing gets unnecessarily complicated, skipping around from the beginning to the end to the middle to the mid-middle to the late-beginning to the next-to-last part and then back under to the middle before it twists around to another part in the middle. Unlike FLAGS though the structure works pretty good, you stay involved and the puzzle-pieces kind of set up obviously matches the subject matter. The magicians are trying to figure out how each other’s tricks are done, deciphering each other’s journals, spying on each other, the court is trying to figure out how the trick is done to find out how the murder was done, and the audience is trying to figure out how the story fits together. Then David Bowie shows up as Nikola Tesla and builds some machines. A warning, he does not sing in the movie, it is not a musical. Also no puppets.

The characters in the movie keep talking about the structure of a magic trick. “The Prestige” is apparently magician hipster lingo for “the part at the end where the bird that disappeared reappears.” (I bet Penn Jillette talks about that shit all the time. The prestige this, the prestige that. Shut up dude. We don’t want to hear about the aristocrats ever again, either. Less talk more trick, buddy.) The movie is obviously supposed to be sort of a magic trick too, using the ol’ “slight of hand” or the magic of cinema to trick you and jerk you around and make you accept some completely ludicrous events that happen in the end (but that are strangely similar to other easier to accept tricks earlier in the movie, when you go back and think it over).

I never even saw a trailer for this movie and I have to say, it was nice to see it without really knowing what to expect at all. So I don’t want to really say anything about the plot. But I gotta say one thing. There is all kinds of crazy impossible shit that happens in this movie, but the ONE thing I had a hard time accepting was a little one where they find a double for Huge Ackman to use in his act. There just happens to be a drunk guy they find (played by Huge Ackman) who looks exactly like Huge Ackman. This is based on a book and in a book it might work because you can imagine that there are two guys who look alot alike and they dress them up to look the same. I mean, there is such a thing as stunt doubles after all. And there was that guy Tony Jaa bumped into in THE PROTECTOR that I thought was Jackie Chan but apparently was just a lookalike. So we know this is possible. But when you have Huge Ackman playing a guy who looks like Huge Ackman it becomes a joke, like Eddie Murphy playing a bunch of different fat people in one movie. There are other things that happen in the movie that are MUCH more far-fetched, but in the context of the movie, more believable.

The cast is good of course. Christian Bale has got to be one of the top actors working now. This is no AMERICAN PSYCHO as far as being a great role for him, but it’s a good one. The Alfred to his Batman, Michael Caine (ON DEADLY GROUND) is also in there, though he’s working for Wolverine. Andy Serkis (Gollum, King Kong) is in there as David Bowie’s assistant, slightly overacting but I think it’s just because he’s not weighed down by the motion capture suit he normally wears. He doesn’t know his own strength.

Like I mentioned before I dozed off during this movie, through no fault of the movie. I woke up and all the sudden Scarlett Johansen was in it. I think she might have snuck in from some other movie because once again she’s the hot young mistress who gets betrayed and turns bitchy and yells at the dude. This time with a British accent though. Due to my brief sleep breaks I couldn’t really tell you how Scarlett came into the story. I also missed exactly why Christian and Huge hated each other so much (besides comic book politics) and when somebody explained it to me afterwards I thought shit, that makes a whole lot more sense. But I think the version I saw where this wasn’t explained was a little more challenging, a little less Hollywood, and it still made a good story.

One thing they did not cover is tigers, they do not have tigers like Sigfried and Roy do. But it makes you question, if there is this sort of competition, this violent east coast/west coast magician feud going on, how do we know that tiger that ate Roy wasn’t in on it? Maybe David Blaine paid him off. That is the dirty secret of street magic, that guy comes from the street so even though he can levitate he has a violent background. ‘Cause in the world of street magic you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. And I mean that’s some dirty Godfather, Scarface type shit to send a fucking white tiger after a guy. The day a white tiger eats your throat out is the day you’ve fucked with the wrong guys. Admittedly, Sigfried and Roy probaly have a higher chance of being attacked by tigers than regular citizens due to the circles they run in, but still, what are the chances? It had to be David Blaine. Or what about that Criss Angel Mindfreak dude? I don’t know what the fuck his problem is, I just seen ads for him in magazines. But mindfreak or not I don’t trust any weirdo who names himself “Criss Angel.” At least spell Chris correctly if you don’t want us to suspect you of this shit.

