Henry Poole Is Here—and he's reinforcing misconceptions

More often than not, I categorize indie films as future home rentals rather than worthwhile trips to the local movie multiplex. A side effect is that I may never remember to rent the film at all. This was why I didn't see the 2008 fantasy Henry Poole Is Here...until 2013, when I abruptly rediscovered it.

The twist is that in 2008 I was still actively religious, although my doubts were germinating steadily. If I had watched it then, I may have reacted differently to the character Henry Poole. Of course, seeing it now, I find myself wishing to counteract misconceptions about atheists, which are reinforced by characters such as Poole. I'm not Henry Poole. The film itself might not intend to present a slanted portrayal of atheists, but I worry that an uninformed audience might interpret it that way.

• To start with the obvious, Poole is mostly depressed and aimless. It should be equally obvious that atheism isn't a cause of these serious emotional issues. In truth, that automatic assumption is a little insulting to everyone regardless of religiosity. It presumes that they cannot achieve emotional stability nor purposeful lives without a religion handing a set of prefabricated answers to them. One other point should be obvious: the majority of atheists don't live in a reclusive pit of monotonous existential despair like Poole does. Instead they tend to mostly act like, well, everyone else in their culture (and/or subcultures).
• Poole's childhood was rough. I don't recall whether anyone in the film suggests that past trauma contributed to Poole's atheism, but some viewers may leap to that conclusion. Religious psychoanalysis tends to claim that concepts of gods are founded on concepts of parents. Supposedly, absent or chaotic parents interfere with the "normal" development of concepts of trustworthy gods. This claim is one reason why parents may feel personally responsible when their offspring eventually reject their religion. But like most simple reductionist explanations, it fails frequently in cases of realistic complexity. My relatives were conscientious and loving, but I nevertheless dropped their teachings about the supernatural. And for far too many adult atheists, unlike mine their childhoods were traumatic precisely because their earnest relatives consistently enforced a horrifying flavor of supernatural belief.
• Similarly, I don't recall whether the film suggests that Poole's more recent difficulties resulted in a sudden passionate mood swing toward atheism, but once again some viewers may think so. It's true that atheists aren't unemotional logic processors. Their dismissal of religion can be quick and climactic. My complaint is the stereotype that all atheistic shifts solely consist of capricious raging impulses. It underlies the comforting false hypothesis that a former believer's current atheism is "really" shallow emotional turbulence, perhaps motivated by a perverse desire to break the religion's rules, and not the sober acceptance of an opposite perspective that has its own intellectual foundations.
• Another way that the film could unintentionally support the misconception of "peevish" atheism are the scenes when Poole physically attacks religious symbols. Outside fictional stories and totalitarian political regimes, average peaceful atheists see little value or fun in employing violence against inanimate objects which represent nonexistent entities. The population of Great Britain isn't roving around in mobs illegally demolishing empty churches. Some new atheists describe a feeling of complete "freedom" from the mental influence of their former beliefs, so it seems to me that atheistic indifference toward religious symbols is much more likely. Ask a committed atheist "Why do you hate God all the time?" and they'll probably shrug and reply, "'God' who? I don't blame your god for anything. But your actions to please your god, on the other hand..."
• Yet another unflattering aspect of Poole's manner is his unwillingness to tolerate the religious believers around him. Some of his retorts are needlessly hurtful. He's prickly and he explicitly attempts social isolation. Unfortunately, Poole could thereby reinforce the awful misconception that most atheists are uncaring individualists whose deepest desire is to poke holes in everyone else's opinions at the slightest opportunity. In this case, it's important to pay attention to the context of these conversations. Poole is provoked over and over by others who persistently preach their beliefs at him. He has the right to decide who may enter his property and what topics he is open to discussing (and how many times). He could be sweeter and more patient, but given the difficult situation I'm hesitant to be too hard on him. At some point, the freedom to express thoughts on the topic of religion should also include the freedom to contradict someone else's thoughts, preferably in a benevolent attitude.
• My last warning about the accuracy of the character Henry Poole centers on his hasty responses to the miracles in this fictional story. If other characters in the story are instantly cured of significant maladies, and those maladies aren't simply psychosomatic, then it's extremely selfish and short-sighted of Poole to immediately pronounce, without intense secular observing and theorizing, that the miracles cannot be happening. What if the far-fetched religious explanations are irrelevant to the physical cause of the uncanny medical effects? What if Poole has exposed a microscopic substance as potent as penicillin? Imagine if the character of Poole were a scientist in that situation.

belated comments on the Tron Legacy iso concept

Far be it from me to pretend that the movie Tron Legacy is realistic or self-consistent. In an otherworldly setting, ridiculous details of many varieties are normal, if not expected. Why must the heroes do this or that? Why do objects have those peculiar shapes and colors? Just because¹.

