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Mayday

It’s New Year’s Eve aboard of one of the biggest and must luxurious cruise liners the world has ever seen. For this special occasion, the Poseidon is filled with over 2000 passengers who all wanted to ring in the New Year in a very special way. The passenger list includes a former New York mayor (Kurt Russell) and his daughter (Emmy Rossum), a former Navy-Seal turned gambler (Josh Lucas), a single-mother (Jacinda Barrett) with her son (Jimmy Bennett) and architect Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss) whose suicide plans will unfortunately be interrupted. As midnight draws close, the ballroom of the Poseidon gets crowded and Gloria (Stacey Ferguson) and her band get the party started. However, what the party-goers don’t know is that they will witness a natural phenomenon beyond anyone’s imagination. On the stroke of midnight a giant rogue wave capsizes the ocean liner. Now, with their world turned upside down, a group of survivors try to escape from this watery grave.

This 140$ million rehash of the 1972 original disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure, is nothing more than your usual summer movie fare. Running for only 90 minutes, Poseidon does not give you much time to breathe between its frantic set-pieces but neither does it leave room for anything like character development. The price we pay for nearly non-stop suspense is a bunch of stereotyped characters who are as one-dimensional as their billboard counterparts. What’s more is that for a movie relying that heavily on CGI, some effects just didn’t match our expectations. Despite the introduction in which the camera pans alongside the digitally created ocean liner, we can never be tricked into believing that these people are actually on that ship. That being said, we would have liked the movie to be half an hour longer. That would have allowed for showing off more of the much better interior set designs and should have included longer character expositions. The version we are left with, however, is deeply flawed and is struggling to stay afloat. (2 out of 4 black eyed peas)

Poseidon is rated PG-13. Does not include wet T-shirt contests.

Take a Stand.

Some time has passed since the events on Alkali Lake and Professor Charles Xavier’s (Patrick Stewart) School for the Gifted has once again become a safe harbor for all mutants. But the new found peace was not meant to last. Still grieving over the death of Dr. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), the X-Men are faced with a new problem. Dr. Hank McCoy/Beast (Frasier’s Kelsey Grammar) arrives at the X-mansion saying that a pharmaceutical company has found a way to suppress the mutant X-gene permanently. For Magneto (Ian McKellen), whose radical ideologies heavily clash with those of his former ally Charles Xavier, this heralded cure is a potential weapon that if used by the government threatens the whole mutant community. In an attempt to save mutants from extinction, Magneto and his Brotherhood seek to destroy the source of the cure and risk a war in which both sides will suffer from casualties. The X-Men must stop Magneto, who is aided by a resurrected and omnipotent Jean Grey (aka Dark Phoenix), from wreaking havoc on the city of San Francisco and from killing everyone standing in his way.

If the rumors are true and X3 is indeed the last chapter in Marvel’s comic book saga, it definitely ends with a blast. The writers tried to cram enough X-Men mythology into this last installment to satisfy fanboys (and girls) while at the same time they managed to keep it fairly exciting for the non-initiated. For a summer action movie X3 is as good as it gets. With more action and battle scenes (the fight in Jean Grey’s house is jaw-dropping as is the finale on Alcatraz) than in any of the previous chapters, it certainly stays true to Hollywood’s bigger and louder sequel formula. That being said, we would have liked to see a bit more character development and some memorable dialogues. With a runtime of approximately 104 minutes, X3 is simply too short to focus on characters, tell a story and show us the X-Men in action. For a concluding chapter in a trilogy, this feels extremely rushed. But apart from that, director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Red Dragon) reproduces the feel and style of the previous installments and Simon Kinberg did not play it safe and wrote a bold and interesting script. Nevertheless, the departure of Bryan Singer (who went to direct Superman Returns) is felt, if only because of a lack of artistic creativity from behind the camera, which leaves us with the inevitable question of how The Last Stand compares to Singer’s excellent X2? Well it’s close but no cigar. (3 out of 4 fur balls)
P.S. If you haven’t already heard, stay until after the credits.

X-Men: The Last Stand is rated PG-13 for naked ladies covered in blue paint.