Anyway it’s a pretty good one, I would like to see it again while awake some time to see if it holds up.

[ratings]

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.”

Hank is the first good guy mutant to find out about some fucked up bullshit that is the main plot of the movie. It seems that the fucking humans have gone and created a “cure” for being a mutant. My favorite X-Man by far, Mystique, was actually the one who caught on to this, stealing the info from the FDA, but she got apprehended by The Man. I always liked Mystique because she has the right attitude about being a mutant. Her power is to change into any form, so it would require no effort for her to appear “normal.” And yet she chooses to walk around as a scaly naked blue chick with orange hair and eyes. That’s just her thing, man. If you got a problem with it, what I would like you to do is take that problem you have and stick it up your ass. She’s here, she’s blue and orange, get used to it.

In part 2 of course my girl Mystique busted Magneto out of the joint, and Magneto is enough of a gentleman that he returns the favor. But the escape is botched. Poor Mystique. I kind of thought things would turn out bad for her, because I’m sure at some point Rebecca Romijn-she’s-not-Stamos-anymore-fellas is gonna turn down the opportunity to spend 4 hours every day getting glued and painted. But what happens to Mystique is worse than I imagined and, depending how you interpret it, could mean she’s not quite as right on as I always thought. But I believe in her.

Meanwhile, the other pretty lady in X-land, Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey comes back to life but is part evil and out of control and etc. This ties in to the thread from the whole trilogy where Professor X-Man tries to convince her to control her powers and Magneto tries to convince her to unleash them. But for the first time Magneto gets his way.

Like the other two, this exists in an alternate political landscape where this whole “mutant cure” business becomes a big controversy. A bunch of sellout uncle tom mutants including one of the Academy Award winning cast members line up to get cured while others protest and Magneto tries to lead a revolt. Even more than in the other two, I found myself siding with Magneto on this one. If the cure was voluntary like they say, that would be one thing. But we see that the fucking humans are shooting it out of guns, and that’s bullshit.

Magneto gathers all the mutants (you can tell by their tattoos and leather) in the woods and then they attack the facility that makes the cure, which by the way is on Alcatraz for some reason. So you got the two overlapping storylines of Jean Grey’s out of control magic powers and this bullshit with trying to cure mutants. And then sad things happen, etc.

There are two main things I like about the X-Pictures. The first one is the way they use this mutant concept as a metaphor for things we can relate to in our mutant-free world. Everybody always mentions that Magneto is Malcolm X and Xavier is Martin Luther King (which is kind of weird since Martin Luther King’s space age jet probaly didn’t have missiles on it) and I don’t know if anybody here has heard about this yet, but Bryan Singer is actually gay so you can read a certain symbolism about anti-gay bigotry into the way humans treat the mutants in the movies.

The other main thing I like is the way there’s so much grey area between good guys and bad guys that I always end up rooting for the bad guys. I mean don’t get me wrong, Logan Wolverine is cool and everything, but I think Professor X-Man trusts the humans a little too much. When they’re shooting the cure out of guns that crosses a line.

Well both of those two main things that I like are present in part 3 and maybe even more than in the previous ones. The whole concept of the cure can obviously be applied to alot of things in life. It makes you think about that silly idea of “curing” gays, but it can be applied to any minority or oppressed group. You could get the cure and people wouldn’t stare at you anymore and maybe you would make new friends. But then you would remember that those new friends are the same assholes that stared at you just because you were blue. Mystique knows getting cured is bullshit, and she also refuses to respond to her “slave name.” If you are ever in a bind ask yourself “WWMD(BSS)” which means “What would Mystique do (besides shape shift).”

