Geek Stuff

X-Men: The Last Stand is way better than you think

June 4, 2015 2 Comments

I’m re-watching all the X movies in chronological order, but all you need to know is that I am going to talk about this movie: X-Men: The Last Stand Sometimes when you revisit a bunch of stuff you haven’t seen in a while in a “re-examination” kind of way, your eyes are opened to things you hadn’t seen before and your opinion changes. Other times, your existing views end up being reinforced with even greater strength. When it comes to X-Men: The Last Stand, it’s the latter — and that seems to put me in the minority The movie is often trashed, but I feel like it’s trashed for the wrong reasons. Ardent fans hate it because it didn’t do Dark Phoenix right, because of…
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X2: X-Men United is as good as you remember

June 3, 2015 2 Comments

I probably made some post somewhere saying that I’m watching all the X-Men movies in chronological order and will comment and stuff and whatever and stuff. True story! Though don’t expect in-depth reviews or commentary, because that’s not what I’m doing here. Also, these assume you know the movies well, so I don’t bother with a summary or synopsis or whatever, and here is more: X2: X-Men United This is more like it! X2 is everything the first movie is not. It’s smarter, it’s more finely honed, it’s more exciting, it has more emotion, it has a better narrative, better use of powers, better setpieces, and so on. Maddeningly, X2’s strength is highly reliant on the first movie, so you kind of HAVE to take…
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X-Men, the movie that started it all (but that isn’t as good as you think)

June 2, 2015 2 Comments

Somewhere I posted about the fact that over the next seven days I am posting about the X-Men movies, and am doing so in chronological order rather than release order. Look for that, then read: X-Men (aka the first one) While there are arguably a few other contenders, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the 2000 film X-Men ushered in the modern era of superhero movies. Without it, we wouldn’t have flicks like the Avengers. So from an historical perspective, it’s a noteworthy film in the genre. It’s a genuine LANDMARK for the genre, and for that it deserves credit and respect. From an entertainment perspective, on the other hand, it’s looking a bit sluggish these days. Though there are some excellent initial…
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X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and why it’s worse than bad parking

June 1, 2015 0 Comments

In some post I can’t be bothered to link to, I pointed out that all week I am going to be re-watching and reviewing the X-Movies, so now you know what this is and here we go. Oh, and this assumes you have seen them before, so SPOILERS. Oh 2, I’m going to breeze through this one, especially since it sucks: X-Men Origins: Wolverine My enduring memory of this was pretty bad, so I was interested to see if perhaps I was being a little unfair and if memory and reality would end up being in conflict. Nope. It really is as a bad as I remembered. I don’t even know where to begin. Even if you ignore the cringe-inducing dialogue, terrible story and ham-fisted…
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X-Men: First Class, and it is good (not great) but very. Good.

May 31, 2015 0 Comments

My X marathon begins! And for what it’s worth, I’m starting pretty shallow, with some lightweight comments and such. Totally mailing it in for the first few movies. The reason is because I am. Seriously. Ripping this one out because in truth what people REALLY want is to know why I think you’re dumb for insulting The Last Stand. So to get the obvious stuff out of the way, First Class is close to impeccable. Marred only by writing that is too wink wink nudge nudge, it’s got pretty much everything you want from a good mutant movie. Pathos. Humanity. Thrilling action. Creative use of powers (the most creative of all seven X flicks, actually). A relatively smart plot. An awesome finale. Etc. Plus it…
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