Movie Review: X-Men III The Last Stand

The cold is slowly creeping back into the air, along with the faint smell of dog food in the mornings. The leaves will soon begin turning bright shades of yellow, red, and orange. Welcome back to Harrisonburg, EMU students! As we all work ourselves into a new routine of studying and working hard during the week, our old routines of frolicking about and hanging with friends are coming back in a parallel fashion. College isn't all work with no play. We here at EMU play, and we play hard. And what better way to kick off the merrymaking than the weekend staple of CAC movies?!

The CAC is not playing around with this weekend of film-showing. They are bringing the action, the mega-blockbuster hype, they are bringing us Dr. Frasier Crane in mutated form, kicking bad guy tail with a fury that can only come with a bluish hue.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's the final installment in the X-Men Trilogy: X-Men: The Last Stand. An all-star cast heads this one up, as was the case with the first two films. Hugh Jackman reunites with Swordfish costar Halle Berry again to lead the spandex wearing superheroes in the seemingly endless fight against a horde of bad-guy mutants. Jackman plays the rough and rowdy Wolverine whose strength and healing abilities make him a formidable asset for the X-Men. Berry is the sexy yet deadly Storm who has the ability to control the weather, and we're not talking about a bit of drizzling rain on their heads; we're talking about her slamming some guy in the head with Hurricane Ernesto. The crew is lead by Patrick Stewart, playing Professor Charles Xavier, the bald invalid who rolls around in his tricked-out wheelchair. He's no pushover though, using mind control, telepathy, and telekinesis to totally "go gangsta" on some evil mutants.

Leading the baddies this time, as always, is British Shakespearian thespian, Sir Ian McKellan. Portraying the disillusioned Magneto, McKellan's character subscribes to the belief that humans are evil and wish to eliminate all mutants with extreme prejudice. The drop-dead gorgeous Rebecca Romijn plays Mystique, whose chameleon powers enable her to assume the form of anyone that she touches.

My favorite new additions to the cast are Vinnie Jones and Kelsey Grammer. Jones plays the Juggernaut! Coming to fame in America for the Guy Ritchie movie Snatch, Bullet Tooth Tony doesn't disappoint as the brawn over brains Juggernaut. Kelsey Grammer as the equally strong Beast is hilarious to say the least. I, like most of you, grew up knowing Grammer as Frasier in the show of the same name, and in Cheers. Seeing him in blue paint with some hellacious mutton chops is just high comedy.

The film opens when a pharmaceutical company releases a "cure" for mutants; they can remain the same with their differences or become human. This incites a battle between the X-Men and Magneto's army of evil mutants. I hope that I'm not giving away too much by revealing that Jean Grey, or Phoenix, was killed at the end of X2. The complication in X3 begins when Grey is resurrected as the Dark Phoenix, a mutant of unparalleled powers. Joining forces with Magneto, the X-Men must come together to thwart the attempts of these evil mutants and make their last stand!

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action, violence, some sexual content and language, this seems to be the right film for you to get your action/adventure/sci-fi fix for the week. X3 is showing Friday night at 10 and Saturday night at 9 at a cost of $1.50 with your student ID and $2.50 for general admission.

Up next week, September 15 and 16: An Inconvenient Truth. This film is a documentary by Al Gore, and was filmed as part of his campaign on making the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.