However, the concept of the "iso" is an exception. It's as interesting to me now, when I stream the movie from Netflix, as it was when I first saw the movie in the theater. An iso is an incredibly complex intelligence that evolved from out of the movements of the information in the Tron "digital world", a highly unusual computer system that apparently is POSIX-compatible. The isoes are "bio-digital jazz, man." Supposedly the answers to every problem are achievable by them. No human or program can entirely comprehend them. They're judged too chaotic to be part of an unchanging perfection.

In my interpretation, the isoes are programs with a mind-blowing aptitude for modeling and understanding. A model is a duplication of a thing's information. Useful models enable prediction, analysis, and manipulation. To understand is to employ a working model. Of course, models may be imprecise, nonverbal, incomplete, etc. 

We humans constantly brush up against limits in our ability to make models. It could be difficult to invent the right metaphor or to deduce the right mathematical expression. In any case, our brains, and therefore our mental resources for such tasks, are obviously finite. We can work around these hard realities in any number of ways, and we often do.

But imagine that the iso is a program whose computational equivalent is a brain as large as an average adult human body. With that magnitude of potential representations devoted to a model, it could be much more comprehensive and true-to-life. Although there would still be limiting factors (cf. combinatorial explosion), the model's simulations would more likely reflect the full subtlety². It would catch the higher-order, peripheral, and mutually-interacting effects, which are emergent³.

Furthermore, creative modifications of the model would have more room for exploration, so it could more easily compute how to respond to the model in order to achieve a benefit. In this sense, an iso is indeed jazz-like in its methods. It imitates, then it adds or subtracts to the original by informed trial and error. It doesn't need to resort to the human simplification of forcing something into a preconceived pattern for the sake of comprehension. Instead, it "absorbs" the thing into a mirror model, and travels the depths of that model.

An iso learns to defeat you at chess by discerning the reasoning process which you use for chess. Sooner or later it uses that knowledge to figure out which moves will circumvent the effectiveness of that process. After that point there's no real competition or game remaining; you can no longer "surprise" the iso with your decisions. You're the iso's pawn. What if the iso could similarly anticipate cancer's "moves"?

I'll grant that my interpretation might not be close to what the movie meant, assuming the movie had a specific idea in mind. Once someone presumes that artificial intelligence is possible, it's no great leap to speculate that it could be made superior to human intelligence, at least in restricted domains or according to superficial measurements.

¹To take just one example of the missed opportunities embedded in the movie's premises, the conversion of a human to and from digital data is essentially a teleporter. Or perhaps Wonkavision, when it happens over a wireless connection. Completing orders for merchandise "over the Internet" would be literal. Sharing a digitization of a person in Bittorrent would violate laws against human cloning, I suppose.
²Philosophically or theoretically, no one can ever say with absolute certainty that a sufficiently complicated simulation is perfectly accurate to an original. Yet most humans would opine that a simulation "works" (and is true) when it consistently matches all actual/empirical tests within a reasonable error threshold.
³I purposefully compared the iso to a brain rather than a supercomputer. It wouldn't be a massive array of motionless memory acted upon by unvarying procedures. The movie states that an iso is artificial life. The expectation is software layout that's inseparable from hardware layout, innumerable adjustable junctions between parts, and feedback loops galore.

another late commentary: Lord of War

There's a fairly large class of movies that pique my interest, then provoke my interest further when I read the reviews, but I just can't justify putting in the time, effort, money to go to a theater to see them (especially if I have other ways to fill my time, which I do, or if I know I'll be going alone). So I make a mental note to see them later on DVD. But the mental note ends up misplaced, or maybe it's under a stack of mental to-dos, or maybe it slithered out of one ear when I was sleeping. In any case, the rental store didn't have what I came to get, so I finally watched Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage as a large-scale, illegal weapons dealer. To be fair, by the end of the movie, the question of the very legality of Cage's weapons dealing is thoroughly blurred.

