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I just finished seeing the latest X-Men men movie, X3: United. My take: the super mutants didn’t make a super movie but on the flip side, a pretty lame director didn’t make a lame movie. X3 is alright and i give it a 7.5 out of 10.

My main complaint of the movie is its failure to do more with the plot. After the movie is finished you notice while almost all the scenes are cool, they never really deliver. It took me a while to figure out why this is. I believe this is largely due to the fact that the plot isn’t pushed or really developed. Any good comic or writer knows there are 3 parts to every good joke or story: 1) the premise, 2) examples, 3) the punchline or finale. The punchline is usually key to wrap up a joke or story and make it all work – and this is what separates merely clever people and uber-funny folks. A punchline can deliver by taking the premise to the next level or a totally different and unthinkable directions or by simply exploring/deconstructing the premise with some new facts or new perspective. Some examples:

Caddyshack

• Premise: odd goofball golfers have fun on the course and local caddy Danny mingles with upperclass and worries about his uncertain future
• Examples: golfing events, pool party.
• Punchline: A hysterical battle between goofballs and straight golfers where the entire course is blown up and destroyed, which also determines the future for young Danny boy.

Jaws

• Premise: big-ass shark is discovered and terrorizes a small east coast sea town
• Examples: woman gets eaten, families on the beach are scared over Memorial Day, big shark teeth are found
• Punchline: Two guys track and actually find the shark, battle it, have their entire boat demolished in the struggle while managing to kill it in dramatic mano a mano final moment.

Compared to other films, X3 has a great premise and the examples of it are pretty frickin’ awesome, but you’ll see it all falls apart on the punchline…

• Premise: There’s a mutant cure developed by humans who are weaponizing it to wipe out the mutant race. The mutants can react diplomatically or violently. Parallels between curing mutants and modern-day homosexuality are lightly drawn. Also, there’s a schizo mutant who’s also the most powerful who threatens to do bad things – either destroy the world or kill everyone (nobody really knows)
• Examples: Some mutants are “cured” by humans. Schizo mutant kills some of the main characters.
• Punchline: battle between mutants and humans is interrupted by good mutants who stop it by “curing” some bad mutants. Schizo mutant starts mis-behaving is killed.

As you can see, this punchline does nothing to address the actual premise. The concept of what to do with the “cure” isn’t addressed in the finish. The battle doesn’t solve anything or isn’t even between two ideologies. One could argue that the final battle was whether there should be a cure offered to people. Of which you could say that the movie answers “yes, there should” but nowhere in the movie was it revealed that the good X-Men (Wolverine and company) actually cared about that fact. And to make it even more shallow, Jean Grey’s power is never fully explained or realized or solved in an interesting way.

So, all in all, a good flick but no way is it a classic.

Some other thoughts… Why is every mutant American (or even Canadian)? What about other countries, do they have mutants?

Also, imagine an Iranian or Iraqi or some middle eastern mutant who was both extremely powerful (on par with Magneto and Xavier) and a political terrorist for his nation – and he/she started committing acts of violence on the US citizens. Would the good X-Men protect the US? I have to imagine they would. Would then the X-Men be the sort of mutant army wing of the US government? If that was the case, would each nation have a stable of mutants protecting their country in case other nations used mutants in their army? Now, here’s a premise for a movie. Exploring the loyalties of a mutant is interesting. Are these people first American, and then mutants – protecting first the country and then their mutant race? Or, do they identify themselves as mutants who happen to be American? What if mutant terrorists were being hunted down – would good mutants have sympathy for them? Thoughts?

 

I read about some people recently discussing Fight Club (here) which is one of my favorite movies of all time. I'd like to take a moment to discuss some of items currently brewing around the classic….

