Since we can't let a weekend pass without seeing a movie, Dan and I went to see The Wolverine on our Big Bear vacation.

I'm not a big fan of the Marvel movies, with the exception being the X-Men franchise. I've loved all of the X-Men movies, except X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It was lacking. So, it was with a dose of skepticism and a bit of hopefulness that I went to see The Wolverine.

The Wolverine was good, really good. Admittedly, the movie was stronger in the first half, but even when it began to crumble in the last thirty-minutes, it was still held my interest.

My primary enjoyment of the film stemmed from the strong characters. Unlike other comic based movies, the villains were not the most intriguing characters. In fact, the villains in The Wolverine, were relatively weak and uninteresting, which oddly did not diminish my enjoyment of the film.

Huge Jackman is perfectly cast as Logan, the Wolverine, bringing a good dose of humor to off-set the angst and anger of his character. As much as I love Jackman, this movie is helped by the fact that it's not his sole responsibility to carry the film. The character is more interesting to watch when he is reacting to situations, rather than allowed to wallow or brood.

I really enjoyed the interplay between Logan and the two female leads, Mariko (Tao Okamoto) and Yukio (Rila Fukushima). Mariko is the granddaughter of an extremely wealthy Japanese business man, Yashida, whom Logan saved from death during WW2. As a child, Yukio was informally adopted by the wealthy family to be a playmate and sister for Mariko. As an adult Yukio is almost treated like staff and has been sent by a dying Yashida to track down Logan in North America and bring him to Tokyo for a business proposition.

The best thing about the triangle of Logan/Mariko/Yukio, is it isn't one. So easily, this could have turned into a love triangle with jealous women. I loved that both women are independent and strong. They don't fight with each other. Their friendship and sister bond prevails throughout and they are not in conflict. Both women kick-ass in the movie and sometimes they are the ones doing the rescuing.

Although the movie is called The Wolverine, it really has three strong leads rather than a single protagonist. The women are just as vital as Logan and often more interesting, as he has entered their world. A lot of the entertainment is derived from watching Logan figure out his new environment. I love that the story is set in Japan.

The pacing is quick and the movie is filled with loads of great fight sequences. In particular, there is a very intense fight that takes place on top of a speeding bullet train.

If you're not familiar with the X-Men franchise, you might be a bit confused with elements of the story. The story is written with the assumption that you have seen the other movies and in particular, there are multiple dream sequences with a character that will only make sense if you have seen the other films.

TIP- Make sure to stay for the end credits!

The Wolverine is a solid summer-release type of movie and highly entertaining. It's to splurge and see on the big screen.

SPOILER ALERT- SPOILER ALERT- SPOILER ALERT

The only part of the movie that really bothered me was when Yashida was in the robot. Are you kidding??? It was eye-roll inducing and so cheesy. I'm not sure how I would have handled the reveal, but a robot was not the way to go. It was that one element in the movie that just crossed the line.

Originally, we wanted to celebrate Dan's 40th in Hawaii, but due to lack of vacation time, we had to pick something a bit more local. Dan loves Big Bear, so we booked up a three day weekend with tons of activities.

Unlike Lake Arrowhead, which has the very lovely Lake Arrowhead Resort and Spa, we couldn't immediately pin-point the nicest resort in Big Bear. Although filled with beautiful homes and amazing restaurants, Big Bear seems to have a lack of luxury resorts. After many hours of internet research and recommendations from friends, we picked the NorthWoods Resort as our home for the weekend.

We were initially put off by the lack of a lake view, but what NorthWoods lacks in view, it makes up for in proximity to the village. This is the place to stay if you want the ability to walk to great restaurants and more importantly drink without having to worry about choosing a designated driver! The walk-ability factor was huge to our enjoyment of the weekend.

The decor in the hotel is rustic, cozy and cute. I had an great initial impression with the lobby and while waiting to check-in, I overheard a very enthusiastic front desk clerk giving out tips to another couple regarding local hiking trails. The staff was wonderful at NorthWoods, quick to make suggestions and generally ready to see that our needs were met.

We arrived very early on a Saturday morning and the early check-in fee was only ten dollars. Most things in Big Bear are far less expensive than in Los Angeles, so we spent the whole weekend suffering from reverse sticker shock.