For this is a movie exhibiting a remarkably blurry morality. Viewers who argue that it's pushing a particular political viewpoint aren't seeing the movie as is, like how someone who's been living in the overpowering red glare of a bright sign might mistake tomato juice for milk. Some of the back-and-forth on the imdb forum for this movie would be amusing if it wasn't tragic. Just as everyone watching V for Vendetta should be able to at least agree that loss of freedom is a Bad Thing, everyone watching Lord of War should be able to at least agree that people using huge quantities of weapons to kill innocents is a Bad Thing. As for specific decisions involving many factors, and situations without easy answers, well, that's different.

Naturally, Cage's character, Yuri, doesn't have much to offer in terms of positive platitudes. He does have many short, slanted observations about humanity, though. These observations are the counterpart to positive platitudes: instead of being naively optimistic, they are naively pessimistic. But it's unsurprising coming from someone who earns his cash mingling with humanity's worst. Overall, I don't see his narration as a weakness of the script, but as a window into Yuri's sometimes-disturbingly-accurate viewpoint. His statements are realistic and business-oriented from the start; he goes into the weapons trade after seeing a mob hit, because he figures people will always need weapons - no different than someone opening a restaurant because people will always need food.

The appeal of the movie is likely proportional to how much Yuri's inner contradictions appeal to the viewer. On the one hand, he's someone who gets away with doing what's supposed to be illegal. On the other hand, he's an expert at playing the menagerie of international legal systems so he can't be proven to be on the wrong side of the law. On the one hand, he supplies weapons to people who plan to use those weapons in despicable acts. On the other hand, he knows that if he wasn't selling, then his buyers would still obtain other weapons. On the one hand, he has close business relationships with killers. On the other hand, he involuntarily exclaims in protest when he sees senseless killing. On the one hand, he's practically printing money through being part of a black market (as he says when trying to go straight, the margins of legal work are too small). On the other hand, he doesn't want payment in drugs, women, or other criminal contraband. Diamonds are fine. In passing he mentions that diamonds used to fund violence have been called blood diamonds. Huh, fancy that.

As a conflicted character, Yuri doesn't smile a lot. It took me a little while to guess the most pivotal reason why he continues to do what he apparently doesn't enjoy. He has multiple minor reasons, which are easy to pick out because he narrates them: the money, his talent or knack for it, his desire to keep his wife satisfied, the thrill (he describes his first sale as "over too fast"), his clients' orders for more. I think he sells weapons to attempt to fit himself into a bleak world. He has contempt for everyone, which is why he doesn't take sides by selling weapons to one faction instead of another. His contempt is not only for his individual buyers but for countries, hence his nomadic globe-hopping, numerous passports, disregard for embargoes, and a willingness to sell to those who kill people in his country of origin. By being locked into the mindset that "people kill people regardless of what weapons are available" he emotionally shields himself from the guilt of complicity. Selling weapons in a world that he views to be inescapably violent is both a resignation and a condemnation: resignation because selling weapons does nothing to stop the violence, but condemnation because he is giving them the destructive mayhem they foolishly want. One of the responses to a fatalistic belief is to accelerate the enacting of that belief - it's a way to say "There may be nothing I can ultimately do to stop this, but I don't care! I'll prove how much I don't care, by going along with it!" As the saying goes, "if you can't beat them, join them". Yuri might say "Violence is here to stay. Since that's true, isn't it shrewd to earn money on it?"

In case I haven't made it clear, this movie makes for a depressing viewing experience. Violence, gore, drug use, nudity, and, oh yeah, profanity (in more than one language) are everywhere. The "dirtiness", of what has happened and is continuing to happen, is the point. I didn't find out until afterward that the director was the same one as for Gattaca. Like Gattaca, Lord of War has many compelling shots and it uses those shots to drive home the main point. It represents one big question or issue. I'm not knowledgable enough to offer any answers.

Dark City

I have a new entry in the "movies I saw for the first time on cable" category, alongside Fargo: Dark City. By writing anything about it, I'm probably expected to mention the Matrix, but I won't and you can't make me! More generally, Dark City's similarities to other movies I like reduces it in my eyes because those other movies were more enjoyable. Minority Report has dreamlike precog visions in place of Dark City's dreamlike memory flashes, not to mention a major character being afflicted by doubts about his innocence. A darkly-styled city appears in many other movies (is Sin City disqualified because the entire movie is incredibly black anyway?). Seeing people hover and emit mental blasts in this movie isn't terribly exciting if the viewer (me) has seen X-Men. The bar for people merely acting loopy was set pretty high by Twelve Monkeys. Ignoring the M movie, trapping people in constructed realities was handled with style by the "Perchance to Dream" episode of the Batman animated series, and "Legends" of the Justice League series. Someone having memory trouble is pretty much the thrust of Memento. Freaky guys, even kids, with ghostly skin? Check the horror aisle.