• First, The are creating a musical on Fight Club. Yes, you read that correctly – a musical, as in Broadway. When did they start making musicals based on successful movies? I saw that there's a musical for The Wedding Singer – wft? Apparently David Fincher and Trent Reznor (from Nine Inch Nails) are involved in the project to direct and create the music. (Playbill News, BBC)

• There a great site here which talk about Calvin and Hobbes relates to Fight Club. Apparently Hobbes is reborn as Tyler (Brad Pitt) to rescue Jack which is a grown-up Calvin (played by Edward Norton). Some good points:
  • Hobbes, like Tyler, are completely imaginary to Calvin/Jack/Norton
  • Similar to 7th grade, Calvin in the movie encounters real life which is threatening and forces him to abandon
  • A passage:
    • Calvin has always idolized Hobbes. In Weirdos From Another Planet, he dresses up like a tiger and attempts to live in the woods. Like Hobbes, Tyler is cool, collected, and incredibly cerebral. Given this evidence, one can conclude that Tyler is Hobbes, reincarnated after being trapped inside Calvin/Jack’s brain for so many years. Just as Calvin is Jack, Hobbes is Tyler.
  • Marla Singer is the avatar of Susie. Similar to the reason Calvin hates Susie – she advocates everything he is not and embarrasses all that he can't – Jack loathes Marla.
  • And many more….worth a read. It makes me miss college where these kind of thoughts are actually encouraged.
• It's interesting to read the script for Fight Club (here) and see line for line how the movie comes to life through Norton and Pitt. Say what you want about them (Norton's latest Down in the Valley sucks and Pitt's gone off the deep end with Angelina, but then again, who wouldn't), but they rocked this movie.

I'm updating the summer movie schedule. Kevin Smith has a very funny quote on his blog (no-joke) about why he's moving Clerks II up:

In a ballsy move that says “Fuck you: we’re a five million dollar flick and we’re coming out in the fucking middle of the summer, bitches!”

So, the schedule is now:

• May 19: Da Vinci Code
  • Up in the air. Tom Hanks was a bad choice and i don't think they can wedge all the cool code cracking stuff into 2 hours. But Ron Howard is usually pretty awesome so we'll see.
  • Also coming out is Over the Hedge which looks pretty funny.
• May 26: X-Men: The Last Stand (trailer)
  • Looks awesome! I couldn't be more excited about this one although i've heard that Brett Ratner has totally destroyed it (early review here)
• June 2: The Break-Up (trailer)
  • This looks really funny because Vince Vaughn in clearly in his comedy prime. I also heard that in the original they actually breakup, but test audiences have so much sympathy for Jennifer Aniston that they wanted her to get the guy at the end so they reshot it so they end up together – which is pretty lame. But, on the other hand they reshot Casablanca 4 times and it ended up pretty good.
• June 6: The Omen – looks scary and i loved the original 1976 Omen, so i'm excited for the latest. (trailer)
• June 9: Cars – Pixar is batting 1.000, can they continue to rock? Everything has to come down sometime and i wouldn't be surprised if this movie is sub-par – the trailers look stupid. But then again, you never know with Pixar they always pull it out somehow. I guess we'll see. UPDATE: Actually, the just released a trailer that doesn't look half bad – check this out.
• June 16: Nacho Libre
  • This looks so damn funny. Jack Black is fan-tas-tic! Napoleon mixed with Tenacious D. Can't wait. The trailer is hilarious
• June 23: Click – If it wasn't adam sandler, i wouldn't even waste my time writing about it. Chances of this being good: 3%
• June 30: Superman Returns
  • This looks really good. I just saw the new trailer: Spacey looks great as Lex, Bosworth is good. I also like how the story now has Clark Kent and Lois once being together and then him ditching her – and then returning. Some good spice there. Matt Lewis had a good point: could be a bad idea to make it retro. Why make it take place in the 50's and 60's? I like superhero movies that are more modern.
  • Also coming is Devil Wears Prada – a lame chick-lit book turned into an even lamer chick-movie only without any romance, just an old boss yelling at an assistant – wow, sounds great.
• July 7: Pirates of Caribbean: Dean Man's Chest
  • Johnny Depp nails this character and i think this looks like a fun ride. Let's just hope they don't make the plot too screwed up.
• July 14: Pulse – japanese horror movie that will scare the crap out of you – originally done by Kurosawa.
• July 21: Lady In The Water
  • This is the latest M. Night Shyswe*an…movie. I liked The Village more than most, and thought Unbreakable was very underrated and, of course, Sixth Sense was awesome. At least he tries to be different and original
  • Super Ex-Girlfriend – Uma and Luke Wilson. Uma has super powers. Could be cool, could be Prime. I think it'll be pretty lame. Luke is a great 6th man (Old School, Wes Anderson movies) but can't carry a movie and this just feels too weak for me. Then again, Ivan Reitman is directing and he's done mostly good (Old School, Stripes, Animal House) but also some bad (Beethoven's 2nd, Evolution) flicks.
  • Clerks II. (moved up from August!) Not sure what i think about this. My guess is that it probably has some funny dialogue but fails pretty hard as a movie.
• July 28: Miami Vice – NOW we're talking. In case you weren't aware, this is made by Michael Mann who made the amazing movie Heat and did the original Miami Vice tv show. And, it has Jamie Foxx who's probably the coolest actor going right now. I mean how many actors can you think of who were probably the cool kid in high school? That's what i thought. I want the cool kids of my movies to have actually known what it was like to be cool.
• August 4: Talladega Nights – Will Farrell being a total Nascar moron. Could rival Nacho Libre as the funniest movie of the summer
  • Also coming – Flags of Our Father – Clint Eastwood's latest written by the same guy who did Million Dollar Baby. War movie of Iwo Jima – could be sweet.
• August 18: Snakes on a Plane. I must admit, the hype (and blogs) have totally worked for me. It's absurd, it's stupid – but so am i – and i'll see it. If fact, one of the few movies with a Wikipedia entry

