I can feel you thinking.

Next in the series of movie reviews of films past well past their sell date: The X-Files : I Want to Believe (extended vers., to be specific)….

On the positive

• This was, at heart, good thriller that wove together some tried-and-true genre story lines (mad doctors, organ theft, creepy monster trucks, women as victims...) and created something genuinely creepy. Also: two-headed dogs.

• The show theme popping up as Scully and Mulder viewed portraits of G.W. Bush and J. E. Hoover had me laughing for a good five minutes.

• Scully, Scully, Scully – Sue me, but this whole franchise would be nothing without Gillian Anderson and Dana Scully. From her astounding beauty to her totally enthralling performance, she holds this whole cabal together. The same can’t be said for Duchovny/Mulder; he is the impetus, but she is the motor that moves the stories along. She is the soul. She is also the baddest of bad-asses. I love love LOVE that she is the one who saves Mulder and the victim, with a block of wood and a scalpel, respectively. Do not fuck with Dana Scully. Woman is STEELY. See her BISH PLEEZE glare at the young Fed who puts the flirt on Fox:
  

• ‘Shipper fodder – No cock-blocking bees in this one! They’re living together and smooching just like normal people! And they even kill the absurdly-named youngin* who ever-so-slightly puts the moves on Mulder! They even give the slash-fic writers a bone showing Skinner warming up Mulder in his arms! Ah, sweet, sweet bureaucratic tenderness…. On a more serious note, I think what we see here is that Mulder and Scully are, in fact, quite alike, albeit with different obsessions. Both are tenacious, intelligent, passionate, and so full of integrity you think their hearts will explode from their righteousness. And these similarities are what pull them apart so often, and then inevitably together. Duchovny and Anderson still have wonderful chemistry, and bring out the realities of a long, loving, but frustrating relationship.

• Billy Connolly is always a treat.

• Nicki Aycox looks much better without the bleach-blonde crop. And gives a much better performance without the trite villain dialogue.

• Callum Keith Rennie is the Canadian Dean Winters. Ruggedly handsome and versatile. Can fall into any sort of role, big or small, good or evil. His only misstep was that awful, awful Chicago accent he put on in Due South. Leoben totally makes up for it.

On the nitpicky

• Where did Sculder live? Virginia? And if so, why would it be so hard for the FBI to find Fox if he’s living so close to DC?

• And why did they give place/timestamps for the casework but not the personal?

• When did Scully become a surgeon? Autopsy is one thing, surgery very much another.

• And Frankenstein’s Altar Boy – they were giving him a woman’s body? He couldn’t have gotten a regular sex change operation? What the hell else was wrong with him?

• And does Google really need product placement at this point?

Overall, quite enjoyable and I would not frown upon a third movie...



* Dakota Whitley, WTF? And her fall was quite Hitchcockian.