Saying that a movie is in good company doesn't necessarily indicate that it's entertaining or not, just that it's overshadowed. Some of the ingredients of this movie predisposed me to want to like it. Kiefer Sutherland is so ingrained in my mind as Jack Bauer that I get a strange pleasure out of seeing him in anything else because it doesn't feel right (the Sentinel doesn't count). In Dark City he's a batty scientist with a halting speech pattern. He bugged me at first, but then I started to like him, maybe because he's off-screen for a few stretches of time, and I felt the absence - his importance to the movie is that he seemed to be the most interesting character for me. The others lacked personality, or if they had personalities I failed to be intrigued. For the Strangers, this is to be expected. For Jennifer Connelly, not so much. Then again, for Connelly it may be expected. I can't say for sure, because I'm a poor judge of acting. In her case, I'm hopelessly biased, too, on account of the (mostly harmless! really!) fascination I have for watching her, a fascination that's similar to the Eliza Dushku fascination I mentioned elsewhere. It doesn't help that she's in three off-kilter and critically-despised movies that I inexplicably like: Hulk, Labyrinth, Rocketeer. Her presence hardly lifted this movie, but she did fine with what she was given (I guess).

Indeed, Dark City felt weighed-down and dreary to me, which may have been its intention. Blame the great disparity between the abilities of the Strangers and the humans, blame the humorlessness, blame the well-justified despair a dark city has, blame the nasty-looking knives the Strangers pull out at the drop of a hat. On the other hand, it is a fine-looking movie. Fine lighting, fine compositions of the shots, pretty good effects. Perhaps I'm too happy to like this movie. Eh, it was worth the time to see it on cable.

the Prestige

I saw The Prestige a few days ago, which itself is a somewhat momentous event because I seldom see movies in the theater unless: 1) I honestly can't stand to wait to see it, and/or 2) the movie obviously benefits from huge screen and sound. The Prestige falls in category 1, although it has a handful of impressive scenes that fit 2. The three Lord of the Rings movies, in contrast, were off the scale in both categories--just had to see those in theaters. In the case of the Prestige, the combination of a reunion between some of the people behind Batman Begins, a string of intriguing previews/ads explaining the movie concept, and a set of other people who are fun to watch on screen, Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansen and David Bowie and Andy Serkis, proved too irrestible.

All things considered, the Prestige is the most subdued movie I've seen in a while, if you don't count Proof, which was a DVD rental for me. This movie has deaths and injuries, but each one is staggered throughout the movie, so the usual desensitization doesn't occur. These dueling magicians don't have it out in some dark alley, at least not for a long time; they're after public embarrasment, complete career ruination, and eye-for-eye retribution. Although the two share a passion for glory and fame, they have different ways of pursuing it. Minor characters get dragged into the story as pawns, including an astoundingly eccentric Tesla, but thankfully the minors also have their own independent agendas. Michael Caine's character tries to lend some levelheadedness to those around him, but his effort is squandered. Everyone schemes and deceives so much that, fittingly enough for a movie about magicians, it's hard to tell when anyone is telling the truth.

They do tell skilled half-truths. The movie's surprises, praised and denounced by critics, don't happen like deus ex machina, but come after oft-repeated clues. The clues are important, because otherwise the solutions at the end would seem like cheats. I mostly figured out what was happening before the big reveals, but not everything. And the parts I didn't think of were related to clues that had made me think "Something must be significant about X, but what?" The end satisfied me.

Apart from the interpersonal struggles and plot machinations, the magic tricks in the movie are fun to watch, either from the perspective of the unwitting audience or the (dis)ingenious magician. Of course, at a time when movie technology has advanced to the point that animals routinely morph into people on screen, audiences are more jaded about what they see. In any recent all-talents-accepted competitions, the magicians are usually the first to go. We're accustomed to seeing fake realities on our screens, and aren't impressed. It's nice to have a movie to celebrate a simpler time when magic wasn't taken for granted.

v for vendetta

So, V for Vendetta turned out to be what I expected, based on what I had heard. Fantastic imagery, some bloody action, an enigmatic main character, hairless Natalie Portman. Oh, and some political discussion points. Make that a lot of political discussion points. Er, I mean a continual deluge of political discussion points.