That's the summer. Should be one of the best in a long time. A few good sequels, a few funny comedies, and some mindless fun. Bring it.

I saw Mission Impossible 3 this weekend and was happy to finally get into summer movie-watching mode. Before i get started talking about the summer, I must say that i really liked Mi3 for a few reasons:

• The main reason – Great action scenes. The first scene with the helicopter was very cool (7 out of 10), getting into the Vatican was amazing all-around (9) and the bridge scene was one of the best i've ever seen (9).
• Some good humor. Ving was in good form. Just when you think the movie is getting too serious, they break out a good joke. Right off the bat, in the opening scene you see Tom telling a story about how he works for Dept of Transportation and you have some guy start snoring ("boring") and then it pans to two girls who immediately say, "I'd marry him." This is just the lightness needed for an absurd movie. If the dialogue is realistic it keeps us grounded and keeps everything light so we can enjoy the insanity. I aslo like the moments at the very end when the wife is like "What the hell are we doing in China?" Exactly the question i'd ask – good colloquial dialogue in there – it was definitely missing from Mi1, Mi2, and 87% of all other summer movies.
• Tom didn't completely suck. Sure he had his "curiousfury" moments where all he does is run and where it's a Director: "Just smile for us Tom" moment which are almost as painful as Legends of the Fall's I'm-BradPitt-watch-me-ride-a-horse moments. But, all in all, he was fine and didn't kibosh the entire movie.
• Good lookin' babes – always a must for mindless summer fun and this delivers. Tom's wife is smokin', as is the IMF sidekick which won't be named here b/c she wasn't really named in the movie and in both cases it doesn't matter. That scene in the Vatican does a good job of eye candy all around with the cars, art, and babes.
• Great supporting cast – i.e. Philip Seymour rules. I wish he was involved in more of the movie, but he crushes the scenes he's in. Laurence Fishbourne is also really good.

Of course there are some negatives in that we have no idea what the rabbitfoot is, and there are a few dozen too many twists. But it is definitely worth a viewing.

