Terminator Salvation

A reasonable furthering of the franchise. Every plot twist was predictable far in advance, and the writers didn't have the strength to keep the references to and quotes of the original Terminator script to only one tasteful instance, but the story overall worked and paced well between action, suspense and reflection. Sam Worthington's accent was variable as always, Christian Bale's personality was his stock gravelly hard-man, but Anton Yelchin's Kyle Reese and Moon Bloodgood's (what a name) original character Blair found a niche of realism and purpose. The line-less child character of Star might as well have been an inanimate object - I'm sure the young actor did a good job but her presence was purely a tool of the script.

The Wolverine

Stretching it a bit.

The barely-present romantic subplot was completely pointless and transparently tacked-on, the samurai/Yakuza/'disrespect' Japanese setting felt uncomfortably stereotypical, and the secondary villain had no backstory whatsoever. Jackman is once again the perfect Wolverine (the opening sequence in the bar was done well), physically (holy Christ) and tonally, but the film feels like a tedious attempt to wring a higher movie count out of the character. About the only useful transformation as a result is showing Logan's turmoil over Jean's fate - something that could have been accomplished in a flashback or vignette as part of the next X-Men story.