Knowing that I will fall behind on my summer blockbusters if I don't get to them within the first couple weeks of their opening, I hit two flicks today. I'll start with the crap.
Wolverine. Ugh. Hugh, I love you, but did you read the script? While I can see the bonus of you popping up out of water naked and glistening, such a scene is not quite enough to redeem this pile of poo. It's not for lack of trying on your part. You just had crappy lines, a weak story, and too many characters (a problem with X Men 3 in my opinion) to work around. I was looking forward to seeing Ryan Reynolds, but he's barely in it. Instead, we get more of Will.i.am, which no one needs really...especially since he isn't a very good actor. There was potential for this to be great; Wolverine was definitely the most interesting character to come from the first 3 movies. But, instead we get stiff acting, marginal SFX (the claws looked really lame most of the time for some reason), and a cliched story.
Star Trek was much better. Visually, it is a beautiful movie to watch. I guess ILM did the SFX work and it is stunning. I even dig the new look to the process of "beaming up." I thought all the actors were solid in their roles, though Karl Urban as Bones never quite worked for me. But,he and Kirk do have one of the funniest scenes together so I'll give him props for that. I would have liked to have seen more Simon Pegg, but I know it's not a film about Scotty.
The first half of the film is the strongest. The action set pieces are impressive and the opening sequence actually had me a little choked up. But, the story seemed to drag in spots and there were too many coincidences for my taste as the movie progressed. I thought Zachary Quinto was perfect as Spock and Chris Pine had just the right mix of bravado for a young Kirk (no channeling of Shatner here).
The set design was sweet and bonus points to the music dept. for their use of a Beastie Boys tune. I would've liked a bit more bad to our bad guy. He's there, then he's gone, then he's back, but if felt a bit haphazard.
Still, for a fresh look at an origin story, it was a pleasure to watch and had more than enough moments to make it a pretty cool summer movie. You don't even need to be a Trekkie to have fun with it.
I'm a little nervous about the upcoming Angels & Demons since Da Vinci Code was such a snooze fest. Everytime I see the Terminator Salvation trailer I get excited, but I can't decide if that's because of Christian Bale or the supremely excellent use of Nine Inch Nails' "The Day The World Went Away." I saw a longer trailer for Up and I absolutely can not wait. Pixar productions are the only Disney product I can stomach for the most part. Sam Raimi (sp) is back with Drag Me To Hell and don't even get me started about HP6.
Well, I better close. I still have my Mother's Day presents to wrap for my Mom and my sister. I realized that I will forever live a life of irony. The anniversary of the surgery that effectively ended my ability to naturally become a mom will always be around Mother's Day. That's right. It was one year ago today. It all just zipped by.
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