Now, the rest of the summer is almost here. On tap, here's what we've got:

• May 12: Poseidon
  • i think it'll be lame. I believe WarnerBros. just needed to make another movie with the monster water tank they built for The Perfect Storm.
• May 19: Da Vinci Code
  • Up in the air. Tom Hanks was a bad choice and i don't think they can wedge all the cool code cracking stuff into 2 hours. But Ron Howard is usually pretty awesome so we'll see.
  • Also coming out is Over the Hedge which looks pretty funny.
• May 26: X-Men: The Last Stand (trailer)
  • Looks awesome! I couldn't be more excited about this one.
• June 2: The Break-Up (trailer)
  • This looks really funny because Vince Vaughn in clearly in his comedy prime. I also heard that in the original they actually breakup, but test audiences have so much sympathy for Jennifer Aniston that they wanted her to get the guy at the end so they reshot it so they end up together – which is pretty lame. But, on the other hand they reshot Casablanca 4 times and it ended up pretty good.
• June 6: The Omen – looks scary and i loved the original 1976 Omen, so i'm excited for the latest. (trailer)
• June 9: Cars – Pixar is batting 1.000, can they continue to rock? Everything has to come down sometime and i wouldn't be surprised if this movie is sub-par – the trailers look stupid. But then again, you never know with Pixar they always pull it out somehow. I guess we'll see.
• June 16: Nacho Libre
  • This looks so damn funny. Jack Black is fan-tas-tic! Napoleon mixed with Tenacious D. Can't wait. The trailer is hilarious
• June 23: Click – If it wasn't adam sandler, i wouldn't even waste my time writing about it. Chances of this being good: 3%
• June 30: Superman Returns
  • This looks really good. I just saw the new trailer: Spacey looks great as Lex, Bosworth is good. I also like how the story now has Clark Kent and Lois once being together and then him ditching her – and then returning. Some good spice there. Matt Lewis had a good point: could be a bad idea to make it retro. Why make it take place in the 50's and 60's? I like superhero movies that are more modern.
  • Also coming is Devil Wears Prada – a lame chick-lit book turned into an even lamer chick-movie only without any romance, just an old boss yelling at an assistant – wow, sounds great.
• July 7: Pirates of Caribbean: Dean Man's Chest
  • Johnny Depp nails this character and i think this looks like a fun ride. Let's just hope they don't make the plot too screwed up.
• July 14: Pulse – japanese horror movie that will scare the crap out of you – originally done by Kurosawa.
• July 21: Lady In The Water
  • This is the latest M. Night Shyswe*an…movie. I liked The Village more than most, and thought Unbreakable was very underrated and, of course, Sixth Sense was awesome. At least he tries to be different and original
  • Super Ex-Girlfriend – Uma and Luke Wilson. Uma has super powers. Could be cool, could be Prime. I think it'll be pretty lame. Luke is a great 6th man (Old School, Wes Anderson movies) but can't carry a movie and this just feels too weak for me. Then again, Ivan Reitman is directing and he's done mostly good (Old School, Stripes, Animal House) but also some bad (Beethoven's 2nd, Evolution) flicks.
• July 28: Miami Vice – NOW we're talking. In case you weren't aware, this is made by Michael Mann who made the amazing movie Heat and did the original Miami Vice tv show. And, it has Jamie Foxx who's probably the coolest actor going right now. I mean how many actors can you think of who were probably the cool kid in high school? That's what i thought. I want the cool kids of my movies to have actually known what it was like to be cool.
• August 4: Talladega Nights – Will Farrell being a total Nascar moron. Could rival Nacho Libre as the funniest movie of the summer
  • Also coming – Flags of Our Father – Clint Eastwood's latest written by the same guy who did Million Dollar Baby. War movie of Iwo Jima – could be sweet.
• August 18: Snakes on a Plane. I must admit, the hype (and blogs) have totally worked for me. It's absurd, it's stupid – but so am i – and i'll see it. If fact, one of the few movies with a Wikipedia entry
  • Also coming – Clerks II. Not sure what i think about this. My guess is that it probably has some funny dialogue but fails pretty hard as a movie.

