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There is not really much to say about this film. It was not as good as the previous X-Men films. There is basically not logical to the sequence of events that transpire throughout, characters are one dimensional and lack any kind of authentic motivations. Basically, it was just a typical special effects extravaganza, as they say. In other worlds, it was a bad film. But, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

My major complaint about the film was how it portrayed characters in entirely “unrealistic” manner. Or, I should say, not as how they acted in the source material. The treatment done to Magneto was positively shameful. He was essentially an entirely different character altogether. Perhaps that most distressing change was his complete lack of loyalty. As, when Mystique lost her powers, Magneto simply abandoned her. In the comics that is much less likely to have happened as loyalty has always been one of Magneto’s biggest hang ups. But, the list just goes on an on. In addition, there are several negative changes to characters across the board, but I am not going to get into that.

I will admit that the film was not entire awful, as there was particularly amusing scene, where juggernaut makes a pop culture reference by stating, “DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?! I’M THE JUGGERNAUT, BITCH!!!” Unfortunately, I am afraid many of the people in the theater did not get it, as I was the only one that laughed aloud.

Basically, if you like action, and hate stories, you will enjoy this film. If you like the X-Men you will probably hate the film. If you don’t know anything about the X-Men, it does not really matter, but nothing makes sense in the film. I think it is supposed to be that way.

This is an anime series that I have been intending to view for quite some time. I have had copies of the series forever that I got from a friend of mine back in “the day.” However, I was never willing to make the time to sit down and watch it. That was a mistake. The series contains a total of 26 twenty something minute episodes from back in 2001. Not all of them are gold, but there are definitely some great ones.

Basically, the show follows a couple of female death dealers, their ages are never revealed, but I imagine that they are supposed to be pretty young. As the series progresses these two chicks are caught within a complicated web spun by a clandestine organization known only as “Les Soldats.” That’s “the soldiers” in French for those playing along at home.

I have to admit that during the setup episodes, it is a little bit of a generic action style anime series. However, there is an interesting twist. Apparently, since it was originally aired on a “conservative” network in Japan, none of the battle sequences have blood. It is kind of interesting that they maintained this on the DVDs as well. Anyhow, since they could not make the gun fights “bloody” they decided to make them extremely stylized, which works out very well. I wish the makers of 24 would take a look at it, and add in some of the cinematography. As the series progressed the anime really picked up though.

After a few episodes a third female character enters the show and with her there is a new psychological element added to the show that is accompanied by the further development of the Soldats organization. It is a mostly “in the shadows” kind of group, so you are left guessing as to their motivations. However, I also found this to be true about the lead females. Really, everyone within the series kind of acted in entirely unpredictable ways.

When I finished the series, I went to check out the wikipedia article on it to see if there were any kind of clarifications about the characters, and the Soldats. Unfortunately, the article was rather sparse, but I did glean an interesting piece of information. Apparently, many people believe that Noir has been influenced by the novel, Foucault’s Pendulum. It is unknown whether or not this connection is true, but it did sound interesting.

I followed the link to the article on Foucault’s Pendulum to see what it was about. The following captions piqued my interest:

“[Foucault’s Pendulum] is divided into ten segments represented by the ten Sefiroth. Told in the form of a kind of satirical intellectual game, three friends create a fictitious plan (the “Plan”) that stretches throughout history and combines elements from conspiracy theories. They feed the plan into a computer that in turn helps them formulate a new conspiracy theory, which is then believed to be true by adherents of the previous conspiracies, leading to disastrous consequences.”

In the “clandestine organization” kind of mood, I decided to give it a shot. However, reading further on in the article I found another bit of humor:

“Foucault’s Pendulum has lately been called a “thinking person’s Da Vinci Code,” … So the phrase used to link Eco’s book to Brown’s implies that the latter is for people who do not think.”

In order to assess the validity of this claim, and to prepare for my rather lengthy post on the Da Vinci Code movie, I decided to actually read the Da Vinci Code. Unfortunately, you are going to have to wait until the movie comes out to get that post. Whereas, my Foucault’s Pendulum post will be coming on the coat tails of this post. So you had better prepare for a long post.

The Poseidon Adventure is a story that is supposed to inspire the reader to question their own integrity, and make them ask questions of their person medal (sp). The original movie captured some of this, but not a whole lot. The remake is not so lucky.

Basically, if you take the book, and remove all its redeeming qualities, such as story, character development, questions of mortality you pretty much have the new movie. By cutting out all that “messy” stuff, it allowed them to make a feature film that capitalizes on HORRID hollywood physics.