That’s why even more than in the other two I was rooting for Magneto’s side. Admittedly, part of their plan involves killing a kid. Which I’m against. And they did have some part about taking over the world after they get rid of the cure. But the main thing is getting rid of the cure, which I can get behind more than the diabolical super villain plans Magneto had in the other ones. When The Brotherhood are attacking Alcatraz and the humans turn out to have a surprisingly good counter-attack, I found myself worried, thinking “oh shit, they’re gonna get slaughtered, what are they gonna do?” Then when Logan Wolverine and friends showed up to protect the building I actually got pretty uncomfortable. They seem like sellouts. What the fuck are they doing? And then an opportunity presents itself to defeat Magneto but it involves an ethical question, and I think Logan and friends arrive at the wrong answer on that one.

I don’t know, maybe that’s the one way that this was not as good as the other two to me, that I actually thought that what the X-Men were doing was wrong. But what the hell, might as well challenge me with a comic strip movie. It gives you more to think about than other pictures in the genre such as GARFIELD or GARFIELD’S A TALE OF TWO KITTIES or, I don’t know if there’s a ZIGGY movie or not.

Anyway, I like that the good guys and bad guys all understand that they have this mutant heritage thing in common. And even though Xavier and Magneto are enemies, they are also old friends. Remember in the first one, Professor X-Man gets Magneto locked up but then goes to visit him and play chess while he’s in the can? That type of respect and friendship comes through in this one too. That’s how it gets ya, it pulls at your heartstrings.

With as many characters as they have now they have to shortchange some of them or kill them off early (a handy trick they use in this one). Logan Wolverine is still cool and heavily involved in the Jean Grey storyline, but he doesn’t seem like the main character anymore. Storm actually has a little more important role and does cooler things, although she still talks like either Janet or Latoya. Kurt (the German guy) has such a small part that he’s not in the movie. I think they do a good job of getting across what they need to about each character within a small amount of screen time.

All the main new characters are pretty cool. I like how Hank is a thoughtful, well spoken diplomat who wears a suit and tie but happens to be blue and furry and hang upside down. In the small part of the movie dedicated to him he gets to have a little depth because it’s implied that he would like to take the cure, but instead he stands up for his people. I don’t like politicians but he seems like a cool guy. Then you got Hawkman, a small character just on screen enough to get an idea across. He’s the son of the inventor of the cure, but he has bird wings. It’s sad and then moving to see how he hates himself and then how he decides to metaphorically spread his wings and fly. (the wings being a metaphor for his wings.)

Finally there’s Juggernaut, played by Vinnie Jones (SUBMERGED). There’s no depth to Juggernaut, which is okay in this case. He’s just a big muscleman with a metal helmet who runs through walls and punches stuff. I never understood all this talk about “geekgasm” and what not until I saw the reaction to Juggernaut’s big scene. Alot of people were whooping and hollering but one particular guy got so excited he actually jumped to his feet and pumped his fists in the air yelling “YEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHH!!!! FUCK YEEEAAAAAHHHH!!!” well into the next scene, and I swear people were ducking for cover just in case he really did shoot his wad all over the rows in front of him. So now I get it what Harry is always talking about. You people are sickos but I get it now.

But the new character who matters the most is the director, Brett Ratner. I remember some of you guys had that plan to kidnap the furry bastard and strangle him with spider-man underoos for a little bit of the ol’ nerd justice. I never understood that because 1) okay he’s not Stanley Kubrick, but he’s not the guy who did Daredevil either, so cut the guy some fuckin slack and 2) he hadn’t even made the movie yet, isn’t he, as an American, innocent until proven guilty? and 3) if you don’t think MONEY TALKS is hilarious then I ain’t reading casper comics with you, buddy. At least give him credit for MONEY TALKS.

Well I’m never gonna convince you on that one but it’ll be interesting to see if you still want to assassinate this guy after you see X PART 3. In my eyes he did a good job. Like Mystique would, he has made an amazing facsimile of Bryan Singer’s style from the first two, completing the story. Don’t get me wrong, I consider Singer the better filmatist, but honestly if I saw this and didn’t know it was a new director I would’ve fell for it. He is a great fake Singer.