That's the summer. Should be one of the best in a long time. A few good sequels, a few funny comedies, and some mindless fun. Bring it.

I find movie trailers absolutely amazing. They are often better than the movie itself. Trailers are an art form that has emerged over the past 10 years and are truly a great piece of entertainment. I'd like to take this blog moment to recognize my favorite trailers over the past few years.

1. Star Wars: Episode I – No trailer has never gotten me so pumped to see a movie as this one did. My senior year in college, working on my final CS project, i played this trailer repeatedly in anticipation of Darth Maul kicking ass! Seriously, it is just a well crafted trailer, giving you a great crecendo of action right until the end. I know i'm a nerd, no need to say it out loud.
2. Garden State – a great trailer and one that Matt Lewis obsessed with for a good 2 months. He even hit the chat rooms based soley on this trailer.
3. Jarhead – the Kanye music and the oil scenes make this movie look like this this generation's Apocolypse Now. The movie didn't deliver on the promise, but the trailer still gets you.
4. X-Men III, which is coming out soon has a great trailer. The final confrontation between mutants and humans couldn't look any cooler, and all the character building they've been doing in 1 and 2 look like they'll pay off big-time in this one.
5. The Vanilla Sky trailer got me really pumped up when i saw it as Cameron Crowe films are always great (Fast Times at Ridgemont, Almost Famous, Say Anything) and he always uses music so well in his films (Say Anything – Lloyd holding the stereo, Almost Famous' classic Zepplin and Elton John bus scene), so when i heard the Peter Gabriel music and Penolope Cruz in this one, i thought i was going to be quite a modern classic. Oh well.
6. Sliver – it's actually a sucky movie and a horrible trailer, but i just wanted to see if you were still paying attention. I'm putting it up here just because Sam Lewis said he loved it and i want us all to mock him. You should check it out still, it is pretty comical.
7. ADDED (5/5/) Mock Trailers – they're all good. My personal favorite is Brokeback to the Future, but i think Big is good and the Shining (thanks Walker) is not bad either. 

What sucks about alot of these trailers (Vanilla Sky for instance) is that they often tell the entire movie – i mean the entire plot. I hate that. But, i have to admit, it makes me more likely to go to the movie, but it does make the viewing experience much worse – i guess that's what the trailermakers care about – getting the audience, not necessarily enjoying the flick.

So terrible in fact, it's hilarious. The plot is so absurd that it was kinda enjoyable. Let me list some of the things in the actual movie:

Actual Things in The Plot

• The main characters are a mother/daughter team who take a road trip to a ghost town (because in the daughter's dreams she is called there of course). The ghost town is actually an alternate world where everyone's already dead – but apperenty their cell phones can reach the other side, although its pretty staticy
• In the ghost town, every hour or so, sirens sound and "darkness" comes where mutants appear out of thin air and come into town to terrorize and kill anyone wondering around. After about 20 minutes of terrorizing, they disintigrate into thin air and the sun comes back out.
• it is raining ash all the time due to underground coal fires that have been burning for 30 years. But the ash is either from that or the mutants who come out b/c after an hour or so of terrorizing the people, they burn up
• Immediately after entering the spooky ghost town, the daughter runs away from her mom. The mom then goes around trying to find her and rescue her . To help her the daughter has left clues within the different buildings in the town that the mom – doing good detective work – finds.
• There are bad guys (who knows who they are) wearing fumigation suits and masks (note: nobody else does and nothing bad happens to them). These guys go around town with metal pipes killing humans as they believe they are "sinners" or something like that.
• There's a mutant guy with anvil head and huge-ass 20 foot knife who commands an army of cockroaches.  He comes with "the darkness"
• The main character (adopted daughter) is adopted by the main family but coincidentally she looks exactly like another young girl who died 30 years ago who was killed because her mom wouldn't tell the town who the father was. Because of this apparent sin the people of the town decided to burn the girl in a bonfire they made inside the middle of the church. If you're going to build a bonfire to burn people, you might want to do it outside 
• Every women in the film has huge boobs and a really tight shirt – even the mutants who have no heads, they have big boobs. I thought it made them even scarier. 

