X-Men

Subrata was very disappointed in it, and I think did not find it to be a good film. I fall in-between the two extremes: It's an enjoyable and entertaining film, but well short of being a great film. Certainly it doesn't knock the first two Superman films off the top of the comic-book-film-adaptation pile (which you'd think would not be hard to do, since they're not great films, either).

In the near future, mankind is mutating: Dozens, maybe hundreds, of mutants with special powers are appearing around the world. Senator Robert Kelly (Bruce Davison) is leading the charge to register mutants to protect normal humans from them. Like him, the powerful mutant Magneto (Ian McKellan) sees a war coming between mutants and humans, and launches a plan to force humans to see things his way.

Opposing him is his old friend Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who runs a school for mutants in New York state, and has gathered several powerful, trained mutants to aid him: Cyclops (James Marsden), Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), and Storm (Halle Berry). He then recruits the savage Logan (Hugh Jackman) and the teenaged Rogue (Anna Paquin) before Magneto can capture them, but Magneto eventually grabs the ones he wants, and the X-Men are forced into a showdown with Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants at the Statue of Liberty.

The film is troubled by a lack of overall focus in several ways. For instance, it's not sure if it wants to be a dark and grim drama a la Batman, Blade and other recent superhero films, or if it wants to be an over-the-top action piece. Subrata agrees, and says that it does none of these things, while I felt it ended up doing many of them halfway: The special effects are impressive, but marred by the lack of graphic design sense (the anonymous black uniforms of the X-Men, for instance, are bland as anything in action films in recent memory).

Thematically, the film is something of a muddle. Originally, the comic book X-Men were a heavy-handed metaphor for racism, but refining of that idea into some plausible given what mutants can actually do has been very slow over the decades, and the reaction of humans to mutants here is not sophisticated. The reaction of Magneto to humans is not sophisticated either, but makes more sense in this case. But the philosophical differences between Xavier and Magneto - the crux of what makes Magneto an interesting character - are only touched on. We see early in the film why Magneto fears human tyranny, but we never see why Xavier does not. (To be fair, this is a failing in the comics as well, although there Xavier is presented as more of a cipher, doing what he does for often mysterious reasons.) The film is at its best when it's presenting the adjustments mutants have to make to deal with their powers, which can be more curse than blessing, as in the case of Rogue, though one is often forced to wonder what drawbacks Storm and Jean Grey must deal with given their entirely mental abilities.

The acting in the film is much better than your typical action film, as Stewart, McKellan, and especially Jackman all do superb jobs. (John observed that he's surprised anyone managed to conceived the character of Logan/Wolverine without knowing about Hugh Jackman.) The weak link in the acting is Berry, who seems pretty stiff in her role.

The sights at Xavier's school are also something to see (not counting Janssen and Paquin, who are both very attractive; although, for that matter so are Marsden, Jackman and Stewart). The film does the comics one better by making the school an actual school, with dozens of students, mostly teenagers, who are not part of the "combat team". The underground technology is also pretty intriguing. And the film builds up Logan's background in an intriguing manner (it's strongly suggested that his history will be the subject of any sequel film).

But there's a tension between plot and script, in that the latter is sacrificed at times to make pure entertainment, often manifested in the former, which contains some bitingly funny lines, especially in exchanges between Cyclops and Logan. But one wonders why Magneto, who can defeat nearly anyone in single (or multiple) combat, doesn't do more of his dirty work himself, or why the X-Men, who include multiple people with attacks which work from a range, can't foil Magneto's plans from a distance.

So it's not a great film, but it's a fun one. It is disappointing in that it seems they could have done more with it, giving it more depth than it has. But it's okay. Better than the Batman films, in general.

(By the way, all through the film I was wondering why Anna Paquin looked so familiar to me. I finally realized that she looks just like Sophie Aldred, who played Ace on the last few seasons of Doctor Who. Weird!)

We went to Hobees for lunch, and dealt with rather poor wait service, although we eventually got what we ordered. Then Subrata and I did some shopping, and hung out at his place for a while, reading.

In the evening we drove over to Oakland to play in a Bridge match. We had many, many really interesting hands which required a lot of thought to play through. I feel I played my most consistent match of Bridge yet, not making any stunningly boneheaded mistakes, and we ended up at 53% in a stratified match, and first in our flight (I think we were something like seventh overall). We got 0.8 master points, which is pretty good for a night's work.

I was especially pleased because the room was hot and stuffy, and I managed to keep my focus for most of the evening nonetheless. I did have a difficult time part-way through when one of the opponents led out of turn, and I had to deal with the ramifications of him holding a penalty card, which added more things to think about on a tough contract. I was a little flustered for a while after that. (Subrata says he hasn't seen a penalty card in a while.) But it worked out okay.

Afterwards we stopped at In-n-Out Burger, which is a chain of highly-regarded fast food places around the south bay, which Subrata introduced me to recently. It's pretty tasty, it reminds me a little of Culver's in Wisconsin, though it's not really as good. But then, Culver's is excellent for fast food. (You know, I really miss Culver's...)

I got home around 1:30 am, so I'm obviously writing this on Sunday!