Film Review: X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

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.

Film Review: Inception (2010)

Also known as: Oliver’s Arrow (fake working title), El Origen (Spanish title)
Release Date: July 8th, 2010 (London premiere)
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Written by: Christopher Nolan
Music by: Hans Zimmer
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine, Pete Postlethwaite, Lukas Haas, Talulah Riley, Dileep Rao

Legendary Pictures, Syncopy, Warner Bros., 148 Minutes

Review:

“What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere.” – Cobb

Like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, I guess I’m the only person on Earth that doesn’t like this movie.

I can’t take away from the visuals though. This film is stunning to look at and all the strange physics of the dream world come off almost flawlessly and create a visual smorgasbord of cool shit. And because of that, this film had one of the most amazing trailers for its time.

Frankly, I think a lot of people were so blown away by the trailer and the visuals that they completely dismiss everything else.

Inception is one of those “science-y” word salad movies that no one wants to look uncool by admitting that they have no idea what the fuck any of this is about.

The film relies solely on you buying into Christopher Nolan’s bad science, which is constantly explained with more and more layers dropped on top of it all. I don’t think that Nolan really knows what the hell he was saying. It’s complicated, it’s boring, it’s really fucking lame and it’s only cool for those people that read I Fucking Love Science‘s Facebook feed for the headlines without clicking on the articles. It’s bullshit brain casserole for the normie that yells “Yay, science!” but hasn’t actually picked up and read a book by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, whose books are actually really easy for the layman to digest.

This movie wants so hard to be smart but it’s dumber than my cousin Sam after we found her under a bridge in Ft. Lauderdale following a twenty-six day opium bender.

On the flip side, the acting is top notch. I can’t fault the cast for anything. Well, except for Ellen Page who is dryer than a box of saltine crackers, opened and lost in the Sahara during a drought. However, good acting aside, every character in this movie is flat. Also, it lacks any sort of emotion because of the flatness of these characters and because the audience is hit in the face with “Yay, science!” every 8 seconds that you don’t have time to make a connection with anything.

Plus, this film isn’t as innovative as it thinks it is. It certainly isn’t as clever as it thinks it is, either. I wonder if Nolan stores his farts in jars to enjoy at a later date?

Also, Nolan’s directing is damn good. It’s just his writing that is terrible with this $160 million bullshit bonanza.

Fuck this movie. I hate it. I can’t give it a very low score because of the strong positives. But I can’t sit through this turkey in one sitting. I’ve tried. Watching it again, just to finally review it was like sitting through a four day root canal without drugs.

As for that ending, was DiCaprio dreaming? Who the fuck cares.

Rating: 5/10
Pairs well with: other Nolan films that don’t feature Batman.

TV Review: The Umbrella Academy (2019- )

Original Run: February 15th, 2019 – current
Created by: Steve Blackman, Jeremy Slater
Directed by: various
Written by: various
Based on: The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way, Gabriel Ba
Music by: Jeff Russo
Cast: Ellen Page, Tom Hopper, Emmy Raver-Lampman, David Castañeda, Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher, Mary J. Blige, Cameron Britton, Colm Feore, Adam Godley, John Magaro

Borderline Entertainment, Dark Horse Entertainment, Universal Cable Productions, Netflix, 10 Episodes (so far), 45-60 Minutes (per episode)

Review:

When the first Umbrella Academy story came out in 2007, I was instantly captivated by it. It sucked me in, it was a lot of fun, it borrowed heavily from a few different things but ultimately, it was refreshing, unique and helped to reinvigorate my interest in comics at the time.

For years, I have heard that the comic was going to be adapted for live action. I just never really liked the thought of that, as it isn’t something that seems like it could be adapted in a good or effective way outside of its original medium.

Fast forward to late 2018 when I finally saw a trailer for its live action incarnation, this Netflix show. It didn’t get me enthused about it but I thought that there might be a chance that it can work, despite the obvious alterations that I picked up from that trailer.

Well, I don’t want to call this a bad show. It’s really just about what I expected it to be. It has good production value, good special effects for television and it fits well within the genre style. But it just feels like the same ol’ shit in a world where we now have superhero TV shows like we have soda options.

This may be your flavor, this may not be. While I love the comic’s flavor, this just seems like the dollar store generic version of that flavor.

The show has an identity crisis. It doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be or what it should be. It’s like Tim Burton and Wes Anderson had a baby in the worst way possible. The show also tries so hard to be cool that it isn’t. The humor doesn’t stick, the characters aren’t likable and it spends more time trying to wow you with its pop music selections than constructing a scene with any real craftsmanship.

