Release Date: April 7th, 2006 Directed by: Dennis Dugan Written by: Allen Covert, Nick Swardson Music by: Waddy Wachtel Cast: Rob Schneider, David Spade, Jon Heder, Jon Lovitz, Craig Kilborn, Molly Sims, Tim Meadows, Nick Swardson, Bill Romanowski, Reggie Jackson, Terry Crews, Dennis Dugan, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Rachel Hunter, Doug Jones (voice), William Daniels (voice), James Earl Jones (voice)
Happy Madison Productions, Revolution Studios, 85 Minutes
Review:
“My wife is the only one who gets to twist these man titties.” – Gus
This is both a bad and a dumb movie. Still, I like the hell out of it because sometimes bad and dumb are just what you need to mindlessly escape from an increasingly shitty world.
Also, this is the type of movie that can’t be made today. When I say “type of movie” I mean “comedy”. We’re not allowed to laugh at things anymore because it could offend a small portion of the population who go through life like Howie in this movie. Although, Howie finally faced his fears and went outside where he made real friends and learned how to overcome his irrationality and begin to heal.
The Benchwarmers is the same sort of movies as Grandma’s Boy and, in fact, it’s made by some of the same people. Unlike Grandma’s Boy, though, this doesn’t focus on smoking dope and programming video games, it focuses on standing up to bullies and playing baseball.
While most of the characters in this are borderline ridiculous and way over the top, this is also the writers and actors poking fun at themselves for being nerds and non-jocks that probably just wanted to be able to hang with the dudes that picked on them growing up. This just takes the concept to the extreme because it’s easier to laugh at ourselves when it doesn’t hit super close to home.
This isn’t particularly well acted and many of the nerd tropes are way overdone to the point of cringe but in some way, it works for this movie. We really shouldn’t take this movie too seriously just like most of the things in our lives.
I get that a lot of people will hate this movie while watching it. But ask yourself this, “Are those people fun? Or are they just boring snobs thinking that they’re above a fart joke or shitty pun?” Basically, fuck those people.
Also known as: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Origin (working title) Release Date: October 5th, 2006 (Taiwan) Directed by: Jonathan Liebesman Written by: Sheldon Turner, David J. Schow Based on:The Texas Chain Saw Massacreby Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper Music by: Steve Jabolonsky Cast: Jordana Brewster, Taylor Handley, Diora Baird, Matt Bomer, Lee Tergesen, R. Lee Ermey, Andrew Bryniarski, Lew Temple
Next Entertainment, Platinum Dunes, New Line Cinema, 91 Minutes
Review:
“People may not remember what we say here tonight, but by God they’ll remember what we did.” – Sheriff Hoyt
For Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, I think the two original remakes are both pretty decent, this one being the second of the two, albeit a prequel to the first. The second attempt at a reboot was definitely worse and I’ll probably review those two movies at a later date.
I don’t like this one as much as the 2003 film with Jessica Biel but I do think that the writing, as far as telling the origin story of the killer family, was pretty damn solid and creative.
I’m not sure how much they thought about the family’s backstory in the 2003 movie but this one does interesting things in showing how the patriarch became Sheriff, how the uncle lost his legs, how the Sheriff lost his teeth and some other cool things that called back to details in the previous film that otherwise seemed unimportant. I love when writers do stuff like this, especially when having to add to the mythos that a different writer established.
Beyond that, everything else in this is incredibly derivative and there’s nothing here that you haven’t seen before and done better.
I did like Jordana Brewster and this was the only thing I knew her from other than the first Fast & Furious movie. In the years since, I’ve seen her in a lot and I really, really liked her on the Lethal Weapon television series.
Like the previous movie, I loved R. Lee Ermey in this one too. Man, he’s just such a good psycho asshole. He really ups the ante in this one, especially in regards to becoming the Sheriff.
The thing that was really working against this movie from the beginning, though, was that you knew no one could survive because it was a prequel. So the twist ending, where they want you to think the “final” girl escapes, wasn’t shocking at all. Also, it didn’t make sense unless Leatherface has the power of teleportation.
I understand why they made this movie; the 2003 remake was really successful. But honestly, this chapter didn’t really need to exist. I’m glad that they made the most out of the origin story stuff but beyond that, there’s just not much here. Still, it’s probably one of the better Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies because most of them are all just the same.
