| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Conan The Westy |
Posted - 04/16/2009 : 08:39:20
If anyone has seen the German cannibal episode from the British comedy series "The I.T. Crowd", they'll understand my dilemma last night.
I was visiting some friends who'd just returned from Singapore and they had a copy of
X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I told them that it hadn't had its world premiere yet so the copy had to be from the nearly completed leaked version. To watch or not to watch???
After promising myself I'd still see it in the cinema so Hugh wouldn't be out-of-pocket, I watched. 
NO SPOILERS:
I was fascinated to see the film with only the basic CGI in place, waiting to get the final polish. I'm actually really keen to see the way the finished scenes look on the silver screen. Did I mention the harness was still visible in a few stunts?
Playing "Spot the Aussie" in the uncredited (on IMDb anyway) smaller roles was a hoot too - Peter O'Brien & Max Cullen were two I picked up on. Most were a "blink and they'll already be dead" roles |
| 15 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| randall |
Posted - 10/12/2009 : 01:46:04
Ugh. Pitiful.
And it even resorted to the lame action-film cliche of the hero walking FG to cam in slow motion, while something blows up real good behind him. This was beginning to get tiresome back in TERMINATOR 2, and that was decades ago. There must be some storytelling supporting the shot, a la NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Here, nada. It's preposterous, even for a comic-book character.
Ever since SPIDER-MAN, which I know many people loved, I've had a beef with CGI fight scenes. These days they're cut so staccato that you never get a sense of where the two combatants are -- and that's all this movie is, two-[once, three-!]guy fights. By now, things only have to move around very fast to make you think you've seen something which you haven't. Lazy. You don't believe anything has weight or mass [which also hurts every single web-swinging scene in every single Spidey movie]; as for jumping onto a flying vehicle, Jim Cameron stated that stunt in TERMY 2 and TRUE LIES, and it looked far better back then.
CGI improves visuals no more than word processors improve prose; they both tempt you into leaving more than you needed to. [Single exception: Peter Jackson's RINGS.] This flick's only for admirers of Hugh Jackman, both girls and boys. |
| damalc |
Posted - 06/29/2009 : 01:49:01
not the Wolverine i've been reading for decades.
i know X-Men stories are usually heavier than Spider-Man's but i expect a comic movie to be a lot more fun.
p.s. how many times did we need to see characters snarling, brandishing sharp weapons, charging at each other? |
| MguyXXV |
Posted - 05/13/2009 : 22:35:50
Hated it! 
|
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 05/08/2009 : 15:33:20
Abroad. But moving anywhere without a Cineworld would be just as much of a shock. :-) |
| demonic |
Posted - 05/08/2009 : 14:45:38
Are you going abroad? Or are things worse in the north of England than I first suspected? |
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 05/08/2009 : 05:58:38
I definitely plan to. I just have a list of things to watch on D.V.D. I don't really like it compared to the cinema. However, I'll probably watch a lot more soon since I won't have Cineworld membership or indeed television once I leave London. |
| demonic |
Posted - 05/08/2009 : 05:04:00
Utter, utter shit.
I could pick it apart, but there's really no need. The sheer fact that this film was certified a 12 in the UK speaks volumes about the target audience that it was catering to, but it was so astonishingly inept, so heaped with tedious cliche and redundant moralising that even the the two 12 year old kids in front of me in the cinema sat bored and confused. I'd call that a bona fide failure on all counts.
Minor plus points:
The line about Sabretooth's nails looking like a bag lady made me smirk.
Lynn Collins is easy on the eye (but has fallen some way since her decent turn as Portia opposite Pacino's Shylock).
No Stan Lee cameo. A small mercy.
p.s. Sal - it's worth giving the X-men trilogy a spin. They're no classics (although X-2 has great moments), but better stories, better directing, better acting, better scripts, more interesting character development, actual dilemma and conflict, less fan-boy juvenile "X vs Y battle to achieve Z" await. |
| RockGolf |
Posted - 05/04/2009 : 16:15:11
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
And Adamantium is a very silly name, even if there was never Adam Ant, which there was.
I believe the term "adamantium" was introduced in (and by) Marvel Comics at least a decade before Mr. Ant hit the charts. IIRC, it was the metal that Ultron was made from in an Avenger's comic circa 1969. |
| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 05/04/2009 : 15:48:33
I feel like I should add more.
Pretty much the only thing that worked are that Jackman and Schreiber are great actors, plus there are a couple minor aspects of the action scenes -- Sabertooth grabbing that one guy's spine, for example.
But geez, this thing is just so unfocused and joyless -- it doesn't have the depth of the other X-Men movies, it's strictly a this guy vs. that guy deal where the "that guy" is constantly shifting. Every so often there's just a stunningly bad line -- "His brain may heal, but his memories won't," "I could shoot you but then I'd be no better off than you," that ridiculousness about the moon and the wolverine where Logan gets his name, and so on. Gambit is wasted in a barely justified fanservice cameo; Sabertooth and Wolverine are revealed to be brothers in an utterly pointless opening scene; the whole thing is hamstrung by prequelitis. (It probably would have worked better as a sequel, had the last movie not ended on such a bizarre and unpleasant note.)
Also, I'm not sure the bootleg has appreciably worse CGI than the actual movie, Conan. Some of the CGI is awful, particularly Wolverine's claws, which often look painted on "Roger Rabbit"-style rather than computer generated. |
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 05/03/2009 : 07:39:36
quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
What a dull, dreary, beyond poorly written piece of shit this was. Just terrible.
How did I guess you were going to say that?  |
| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 05/02/2009 : 20:53:00
What a dull, dreary, beyond poorly written piece of shit this was. Just terrible. |
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 04/30/2009 : 12:45:59
I didn't know that usage. I thought it just came from the presumably related adjective of manner. Given Adam Ant, it still sounds very silly, but I'm guessing even the X-Men name predates him so it cannot really be blamed. They should have used a bit of Ant Music as a little joke, though. After all, the film is already somewhat Kitsch! |
| Conan The Westy |
Posted - 04/30/2009 : 06:59:53
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
And Adamantium is a very silly name, even if there was never Adam Ant, which there was.
I'm guessing your joking Salopian as I'm well aware of your expansive vocabulary. But in case this word has slipped by, "Adamant", I've included a link to a Wikipedia article. Now I have to stop whistling the tune to Ant Music. Grrr. |
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 04/30/2009 : 01:33:54
And Adamantium is a very silly name, even if there was never Adam Ant, which there was. |
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 04/30/2009 : 01:30:12
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I haven't seen any of the other X-Men films, so please no spoilers about them. I thought it would be interesting to watch them afterwards (sometime) and see whether it all makes chronological sense. It certainly too obviously builds towards a future scenario, and the whole (packed) cinema laughed at an arrival near the end that I didn't see anything funny about.
I thought it was quite good, though. Jackman looks good, even with his comedy whiskers, and is naked at one point. The shot I think B.B. is describing is great. The other points she has raised didn't trouble me. No explanation is offered for the origin of his mutation or others. Given that it is quite ridiculous (including that he apparently ages to his thirties and then stops in that form for ever), they could've tried a bit harder with that.
The reason for his choice of the name Wolverine means that he metaphorically is a wolverine, so I wonder whether my "Glutton for punishment" (or Rock Golf's "Punishment for glutton") would do or whether I'll have to use "Wolverine: glutton for punishment". |
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