Manchester Evening Gazette

I'm not exactly sure why but when I was younger I saw X-men 2 before X-men. And that creates a bit of a problem for me because X-men 2 is better than the first. Thats not to say the first is a bad movie, in fact it's a solid start to the franchise. The two strong points to this superhero feature is the acting and the characterisation. Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are brilliant as Malcom X and Martin Luther Ki - I'm sorry as Magneto and Professor X, their voices are just magnificent; you could just listen to their verbal exchanges all day. Hugh Jackman and Anna Paquin are also good as fan favourite X-men Wolverine and Rogue, Wolverine gets a bit too much screen time for my liking - as X-men is supposed to be about the team and not just Wolverine. Surprisingly since it's a superhero film the action is one of the weaker facets of the film, its climax isn't climatic at all and the fight scenes between Wolverine and Sabretooth are just rubbish as is the CG...

I hadn't heard a lot about Green Zone, I knew that it was packaged as the war version of Bourne due to star Damon and director Greengrass teaming up again and that nobody saw it, it didn't make a lot of money and it's reviews wern't great either. So it kind of vanished without a trace really, which is a good thing really. First lets comment on Damon in the film. If I'm honest there isn't an awful lot to say about his performance as there isn't really one, it is pretty much just Damon shouting about WMD's for a couple of hours. So second, lets move onto Greengrass' direction, there is an intense enjoyable opening scene but after that the camera is too frantic and shakey you cant even tell what the events on screen are and when it's just dialogue between two characters the wobbliness of the camera is just off putting. Green Zone also marks the re-team-up of Damon and "Stuck on you" co-star Greg Kinnear. So this is where I'll tak...