Release Date: October 28th, 2005 (Saw II), October 27th 2006 (Saw III), October 26th, 2007 (Saw IV), October 24th, 2008 (Saw V), October 23rd, 2009 (Saw VI), October 29th, 2010 (Saw VII), Directed by: Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV), David Hackl (Saw V), Kevin Greutert (Saw VI-VII) Written by: Leigh Whannell, Darren Lynn Bousman, James Wan, Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan, Thomas Fenton Based on:Saw by James Wan, Leigh Whannell Music by: Charlie Clouser Cast: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell, Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell, Dina Meyer, Donnie Wahlberg, Lyriq Bent, Erik Knudsen, Franky G, Angus Macfadyen, Bahar Soomekh, Mark Rolston, Julie Benz, Sean Patrick Flanery, Glenn Plummer, Beverly Mitchell, Meagan Good,
I wasn’t a fan of the Saw franchise after the original movie. In fact, I quit with the third film and haven’t watched any of them since that one debuted in theaters. Jigsaw died in that one and so I was fine moving on, as well.
After revisiting the first one to review, I figured I would just power through the original string of sequels since they were all on HBO Max.
Since these are all pretty dreadful, blend together in a convoluted clusterfuck and are almost indistinguishable from one another, by the time I got to the end of the fourth movie, I decided just to review them all together. So I pushed through all six of these movies over a weekend and what a miserable experience it was.
The second film is at least a new situation from the first but it also set the stage for what would generally be the formula going forward, which sees a group of people locked in a secret location, having to pass tests in an effort to survive and not be murdered by Jigsaw’s traps.
The third film sees an abducted doctor forced to keep Jigsaw alive, as long as she can. Meanwhile, her husband has to work his way through a test and others are brutalized.
Film four through seven are just rehashes of everything we’ve already seen. Sure, there are different characters with different sins that they have to atone for in Jigsaw’s game. However, we have one Jigsaw successor, then another, then his ex-wife who is also working for him and eventually we discover that the Cary Elwes doctor character from way back in the first movie, has been assisting all along too.
The first film was great because it had a stellar twist at the end. Each picture after it, though, tries to outdo it and ultimately, fails at trying to replicate the shock of the original film’s closing moments.
In fact, with each new plot twist, big reveal and eye-opening flashback, the overall story gets more and more complicated to the point that you really can’t follow any of it and I don’t think the filmmakers even cared about consistency and logic because they were pumping these things out, annually, in an effort to make hundreds of millions off of each movie, all of which cost a slight fraction of that.
Saw after the success of the first one became a soulless, heartless, pointless cash cow. It was pushed as far as it could go and it ultimately diminished what the first movie had built and the reputation it deservedly earned.
I also hate the visual style of these films. They look like a ’90s industrial music video, everything is choppily and rapidly edited and they’re overwhelmed by more violent, shrill, jarring flashbacks than my ‘Nam vet uncle on LSD.
The musical score is also overbearing a lot of the time. It’s like this series has one theme playing throughout the movie and when crazy, violent shit pops up, they simply raise the volume.
Additionally, outside of Tobin Bell, these things are terribly acted. As much as I like Bell as Jigsaw in spite of this shitty series, even his presence runs its course midway through this series. He basically just becomes this prop in each film for the writers and directors to hang their stinky ass ideas on.
People may want to point to other long-running horror franchise and call them pointless cash cows too but most of the movies in the Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, etc. franchises were at least fun and entertaining.
There is nothing fun about these movies. They’re just full of miserable people who do miserable things, trapped in a miserable situation that only extends their misery and the misery of the audience. I don’t know why people kept going to see these for seven fucking annual installments. But then again, some people really, really liked Limp Bizkit, JNCO jeans and Jerry Springer.
