Gretchen Mol has sex with a man who makes her believe in God.

Winona Ryder has an unnatural attraction to a ventriloquist’s dummy, and She’s Gotta Have It (Just in case you didn’t get enough puppet sex in TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE).

The protagonist dumps Famke Janssen for Jessica Alba, then begins to suspect he may have traded down too young when she chirps, “Will you buy me a pony?”

And there’s seven more stories as well. The connection to the commandments is tenuous at times, but it’s usually crude, often strange, and by and large funny.

There’s a strange animated sequence in the middle of the movie.

Pretty funny, weird stuff. 6 of the 10 commandments were hilarious…

X2 starts off with NightCrawler doing what he does best, kicking ass via teleportation. But why is he trying to get to the President? That’s a mystery to be solved later, and we don’t do spoilers.

Meanwhile, back at the X-Cave, Wolverine returns to seek more answers about his past from Professor X. “No young Jedi, some answers you must find for yourself. Be strong and all will be made apparent to you.” Wait… I’m getting confused.

The best part about X2 is that it feels like you’re walking into a story that’s already started, and when the movie ends you know for certain that things aren’t over yet. The real trick is that the writers managed to do this without you feeling lost at the beginning of the movie, and without getting pissed off at a cliffhanger at the end. That takes true skill.

Casting is excellent of course, and the original cast has returned for this movie. This could be a problem in the future though as I’m sure the cast members are going to demand hefty raises after this movie, and we all know Patrick Stewart has a history of doing this. When a movie has so many “main” characters, can a series possibly survive under the weight of those egos and salaries? I hope so as I’d hate to try and get used to new actors.

Fox has already been toying around with the possibility of spinoff movies for some of the characters, and Wolverine would be an obvious choice here as he’s already getting most of the screen time. Would spinoffs work? I think so, but then they’d need to keep the solo character to a minimum for the next X-Men movie. Can you imagine it if they managed to make this plan work? Wolverine movie one year, Storm the next, X-Men after that, followed by Cyclops, etc.

Oh, one last thing. Mystique is the ultimate woman. Period.

I’m glad…no, I’m thrilled to say that Ratner held the line and not only kept building the story, he also injected a crapload of adrenalin into it. In X-Men 3: The Last Stand, the homo sapien / homo superior war comes to a head and, BOY!, there is a huge body count. And it ain’t just civilians and soldiers either. By the time the movie gets going really well, we’ve already learned the lesson that NOBODY is safe.

War is hell. It’s just that simple. And this war is no different. If you’ve seen the first two X-Men flicks (and I KNOW you have!), you know that a conflict has been brooding for quite sometime between paranoid “normal” humans in government and the few but powerful mutants that seem to be coming out into the open more and more each day.

But as with humanity, the mutants are not homogenous. There are good ones, bad ones, and lots more in between. The two most prominent are, of course, Professor Charles Xavier and Eric “Magneto” Lensherr. These once longtime friends are now enemies. They both wish to see mutants flourish and live freely and securely, but while Xavier wants mutants and humans to peacefully co-exist, Magneto would simply rather kill and/or enslave normal humans that get in their way.

The government isn’t quite sure how to handle the situation, but in true government fashion, they set up a cabinet level department to oversee the problem and not much seems to get done.

Enter Leech, a young mutant who has the ability to cancel other mutant powers. A large corporation develops what they call a “cure” for the mutant “X” gene using Leech’s blood. The government latches onto this notion in the hopes that the mutants will simply want to cure themselves and the problem will take care of itself.

But you and I and every other comic book reader know better, right? While some of the mutants (including some of the X-Men themselves) like the idea of being “normal”, most don’t. At least most of the powerful mutants don’t. Magneto fears that this “voluntary” cure will become mandatory and decides that mutants must strike first in order to survive. Magneto doesn’t dress particularly well nor is he exactly “hip”, but the man definitely has a sense of STYLE! And the attack he plans and executes is QUITE impressive.

This movie is all about payoffs: Payoff for the mutant war, payoff for the Jean Grey / Dark Phoenix saga, payoff for some of the characters that were only peripherally seen before (Kitty Pryde, Colossus), and a big payoff for us in that we finally get to see just HOW powerful these guys truly are.

