I have Kitty Pryde!

X-Men
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Rebecca Romijn, James Marsden, Shawn Ashmore
Released: July 14, 2000

X2: X-Men United
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Same people plus Brian Cox and Alan Cumming
Released: May 2, 2003
Viewed in theaters: May 26, 2003

X-Men 3: The Last Stand
Director: Brett Ratner
Cast: Same people plus Ellen Page and Kelsey Grammar
Released: May 26, 2006

My knowledge of comic book lore hovers around "none" and "barely any" so please forgive me if it seems like I may not know what I'm talking about, because, chances are, I don't! After all, I thought Thor was created for Adventure in Baby-Sitting and didn't realize he was actually from a real comic until a few months before the movie was released in 2011. I'm not kidding; that's a true story.

When I saw first saw these movies, I enjoyed them for the most part, but after re-watching them recently, they didn't hold up that well, but honestly I think that's because they suck in comparison to First Class and Days of Future Past, the films' prequels. Wait, are those prequels or reboots? See, I really have no idea!

The X-Men are called mutants and they all have some kind of power. There are differing levels of powers as some are pretty impressive and others, not so much. There was one young boy in the second movie who could change the channel on the TV by blinking his eyes. Ooh, big deal! Sure, I suppose it would be convenient if you've lost your remote and perhaps there's more to his power, but they didn't show it. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) runs a school for young mutants (and there are other grown up mutants who teach classes...it's just like Hogwarts!) and he must be a bit of an ego maniac because the X-Men are obviously named after him and he has X's on his wheelchair's, uh, wheels and there's a big X on the vault that leads to Cerebro which is this huge room with a bottomless pit where he can track any mutant at any time...IDK....just go with me! But he seems like a pretty humble and down to earth guy for having a bunch of his initials everywhere. Besides being able to find any mutant, he can also read and control minds.

The first movie focuses mostly on Logan aka Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Rogue (Anna Paquin). Rogue is from Mississippi and has run away to Alaska because whenever she touches people she ends up hurting them. She hitchhikes a ride from Logan. They are ambushed by bad mutants, but are saved by Xavier's crew of Storm (Halle Berry) and Scott aka Cyclops (James Marsden). They bring them back to the school where Jean Grey (Famke Jannssen) does a medical exam on Logan. Apparently he doesn't age so he may be even older than Xavier! She even says this to Xavier's face and I'm thinking, Wow, that's really rude to imply your boss is really old! Besides having retractable claws, Wolverine's power is that he can heal. Rogue's other power besides being unable to have sex is that she absorbs other mutants' powers. For instance, she sees Logan is having a nightmare and goes over to wake him. Um, if someone has five inch long sharp nails, DON'T startle them! Because this is exactly what happens and Wolverine drives his claws into her stomach, but after she touches him, she absorbs his powers and heals herself.

Storm's power is that she can manipulate the weather, which, I won't lie, I wouldn't mind having that power! If I did, everyday would be a nice and balmy 72 degrees and it would only snow at Christmas and maybe a nice thunderstorm every now and then. In the first movie, a pre-Oscar winner Halle Berry barely has any lines or scenes. But perhaps this is a good thing because she has the weirdest accent...I heard it was suppose to be South African? And she has possibly what is being touted as the worst line in cinematic history: "You know what happens to a toad when it gets struck by lighting?" (Strikes a bad mutant with toad-like qualities with lightning and he get electrocuted). "The same thing as everything else." So. Stupid! By the second movie she has miraculously (and thankfully!) lost her accent (and Berry is by then an Oscar winner) and gets to fly the cool jet and by the third movie she is rocking a cute shag cut and is doing twirls in the air to simulate tornados and has a lot more scenes thanks to other people getting killed off!

