X-men Origins: Wolverine

To say that I was looking forward to the latest installment of the the X-men franchise, would be a gross understatement. Truth be told, Wolverine has been my most anticipated film for the last 2 years or so.

With great excitement and high expectations I went along to a screening, only to come out going 'hmmm....' Id say that's my own fault by having such high expectations, but hey I'm a geek, I'm allowed to right?

My biggest nuisance would probably boil down to the fact that I feel that too many stories have been crammed into one. One of the exciting things about the character Wolverine is that he has many different origin stories creating a very diverse character. I feel that the creators of this film should have maybe picked 1 or 2 lines from the smorgasbord to create a masterpiece, instead it seems they have picked many and tried to cram them all in to the first 30mins or so of the film. If they had chosen to focus on one closer I feel that they could have created an awesome film that would show a development of a character rather than an the array of awesome action effects that we got, causing the film to fall into the awkward middle ground between mindless action flick and a well rounded blockbuster film.

Strangely the film seems to be made for fanboys of the Marvel universe, as the film is made of characters from the universe, but almost no information is given on them. It seems that you need to be well educated in the characters to understand why they do the things they do and how (ie. powers and such) but at the same time, if you know a little about some characters it was easy to be let down. Where the hell was Remy's accent?

Now for some positive,

Liev Schreiber does a brilliant job as Victor, a man having great difficulty keeping the beast within. He growls his lines with ferocity and even at times out shines our hero.

Agent Zero played by Daniel Henney was an interesting character, with most of the best action sequences, when he met with his demise, the film actually felt to lack. Is it the revival of gun-fu?

The action sequences were awesomely gritty and brutal, when Wolvey says "I'm the best I am at what I do, and what I do isn't very nice" you believe him, and almost feel hes understating it.

The scene with all the young mutants in the prison, is interesting, I'm actually looking forward to watching it again and picking out who is who. But as someone has pointed out - In the finale, the mutants who will become the first generation of students for Xavier's School are freed by Wolverine. One might expect that the students to mention the grizzled, hairy rescuer with long metal claws in his hands, or that their psychic mentor might pick up on it. Cyclops is the only exception, as he was blind throughout that sequence. Yet when Wolverine reaches Xavier's School in the first X-Men movie, he is a complete mystery to everybody.

Also to be commended is Danny Huston as Stryker he fits the role perfectly.

In closing "Oooh, Shiny. "

Bee Movie

I must admit that 'Bee Movie' is one that I have ruled out many a time. But my partners obsession with Seinfeld meant that there it was, sitting in my DVD player.

The fact that I had never paid much attention to this film before, does not mean that I didn't give it a fair chance. Quite the opposite actually, when I have low expectations of a film I am always pleasantly surprised. Well, that was until now.



Strike 1 - Putting the voice of aging comedian Jerry Seinfeld into a recently graduated bee in a child's movie. Don't get me wrong, I like Jerry, he excels at adult humour, his self titled show is brilliant. But the transfer to voice actor just doesn't meld. His character isn't convincing, lacking in any emotion bar Jerry emotion.

Strike 2 - Trying to fit a story that is to big into a child's length movie. There are maybe 3 stories in this film. But instead of taking one out to save or a sequel or leave on the editing room floor, they crammed them in, cutting out the joining intersections giving the film a jerky stop/start viewing experience. A film, without flow is difficult to watch, you loose your audience, and then they loose interest. I have no idea how that would've gone down with children.

Your outta here - Maybe due to the 'to much in a short amount of time' thing, we find that there is extreme lack of character development. Maybe the only characters we get to know are Barry and Ken, and to the same degree. Barry is the main character and we know him as well as any bit part, without knowing a character we cannot get tied up with them emotionally, in this case I did not feel pity or excitement or any other feeling one would normally feel for a lead character. Therefore Ken is the only character developed to where he should be, and he is that bit character.

On the upside, this film did make me laugh. Its portrayal of the stereotypical reaction that humans have to bees was spot on. Its good to laugh at yourself.