Not that I wouldn’t have liked a couple more Ratnerisms in there. The only one I really noticed was that he put Ken Leung, the villain from RUSH HOUR in a small part as the evil mutant Porcupine Man. There’s so many mutant extras I don’t know why he didn’t go for more cameos. I’m sure he coulda fit Chris Tucker in there. And Michael Jackson obviously would’ve made a good mutant too. Okay, maybe that would be distracting, but one thing I did miss was Lalo Schifrin, the genius behind the music for ENTER THE DRAGON, DIRTY HARRY, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, etc. and also the guy who scored most of Ratner’s pictures. I read he was gonna do this one, not sure if that was a mistake or if he got fired for being too awesome, but the score is by some guy called John Powell. Nothing against him, he did fine, but more than Brett Ratner is not Bryan Singer, that motherfucker is NOT Lalo Schifrin. He’s some other guy.

But I think Ratner did a good job. And he has the balls to include important information after the credits, something I always enjoy but rarely see. Remember, SEE NO EVIL was afraid to even put the awesome peeing scene at the end of the credits, they put it pretty much at the beginning. This one doesn’t involve peeing on a dead body, but it’s pretty good.

Now, I’m pretty sure I know how some comical book extremists will react to this movie. They will watch it three times in the theater and buy it on DVD to get a fuller understanding of why it is the worst movie ever made. But I think the average every day nerd on the street, the cool ones like you, are mostly gonna like it. I say this only because the crowd I saw it with (who got their passes from a comic book shop) mostly seemed to love it.

The end is a little weird, it acts like things are wrapped up. But the cure was not uninvented, so there is still a huge fucking dilemma. And plus we got some dead X-Men-and-Women. Still, it leaves you a little hope for if there was a next one. But of course, there are only three X-Men comic books probaly so that must be the end of the story. Too bad, would’ve been cool to see what would’ve happened.

thanks nerds,

Vern

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23417

[ratings]

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.

Also that new German guy Kurt is pretty cool. I mean I’m cool with mutants, I totally don’t even care that the guy has that tail and everything. I mean I would totally hang out with blue skinned people to be frankly honest. I probaly, you know I’m not a mutant but I’d probaly be one of those guys that hangs out with mutants and it’s like, when I’m around them I don’t even remember who is a mutant and who is not a mutant. I’d be like…

hey, you know that guy Kurt? Kurt Vagner? You know, the German guy?

Kurt? German guy Kurt. I don’t know, what does he look like?

I don’t know how to describe him, I mean, he’s kind of short I think, about this tall. Medium length hair. You know, not long at all, but it’s not like a crew cut or anything. He’s got a lot of tattoos, he wears like a leather jacket and striped pants.

Hm, I don’t know, are you sure I know this guy?

Yeah, Kurt. You know. With the accent. And he’s real religious, always saying prayers.

I don’t know.

He has a rosary, I think he was raised by gypsies though. He said he used to be in the circus. You know he’s, he’s the guy that teleports all the time, and leaves this cloud of inky blue smoke.

Oh, you mean the blue guy with the devil tail. Nightcrawler.

Oh yeah, he is blue, isn’t he? Yeah, that’s Kurt. Kurt Vagner. He’s a cool guy.

The one disappointing thing about Kurt, that opening scene where he attacked the president. When he didn’t kill him and just left a “mutant freedom now” ribbon I thought he was my fuckin hero. I thought he was some revolutionary like John Brown. But then it turns out he’s just being mind controlled by Stryker.

Now that Stryker guy, that guy’s a real asshole but I coulda warned you, Mystique, because that’s Brian Cox. He’s always playing assholes now, or pedophiles at least. I don’t fuckin trust that guy. I coulda told you that guy’s a bad guy and he has some magic formula to control the mutants and his son was a mutant who he tried to “cure” (can you believe that shit?) and now he has a vendetta so he is building his own “cerebro” machine and kidnapping Dr. X-Man to use him to concentrate on all of the mutants in the world at once so that he can commit telepathic genocide.