Scott and Jean are a couple and they are so boring together. Scott's power is that he has laser eyes. He has to wear these tacky sunglasses that make him stand out in public (but I suppose there are mutants who are worse off in the ways they stand out!) otherwise his laser eyes will destroy anything in front of him. Like Professor X, Jean can read minds, but her true powers and what she is really capable of is not revealed until the third movie. She can also move objects with her mind. Logan has the hots for her but she tells him, "I love Scott and his dorky eyewear!" Did nobody tell her that Wolverine is the star of these movies and Cyclops barely has anything to do in any of the movies?

Professor X's archenemies is Magneto aka Gandalf (just kidding! He's played by Ian McKellen). Magneto can control stuff made out of metal which comes in quite handy for him. He has other mutants working for him, including the "toad" that Storm fries, but his second in command is Mystique (played by a very brave Rebecca Romijn who wears body paint...but she has the physique to pull it off! (Heh, Mystique has the physique!)) While most mutants are lucky enough to blend in with other normal human beings, Mystique sticks out quite a bit because she has bright red hair and blue skin and doesn't wear clothes. However, she has what I consider has to be the most impressive ability: she is a shapeshifter so she can transfer into anybody and mimic their voice and attributes. This come in very handy for a villain who is trying to fool the good guys...and they do get fooled. There is a scene in the first movie where she is fighting Wolverine....as Wolverine. I don't know about you, but if I were an X-(wo)man, I would want to be Mystique. I wouldn't be crazy about the blue skin, but who cares if you can look like anybody. I would disguise myself as Julia Roberts and go shopping on Rodeo Drive and get free champagne and clothes! Mystique only disguises herself as other people (mostly men) when she's trying to fool her adversaries. There's a scene in the second movie where Romijn looks like herself when Mystique is seducing a man to get something.

In the first movie, Rogue runs away when Bobby, the boy she has a crush on (Shawn Ashmore), tells her that nobody likes her because she just makes things worse and it would be best if she just left. Of course, it wasn't really Bobby who told her this, but Mystique disguised as Bobby. So she runs away and Magneto kidnaps her and Wolverine and the others have to save her. They also have to deal with a senator who wants to enable an act where a mutant would have to reveal their abilities and the fact that they are mutants. I would not want to live in a world with mutants! You could have somebody breaking into your place just by walking through your walls or somebody could mind control you or Mystique could try to pretend to be someone you know to mess with you.

The cold never bothered him
anyway! 

The second movie is two and a half hours and believe me, it feels that long. It just seemed to drag on forever...and I found that there was more action in the first and third movies. A subplot of this movie focuses on Rogue's and Bobby's relationship...except they can't kiss or anything of the physical nature because she'll hurt him. Bobby is like a male Elsa: everything he touches turns to ice. But he can't create massive ice castles and snowmen that come to life, so fail, Bobby! His alias is Iceman, how fitting. He has a friend, Pyro who can create fire, but seeing as fire and ice are not compatible, they have a falling out and Pyro goes to join Magneto's team. The second movie is called X-Men United because Professor X and the "good" mutants must unite with Magneto and the not-so-ethical mutants to join forces so they can stop a scientists (Brian Cox) who hates all mutants (and has a son who is one) and wants to destroy all of them.

There's a scene where a cat startles Wolverine and when the cat meowed, my cat was looking at the screen in confusion. There's a lot of dicing and slicing in this movie with Wolverine taking out the claws (literally!). Alan Cumming plays Nightcrawler, a mutant who is manipulated into killing the POTUS, but doesn't. He can teleport anywhere which is very helpful when he and the other X-Men are in a jet but when it is shot down and crashing to the ground (before Magneto stops it by holding it up), Rogue, who doesn't have her seatbelt on, flies out of the plane when the back half rips open and Nightcrawler is able to teleport to her and bring her back.

The movie ends with Jean Grey sacrificing herself so the others can escape a massive flood (they were near a dam) and builds a wall to shield the water from them. Everyone is really sad she's dead especially Scott and Logan because they both loved her.