Saw II – Rating: 5/10 Saw III – Rating: 5.5/10 Saw IV – Rating: 4.25/10 Saw V – Rating: 4/10 Saw VI – Rating: 4/10 Saw VII – Rating: 4.25/10
Release Date: September 26th, 2006 (New York City premiere) Directed by: Martin Scorsese Written by: William Monahan Based on:Infernal Affairs by Alan Mak, Felix Chong Music by: Howard Shore Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Anderson, Kevin Corrigan, Mark Rolston, Robert Wahlberg
Media Asia Films, Vertigo Entertainment, Initial Entertainment Group, Plan B Entertainment, Warner Bros., 151 Minutes
Review:
“My theory on Feds is that they’re like mushrooms, feed ’em shit and keep ’em in the dark” – Dignam
I probably would’ve enjoyed this movie a lot more had I not seen the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs first. Reason being, this is an American remake of that film and frankly, it’s nowhere near as good but I’ll explain why.
To start, the acting is superb as fuck and really, that should go without saying if you look over the cast list. And really, I think that’s the one part of this film that possibly exceeds the original. DiCaprio is solid. Damon is solid. Nicholson is solid. Frankly, so is everyone else and there isn’t really a weak link in this chain of talent.
I think that for the lesser known actors and those with smaller parts, working with these other legends really helped them rise to the occasion. But some credit for that obviously has to go to Martin Scorsese’s direction. Scorsese, time and time again, always pulls the very best out of his actors from top-to-bottom in every production.
But this doesn’t discredit the acting in the Hong Kong film, which was also top notch and pretty damn close to this one even with the language barrier and having to experience it through subtitles.
One thing I’m not super keen on about this version is that it feels like the least Martin Scorsese film that the man has ever made… or, at least, that I’ve seen. It’s like Scorsese really wanted to replicate the tone and style of the original and while he did a fine job in replicating it, it sort of loses his patented touch. I would’ve rather seen him really take this story and make it his own.
Speaking of the story, I found this harder to follow than its source material. The Hong Kong film developed the characters better, especially the backstories. This movie lacked a lot of the extra context we got in the original between the Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon characters. I think that context was pretty important and maybe those scenes were filmed but ended up on the cutting room floor.
What’s strange is that this movie is a whopping fifty minutes longer… fifty! Yet it feels like it has less story and the story that is present is a bit complicated. I feel like they tried to add extra layers into this where they didn’t need to be. While I don’t remember every detail of Infernal Affairs, as it’s been four years since I’ve seen it, but it did feel more streamlined and focused in spite of all the characters it had to balance.
It may seem like I’m shitting on The Departed but I don’t mean to. It’s just that I found a lot more value in the original.
This is still a damn engaging movie with characters you like, even the bad ones. It mostly moves at a brisk pace and as I’ve already stated, it’s a movie that’s greatly enhanced by its performances.
It was kind of cool seeing guys like DiCaprio, Nicholson and Damon come together in the same picture. It truly feels like a once-in-a-lifetime team-up and these guys worked together wonderfully.
Also known as: Nana’s Boy (working title) Release Date: January 6th, 2006 Directed by: Nicholaus Goossen Written by: Barry Wernick, Allen Covert, Nick Swardson Music by: Waddy Wachtel Cast: Linda Cardellini, Allen Covert, Peter Dante, Shirley Jones, Shirley Knight, Joel David Moore, Kevin Nealon, Doris Roberts, Nick Swardson, Jonah Hill, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Kevin Nash
Happy Madison Productions, Level 1 Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, 94 Minutes
Review:
“This chick’s pussy smelled like the great depression.” – Jeff
Grandma’s Boy is a movie I slept on when it came out. I’m not a massive Adam Sandler fan and seeing a movie that was essentially an Adam Sandler movie without Adam Sandler wasn’t what I considered a top priority. However, several friends would reference it all the time, so I gave in and checked it out after a few years.
Since then, it’s become one of my favorite comedy movies of its era. It’s just solid, mindless escapism, which is something I love. Add in the fact that it’s fucking hilarious and it’s become one of those sweet guilty pleasures that I tend to watch once or twice per year.
It stars Allen Covert, who has been in just about all of Adam Sandler’s comedies. The film was co-written by him, Barry Wernick and Nick Swardson, a comedic actor that I like in just about everything… yes, even Bucky Larson. You also get another Sandler “best bud” with Peter Dante.
Beyond those guys, you’ve got Linda Cardellini, Joel David Moore, Kevin Nealon, David Spade, Jonah Hill, Shirley Jones, Shirley Knight, Rob Schneider and former professional wrestler Kevin Nash. Needless to say, this low budget movie that nearly everyone slept on in the theater, has a stacked cast.