Here are some of my NorthWoods first impression pictures.

Our room had cute woodsy decor touches, like towel racks that looked like tree branches. As far as hotels go it fit our basic needs. The room had standard amenities (coffee/hairdryer/iron/nice toiletries) and was roomy.

NorthWoods definitely had some negatives. The walls were paper-thin. We heard every bit of the conversations going on in the rooms surrounding us. The bed wasn't very comfortable, it was springy. The television wasn't in widescreen and as we were watching the news, the newscaster was often only on half on the screen. It was actually kind of funny. The biggest let-down was the pool, which was small and located in the parking lot. We didn't even bother to use it.

As I previously mentioned, NorthWoods' great location is what makes this resort a stand-out. We will likely return here to take advantage of its proximity. Minutes after dumping our luggage off in our room, we walked to the marina for our pontoon boat rental.

In summer, the marina books up their rental equipment very quickly. We reserved our two-hour pontoon boat ride three weeks in advance, but all of the people that were trying to book same-day or same-weekend rentals, were being told that they were out of luck. Book early!

As part of their contribution to Dan's birthday weekend, his parents paid for the boat trip. Thanks Jan and Dave! We had gone on a shorter pontoon trip when they visited us last September and it was something that Dan had wanted to do again.

I had packed a picnic for the boat, but unfortunately I had forgotten it in the car. The marina has a small selection of snacks, so we bought a bag of M&M's and bottled water.

We saw a funny little boat in the marina. It was so low in the water, that it looked like it was sinking.

Also near the marina was the Action Aqua Flight. It's a new thing that the Action Tour Company is offering this summer. It looked potentially fun, but also really hard to do. I'm not sure that I would want to get into the icy lake water to try it out!

Action Aqua Flight

It was an overcast, chilly morning on the lake. We found a small patch of sun on one side of the lake and joined a ton of other boats that were also taking advantage of the warmth.

Friday night had been a late evening spent kicking off Dan's birthday weekend with a few friends and we were running on empty having only gotten a fews hours of sleep before driving up the mountain. We parked the boat in the sun and took a much needed nap.

Dan took this beautiful panorama picture of the lake.

Sooner than we would have liked, our two hour rental was nearly finished and we had to head back towards the marina, through the cold part of the lake. We saw the Time Bandit pirate ship, something that we want to do on our next Big Bear trip!

For dinner, we walked to the village and found an amazing Mexican restaurant called El Jacalito Grill. The place was packed, but we managed to snag a high-top in the bar. I previously mentioned the stick-shock in Big Bear for those of us visiting from Los Angeles. El Jacalito was ridiculously inexpensive. We each had a large Coronarita (for the uninitiated- bottles of Corona in a Margarita).

Since it's his birthday, Dan is allowed to steal my drink.

We shared our main course, which was an enormous shredded beef burrito. The burritos are bigger than the ones at Chipolte. We left full and happy that we had the foresight to share. El Jacalito also has a salsa bar to accompany the tortilla chips, which was a fun touch. The total for our bill was around twenty dollars. Amazing!

Another Big Bear Village value is the cinema. It's a small four screen theater and anyone who lives in a big city will feel like this is a flash back to the eighties. It's older. That being said, we saw The Wolverine on opening weekend during peak movie times and it was only eight dollars a ticket. That's cheaper than the matinee at our local theaters. We joked (half-joked) about driving up to Big Bear just to spend a day watching movies to save money on our cinema habit. What did I think of The Wolverine? Stay tuned for a review coming at the end of the week.

With the exception of bars, Big Bear is a town that shuts down early. It was eerily quiet walking back to our hotel after the movie, around nine-thirty. We ended our night with Irish Coffees at the bar in NorthWoods, Stillwells.

Stillwells is a great addition to NorthWoods. It fits in with the rustic decor and the bar had a warm vibe. I really liked the bartender, who was from England and was chatting with us. NorthWoods really had great staff, everyone from check-in to cleaning staff to the bartenders, were very friendly. Again, we marveled at the low drink prices.

We called it an early night and headed to bed to wake up for Dan's Birthday and morning Segway tour!

Movie Review- The Wolverine

Dan's 40th Birthday Big Bear Weekend- Day One