But wait! She isn't dead! As we will find out in the third movie! Scott asks her how this happens to which she replies, "I don't know." Yeah, that's the movie's way of being lazy and they just needed to find a way to bring Jean back but they can't think of a way to explain it! Scott is killed off immediately by Jean's now superstrong powers, mostly because James Marsden had a scheduling conflict. Patrick Stewart must also have had scheduling conflicts because Professor X is killed off by Jean who is now known as the Phoenix and has joined forces with Magneto. Oh, and Rebecca Romijn also must have had other plans because she is only in a few scenes at the beginning. While trying to protect Magneto from being shot with a vaccine that makes mutants into regular humans, she gets it instead and becomes a normal (but pretty hot - so good for her!) woman. Magneto has no more need for her as she is just a civilian. I thought he was going to kill her, but he doesn't.

Magneto wants to stop this vaccine from getting out. Meanwhile, Rogue, who is still a couple with Bobby, but is getting jealous of his friendship with Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), the mutant who can run through walls, decides to get the vaccine so she can have sex with her boyfriend. I understand that this is what she wants and it must be difficult to not be able to touch people at all, but the fact that she's doing this for a boy is so stupid. The vaccine is actually taken from a young mutant who takes away other mutants' powers....he ends up coming back to the mutant school founded by Professor X, so how Storm and the other grown up mutant teachers can teach, I have no idea. I guess they will have to keep Leech (the young boy) locked up in a padded room. But if Rogue and Bobby wanted to get it on, they could just have him sit with his back turned! She didn't need to get rid of her powers. And now that she did, does that mean she can't attend the school anymore?

I was so confused because, from what I could tell, the third movie takes place perhaps only a few months after the second one ended. Kitty Pryde is in the second movie, but she is played by a different actress....one that looks like she is no more than seven or eight years old. In the third movie, she is a teenager. Uh....? I thought it was weird that if she touched people, objects could go through her and through that person. For instance, she and the other students were doing a simulation where they had to fight giant robots and meteors and things like that and she sees a flaming rock hurtling towards Bobby so she grabs him and it goes through her and him. I have no idea how this is possible...why would his body be able to enable the rock to go through it? But maybe since it was a simulation, the rock was just a hallucination? I am so confused! But there's a scene where she and Bobby jump off a roof and they go through the ground because she's holding on to him. So by this logic does that mean if Mystique touches somebody, they also have the ability to transfer into anybody? Kitty Pryde has to use her ability to get to Leech before the big dude that can also walk through walls, but he has to knock them down first before he can walk through them!

Of course we have a duel between Pyro and Iceman, fire v. ice. I'm pretty sure fire always trumps ice, but in this scenario, Iceman defeats Pyro.

There's this scene where Magneto needs to get to Alcatraz because that's where Leech is kept, so instead of summoning a boat, he moves the Golden Gate Bridge. Sure, it's a cool scene, but it just seems like so much work when going over on a boat would be a lot easier!

Oh, and one more thing....does this mean that these movies never happened since they went (back!) to the future in Days of Future Past, but I don't know exactly when in the future the young Charles Xavier went to see his other self (I guess it was before the third movie since he died in that one)....Oh, God, I'm confusing myself now! I need a timeline....someone get me a timeline for these movies, stat! I am so confused!!

I want to know how many fanboys out there have cats named Kitty Pryde!

Don't fly Oceanic!

Executive Deciscion
Director: Stuart Baird
Cast: Kurt Russell, Halle Berry, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, Joe Morton, BD Wong, Steven Seagal
Released: March 15, 1996

As far as airplane hijack movies go, Executive Decision is not as good as Air Force One, but it is heaps better than Passenger 57 (which is a sorry excuse for an airplane hijack movie since it takes place on the ground for most of the movie!)

David Grant (Kurt Russell) is the world's leading expert on the world's most wanted terrorist. No, not Osama Bin Laden, but some other guy, Jaffa. He is captured and taken into custody, but he still has men out there working for him and these men, led by a man named Hassan, hijack a plane flying from Athens to D.C. and they have canisters of a poisonous gas. A single drop can kill a few men and the amount they have on the plane can wipe out the entire eastern seaboard.