Now let me tell you why I liked this movie: this is a movie for our times. I mean I can relate to the idea of a militarist maniac manipulating the government for his own hateful, extremist agenda. I like how the X-Men are a badass underground civil rights group who try to use non violence when necessary. I’m into that. But I mean you guys are cool too, nothing against you guys. I have to admit it was you guys who stopped the passage of the Mutant Registration Act. The X-Men saved the humans from Magneto but you and Magneto saved the mutants from the humans. I was curious though, as long as I have you here what’s the deal with you impersonating that senator? How did you convince his family that he’s still alive? Do you like show up at the house and then you’re like, “Oh shit, I forgot my good tie at the White House, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.” I don’t know, whatever you did you fuckin pulled that one off. Kudos.

By the way, I know you’re mostly interested in the mutant issues but I was wondering maybe if you get a chance, you and Magneto could look into this USA PATRIOT act that we have and the part 2 that they’re working on. The “patriot” act is our own Mutant Registration Act, but it encompasses alot more. They use it to justify roundups of immigrants, and then they lock them up for months or years without charges or lawyers and eventually deport them (deport, not teleport). They also do this trick where non-citizens from the middle east have to come register. If they don’t register, they can get arrested or deported. If they do register, they’ll get locked up without charges or deported. It’s fucked up man. This is also the act that gave Stryker the right to raid that X-Men school, and to lock those little mutant kids up in a pit. They’re doing the same thing in Camp X-Ray Guantanamo Bay. But instead of “little kids” they call them “juvenile enemy combatants.” If he wanted to, Stryker could’ve searched the school without a warrant and without telling anybody. He also could’ve checked all the X-Men’s library records and if the librarian tried to tell anybody that he did it, he or she woulda been arrested. That’s the Patriot act for you.

I don’t know what you could do now, because if you morphed into Bush or Ashcroft or any of those guys, and then you actually did something good, people would be pretty suspicious. I don’t know, I know this thing already passed but, you know, whatever you can do.

Anyway, that’s why you guys are cooler than other comic strip characters, you fight against the system. You fight cops and soldiers and you fuck with politicians and you get shit done. You don’t waste your time flyin around in some fuckin cape tryin to stop muggers. Shit especially you, you let it all hang out, you just walk around naked, do flips, slither around on the ground and all that crap. I love that crap. And that was pretty cool when you turned into Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. She was great in FEMME FATALE. Isn’t she married to some goofball from America’s Funniest Home Videos? Anyway you X-Men and Magneto-ites, you have strong opinions and some of you are more radical than others (right on sister). I mean I know I’m a human but like I said in my first review I think you guys got a good point about the fuckin humans. I don’t agree with everything Magneto does but he seems like a cool guy and it’s cool how he always has this blue naked chick (you) standing behind him.

You guys really have the same goal as the X’s, you just have a different opinion about how to get there. And I think the X’s understand that, that’s why Dr. X-Man visits Magneto in prison, and did you notice that when you busted him out and met them at that campfire they didn’t waste time trying to find out if they trusted you, they just went into action. That was cool.

I mean it’s a good movie. It gets kind of convoluted at the end because it’s so complicated and you start to wonder about all these powers, like what is the deal with Dr. X-Men being able to freeze the whole world like in the Matrix? I don’t get it. Also it would’ve been a better cliffhanger if after their little talk, the president went ahead and read the speech anyway, declaring war on the mutants. Not that I want a war on you guys but that would make a more exciting part 3 wouldn’t it? Oh well, I liked in the first one how they left Wolverine’s past unresolved, and they did the same thing here with Jean Grey’s growing magic super powers. I’m not stupid man, I know she’s not dead and since I heard all the nerds whispering something about “Phoenix” I guess that’s where she’s gonna turn up, Arizona.