As a kid, my favorite toy was transformers. I loved them. What a genius idea to instead of making something half robot have man – make it half robot / half car. Awesome. And if you're a bad guy, you half-robot / half plane or gun.

After a good 20 years since the last transformers movie, they're making another one. Although this one isn't a cartoon and it isn't just for kids. With "I'll blow anything up and make everyone look as cool as possible but with the worst dialouge" Michael Bay at director, Steven Spielberg as hands-on creative producer, and some big name stars signing on, this movie has the makings of being fantastic. Just announecd this past week is Shia LaBeof, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jon Voight, Bernie Mac, Tyrese, John Turturro, Megan Fox, Travis Van Winkle (who was on an OC episode this year), and John Robinson (guy from Elephant – the worst movie ever). I don't think any of these guys are playing the actual transformers, but rather the people who interact with them.

I couldn't be more excited for this movie and i wish they'd bring back the toys too. It seems like the kids of today don't have heros and villans as cool as rotots turned cars and with great names like Megatron, Optimus Prime, and Omega Supreme.

Update (4/23): Not 8 hours after i posted this, the site Ain't It Cool News posted an article about a sitdown they did with Michael Bay about the movie. Apparently it'll be the first movie to every show the new F-22 jet that can hover. All in all, it still sounds like it's going to be sweet.

Update (5/9): IGN (here) has more news and some actors have been confirmed , such as Jon Voight, Megan Fox, Bernie Mac, and Josh Duhamel. Filming begins soon to be ready for next summer. 

Check out this post about Mi3 on Ain't It Cool News

It first establishes "True Lies" as the best action movie of modern times, then goes on to say that first time director JJ Abrams (from Alias and Lost) is The MAN.

This weekend i saw the very-indie film Lonesome Jim. Afterwards, to bring myself back into the mainstream, i went and saw Basic Instinct 2. The movie is just what you'd expect – totally absurd but with an extremely hot Sharon Stone. Say what you want about BI2 being pretty lame, but as far as hotness goes – it completely delivers.

Some interesting things about this movie:

• Sharon Stone signed on to do the movie with a rare clause that allowed her to get paid whether the movie was made or not. That sounds pretty sweet. Someday i hope i can command such terms for something. "Yes, i will agree to build you a doghouse someday, but you must agree to pay me whether or not i actually build it."
• As with many thrillers, they lead you down one plot path, then yank it out and reveal another possible killer at the last moment. BI2 leads you down one path for a killer (Stone), then reveals another (the detective), then another (the ex-wife), then another (the main character). And at the end, you don't even know which one did it – and even worse, you get the idea that none of the characters in movie knows who did it either. It just ends. Who's genius idea was that?
• Since when did 48 year old women become so hot? The last time i heard someone talking about an older actress is Faye Dunaway – and i don't remember her being particularly smokin'
• I saw the movie Broken Flowers (with Bill Murray – which i didn't like) last year and Sharon Stone rocks in that movie too. Overall, I think she's pretty underated as an actress. When looking back on BI2, I don't know many actresses who could be in such a bad movie and make it rather enjoyable.
• The first scene in the movie has Stone masterbating in a car while driving over 100 mph. While that was cool, i thought the car they showed was totally awesome. Doing a little research i found that it is a car called Spyker C8 Laviolette which are made by hand by a Dutch company (called Spyker). The car uses the Audi V8 and V12 engine and goes about 300 mph. But mostly, it just looks fantastic. Oh, and she ends up crashing into the river on climax.