The hijacked flight is Oceanic Flight 343....yes, Oceanic Airlines, as in the same airline on Lost. First this airline has a plane that's hijacked, then it has a plane that crashed into a mysterious island...yeah, I won't be flying that (fake) airline anytime in my lifetime! This is the third time I've seen this movie and the first time I realized the Oceanic airline connection, so obviously Lost wasn't around when I saw this the first two times....I know for a fact it wasn't around the first time since I saw it when it was released on video in late 1996. The second time I saw it was in December 2004, when the first season of Lost was on, but I binged watched the first season on DVD.

Obviously it had been quite a while since I saw this movie, so I had forgotten a few things (though I didn't forget that Steven Seagal is killed within the first half hour!) I remembered that Halle Berry plays a flight attendant on the hijacked plane, but I completely forgot what Kurt Russell's role was and thought he was the pilot of the hijacked plane. I probably should have realized he wasn't when he was taking flying lessons in a small plane. Duh. I don't think pilots who fly commercial airliners should still be taking lessons in small two-seater planes!

David Grant and Seagal's Lieutenant character are not on the plane when it it hijacked. They are safely on the ground in Washington D.C. Grant is at a fancy black-tie party when he is called in for consultation. They learn that Hassan has hijacked the plane because he wants Jaffa to be released. Grant thinks the terrorist has other intentions: as in using the airplane to explode the bomb that they somehow got onto the plane. This was 1996....back when people just didn't care what you brought on a plane!

Seagal's short-lived character comes up with the most ludicrous plan ever and knows a guy, Dennis (Oliver Platt), who can help them out with it. Together with Grant, Dennis, and his team (who would be completely at home on Survivor: Cook Islands as you have the black guy (Morton), the Hispanic guy (Leguizamo), the Asian guy (Wong), and the white guy (some actor I don't know). If you are a Survivor fan like me, you will understand the reference!)

They are all in a small fighter jet and the plan is for them to fly to Oceanic Flight 343, line up with the airliner's cargo holder or something....I don't know. I don't know anything about planes, but you've all seen the movie and you know what I'm talking about. Basically they're doing a mid-air transfer and they are able to do this by putting their jet on auto pilot so it will fly in synch with the airliner and Dennis lines up the planes together and makes sure the air pressure is okay so they can crawl up this tube that he attaches  between both planes. The whole thing is completely ridiculous! I don't know which is more ridiculous - this or when Denzel flew the 747 upside down in Flight. 

Grant was suppose to stay on the jet...the only reason he went with them was because...I really don't know why, to be honest. But Morton's character, Cappy, ends up getting hurt and Grant helps him and ends up on the plane. By that time, the Seagal character and the jet pilot are the only ones left on the jet and they are loosing air pressure and Dennis tells Grant to shut the door or both planes with explode and everyone will die and Grant, who never liked Seagal's character, has the decency to look mournful about what he's about to do and after he shuts the door, the jet explodes and Seagal is never to be seen again...thank goodness as he is not a good actor and we don't need him ruining this movie!

So Hassan is with the pilots and they notice a light go off indicating the hatch (hey, another Lost reference!) and they ask what that is and make one of the pilots go down and see what's going on. He sees Grant who signals to him to keep quiet and points out they are Americans there to help him and give him a burnt flashdrive to use as an excuse as to why that light went out. He relays this message to the hijacker who pokes his head in and looks around at the darkness but doesn't actually go down to investigate to see if anything is up. What a lazy terrorist! He just chooses to believe the pilot is telling him the truth. And if he didn't want to go down there, he had plenty of other terrorist friends around him. Why didn't he have one of them go down there and check to see what was going on?  So stupid. I can't believe I'm complaining how stupid the terrorists are!

Grant and his crew drill holes and set up camera along the plane to see if they can spy Hassan. Grant says he doesn't know what he looks like, but could recognize his voice anywhere. While hiding in an elevator, Grant sees that flight attendant Jean (Halle Berry) has noticed him and she blocks him when Hassan comes over to her so that he can't see Grant. This signals to Grant that he can trust her and later they call her on the airline phone, tell her they are watching her through a camera and ask for her help...there is a passenger on the plane that is working with the terrorists and has the device that will detonate the bomb. Jean agrees to do this even after Hassan catches her talking on the phone and slaps and threatens her.

