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 what order you should watch these movies. This seems to be particularly important with the Marvel movies and of even more importance with The Avenger movies. I have done my best to see The Avenger movies as they’ve been released, but there have been some that I have found to be terribly along the way, including Thor: The Dark World and Avengers: Age of Ultron. It certainly has not helped that Marvel characters who aren’t Avengers (like Spider-Man) are starting to show up 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 just 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, 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 those who write the comics (though they most likely already are), but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that money speaks.
Continue reading Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Category Archives: Year of Release
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Perhaps one of the most unconventional sequels of all-time, 10 Cloverfield Lane assembles almost no resemblance to 2008’s cult classic Cloverfield other than maybe its name. The movie takes place in rural Louisiana, while Cloverfield takes place in New York City. We never truly know how much 10 Cloverfield Lane is in the future, but we can assume it’s as soon as a couple of days and maybe as long as a couple of weeks. Cloverfield was a shaky camera-found footage film about aliens invading the city. 10 Cloverfield Lane is not that. It’s more like a spin-off than it is a sequel. An alien invasion is a possibility for how these characters find themselves. Still, it is just one of the possibilities described by Howard (John Goodman – Flight, Barton Fink), the film’s antagonist. Goodman might be better than he ever has been before. It certainly is his darker role and the first movie in many, many years (King Ralph anyone) in which he has played a starring role.
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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 held great interest to me in my younger days. I enjoyed movies like Independence Day, Deep Impact, Cloverfield while absolutely 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. But for every success like Deep Impact or Poseidon, there seem to be films like Twister or The Core that set the disaster genre back. So, honestly, when I see a preview for a new disaster movie, my first instinct is to believe that it will be absolutely terrible. If it’s got somewhat of a science-fiction element (like World War Z) or if it is based on a true story (The Impossible) AND it does well with the critics, it gets more of a benefit of the doubt. If it has neither of those things, it most likely will not. I thought of the latter when I saw the first series of trailers for director Brad Peyton (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) San Andreas.
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Man on the Moon (1999)
Though we primarily know him for his slapstick comedy (The Cable Guy, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Venture: Pet Detective), Jim Carrey has proved on numerous occasions that he can do very well what many other people in his genre cannot…he can give riveting and believable performances in both light-hearted and heavy dramas. He’s done it with The Truman Show (where he was spectacular and deserving of an Oscar nomination) as well as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And he does it with 1999’s Man on the Man that, with respect to The Truman Show, is his finest performance as an actor in any genre. Carrey’s biopic of Andy Kaufman is a movie that I’ve had on my list to see for years, but one that I never felt “in the mood” for. It’s not that I expected to be disappointed by it (with just a 63% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I knew this movie would be hit or miss for me). Instead, I just knew that it would be a different kind of movie and that, like many Jim Carrey movies, I’d have to be prepared for anything. I liked The Truman Show a lot and appreciated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But I’m not a Jim Carrey fan by any means. I don’t think he’s that funny at all. If he retired tomorrow and never acted again, I would be perfectly okay with that. With that said, I did enjoy Man on the Moon, and Carrey was the perfect person to portray Andy Kaufman. This was the role that Carrey was born to play. Regardless if you are a fan of his or not, I think this is a movie that everyone should see because you’ll learn so much about Kaufman. And if you’re like me, you probably have heard his name a lot but know very little about him.
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Escobar: Paradise Lost (2015)
I cannot help comparing Escobar: Paradise Lost to Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Beach. There were quite a few similarities and also quite a few differences. I’ll start with the differences first. Except for The Man in the Iron Mask (which wasn’t promoted as a blockbuster), The Beach was DiCaprio’s first marketed movie since Titanic. It had a massive promotional campaign and was expected to vault DiCaprio even further as Hollywood’s next leading man. I had huge hopes for The Beach and kind of liked it. Unfortunately, the movie got panned by audiences and critics alike. But before I get pounced on for enjoying it, please note that I saw this movie when I was about 24 years old. That is my defense. I cannot defend the actions where I have watched the movie about three times since then. But I like the idea of a paradise that’s too good to be true and a lead character who is suddenly so far over his head, he has no means of getting out. This was a similarity to the much less marketed Escobar: Paradise Lost, a movie that received mixed reviews but, for the most part, had as many people who didn’t like the film as it had people who liked it.
Continue reading Escobar: Paradise Lost (2015)