Although still not as pathetically clumsy and obvious as the contrived mention of a "Triad of Evil" in a Star Wars pre-episode III novel, Labyrinth of Evil. We in the know, including George Lucas, have long been aware of how the Old Republic turned into the Galactic Empire; the general process by which this happens has repeated throughout history. Read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, if you don't mind feeling chills down your back.

I'm also amused by people praising the "boldness" of this movie. The US is not repressive. Hollywood has made "bold", "political" movies for a long time. Not that those movies always do well...anyway, V for Vendetta is a stunning movie in more than one sense, so I recommend that people take a look. And start treating your favorite downtrodden minority nicer today!

Unrelated observation from watching my Klingon Fan Collective DVD set: I've only seen a handful of episodes of Deep Space Nine, but after the episodes on this set, I'm frightened by how deeply I like Jadzia Dax. Her appearance (hey, I'm only human, you know), her fun personality, her many layers of competence, her intriguing backstory(-ies), her rapport with Sisko. How sad is a crush on a fictional character? Pretty dang sad, I'd guess.

saw fargo for the first time

A long time ago I remember reading a glowing Siskel review of the movie Fargo. AMC had it on, so I saw it for the first time just a few days ago. (Side observation: using "fruity" as a replacement word is almost as hilarious as hearing Austin Powers say "I'm a sexy Brit!".)

Once again, I didn't get it.

That is, I didn't understand what was so fantastic about this movie, although it had no glaring weaknesses. Later, when I checked online, I read that the white, snow-covered landscape is supposed to be bleak and fatalistic. I played in the snow all the time when I was a kneebiter. I remember making snow forts and sculptures, throwing snowballs, sledding, even going skiiing and snowmobiling. I guess the appearance of snow means something different to people in California. Moving along, I've also read that Fargo is valued for its characters. I could see that, especially since its plot didn't feel that inspired and its emotional tide goes from "hmm" to "blah" to "shrug".

I think the crux of it is that I liked many scenes in Fargo, but the movie as a whole was disappointing. It had some of that same dark, quirky humor that I've greatly enjoyed in other Coen-involved movies, and each character displayed more intersting personality moments than all the characters put together in some other movies. In any case, feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt since I had similar mixed feelings when I first saw Citizen Kane. If I need other people to tell me what's so great about a movie, is it the movie's fault or mine?

EDIT: I later realized that when I wrote that I was a kneebiter, I meant to write anklebiter.

History of Violence & Corpse Bride

Corpse Bride - Honestly, not exactly what I was expecting. Looking back, I should have assumed it would have a lot of musical numbers. And I expected it to be more twisted. On the other hand, it was much more funny and charming and genuinely touching than I assumed. All the dead beings in the movie, and even the live ones, look off-putting but exhibit a degree of personality that makes them go full circle from macabre to droll. The corpse bride is voiced so well that she may be the most likable undead character ever. I also like how the movie purposely mocks any cliches it had a danger of falling into. Although some of the songs annoyed me, I thought it was a movie that somehow managed to end up cute but not at all gag-inducing.

History of Violence - This movie has two sides, but both are manipulative. It juxtaposes the imagery and vibe of small-town paradise with brutal and rapid violence. The same dichotomy that runs through the movie runs through the main character. This wasn't hard to fit into my own frame of reference: he's a superhero with a secret identity. He's Violence Man. When there's trouble, he switches from mild-mannered diner owner to the Punisher. Then I had another realization: he's a Mel Gibson character being played by Viggo. As we know from Mel Gibson movies (e.g. Ransom, Patriot, Braveheart), don't mess with a guy's family or he'll go off like a lethal weapon. Ooops, mixed metaphors there. Anyway, I don't think people should need a movie to point out that while violence is one of those "necessary evils", the thrills it affords are part of being human. We have blood that is fun to get pumpin', and we like to see dirt rubbed into evil's face at every opportunity. People without exposure to true life-and-death violence get their quota through their entertainment. Even back when TV and movies were tamer, people got into fistfights and gun duels in westerns. On the other hand, after seeing this movie, I don't feel like playing my 24 video game for the rest of today...

Reaction to the Spider-Man 3 teaser trailer

Short form: wow. Long form: Unless the trailer is being purposefully deceptive, a lot of the grandiose hints and guesses on the web appear to have been right! Don't knock yourselves over patting yourselves on the back, fellas. The Goblin, Sandman, creeping dark oozy costume. Only anyone who thought the Lizard would make it in will be disappointed. (Well, also those who were expecting the Beetle).

As someone whose main exposure to Spider-Man was through (one of) the animated series, I am stoked. That series introducted Venom through a three-episode story that left such an impression on me that I bought the DVD. The downside of these episodes is the low-budget but still adequate quality of the animation.

