Cast: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schriber, Danny Huston, will.i.am, Lynn Collins, Kevin Durand, Taylor Kitsch, Dominic Monaghan and Ryan Reynolds.

“Mediocre” is the word that comes to mind.

Stuff I Didn’t Like:

• At the expense of sounding like a dissatisfied comic book fanboy, I’m displeased that either the writers, the heartless Fox executives, or both decided that messing up established family connections, or lack thereof, was a good idea.
• Emma Frost.  Why was she in this movie?  Why wasn’t she British?  And what happened to her psychic abilities, since her diamond skin is a secondary mutation?  Shouldn’t she have known Professor X was feeding Scott directions?
• What they did to Wade/Deadpool.  He didn’t get enough screen-time for us to really get to know how his motor-mouth is, he only broke the fourth wall once at the very end, and the final scene tacked on after the credits was there to appease the fanboys, who had plenty to be upset about.
• Some of the conversations and lines feel stilted, even forced.  I know this is a comic book movie, but good writing isn’t exclusive to novels and plays.  And I’d put certain comics, like JMS’s Rising Stars and Alan Moore’s Watchmen above anything Stephenie Meyer or Dan Brown writes.
• You know Logan needs to lose his memory at some point, but seeing it happen here is kind of Shooting the Shaggy Dog.
• Seriously, Fox Studios:  Emma.  Wade.  WTF??

Stuff I Liked:

• I was surprised at how much I liked the Blob, and will.i.am’s John Wraith.  Despite being secondary characters, they had three dimensions.  I wanted to know more about how they got away from the paramilitary mutant brigade.
• Decent special effects and sound design.  This includes the opening sequence, and I can’t deny I love the visual of Logan storming Normandy with a cigar clenched in his teeth.  Shades of the Comedian, there.
• Silverfox is passable as a love interest, and Lynn gives her role her all.  I found myself believing what she had to say.
• It’s always nice to see Dominic Monaghan getting work.  Even in a bit role.

Stuff I Loved:

• Hugh Jackman inhabits Logan’s skin in a way that still surprises me.  His delivery, timing, even his look and the curl of his lip in a “back off, bub” growl keeps me going through another scene.  He’s Wolverine the way RDJ is Iron Man.  And that’s a great thing.
• Sabretooth.  Some people might prefer the two-dimensional blonde growlyface, but I loved him in this flick.  It’s great for him to get a background that ties him to Wolverine and shows us how he became so different and yet so similar to Logan.  He’s smooth, confident, intimidating and even charming all rolled up into a tall dark package.  Liev rocks it.
• Gambit.  He gets a bit more screen time than Wade does, but he owns his scenes.  He oozes the Cajun charm, moves with confidence, and shows us why he can stand toe to toe with Wolverine, not to mention why he pisses off the Canuck so much.  I’d like to see more of him, but that would require another X-movie that isn’t written by these hacks.  (Or the team behind the Last Stand mess, yikes)
• The little time Ryan Reynolds DOES run his mouth, it’s pretty awesome.  Wade’s scene in the room is pretty stunning, and it’s for that reason I felt he was under-used.  That, and I’m quickly coming to love the Regeneratin’ Degenerate.  I have to respect a mercenary who can fly a plane with his feet while shooting out a window with a machine gun with one hand and holding a phone to hit on the hot Russian blonde with the other, but that’s from the comics.

It’s better than The Last Stand, to be sure, and it’s nowhere near the brilliance of Iron Man or Spider-Man 2.  I was disappointed, but I didn’t consider it a total waste.  If you’re a fan of Marvel comics and Wolverine in particular, it’s worth seeing.  But you might want to wait for DVD.

Cast: Russell Crowe, Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck, Robin Wright Penn, Jeff Daniels and Helen Mirren.

This was a decent film that I’d definitely see again.

Stuff I Didn’t Like

• While not badly written, the plot does follow some predictable thriller tropes.  The hype promised a twist “YOU WILL NEVER SEE COMING” and as a result the canny viewer is on their toes for the twist, which is more than likely the fact that the big evil monolithic PMC is not in fact the Big Bad of the movie.
• It’s good to see a villainous character, the ex-military crazy gunman in this case, get a bit of believable characterization, but even in films I have a hard time believing that someone would get loaded for bear and walk into a no-win situation without a plan.  Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, I know, but my father was right in saying a sniper scope would’ve made a big difference.  Phone the reporter to explain yourself and plink him from a thousand yards, don’t walk up to him with an M4 and expect to stroll away.
• Is it somewhere in Ben Affleck’s contract that he needs to cry in every role he takes on?
• They could have given Jeff Daniels’ conservative congressman a bit more depth.  While he’s a talented actor and I’m always happy to see him getting work, his character might has well have been named Congressman Plot Device (R-WV).

Stuff I Liked

• That said, Ben Affleck did fine.  He’s a good actor with some decent range, I just think the waterworks were a bit much.  And as I said I do like Jeff Daniels, quite a bit actually.
• Telling a story about the death of the newspaper.  The fact that the paper in the film (which is totally not the Washington Post, honest) is being bought out by a monolithic media conglomerate points to a sad commentary on our lives.  I’m as guilty as the next person for not having the patience to sit down in the morning and get newsprint on my fingers, but it seems that more and more businesses are concerned about profits over integrity.  We wouldn’t be in this economic tar pit we’re struggling out of if the movers and shakers on Wall Street worried about something other than their next sacrifice intended to pacify the Almighty Dollar.  It does cause the characters’ goodness to shine through all the more, but it’s still a sad commentary.  That said, it just about makes this film worth seeing.  It’s the first really good newspaper film in a while, perhaps since All The President’s Men, and it might be the last.
• It’s hard not to like Rachel McAdams.  She easily gives the impression that, while inexperienced, her cub blogger character has a good head on her shoulders and a nose for news.
• We see a lot of Washington, DC in this film and I’m glad to see little places like that chili restaurant get time on a big screen.  I got the impression that’s a fun place to grab lunch.
• I was tickled that Russel Crowe & Ben Affleck played PA boys, and that Crowe’s reporter was a Steelers fan.  Every logo in his cubicle or apartment made me smile.  And he drank Jameson’s too.  Does that count as product placement, I wonder?
• Decent tension in the garage sequence, and I’m glad Crowe’s hand stayed bound up until the end of the film after that.  That lent the story more realism.
• The final scene, with everybody gathered around Crowe’s desk as he bangs out the story.

Stuff I Loved

• Russel Crowe.  I think he’s underrated as an actor.  I haven’t seen Body of Evidence yet, but I have the feeling his CIA character in that film is as different from this reporter as this reporter is from General Maximus.  He handles this material extremely well and gives us hope that there are still good reporters out there who are less interested in scandal than they are in the truth.
• Helen Mirren.  She classes up just about any film she’s in, even she’s launching dirty Brit slang words like so many ballista bolts at her unfortunate target.
• The fact that Helen, HM The Queen, dropped the F-bomb.

The writing was very snappy and smart, the circumstances and scenes weren’t far-fetched in the slightest, and everybody treated their parts and lines with an appropriate level of solemnity.  It’s a solid piece of film-making despite the hype and I’ll be picking it up on DVD.