Movies Opening This Week: Rip Dickens Off Edition

What Dickens book, you say? It's The Christmas Carol. Why that book when it's not Christmas, you say?

Well, just read on and you'll understand. Before that though, we'll have the higher-profile beast (the key word being 'beast') out first, and it's...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Famously leaked to the interwebz, this new X-Men film flips the page onto Logan's life during his pre-X-Men days. If you watched X-Men 2 and you didn't understand why they had to attack that lab that was owned by a guy named Stryker, this is the movie you'll have to watch to understand.

But after seeing the rough cut of the movie on Quiapo-Blu-ray, I don't feel satisfied with the movie. True, the unfinished effects contribute to that, but I also feel unsatisfied with the back-stories of all those other characters. I mean, the other half of the cast seem so two-dimensional and oh-so disposable, you won't even care about much of the movie. Face it, the only thing you'll get enjoyment out of this movie is the action.

Which is why it's still a pretty good movie to watch in a theater, complete with a huge tub of popcorn.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Now this is the Charles Dickens rip-off. At first, you'll see Matthew McConaughey, and as we all know, McConaughey films are usually shallow fluff but I think he may just have a potentially good rom-com in his hands.

Basically, McConaughey's character Connor Mead is a successful fashion photographer. Suddenly, his deceased uncle's ghost meets up with him because of his comparably bad love life (in terms of 'falling in love' and not just 'one night stands') and he suddenly bumps into the Ghost of Girlfriends Past, Present and Future (now you see the resemblance?). He sees that a colleague of his (Jennifer Garner) has already been dissed by him and he finds out that she's the "one". Now he wants to change his present to affect the future.

Battle for Terra

A CGI film with what seems to be zero originality, Battle for Terra seems like a Ferngully-ish (OK, there is no possibility of this film resembling that film, but I still have that feeling that they are both similar) and a "just about any other sci-fi film" adventure that sees humans destroying the species of the Planet Terra just so they can find habitation. Personally, I think it's gonna be one of those hypocritical (and subtle?) environmental films that also involve humans becoming the bad guys. Standard fare, but eh, maybe it's gonna be pretty decent.

Action looks good, CGI looks cartoony but the over-serious tone defies the style of the film. I mean, it's just unoriginal.

Just hope there won't be any really annoying character serving as the occasional comic relief though.