The characters are all known to us by now and everyone seems very comfortable in their roles here in their third go-round. One great thing is that none of the main characters are iconic. Such are the trappings of lesser movies about comic book heroes. Prof. Xavier is arguably the most “goody two shoes” character in the X-Men comics but even he is revealed to have made some morally questionable choices in the past. He even admits that he sometimes had to choose the “lesser of two evils”. There are many shades of grey and, though the X-Men themselves are the heroes, their foes are not completely bad or evil and we are shown ways to empathize with all sides.

It is this empathy that makes the carnage that much more shocking. It means little to see a cardboard soldier get burned to death or to see an evil mutant riddled with bullets. But if you can understand where they are coming from and know that they all feel like they are doing the right thing, then these deaths become tragedies unto themselves. Clint Eastwood showed the moviegoing world how powerful that this could be in Unforgiven and I think Ratner must have been taking notes. Good for him!

For those interested in the new castings (for Juggernaut, Hank McCoy, Angel, Callisto, etc.), they are a bit of a mixed bag. But they are all (save for Hank) minor additions to the story. Thankfully, however, casting Kelsey Grammer in that role was nothing short of inspired.

Special effects? Off the charts, baby! Just the way I’d always envisioned them. There will be an Oscar for this crew, for sure. These MUST be seen on the big screen! I cannot stress this enough!

In trying to think of negatives for the movie, I cannot come up with much. I can nit-pick the way they’ve changed some of the things from the comics (such as the Dark Phoenix origin, the nature of Leech, combining Callisto and Caliban, the origin of Beast’s blue skin and fur, etc.), but none of these things detract from the movie experience. Some of these changes, such as the origin of Dark Phoenix, serve to help add some irony to the efforts of the X-Men and go to show how similar Xavier and Magneto are after all.

Personally, I plan on seeing it at least two more times in the theater. And I advise you all to see it as soon as possible. And you will DEFINITELY want to stay put in your seat until AFTER all the credits are done. Trust me on this one.

The trick to coming up with a premise for these haunted house movies is how do you come up with a plausible reason for several would-be victims to enter a house that no one in their right mind would go into for less than three Scooby-snacks. This one actually has some originality. Steven Price, played by Geoffrey Rush, is the owner of several terror based amusement parks and is an absolute master of using special effects to scare the hell out of his patrons. However, he hates his wife and she doesn’t seem too fond of him either. So when she comes up with an idea for her birthday party, he turns it around and into something twisted and scary.

The “house” is actually an old hospital for the criminally insane. The doctor went crazy back in the 1930’s and killed all of his patients. Their spirits are supposedly still there. The house has been recently refurbished and is rented to Price and his wife for their little party. The guest list gets twisted around, but the premise ends up being that anyone who stays thru the night and makes it out alive gets a million bucks.

What follows is typically haunted house horror movie fair. But it is done with some decent modern day effects, and there are some really nice twists along the way. This is one of those movies that tries to keep you guessing as to what’s real, and it does a decent job.

The stars of this movie are… Well, as The Rock says “IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT THEIR NAME IS!”. Let’s face it, there are no big name stars and no one is getting an Oscar off of this movie. It’s a booger movie, the star is the booger, in this case the house and it’s ghostly effects. My biggest fault with the movie is they included some decent babeage and kept them completely clothed the entire time. We do get some glimpses of tah tahs during some psychotic episodes, but nothing good.

I can’t say I would consider this movie scary, I don’t even remember jumping when they try to startle the audience. However, if the reaction of the girl in front of me was any indication at least some people will find this pretty intense. Only herself and whoever does her laundry will know for sure. This movie only rates two stars overall as this is one that can most certainly wait for video. However, if you’re in the mood for a good old fashioned booger movie this one fits the bill very nicely.

I actually enjoyed this movie more on DVD than I did at home. If nothing else it was certainly easier to hear the one-liners without a theater full of people laughing around you. I was also pleased with the extras included on the DVD, especially the production artwork for the characters and sets. If you’re a fan of the comic book, you’ll definitely want to check this disk out.