But enough about Jean Grey, I mean she’s a looker for sure but she’s always whining about her headaches and stuff, plus between her husband and Professor Wolverine she has more than enough man. No Mystique, I am more interested in you and let me tell you why. It’s not because of your looks although I like your pretty glowing yellow reptilian eyes, your bright orange slimy hair and your gorgeous blue scaled naked skin. No, it’s like that fox show with the masks, I like you for your personality. You’ve got a mischeivous sense of humor girl I like that. Like when you were seducing Wolverine, I know it was in a closeup and hard to tell but didn’t you turn into Rogue for a second to tease him about his uncomfortable relationship with teens? That was good stuff, you know he’s into barely legal. Also how you freaked out that janitor by walking past him looking like him.

I know you don’t have alot of respect for men, you might be hard to always get along with but I don’t know man I feel like maybe I could change you, settle you down a little but you’d still be a strong woman and you could still kick my ass. I mean I don’t think I’ll ever need you to bust me out of prison but you gotta appreciate a woman who COULD do that if she needed to. that was a nice thing to do Mystique.

The part that impressed me the most was when you were talking to Kurt by the campfire. And by the way I could tell this impressed Kurt too, but some nerd told me you’re his mom, is that true? Anyway Kurt asked why you don’t just look normal all the time since you can, and you said, “We shouldn’t have to.” Right on girl. I like you just the way you are. Just don’t shoot me up with metal so Magneto can tear it out of me.

Think about it Mystique. We could be magic together if you were real. Either way, I can’t wait to see you in part 3.

Love always,

Vern

[ratings]

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.”

Unfortunately Clint wants to go and fuck with me so his new one coming out is about astronauts. It’s called Space Cowboys and unfortunately from what I’ve gathered it is not actually about cowboys, that is just an artistical license kind of thing. They’re just plain astronauts.

The gimmick is, they are a bunch of old guys who go on a mission. Clint is directing so I know it’s not gonna be as bad as Armageddon. But still, Clint, I mean jesus.

For those of you who agree with me on that, never fear. There is another Clint Eastwood movie for you and in fact it’s in theaters right now. Clint is looking younger than ever playing the character of Logan Wolverine in the new comic strip movie X-Men that everybody loves.

Of course, this Clint is credited as “Hugh Jackman” – some kind of joke name I guess but “huge ackman?” I don’t get it. I’m not sure how this was accomplished exactly. Maybe this is a computer generated renderation of a young Clint Eastwood, like they have done with James Brown in the “funky blast” ride at Seattle’s Experience Music Project rock and roll museum. Maybe it is Clint under a lot of makeup to make him look more like he did in his Thunderbolt days. Maybe it is a son of Clint’s, much like Chad McQueen but keeping more in the true spirit of his father than Chad does. Or hell, maybe it’s just some dude named Hugh Jackman who looks a lot like Clint Eastwood.

Who the fuck knows and who cares. The point is SOMEHOW these filmatists have come up with a young Clint Eastwood in the year 2000, and he is playing the main character of the Wolverine. And that is why the X-Men movie is the #1 movie of the summer so far in my opinion, although I can’t really remember what else came out this summer anyway.

This dude has Clint’s eyes. He has Clint’s eyebrows. He has Clint’s smile. And I guess it probaly goes hand in hand with the eyes, but he has Clint’s Badass attitude.

When we first meet the Wolverine he is in a Canadian redneck bar, fighting people in a cage for money, smoking a cigarette with his back turned to the camera. Then he turns around and his face is revealed, and you say, “Holy shit, Clint Eastwood!”

There are many other nods to Clint’s cinematical past. He chomps on a fat cigar. He drifts around living in a rusty old truck. He is the stoic outsider character who teases the other X-Men for wearing costumes and having stupid names but then he ultimately fights alongside them because he knows it’s right. He also has a sort of a relationship with a much younger gal just as Clint does in many movies right up to In the Line of Fire and True Crime. I guess this isn’t the same kind of relationship though so maybe instead you could compare it to Clint’s partnership with little Jeff Bridges in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.

Now I gotta be honest guys I liked this fucking movie. I didn’t know jack shit about X-Men going in, in fact I’ve been calling the fucking movie X-Man for about four months now. Thanks for correcting me guys, jesus.