Speaking of the bomb...Cappy, our injured guy who is laying flat on his back with a neck brace, is the only guy who knows how to dismantle a bomb, but unfortunately there is no way he can do that, so he has to walk Dennis through on what to do.

I should also mention that they had no way of contacting the White House and when the jet lost contact, they assumed that everyone probably thought they were dead. The White House gives order to have the plane shot down, but one of the guys uses morse code on the plane tail lights to signal to one of the jets that they are on the plane and the attack is aborted. Obviously there is a showdown between Grant and Hassan and one of the hijackers shoots the plane and a big piece is ripped away and there is a gaping hole in the plane. Both pilots, Hassan and the hijackers are dead, but Grant, Jean, the rest of our heroes, and passengers who were fortunate not to be sitting in the area where the guy was shooting are still on the plane and they need to land safely, somehow. Grant, if you remember, has been taking flying lessons, and takes control of the plane and Jean helps him out, reading from the pilot's handbook. He misses the runway at the airport, so instead he has to land at the place where he flies the small planes. The landing is a bit (okay, a lot) bumpy and the plane is on fire, but they manage to land without anymore fatalities. And while all this is going on, Dennis and Cappy have to make sure the bomb doesn't detonate!

A fun movie, but not one you would want to see on board a plane!

Weekly Movie #1

For my (extremely lame) New Year's resolution, I decided to see at least one movie a week in the theaters. Who knows how long this will last as none of my resolutions never do. But for now, every time I see my weekly theater movie I will post a review on it, whether it be short and sweet or long and convoluted. It might be a written or video review. So we'll start with the first one, which I saw on the first day of 2012...

New Year's Eve
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Everyone in Hollywood
Released: December 9, 2011
Viewed in theaters: January 1, 2012

This is the type of movie I would rent than see in the theaters, but I saw it with my friend Cameron after we had a delicious dinner of sushi and I ate some hot pepper that nearly set my mouth on fire! We saw New Year's Eve on New Year's Day, heh. This is from the same director as Valentine's Day and is the same idea as that movie and even features two actors who were in that movie (Ashton Kutcher and Jessica Biel), but it is not a sequel to that movie. I liked this movie a tad better, probably because I like the holiday better, even though I could care less about the New Year.

Basically if you've seen Valentine's Day, you know how this movie works. Just change the actors and the day. Hilary Swank is in charge of the ball dropping in Times Square, but it gets stuck and she has to call on Marshall's requisite actor Hector Elizondo to fix it. Halle Berry is a nurse caring for a dying Robert De Niro whose last wish is to see the ball drop at midnight. Michelle Pfeiffer is a dowdy woman who wants to cross everything off her resolution list she made for 2011 before midnight and gets help from Zac Efron. I seriously thought we were going to get a Mrs. Robinson romance going on there...but don't count on it. Sarah Jessica Parker has her doubts about letting her daughter, Abigail Breslin, go to Times Square by herself. We also find out that she and Zac are siblings. Zac and SJP, that is. There is no way in hell that could happen - she is old enough to be his mother! Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele find themselves stuck in an elevator...and of course fall in love! Jessica Biel and Seth Meyers play a couple about to have a baby and they find out from another pregnant couple that the first woman to give birth in 2012 wins $25 grand. Josh Duhamel is out to meet a woman he met last New Year's Eve and there a lot of fakeouts about who it might be. I won't say who it is because I don't want to spoil it. ;-) At one point, Cameron said to me, "I bet it's Fergie!" LOL, it was not Fergie. There's some stupid storyline between Katherine Heigl and Bon Jovi (who plays a rock star!) that nobody cares about. The best thing about her storyline was Sofia Vergara who is hilarious. And looks good even when wearing a chef's coat.

