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X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) --> The final chapter of the X-men franchise has mutant pitted against mutant with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) emerges from the waters that supposedly killed her transformed into the elemental and destructive Phoenix. She kills her lover Scott Summers (James Marsden) and her mentor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). Magneto (Ian McKellen) convinces her to join his rebellion and it takes the love of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and his adamantium claws to finally stop her destructive behaviour.

We are also introduced to new mutants Angel (Ben Foster), Beast (Kelsey Grammer) and Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones). It's an exciting climax to the best comic book franchise put to film. Bret Ratner adds to his credentials as a good director of action flicks adding X-Men: The Last Stand to his work on the Jackie Chan Rush Hour movies.


Full Spectrum Staff

Capote (2005) --> Philip Seymour Hoffman does a brilliant job as the enigmatic Truman Capote in this Bennett Miller film. Capote invented the non-fiction novel with his book In Cold Blood and the film is a fictional account of the circumstances surrounding the book's creation. It especially focuses on Capote's close relationship with Perry Smith, one of the two Kansas family murderers, that is the book's main subject. The most intriguing part of the film was Capote's conflicting feelings between caring for Smith as a friend and wanting his execution to arrive so Capote can finish his book.


Full Spectrum Staff

The War Within (2005) --> Joseph Castelo directs this film about a Pakistani terrorist who blows up Grand Central Station. Castelo takes us through the process of what makes a man become a terrorist willing to commit mass-murder in the name of Allah. It is both believable and frightening. Castelo mostly stays away from preaching and because the film is not a 90 minute lesson in geo-political ethics, it has an authentically human touch.

What was the most interesting about the film was not the tension leading up to the suicide bombing but the results to the family who were friends of the killer. Even though they called police and informed them of the plot, the police arrested the father as a suspected participant. That scene was the most telling in this film and if Castelo is right in its depiction, it is a scary world for Americans of Mid-Eastern and Central Asian decent.


Scott D. Brown

Any Which Way You Can (1980) --> The sequel to Every Which Way but Loose has Clint Eastwood come back as Philo Beddoe, a car repair business owner/bare-knuckled fighter, who is reunited with the woman who spurned him in the first movie, Lynn Halsey-Taylor (Sondra Locke). The Black Widow Motorcycle gang returns in its bumbling glory and Clyde the orangutan shows a expertise in "right-turns." The main plot involves the mafia forcing Beddoe to fight a ringer for heavy sums of money.


Full Spectrum Staff

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