The story is about some stoners that develop and test video games. There’s the underachieving loser who doesn’t realize his own potential, the lovable sidekick, lesser sidekicks, the douchebag work rival and the hot chick that’s out of everyone’s league but she’s cool, so whatever.
However, there’s also the extra added element of the loser’s grandma and her two roommates, who the loser has to live with while dealing with his hectic work life and douchebag work rival.
It’s a fairly simple story and the movie sort of just works because you like the characters, their camaraderie and their shenanigans.
This is just a lighthearted, stoner flick with lots of gags and jokes that would set off Twitter weirdos in the current year “civilization”. So if you don’t like it, you’re probably some fluorescent-haired land whale, feminist, “fuck the white patriarchy”, hater of fun, regardless of what gender you see yourself as.
Rating: 7.5/10 Pairs well with: other comedy films starring Adam Sandler’s best buds, which are mostly films with Adam Sandler.
Release Date: July 21st, 2006 (New York City premiere) Directed by: David Maysles, Albert Maysles Cast: Edith “Big Edie” Ewing Bouvier Beale, Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale
Maysles Films, 91 Minutes
Review:
“[on Republicans] Who’s the party of special interest that always grinds down the little people? Who’s the party that doesn’t give a damn as long as they make millions to put in their bank? Who’s the party that scrounges around to find all the dirt they can and use it against their opponent to destroy the two party system that made America what it is today? Who’s the party that delivered a crooked president?” – Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale
I liked the original Grey Gardens documentary enough to check out this sequel, which came out roughly thirty years later.
This wasn’t a traditional sequel, as in it didn’t check back in on these women after the events of the first movie. This was, instead, a new documentary made with unused footage, which apparently, there was a lot of.
This could’ve been released years ago or added into the original film, making it a three hour affair, but it’s kind of neat seeing it resurface decades later. Why they waited that long or even did it at all is a mystery but I still enjoyed this for the most part.
However, I can also see why most of this wasn’t used in the original film. Although, the scene with the fire in the house probably should’ve been in the original, as it explains why there’s a big burnt hole in the wall of this once great coastal mansion.
I probably wouldn’t watch this over Grey Gardens, if you haven’t seen either. However, if you liked Grey Gardens, this is a good companion piece to it and it gives you more insight and context into the lives of this mother and daughter.
Rating: 6.25/10 Pairs well with: its predecessor and the biographical drama film that is based on these women, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore.
Also known as: Centralia (fake working title), Terror en Silent Hill (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela) Release Date: April 20th, 2006 (Hollywood premiere) Directed by: Christophe Gans Written by: Roger Avery, Christophe Gans, Nicolas Boukhrief Based on:Silent Hill by Konami Music by: Akira Yamaoka, Jeff Danna Cast: Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates, Tanya Allen, Alice Krige, Jodelle Ferland
“When you’re hurt and scared for so long, the fear and pain turn to hate and the hate starts to change the world.” – Dark Alessa
When this came out, it was the film that seemed like it bucked the trend of video game movies being shit, as far as adaptations and overall quality goes.
The Resident Evil films were their own thing and before them we had the Street Fighter movie, Super Mario Bros. and Double Dragon. I would say that the film that actually bucked the trend first, though, was 1995’s Mortal Kombat. However, Silent Hill is a much better film than that one and it works without having knowledge or appreciation of its video game series before seeing it.
In fact, I know several people that saw this film first, which then served as a gateway into the games due to the effect this movie had on them.
I used to watch this quite a bit after I bought it on DVD when it was first released that way. It’s probably been a dozen years since I’ve seen it but my fondness for it was still really strong and I wanted to revisit it. I also want to playthrough some of the earlier games too, which I might in the very near future.
Seeing this now was kind of cool because I was separated enough from it to see it with somewhat fresh eyes. I definitely see the flaws in it more than I did in 2006 but that could also be due to me not being as obsessed with the franchise as I was back then. Subpar sequels in both video games and film took the wind out of this once great property’s sails.
The film adapts elements of the stories from the first two games and sort of merges them while also doing its own thing. So it’s familiar enough for fans to immediately recognize but also takes some interesting turns that allow it to breathe and evolve in a different way.