Here's a summary of the important points: a moving alien ooze, which in reality is a sentient symbiote, makes contact with Spidey at a space shuttle crash. It acts as a dark but shapeshifting costume that obeys his thoughts while also taking the initiative to be protective of him. More importantly, it increases his superpowers to an intoxicating degree. Peter revels in his newfound majesty, but at the same time his moods and attitudes take a turn for the worst. New levels of aggressiveness, selfishness, and peevishness change his actions and inner monologue. Only when he realizes how he is alienating all the people in his life as Parker, and how close he comes to needlessly pulverizing his supervillain opponents, does he force the costume off him using loud noise. The costume finds a host who happens to hate Spider-Man with as much passion as it does. The two merge to become Venom, a villain with all the power that Spidey had when he was wearing the costume. Meaning anything Spider-Man can do, Venom can do better. Venom commences a systematic campaign to scare and torment both Spider-Man and Peter Parker. In the end, Spider-Man wins by luring Venom to a shuttle launch, using himself as bait. The noise weakens and forces the costume off its new host so Spidey can attach the symbiote to the shuttle and wave it goodbye.

I think the reason the story is so compelling to me is because the symbiote is a metaphor for the use and abuse of power/pride. People can flaunt it, try to use it to lord over others, pursue it desperately for the sake of survival, or just fall in love with it to the expense of all else. Unfortunately, power can also corrupt the user, and leave him or her alone with a resulting mountain of regrets. Since the power-corrupted can only view others as below him or her, there can be none of the healthy relationships that form among equals. Although power is a potent drug, seeming to offer freedom from fear, it's nothing without morality to moderate it so it doesn't devour itself.

If the movie taps into this same theme for the symbiote costume (the destructiveness of: 1. power, 2. the exercise of power, and 3. the pursuit of power), well, here's a preemptive I told you so.

Xmen III gets well-deserved Editing Room treatment

The Editing Room recently made one of its "Abridged Scripts" for X-Men III. If you don't mind a lot of creative profanity/crude humor, and you've already seen the movie, have a look . It matched most of my own opinions. I know nobody would visit this blog solely for links, since I know there are much better places to visit for gathering Web links (BoingBoing, Digg, Metafilter, etc.), so here's some original content: my unsolicited opinion.

Good things about X-Men III:

• The mutants get to do a lot of flying. This may seem trivial, but considering how many people have actually dreamed about being able to fly, it really isn't.
• Good visual effects. I like to see mutants toss cars around. 'Nuff said.
• Juggernaut and Beast made it in. See below in the other list for why this is also a bad thing.
• Grand, epic battles. Some people complained about the first X-Men not having enough action. No chance of those complaints this time.
• Deaths, both physical and metaphorical (cured mutants). I'm not a fan of tragedies in which everyone dies at the end, but a death or two can up the emotional ante.
• Phoenix. Constant muttering about mutants "levels" aside, the raw power of Phoenix came through loud and clear. Giving Famke more screen time is another plus.
  

Bad things about X-Men III:

• Juggernaut and Beast were disappointing. Maybe Juggernaut's size just doesn't translate well from the comic to the movie. And his lines were sort of funny, I guess, but it made me long for his performance in Snatch as Bullet-Tooth Tony. Beast looked fine, although once again there's a "size"-able difference between the comic and the movie. I was hoping Beast's personality and intelligence would be showcased more. Give Frasier something more to chew on.
• Other new mutants. They just came off as lame. I'd rather keep more of the old ones alive than toss in those.
• Too few of the great character moments or sly in-jokes from the first two movies that reminded us the mutants were people - a general slump in dialogue quality.
  
• The frantic, overstuffed pace. Maybe this could be blamed on the director switch or one too many script writers. In any case, the movie tried to include too many fan-pleasing elements in too short a movie. Then again, if the movie had been longer, I imagine more would have just been packed in to compensate.
• Spotlight on Storm, or should I say Halle Berry. Yay, Storm has a lot to do. She gets to have personal growth. Whoop-de-friggin-do. The Editing Room's abridged script zeroes in on this point perfectly and then obliterates it.

With all that said, I enjoyed the movie. Whether it'll stand up to repeated viewing as well as the other X-Men movies, only time will tell. (I have a sickening feeling that I'll watch its DVD by skipping over the more melodramatic Storm parts just as I skip over the Jar Jar parts when I break out Phantom Menace for nostalgia watching).