2009 (Gavin Hood) PG, 106 min
Starring: Danny Huston, Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber

The Fox marketing department seems to have come up with the clumsy title – X-Men Origins: Wolverine – and it’s oddly accurate. There really are three movies awkwardly duct-taped together in this spin-off to the successful X-Men films. The opening third offers the back-story for semi-feral, semi-immortal Logan (Hugh Jackman), who will become Wolverine. He and his Cain-like brother Victor (Liev Schreiber) are battling through the great wars of the last 200 years. The slyly villainous Major Stryker (Danny Huston, looking more and more like his Dad, John) then recruits the brothers into a black-ops team of mutants. The final third offers another X-Men sequel, as Wolverine rescues a group of young mutants from Stryker and settles some scores. The movie works best in the middle, when Logan finds domestic bliss, hiding from his past in the Rockies with a native Indian schoolteacher, who names him Wolverine. The love story and more casual pace of this section doesn't get in the way of Jackman's natural charisma, nor do his clothes, either. Most of the movie’s eye-candy is under-dressed, perspiring and male. It's rare to see a summer blockbuster almost exclusively featuring male pulchritude. So, feast your eyes, ladies, while you can. There won't be much to see in Transformers.