Anyway now I am what you call an X-fanatic or X-cellent person or whatever. I know all about these motherfuckers. Xavier is the bald guy, he has two different specially made wheelchairs. Both of them have X’s for the spokes of the wheels. One of them is made out of clear plastic.

Next there is Wolverine. His skeleton is made out of adamantiamatic metal. Nobody knwos why. Apparently some assholes did it to him. But he doesn’t remember who. But jesus he is going to find out in the next movie and those fuckers better duck. Because he has claws like Freddy and yes it hurts every time they pop out but that never stopped a tough motherfucker like Clint Eastwood from clawing a guy.

The main character besides Wolverine is Rogue. She is a young teenage girl with the ability to absorb other people’s life force or mutant powers. She also absorbs different accents throughout the movie, including southern, generic american, and new zealand.

Also cyclops. He is blind I guess. But that’s no excuse for being a tightass. He shoots laser beams from his eyes. His girlfriend is Jean Grey, who is very sexy and has telekinetic type powers, like Carrie. But she is more educated than Carrie so she is the doctor of this group.

Then there is Storm. Not sure WHAT is up with this gal. She has white hair and eyes and can control the weather. One guy in the theater cheered when she first used weather so I guess it is popular. Her acting is kind of weird, reminded me of Michael or Janet Jackson but I guess she is pretty good.

There is also a bad guy mutant named Mystique. Now this chick I gotta admit is pretty great. She is very scary looking because she has orange hair and glowing eyes and blue skin and scales and morphs into different people and does karate. But still it is hard not to notice, I don’t know if any of the girls noticed this but I think the guys will notice this. But she is naked. And she has a good body. This is maybe one case where you wish she wasn’t naked because with clothes on you could picture that she at least didn’t have scales. The blue skin is fine I guess but those scales could probaly do some damage.

Well anyway not to go on too much of a boner tangent but I liked this monster femme fatale gal. Kind of reminded me of the porcupine gal in the old horror flick, The Nightbreed.

What’s cool about it is these are all mutants and they are feared by the humans. There is alot of symbolicy type stuff about intolerance. The opening scene is at a nazi concentration camp and the later scenes of a senator stirring up bigotry against mutants has obvious parallels to gays. Also just to bring the whole race card in there Magneto quotes Malcolm X at the end.

Now Magneto is basically the bad guy but I like him because he’s got dimension. We first see him as a boy facing the worst possible type of intolerance in WWII so we obviously sympathize with him. We know that he has a pretty good point about the fucking humans. He and Dr. X-Man used to be friends and still sort of are but they have philosophical differences. Magneto is more militant and hardcore and he has a plan to turn the world’s leaders into mutants against their will. Magneto and Xavier are not the type of enemies that start fighting every time they see each other, in fact they have polite debates in two different scenes. Just a couple of old guys with a friendly rivalry. I mean I guess it would be pretty fucked up for Magneto to try to fight a dude in a wheelchair but still.

Actually come to think of it that could’ve been a pretty great fight scene but I will forgive them for leaving it out on account of the characterization was good.

My only real complaint about Magneto is that he lives in some kind of underground fort with a couple of henchmen and has a big evil machine that he uses for his plan. I mean I’m not sure but I don’t think Malcolm X ever did that kind of crap. Dr. X also has a machine that he sits in and I don’t know WHAT the fuck that thing does. So when the plot turns more into sitting in a machine and shooting beams and different characters shooting different beams out of different places and what not, well it starts to get a little less personal.

But as a whole the movie works because of this WOlverine character. This is a super hero who makes fun of other super heroes. One who steals motorcycles from other super heroes. One who leaves at the end so he can go track down somebody and kick their ass. Now that is a good super hero in my opinion. It might be corny if the wrong person was playing him but this is “Hugh Jackman” we’re tlaking about. This movie is pretty hot thanks to the miracle of young Clint Eastwood’s Badass charisma. Congratulations Clint and welcome back.

Your biggest fan,

Vern

[ratings]

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