Tag Archive: movie reviews

Why I think Jurassic World stunk (and you should, too)

October 27, 2015 3 Comments

It was kind of hard to escape Jurassic World this summer. The fourth movie in the Jurassic Park series (though it conveniently ignored the first two sequels), it was a HUGE smash hit, raking in $1.6 billion worldwide and jumping to the #3 spot for all time box office. Even adjusted for inflation, it sits at #23 for all time box office. Not too shabby. What was shabby was this film. And I’m going to tell you why. On paper, I should have fallen head over heels for it. I LOVE dinosaurs. I LOVE dinosaur movies. I LOVE the Jurassic Park series, both books and movies, even the subpar installments like Jurassic Park 3. Big creatures destroying stuff? Loads of spectacle? A non-stop adventure filled…
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Films

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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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Films, Geek Stuff

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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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Films, Geek Stuff

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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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Films, Geek Stuff

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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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Films, Geek Stuff

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