The entire movie is based on a false premise, that is that a tidal wave could some how capsize a massive cruise ship. Unfortunately, that is the most realistic part of the film. Well, except maybe expect for the part where people die, since it is possible for people to die. However, the people within this film are definitely super human, and apparently light enough to walk across a thin tin sheet. Actually, on that note, the film was a little off.

Apparently, in movie remakes, only “pretty” people get to live. Go figure. As I remember in the original, they were a pretty ordinary group of people for hollywood. They even had a massive old woman in the bunch.

However, this is not the case in the new film.

Anyhow, if you are looking for a good film that is currently in the theaters, I guess I would go for MI3 over this at this point.

MI:3 could have easily been the best of the three movies. Unfortunately, that simply was not the case.

Despite the best efforts of the rather inept employees of the local theater (they sold me a ticket to Silent Hill, where I happened to see a preview for MI:3 clueing me in that I was in the wrong theater) I did end up seeing Mission Impossible III. I suppose that I ultimately got what I expected, just not in the way I expected.

Initially, I liked the opening sequence of the film, it was far less pretentious than in the second one. This did not last long, as the film unfortunately did one of those “the movie begins at the ending” bullshit things that I despise. In all seriousness flashbacks should be outlawed, they have no place in civilized society. Anyhow, the flashback went way back, and the film had more of a lame style of beginning like I initially expected. But, it did get better.

After slowly getting over the fact that this was all a flashback, a lot of the action was compelling, if not entirely over the top. MI movies always do have the most interesting physics. Unfortunately, even the things that were not given away in the opening were rather predictable. What made it even worse was a guy seated near me sighed after every obvious plot point, thus hitting the predictability home.

Generally speaking, I was starting to get into the movie, and was ready to write a positive response to it. Then, it happened. The “hinge” as I call them. These are points I think writers/directors intentionally put in films to piss off cogent viewers. Essentially, they are events where if the protagonist did something different he could have avoided the entire rest of the story. Mission Impossible II used the tired, cliche hinge where if the Cruise would have just shot the girl he could have ended the threat and the second half of the film would be entirely unnecessary. Ultimately, this was an act of passion rather than logic, I loath hinges like that. MI:3 went the other way.

In MI:3, the major hinge was when Cruise could have ended the threat by cutting the last restraint of the obvious villain sending him to his death out of an airplane. Ironically, this hinge was based on logic ruling over passion something that is out character for Cruise’s character. At least for this reason I was somewhat able let it go, at least more so than in the second film. Also, the sting is reduced by the fact that things were slightly more complicated as you find out in the end as one of the agents within IMF is dirty, and working with enemy.

The second hinge is a “chance meeting” where after the villain escapes, he captures Cruise’s wife. While he is frantically searching for her, he closes paths with her, although she is knocked out and under a sheet. Obviously, this would have been harder for him to address, but it was still annoying. Also, if he would have just caught this, the entire rest of the film probably could have been avoided.

That reminds me, what the hell ever happened to the chick that he risked his life for in the second movie? Did she just cut and run or something? The whole emotional aspect of Cruise’s character are kind of pathetic. He should learn to “use and lose” his women like a respectable secret agent.

Despite these glaring offensives, the film still was not horrible, I would call it a rather typical hollywood affair. I do not plan on ever seeing it again, but I would not thwart anyone else’s attempt to see it. Although, I suppose it could be said that I was trying to thwart people with the spoilers in my post. But, to people that don’t like spoilers: tough.

At this point, my recommendation is: see it.

24 meets The Fugitive? I do not think so.

If the Sentinel accomplishes only one thing, it is that Jack Bauer is so effective because he does not rigidly follow “the rules” or “protocols” as CTU calls them.

Basically, the character that Keifer plays in this movie, is the best secret service agent, who apparent is a just horrid rules lawyer. He is remarkably effective, but not so much as Jack. I think he would be best likened to a cross between Jack and Chappelle. I suppose that things had to work that way, because if it would have been like 24, Keifer would have captured Douglas immediately, interrogated the hell out of him, discovered he was not guilty and would proceed to take out the entire cartel by the end of the day.

Regardless of the context, the movie was actually better than I expected. There were definitely some lame fugitive elements that features far too much Douglas, but that was to be expected. What I did like was that the film feature many “24-like” elements that really made the movie better overall. There were also something things that they did that were more polished than 24, from which I think the writers could learn a thing of two. Particularly about the dynamics of how people interact within a government agency.
Apparently, this post is a lot shorter than I expected. It seems as though the whole 24 comparison to the Sentinel was a lot longer in my head.