Interesting places for Christian ideology. *minor spoilers
Added 10/25/2009
The film itself was pretty good. Though I sincerely hope they finish the story of the series with a third movie.
But, on a spiritual note, this was an interesting idea.
Scully, who is now working in a hospital, is contacted by the FBI in hopes that she can help them find Agent Mulder, as they need his help on a case involving a missing agent.
Enter Father Joseph Crissman, played here by the wonderful Billy Connolly (Boondock Saints, The Last Samurai), is a disgraced former Catholic priest who left the church because he was caught performing pedophilac acts with choirboys. It seems that Father Joseph has been receiving visions from God about the whereabouts of the missing agent.
Mulder, of course, looks at this with the usual cynicism he has for so-called psychics. Scully, who was raised Catholic, refuses to believe that God would send visions to someone who had done something so horrible and had disgraced the Church in the process.
But eventually both are convinced as to the legitimacy of Father Joseph's visions.
This was wonderfully done, especially when it is revealed that the former priest has more of a connection with this case then he realizes.
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Not what you are expecting if you are an X-Phile
Added 10/24/2009
I am an old school X-phile. I liked the alien story-arc (even if it was played out repeatedly, like Scully always arriving seconds later after something cool happened to Mulder), but what really drew me to the series was the "freak of the week" (FOTW) episodes like "Darkness Falls" and "Humbug". Each one was different and exciting.
This movie is a pretty decent attempt at recapturing this concept. I'm not sure if they wanted to do a FOTW to gauge public response to a series of X-Files movies or they just wanted to dig up the series and see if it still had any life in it for a future television project. It did a great job of dragging out that old Mulder-Scully chemistry, that intellectual reparte that we all had known and loved about the original series.
While this movie DOES close some story-lines (the whereabouts of their son, what they were up to after the series ended, etc.), it opens new questions, and most certainly to X File fans: Will they finish the Alien-insurrection Story?
Main drawback: I didn't care for either Xibit or Amanda Peet's characters. It's not a shot against either as an actor, but the character writing was extremely contrived and telegraphed: you could see that they were trying to fit into the X Files story instead of just being FBI agents on an investigation. This could have been solved by one character, not two, filling in the gaps. This would have been a great place to plug in Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) and make him a central character (this would have been hugely satisfying).
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Zzzzzzzzzz
Added 10/17/2009
This was a mediocre, forgettable episode, nothing more. If it's going to be a completely stand-alone story, I think it should be a bigger, much better story than what this was. I loved the X-Files till Mulder left, I even liked the first movie quite a bit. The relationship stuff is nice, and interesting, but the main story itself is just a total dud.
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I am so glad I didn't pay to see this in theatres. It was a waste of time watching it free. This was the dummest movie. To me, it had nothing to do with X-Files, it just had the same main characters. The first movie was awesome. Do not buy this. Save your money.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Not bad but ultimately pointless
Added 10/5/2009
The good news is that the government conspiracy that got so silly the last two season is gone, as is Doggett and super soldiers. The conspiracy got so mangled and convoluted that it hurt the series. In fact, if the X-files had ended with the beautiful and cathartic "Closure" in season 7(the last good thing Carter wrote), this movie might have been amazing. Only 3 episodes that season after closure aired were any good, and maybe 3 more the next two seasons were worth anything.
If only Mulder hadn't "died" which killed the series forever... That episode should have been titled Jump the Shark, but not the shameful episode that did have that name the next season.
The bad news is Chris Carter(along with the equally uneven Frank Spotnitz) wrote this. His writing output for season 8 and 9 as well as Millennium season 3 was for the most part substandard and this movie continues that tradition. Yes, he created a great series, but unlike a Matt Groening, Chris Carter doesn't know when to butt out and let real writers have at it. I think of Chris Carter somewhat like a Robert Jordan, both created a very interesting premise, and both somehow did everything they could to ruin it.
