Weekend Movie Guide: The Origin of Wolverine

Sabretooth vs. Wolverine | Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Despite passionately loving independent films and documentaries, I still get excited when the summer blockbuster season starts -- earlier every year it seems -- and so I'm jazzed to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine. How can anyone justify missing a cinematic rendering of the X-Men? Speaking of independent films, they don't get more so than the works of Jim Jarmusch. I loved Broken Flowers and so seeing Limits of Control is de rigueur. Early reviews are very poor, though. In fact, the awful Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is charting higher amongst a consensus of critics. What ever happened to Jennifer Garner? Wasn't she interesting once?

Battle for Terra is an earnest attempt at doing serious sci-fi, but the animation lacks invention and the story isn't so dynamic. Pass. Micheal Keaton makes his directorial debut with The Merry Gentleman, and it is an excellent one. The lovely Kelly Macdonald co-stars. Porn continues its penetration into mainstream culture as Naked Ambition: An R-Rated Look at an X-Rated Industry cums into theaters. Newcastle is a surfing movie, so I'll see it. Revanche is the best reviewed film of the week. It's got bank robbery, prostitutes, redemption -- in short, it's great. Was nominated for an Oscar. But...it's in a foreign language so no one will see it. Shame that.