X-Men: Last Stand 8. As is well known amongst my friends, I'm very critical of comic-movie adaptations because of my extensive geekified comic book background. And despite their commercial success, I've always been extra critical of the X-Movies.... Mainly because, from a real comic book reader's standpoint, they generally stink on toast. I've always blamed the screenplay writers for my vast disappointment. Now, after seeing X-Men 3, the director of the two previous movies gets to share the blame for their stankitude. Bryan Singer.... you, sir, are lame. I'm even more concerned now about what you'll do the to revered Superman franchise. I say all this because I rather enjoyed X-Men 3, with its new director, Brett Ratner (nice job, Brett) which just illustrates how clueless you really are about the comics.

X-Men 3 is a grand, comic-booky movie that captures more than just the obligatory look of the comics, it also comes much closer to nailing the story, feel, and pacing of the comics. Bryan... dude... you paying attention? This is what you want in a comic book movie... a movie that actually feels like the comics which were so successful by themselves to begin with! Screw your "I know better than they do" mentality which the first two films reeked of.

Not that X-3 doesn't deserve its share of my usual criticisms. I'm still enraged by the writers' self-granted license to pick and choose which established characters they're going to use and how they're going to fit into the screenplay (not to mention how old and/or experienced they're going to be). Witness Angel and Iceman... In the comics they were two of the original X-Men (along with Cyclops, Jean Gray, and Beast), not two children just dicovering their powers. And who decided Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, is suddenly a villain now? Because we needed someone with his powers to make our movie plot work? It's shit like that that chaps my geekified hide.  ¶ 9:20 PM 0 comments

  Rental: Chicken Little 2. DISCLAIMER: I was awfully sleepy when I watched this movie. That may have tainted my impression of it. Chicken Little is a poorly contructed movie that was a romp through the last third of it, but should have been fun through the rest. Once you plod through the first 2/3 of the movie, which surely had theater-going children bouncing and crying bored in their seats, the film finally gets to what it should have been as of 10 minutes into it: An alien invasion movie. What-the-raygun-wielding-fuck are you people doing trying to shoehorn a heartstring-plucking father/son drama into the beginning of this movie? What, without it you couldn't produce more than an entertaining 20 minute short film? You shoulda ran with the 20. It was boring, uncomfortable-making and certainly not at all appealing to children, let alone the adults who chose to see this movie.... you know... your target audience?

Once the sky starts falling, things brighten up immensely. It becomes the movie it was meant to be. The ride is far too short though. The characters are interesting (for some reason I particularly liked Fish), but the focus was never on those characters and their personalities/quirks. I could never shake the feeling that the writers were trying to say "see how clever we are?" You'll get a good chuckle from Chicken Little when it finally rolls around to cable, but unless you've got a free rental coming, there's a lot better things to spend your time watching.  ¶ 7:21 PM 0 comments

  Mission Impossible 3 6 (and that's fairly generous). I don't have too much to complain about here, nor really too much to compliment. Directed by JJ Abrams (Alias), it had some nice action and a good spy feel to it. Tom Cruise, for all his offscreen nonsense, is still perfectly watchable in movies.... and, honestly, I don't want anything more from him than that. I could give a shit if he's bouncing up and down on Oprah's couch ... or Katie Holmes. So, the simple statement of "it's a nice action movie" is going to have to carry enough weight to balance the rest of this, because I've got some issues. Hollywood? ....are you listening? Look......
Stop making action movies like this!! Look you geniuses, making an "action movie" does not mean you start showing action scenes the minute the lights go down and don't stop til 75 seconds before the credits roll! That's not a good movie... That's boring. Whoever told you guys that's what makes a good action movie is lying to you. Take them off your Christmas card list, they've done you a disservice. The greatest offender of this to date has been (for me) Van Helsing, a movie filled with wild action... which I fell asleep in the middle of. Really. I did. Do you want your "action" movies doing that to people? I didn't think so. A good movie, even an "action" movie, has to have a good story behind it and..... "pacing." Go look it up. I'll wait.
Second, a personal preference, not really a fault of the movie. Mission Impossible has always been about the secret missions of a secret government agency. The tried and true plots revolve around carrying out the assignment, encountering glitches, and overcoming those glitches. Yet all the movies thusfar have been about circumventing the government and/or finding fault with it. This is fine for other movies, but I need the IMF working on their actual assignments, not going off the page all the time. It undermines the solidly established premise of the original TV series (like that doesn't happen with every TVseries-to-Movie debacle).  ¶ 4:40 PM 0 comments