you certainly keep some strange company.

Date: Sunday 31st March
Film: X2 (2003)
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellan
Running time: 02 hours, 13 minutes
Rating: 8/10

A final film before The Luce heads out of London and we are back to the superheroes. After being disappointed by X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it was time to watch a film in which Wolverine shines, and there are a few more superheroes that we know well to back him up along the way.

Until First Class came along, X2 was, in my opinion, the best of the X-Men series. There was little in the way of character introduction, which with large ensembles can slow the film down a little, so this film feels like it moves a little quicker than the first movie in the series. Alongside the action, there is a little more exploration into the background of the characters, which makes the film, and the X-Men universe, seem a lot more well rounded.

All in, a great superhero action film.

Challenge day: 149
Challenge time: 12 days, 03 hours, 24 minutes
Challenge film total: 149

So this is the Hobbit.

Date: Sunday 30th December
Film: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellan and Richard Armitage
Running Time: 02 hours, 49 minutes
Rating: 8/10

I am not a Middle Earth fan. I tried reading the books and didn't enjoy them, I made an attempt to watch the LOTR trilogy that didn't go so well (it was New Year's Day, I'd just swum in a Welsh lake, I'm really not sure I was in the best place for anything that involved thinking), and I wasn't convinced that I wanted to see The Hobbit.

I'm not going to say I am completely converted, but I did really enjoy this film. There were aspects that didn't click with me - whilst the motion capture is amazing; the characters created using this are well defined and the texture is incredibly realistic; the (albeit rarely used) CGI effects struck me as a little basic and dated.

I am definitely Elf-ist, they aren't a massive feature of An Unexpected Journey, but when they did pop up I found myself getting a little distracted.

This is a well cast film, Martin Freeman plays the lead brilliantly and the dwarves do a great job of separating themselves as individual characters, a difficult task when there are 13 similarly dressed characters running around on screen.

We didn't see The Hobbit in higher frame rate, nor 3D and I'm glad we didn't. Some of the more fast moving  scenes would have been, I imagine, difficult to track.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised. I think I'll find myself back in Middle Earth again sometime soon.

Challenge day: 96
Challenge time: 05 days, 14 hours, 15 minutes
Challenge film total: 70