A lot of the shots are done with a wide angle lens to the point that it’s as annoying as J. J. Abrams’ use of the lens flare effect in Star Trek. It’s like a high schooler that dreams of one day going to film school was given a camera and a budget and was told to go make his art, without any knowledge whatsoever of mise en scène.

The acting is also problematic for me. Everyone is just so emotionless and boring. Even when characters argue, it’s stale. The kid who plays Number 5 is pretty good though but he’s also not likable, so it’s hard to latch on to him and let him pull you through the muck.

I got about halfway through the first season and I gave up. Maybe it ends on a good note but time is precious and Netflix likes to drag its shows out to ungodly lengths. This is why I stopped caring about their Marvel shows outside of Daredevil.

This may appeal to some but I’m not sure who it is for. If you’re a fan of the comics, this probably won’t work for you. But that also doesn’t mean that the damage I see isn’t salvageable. Sometimes shows need a season to learn from their mistakes and move forward in a better way.

Rating: 6.25/10
Pairs well with: other modern comic book television adaptations.

Film Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Release Date: May 10th, 2014 (Javits Center premiere)
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written by: Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn
Based on: Days of Future Past by Chris Claremont, John Byrne
Music by: John Ottman
Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart

20th Century Fox, Marvel Entertainment, TSG Entertainment, Bad Hat Harry Productions, The Donners’ Company, 131 Minutes

Review:

*Originally written in 2014.

I’m not really sure how Professor X is alive again after being disintegrated in the third X-Men movie but I don’t care. I also don’t know why he and Magneto showed up at the end of the most recent Wolverine film to ask Logan for his seemingly immediate assistance when they didn’t actually need him until much further in the future and only after Logan told them why they needed him. But who cares, right? This is a film series littered with massive continuity errors. And the point of this newest film in the series, is to rewrite its own history, wash away the confusion and reboot the series.

I think I still like X-Men: First Class the best. However, this film is certainly the best of the series out of the films that feature the original cast from the first three films. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen have an amazing chemistry and this film maximized it. The plot was well constructed – for an X-Men film anyway, the action sequences were pretty well put together and the acting was top notch.

The fact of the matter is, I’ll pretty much watch anything with Michael Fassbender or James McAvoy in it. I’ll also watch Hugh Jackman as Wolverine every day of the week. Mix in the awesomeness that is Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen and you have damn near a masterpiece! Jennifer Lawrence was also great, as were Nicholas Hoult and Peter Dinklage. Actually, in many ways, Dinklage stole the show. Additionally, everyone was ripping Quicksilver before this film even came out. Well, jokes on you people because he was awesome!

Going into this chapter of the series, I felt that adding time travel and a massive cast of characters to the mix would make the plot convoluted. It actually flowed quite well and the balance between both sides of the universe came across nicely. However, I was hoping to see more from the future characters; Blink, Bishop, Sunspot and Warpath were just there to really add to the action and had no character development whatsoever. They just felt like fodder for the future Sentinels and really, that’s all they were. It’d be interesting to see their characters fleshed out more or even minutely, as they were just faces on a screen dying multiple times.

I felt like despite being integral to the time travel element, Kitty Pryde should have had more of an impact or an expanded role. Her entire presence in this film was just two hours of her leaning over a dude’s head and moaning. Iceman had some cool moments but nothing all that noteworthy. Hey was that Sookie? I couldn’t tell because she had less than two seconds of screen time! And man, Vampire Bill is going to be pissed she’s holding hands with the Ice Princess!

This was a damn good X-Men movie. For me, First Class still has the lead but this washed away the pain of The Last Stand and that first Wolverine film, which I still haven’t seen in its entirety. Speaking of which, it would’ve been nice to see Sabertooth in this film and by “Sabertooth”, I mean Liev Schreiber with claws straight tearing shit up!

Lastly, stay until the end of the credits because there is a scene that leads into the next film in the X-Men series. The scene introduces my favorite villain in all of X-Men lore, so enjoy.

Getting back to the question I had to start this review, I must have missed where this was mentioned in the film. However, IMDb answers the question of how Professor Charles Xavier is alive in the future. Here’s what their FAQ says:

It is said that Xavier transferred his consciousness into a comatose body believed to be that of his brother prior to being disintegrated. Thus, we can assume that the physical body of Xavier in Days of Future Past is actually that of the body which Xavier took control of.

Wait.. what?!

Rating: 8.5/10
Pairs well with: The current crop of X-Men movies since James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender took over the lead roles. Also, the last two Wolverine pictures.