I think I covered all the storylines. It's a cute movie, but forgettable. The funniest scene in the movie is John Lithgow playing Angry Birds.  I would say wait to rent it.

Anything but a ball

Again, I apologize for the different font styles and sizes. I seriously have no idea how to tame this blog; I'm more used to my LiveJournal!

Spoilers follow
Monster's Ball

Director: Marc Forster

Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Peter Boyle, Heath Ledger

Released: 12/26/01

Oscar nominations:

Best Actress - Halle Berry (won)

Best Original Screenplay - Milo Addica and Will Rokos (lost to Julian Fellowes for Gosford Park)

Monster's Ball and Boys Don't Cry are similar in some ways because they're both small movies that won Oscars for Best Lead Actress and both movies are difficult to watch and deal with some heavy stuff. In this film you'll find racism, graphic sex scenes, parents abusing their children (physically and emotionally), and three emotional death scenes of pivotal characters within the first half hour, and yet, compared to Boys Don't Cry, Monster's Ball is like a walk in the park. That's not to say this is an easy movie to watch, far from it, but honestly, if I was given a choice between the two, I'd rather watch this one just because Boys Don't Cry was so emotionally raw and it's hard watching know that it's based on a true story, whereas Monster's Ball is a piece of fiction.

There are a lot of people out there who say they can't believe Halle Berry has an Oscar; that she didn't deserve to win it for this movie. Me? I think the majority of the movies she's been in have been really, really bad and I do think she's a craptastic actress, but with the right director and right script, like she had in this movie, she can be quite good. So I do think her Oscar was deserved. Did politics play a role in her winning? Well, yes, of course they did. She's the first black woman to win an Oscar for a lead role. Her Oscar win made history. (Her speech, while rightfully emotionally, began to get a little ridiculous when she thanked friggin' Oprah. Had Obama been POTUS in '02, you can bet she would have thanked him. :::rolls eyes:::)

I'm always baffled when people put Halle in the category of "women who won Oscars by making themselves ugly" like Charlize Theron in Monster or Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry (well, she wasn't ugly, just not feminine). Okay, Halle may not wear make-up and her character may not be glamourous, but c'mon, she's still gorgeous in the movie.

If she's considered ugly, then I must be the most revolting -looking person in the world!

While Berry did deserve her Oscar and rocked the hell out of the movie, however there is one scene that just makes me cringe. It's the one where she and Thornton are both drunk and she starts going off about her son who has just died and about how fat he was. She was painfully overacting in that scene. And that sex scene? Blech...I'm sure Billy Bob is a nice (albeit weird) guy and he's a good actor, but he's so skeevy-looking! Seriously, that has got to be one of the most graphic sex scenes I've ever seen in a movie. It was very uncomfortable and awkward to watch, but at least it wasn't a rape scene like in Boys Don't Cry.

Halle and William Robert are both great (drunk sex scene aside) in the movie and they have a great supporting cast to, uh, support them. Peter Boyle, who we all knew as Ray's dad on Everybody Love's Raymond played Thornton's racist father and you just automatically hold your breath when he and Berry meet for the first time, neither of them knowing about the other. Heath Ledger played Thornton's son and this was the first really serious role that he did and showed that he was quite capable of being a future Oscar nominee/winner. Even though his screentime is very limited, you can't help but feel for his character and your heart just breaks for him especially during the scene where he asks his father if he loves him. It was very hard for me to watch the last scene with him; it was hard enough watching it before. One of my favorite scenes is when he comforts P. Diddy/ Puff Daddy whatever the hell you want to call him who plays Halle's husband who's executed in the prison Thornton works at as a prison guard. I also have to give props to Sean Combs, as he's credited in the movie. He did a pretty good job, you know, for Puffy. And Coronjii Calhoun, in his only role to date as Halle's son was also great in his small but pivotal role. I remember Halle saying in an interview how guilty she felt when she had to scream and hit him (yeah, no kidding, I'd feel horrible too), but when they were done filming, he'd go back to being a normal, happy kid.

This is truly an actor's movie. No special effects here.