I like the film’s story quite a lot, even if it does change some key things. Those things don’t break the film as its own body of work, though.
My biggest gripe about the film is the dialogue. It’s not terrible but there are some weird lines and some weird delivery, here and there. I’m not sure if that’s due to a language barrier due to the director, who also co-wrote the film, being French. I don’t know enough about him outside of his finished films that I’ve seen, which aren’t many.
However, the child actress delivers some lines with weird inflections on certain syllables that sound unnatural and a bit off. I don’t necessarily blame her, I blame the direction and the takes that were chosen to be used in the final film.
Overall, she did well essentially playing two different characters that were polar opposites of each other: one being good and innocent and the other being the absolute embodiment of evil. The requirements of her role aren’t easy for most adult actors and she did rather well considering her age and experience.
Moving on, some of the CGI effects look a little dated but for the most part, the film still looks great. There are just a few shots that look kind of weird.
The film as a whole looks incredible, however. Gans has a stupendous eye and from a visual standpoint, he captured the tone and aesthetic of the video game series phenomenally well. I am still really impressed by the scenes where the purgatory world dissolves into the Hell world.
Beyond that, I’m not a big fan of the ending but it fits well within the framework of what Silent Hill is. I guess there is a part of me that wanted something more optimistic but the ambiguous and strange ending leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. Also, that’s not a bad thing, some of my favorite movies do that but after the literal hell that the characters went through, it felt like more of a reward was needed.
I liked the cult aspect of the story and I definitely loved their end. As violent and incredibly fucked up as the climax was, it was also satisfying as hell after learning who these people really were. This movie doesn’t simply provide you with sympathy for the Devil, it makes you root for him… or in this case, her.
The last thing I want to mention is the music. The film recycles the score and iconic songs from the video game series. That might not work in the case of most film adaptations but it really amplified the effect of the film and its brooding, disturbing atmosphere. I think that I appreciated it even more now, as I kind of forgot how good the games’ music was.
Silent Hill is, hands down, one of the best horror movies in its decade, which was unfortunately a terrible decade for horror. But I think it would’ve been just as great in earlier decades, regardless of the higher quality of the genre.
Rating: 8/10 Pairs well with: it’s absolutely shitty sequel, I guess. But more importantly, the video game series. Specifically, the first three games.
Release Date: October 13th, 2006 Directed by: Jeff McQueen Written by: J. Albert Bell, Rachel Belofsky, Michael Derek Bohusz, Adam Rockoff, Rudy Scalese Music by: Harry Manfredini Cast: Ed Green (narrator), Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Debra Hill, Malek Akkad, Greg Nicotero, Amy Holden Jones, Stan Winston, Rob Zombie, Sean S. Cunningham, Tom Savini, Betsy Palmer, Harry Manfredini, Felissa Rose, Robert Shaye
For being one of those film history documentaries made by Starz, it’s pretty good.
Granted, this isn’t great and there are much better documentaries on ’80s horror, slasher films and many of the specific movies this one discusses.
As can be expected, this is a series of talking head interviews edited and presented to tell a narrative. In the case of this film, it goes through the history of slasher films from the ’70s and up to more modern times. I kind of lost interest once it got midway into the ’90s but that’s when Scream came out and kind of wrecked the genre.
This does miss a lot and doesn’t even really touch on the things in film’s history that inspired and paved the way for slasher cinema.
It felt like a missed opportunity to examine Italian giallo and how that subgenre of horror (and neo-noir) laid some groundwork for what would become the American and Canadian slasher flick empire.
Still, this was entertaining and I enjoyed it even if I didn’t learn much of anything new.
Rating: 6/10 Pairs well with: other documentaries on ’70s and ’80s horror.
Also known as: Heyday (fake working title), M:i:III (promotional abbreviation) Release Date: April 24th, 2006 (Rome premiere) Directed by: J. J. Abrams Written by: Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, J. J. Abrams Based on:Mission: Impossible by Bruce Geller Music by: Michael Giacchino Cast: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup, Michelle Monaghan, Simon Pegg, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Keri Russell, Maggie Q, Laurence Fishburne, Eddie Marsan, Greg Grunberg, Aaron Paul
“You can look at me with those judgmental eyes all you want, but I bullshit you not, I will bleed on the American flag to make sure those stripes stay red.” – Brassel
Mission: Impossible II was such a disappointment when I saw it in the theaters, that I never saw another Mission: Impossible film after it. However, I’ve heard great things about the more recent sequels and I’ve been motivated to go back and give the franchise another shot.
