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X-Men Origins: Wolverine

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  • Title: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
  • IMDb: link

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Blu-ray reviewIt’s somewhat amazing that between X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine that 20th Century Fox didn’t manage to destroy their X-Men movie franchise. For Throwback Thursday we take a look back at the first of the Wolverine standalone films. X-Men Origins: Wolverine delves into the unexplored past of Logan (Hugh Jackman) while continuing to refuse to quite nail down the exact date of his birth. Not fitting in at all with the timeline of the other X-Men films, the movie has been largely ignored in current continuity (although one important aspect does return in Logan).

Along with a brief introduction of Logan as a child, and a montage of him working with Team X, the story jumps forward to events which will pull him out of his quiet life in the Canadian wilderness with Silverfox (Lynn Collins) and lead to both his adamantium upgrade and events which will cause him to lose memories of his past.

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5 Film Collection: Gangsters

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  • Title: A History of Violence, The Departed, Training Day, The Town, Gangster Squad
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link

5 Film Collection: GangstersWhat the hell is Gangster Squad doing on this set? The 2013 film wastes a talented cast on this idiotic take on a 50s cop (Josh Brolin) attempting to take down Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). What a piece of shit. The rest of this collection is actually quite good, making you wonder who decided to try and polish this turd by putting in in their company.

Ben Affleck‘s The Town is the second-weakest entry in the set, but the look at Boston bank robbers is at least occasionally compelling. While flawed, 2001’s Training Day is worth a look for the performances of Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke as the older detective introduces his new partner to his world.

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X2

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  • Title: X2
  • IMDb: link

X2 Blu-ray reviewThis week’s Throwback Thursday takes us back to 2003’s sequel to X-Men. Bringing back most of the cast of director Bryan Singer‘s first film, X2 explored the origins of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) with a series of flashbacks which would be further explored in the best-forgotten X-Men Origins: Wolverine six years later. Although Magneto (Ian McKellen) returns, he’s not the villain his time around. Instead the villain is William Stryker (Brian Cox) who is using his own son’s mutant abilities to start a war against mutants in hopes of wiping them out completely. His maneuvering includes brainwashing Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) to try and assassinate the President and attacking the X-Men in their own home.

Along with Nightcrawler, the franchise expands mutants with the additions of Pyro (Aaron Stanford), Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), and Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), and a number of mutant children living in Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

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Michael J. Fox 4-Movie Laugh Pack

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  • Title: The Secret of My Succe$s, For Love or Money, The Hard Way, Greedy
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link
  • IMDb: link

Michael J. Fox 4-Movie Laugh PackThis two-disc set collects four comedies of Michael J. Fox. As a set it’s problematic given you only have one good film here, one okay movie, one not-so-great flick, and one pretty awful piece of garbage. However, at the cost of $10 you are only really paying for the good movie, so it turns out to be a bit of a wash.

Starting from worst to best, 1994’s Greedy is a dumpster fire of a film about a greedy family after an old man’s (Kirk Douglas) fortune. 1991’s The Hard Way is an ill-conceived, but not all-together worthless, buddy-cop comedy starring Fox as an actor partnered with a real detective (James Woods). 1993’s For Love or Money is a pretty standard romcom casting Fox as a concierge with dreams of owning his own hotel who falls for the mistress (Gabrielle Anwar) of the man who might be able to make his dream a reality. It’s a fun, if lightweight, film. The best of the set, however, is 1987’s The Secret of My Succe$s starring Fox as a mail-room clerk who begins to work double-duty as a company executive under an assumed name. Gloriously goofy, the entertaining film is responsible for firmly cementing my long-time crush on Helen Slater.

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The Accountant

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  • Title: The Accountant
  • IMDb: link

The Accountant Blu-ray review

The Accountant is your basic action-thriller with the twist being our main character is an autistic accountant who turns out o be a genius both with math and guns. Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is targeted not by any one of his any number of dangerous clients but by a robotics company for confirming embezzling found by one of the firm’s junior accountants (Anna Kendrick). The story also features a subplot involving a retiring agent (J.K. Simmons) of the Treasury Department and his protege of sorts (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) who are hunting the forensic accountant whose client list includes some of the world most dangerous criminal organizations.

The script by Bill Dubuque gets a little too cute for its own good tying in Christian’s past, but the movie works better than I expected. Affleck is put to good use here as the autistic character I wouldn’t mind seeing more of, and the pairing with Kendrick is refreshingly not by-the-book.

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