After the less than spectacular performances of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the wicked snarl of continuity only worsened by X-Men: First Class, it’s impressive that they’re still putting out X-Men movies. Honestly, I’ve enjoyed all of them well enough1, but it’s still a bit strange.
There’s a saying in science fiction: you get one free pass; one thing that you’re allowed to just let the audience assume. This could be the existence of the warp drive / replicators in Star Trek or the force in Star Wars.
I’ve heard it said that R.I.P.D is essentially Men in Black with undead instead of aliens. I can see where they’re coming from, but there’s a decent bit that doesn’t quite match up.
Pacific Rim is one heck of a movie. Just based on the trailers, we were promised giant robots, bigger monsters, rocket powered punches, and a ship turned sword. We got all of that and more in just over two hours of the best action movie I’ve seen in rather a while.
All together, the trailers (and the associated hype) were a lot to live up to. So how did it turn out?
Dang.
I went to see Man of Steel mostly because I knew it’s on the way out of theaters. What I really want to see is Pacific Rim, but I feel like I have a few weeks for that.
Well, I’m glad I did. Man of Steel is well worth the price of admission and one of the few movies that is definitely worth seeing on a big screen. Just the sheer viseral impact of watching the Kryptonians toss each other into (and through) building after building, throwing about train engines as if they weighed nothing… It felt a little surreal at times–like that’s just *not *how momentum is supposed to work–but I think that actually helped the illusion. Even more than with the Hulk or with Thor; these felt like gods among men.
I’ll just cut right to the chase: if you liked the first Despicable Me, you’ll almost surely like this one just as well. Heck, you might even like it a bit more.
World War Z is a pretty awesome book, showing the aftermath of a decade long zombie war, accounting for the various changes (religious, political, and otherwise) that such an event would bring about. If you haven’t read it (and aren’t completely anti-zombie), I can’t recommend it enough. It’s really a neat book.
World War Z, on the other hand, is a pretty good film and has next to nothing to do with the book–other than the title and the semi-eponymous zombie threat.
If you read nothing else here, just know this: just forget about the book for a few hours. It will make the movie that much better.
Given how relatively few films they’ve put out, it’s fairly impressive how Pixar has already shown us that they know how to do a sequel well (Toy Story 2/3) and they’ve found out how to do it now quite so well (Cars 2). So how does Monsters University do?
A few years ago, I decided that I was doing myself a disservice as a self-identified geek1: of Star Trek, I’d only seen Voyager and a few of the movies. Of course I had to remedy that fact. 😄
Over the course of a summer, I watched it all2. 10 movies. 3 seasons of The Original Series; 7 seasons each of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager3; and finally the 4 seasons of Enterprise. Yet, I still don’t consider myself a Trekkie (or a Trekker).
I guess my entire point is that I do have at least a bit of a leg to stand on when talking about the new Star Trek movies. That being said, feel free to ignore me. 😄 Everyone has their own opinion and I’ve certainly seen the entire spectrum when it comes to this movie…
Pain & Gain is a pretty good example of the American Dream gone wrong…