Another amazing fact to note, neither Mulder nor Scully made an appearance in the third biggest role of the series: the hospital bed. Granted, it made a cameo, but it was not the same without Mulder or Scully laying in it. Seriously, the hospital bed with one of the two major characters in it, made more appearances than the cancer man, skinner, or krycek combined.
What was the purpose of the side story with the sick boy? Is Scully working for the aliens by propping up the number of slaves? It would seem the humane thing to do would be to let him die.
It is not that this is a terrible movie, it is that it is a below average episode. While I was watching this, I couldn't help but start wishing that Darin Morgan had written the movie instead. After all, the best, most creative, most interesting, most engaging, and most applauded episodes were written by Mr. Morgan, not Chris Carter. In fact the only marginal episode Morgan wrote was the Jose Chung episode for Millennium(it wasn't bad, it just didn't fit into the much darker Millennium series). If there are going to be any more non-conspiracy movies, please enlist Morgan to write it.
If you are a fan, you probably have already watched it, but I can't imagine such a lackluster effort convincing newcomers to go back and watch the series nor even understand the issues between Mulder, Scully and the FBI. It added nothing to the series, revealed nothing new, presenting nothing interesting, so what is the point of this?
This movie is really a 2 star movie when judged as a episode, maybe 4 stars when judged against the crap Hollywood has been churning out the past few years, so it gets a three. It was nice to see Mulder and Scully together again and that is worth a star.
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Interesting places for Christian ideology. *minor spoilers
Added 10/25/2009
The film itself was pretty good. Though I sincerely hope they finish the story of the series with a third movie.
But, on a spiritual note, this was an interesting idea.
Scully, who is now working in a hospital, is contacted by the FBI in hopes that she can help them find Agent Mulder, as they need his help on a case involving a missing agent.
Enter Father Joseph Crissman, played here by the wonderful Billy Connolly (Boondock Saints, The Last Samurai), is a disgraced former Catholic priest who left the church because he was caught performing pedophilac acts with choirboys. It seems that Father Joseph has been receiving visions from God about the whereabouts of the missing agent.
Mulder, of course, looks at this with the usual cynicism he has for so-called psychics. Scully, who was raised Catholic, refuses to believe that God would send visions to someone who had done something so horrible and had disgraced the Church in the process.
But eventually both are convinced as to the legitimacy of Father Joseph's visions.
This was wonderfully done, especially when it is revealed that the former priest has more of a connection with this case then he realizes.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Not what you are expecting if you are an X-Phile
Added 10/24/2009
I am an old school X-phile. I liked the alien story-arc (even if it was played out repeatedly, like Scully always arriving seconds later after something cool happened to Mulder), but what really drew me to the series was the "freak of the week" (FOTW) episodes like "Darkness Falls" and "Humbug". Each one was different and exciting.
This movie is a pretty decent attempt at recapturing this concept. I'm not sure if they wanted to do a FOTW to gauge public response to a series of X-Files movies or they just wanted to dig up the series and see if it still had any life in it for a future television project. It did a great job of dragging out that old Mulder-Scully chemistry, that intellectual reparte that we all had known and loved about the original series.
While this movie DOES close some story-lines (the whereabouts of their son, what they were up to after the series ended, etc.), it opens new questions, and most certainly to X File fans: Will they finish the Alien-insurrection Story?
Main drawback: I didn't care for either Xibit or Amanda Peet's characters. It's not a shot against either as an actor, but the character writing was extremely contrived and telegraphed: you could see that they were trying to fit into the X Files story instead of just being FBI agents on an investigation. This could have been solved by one character, not two, filling in the gaps. This would have been a great place to plug in Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) and make him a central character (this would have been hugely satisfying).
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Zzzzzzzzzz
Added 10/17/2009
This was a mediocre, forgettable episode, nothing more. If it's going to be a completely stand-alone story, I think it should be a bigger, much better story than what this was. I loved the X-Files till Mulder left, I even liked the first movie quite a bit. The relationship stuff is nice, and interesting, but the main story itself is just a total dud.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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