Captain America: Civil War is perhaps the greatest superhero movie that Christopher Nolan has not directed. My two favorite superhero movies (The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises) belong to him. As of this post, my third favorite is a toss-up between Batman Begins, Iron Man, and Captain America: Civil War. Others (such as The Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, etc.) are up there, but there is clearly a distinction between the top 3 or 4 and all of the others. I hope superhero movies continue to improve, but unfortunately, we get 3 to 4 bad ones for every good one. So when we get a film like Captain America: Civil War, it’s important to take pause, see it, praise it, and encourage more movies like it because we know that poor movies will continue to be made because all of them seem to gross over $100 million easily. And the reason they do is our fault. We continue to see these terrible movies. But that is a different story for a different day.
Category Archives: Adventure
A Walk in the Woods (2015)
A Walk in the Woods, the 2015 comedy-drama that I thought would be a throwaway movie I originally only watched so that I could add it to my list, turned out to be one of the year’s biggest surprises. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’d be a fool to think that a year from now, I’d remember anything from this movie or that I’ll ever watch this movie again. But for two hours on a Tuesday night in the middle of April, it was a refreshing escape from reality, and the movie had me grinning from ear to ear from the first scene until the last. Also, if Robert Redford (The Horse Whisperer, All is Lost) or Nick Nolte (The Prince of Tides, Warrior) called it a career today, and this was either of their last movies, that would be okay.
Continue reading A Walk in the Woods (2015)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
In a day and age where it seems like a new superhero movie is getting released every other week, it is hard for an average mainstream moviegoer to know which ones are worth watching, which ones to skip, and in what order you should watch these movies. This is particularly important with the Marvel movies and even more important with The Avenger movies. I have done my best to see The Avengers movies as they’ve been released, but I haven’t always been successful. It certainly has not helped that Marvel characters who aren’t Avengers (like Spider-Man) are starting to appear in movies featuring The Avengers. It’s only a matter of time before all of these other Marvel characters (Ant-Man, Deadpool, etc.) start appearing in each newly released movie. At that time, it might be time to give up. Don’t even get me started about the future when either Marvel or DC buys the other out, and we get characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Thor, Captain America, Flash, Wonder Woman, The Green Lantern, Hulk, etc., all end up in the same movie. It won’t occur for a while, but when this market becomes stale many years from now, there will be too much money sitting on the table not to do it. Of course, the purists will also be upset by those who write the comics (though they most likely already are), but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that money speaks.
San Andreas (2015)
Not being a guy who is really into the disaster film genre anymore (I turned off movies like The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 before I was even a third of the way in), I was more than tentative to give San Andreas a chance. It’s a genre that once interested me in my younger days. I enjoyed movies like Independence Day, Deep Impact, Cloverfield while loving Titanic (my favorite movie of 1997), The Impossible (my favorite movie of 1992), World War Z (my second favorite movie of 2013), I Am Legend (my second favorite movie of 2007), War of the Worlds, The Perfect Storm and, shamefully, Armageddon.
The Revenant (2015)
Why not save the best for last? It doesn’t always work out that way, but The Revenant was the final movie released in 2015. In fact, except in a few select theaters in a few select cities, you couldn’t see the film until January 7th. Was it worth the wait? It was. We’ve seen trailers for months building this movie up. Each time I saw a preview, I couldn’t help but get excited. This may have been my most anticipated movie since Shutter Island, and with that movie, I had reason to be wary because it was a 2010 movie released in February. You usually don’t get the best films of the year released that early in the year.