Having already revisited the first two films for review purposes, I have now reached the third one, which is the first one I’ve never seen. Granted, I knew about the gist of the story as a former roommate used to talk about the movie a lot. He was also a J. J. Abrams mark until 2009’s Star Trek kicked his hard-on into the sun.
Speaking of which, this is directed by J. J. Abrams. I actually have to say that this is one of the best films he’s directed, if not the best from the ones I’ve seen.
This actually doesn’t get wrecked by relying on too many of the tropes that have made some of Abrams’ other films and television shows, predictable and tiresome. Sure, there’s the whole MacGuffin thing and the big swerve and he also borrows heavily and obviously from other films, even ones in this picture’s own franchise, but the final product was entertaining and palatable.
The film is also helped by the performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom Cruise and most of the other key players. Hoffman really stands out in this and I might even say that his talent far exceeded what was needed for this movie.
The action sequences were good, even if some of them felt familiar. The bridge battle, for instance, was very True Lies. However, at least sequences like that didn’t just outright copy their influences and tried to do something unique. Now had we had Cruise reaching for his wife to save her from her car going into the ocean, I probably would’ve called shenanigans much louder.
One thing I did like about this film is that it seemed more serious than the two before it. With that, it kind of reinvents the series and wipes away the gigantic misstep that was the second film. Because of that, this is the best film out of the first three.
In the end, this was a solid, fun movie with good action, good characters and a few performances that were much better than they had to be. Although, the twist ending about the bad guys having someone on the inside was just a rehash of the ending from the first movie and it was kind of lame. But I guess Abrams couldn’t help himself.
Rating: 8/10 Pairs well with: the other Mission: Impossible films.
Also known as: X-Men 3, X-Men 3: The Last Stand (working titles), X3, X III: The Last Stand (alternative titles) Release Date: May 22nd, 2006 (Cannes) Directed by: Brett Ratner Written by: Simon Kinberg, Zak Penn Based on:X-Men by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby Music by: John Powell Cast: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Shawn Ashmore, Aaron Stanford, Vinnie Jones, Patrick Stewart, Ben Foster, Ellen Page, Dania Ramirez, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Bill Duke, Daniel Cudmore, Eric Dane, R. Lee Ermey, Ken Leung
The Donners’ Company, Marvel Enterprises, Twentieth Century Fox, 104 Minutes
Review:
“Charles Xavier did more for mutants than you will ever know. My single greatest regret is that he had to die for our dream to live.” – Magneto
From memory, this was the worst X-Men film of the lot. Well, after about a dozen movies with spinoffs and whatnot, this one still takes the cake in that regard.
This really killed the film franchise, at least for its time. It wouldn’t bounce back until First Class rolled around and gave the series a bit of a soft reboot.
Here, we see the original trilogy of films come to an end and unfortunately, that end is a very unsatisfactory one. Granted, none of these films have aged particularly well and they actually feel quite dated now.
That’s not to say that some of the performances aren’t great or iconic, a few of them are. Specifically, Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. This is probably also why they tried to find ways to include these guys in the X-Men films that followed during the reboot era.
The plot for this is pretty fucking atrocious and the film spends more time killing off beloved characters than trying to tell a good story. It’s like it went for shock and cheap emotional grabs but it failed in generating any real emotion because it all felt soulless and cheap.
I think the biggest issue with the film was that Bryan Singer left to make that big bust, Superman Returns. While Brett Ratner probably wasn’t a bad choice, the final product makes me feel like he was sort of just inserted into a movie that was already well into production and found himself in over his head.
The film is also pretty short when compared to the two chapter before it. It makes me wonder if a lot was left out of the final movie. It certainly feels like it’s lacking story, context and depth.
In the end, this is okay if you want to spend a little more time with these characters and if you turn your brain off, it has some neat moments, but overall, it’s a sloppy misfire.
Rating: 5.5/10 Pairs well with: the other films in the original X-Men trilogy.
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Talking Pulp 
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