Last movie you watched......

Watched "The Wolverine" tonight and it was pretty mundane. I think I'm just not a fan of when an established character spends a large chunk of the film without powers or out of character. I hated when "The Avengers" made Hawkeye bad for 3/4 of the movie, I hated when "Toy Story 3" made Buzz Lightyear bad and/or Spanish for 3/4 of the movie, and I hated when Superman spent 3/4 of Superman 3 drunk.

Show me Iron Man being Iron Man, Thor being Thor and Wolverine being Wolverine. When these guys spend the majority of their screen time without their powers, I find it excruciatingly dull.

The end credits scene, however, was fantastic and has me pumped up for "X-Men: Days of Future Past."

 

"Once Upon a Time in the West."

Wow. First time I'd seen the classic. Incredible. 2:45, but what, 14 pages of dialogue?

Wonder if that kind of movie could be successful today.

 

I actually rated 12 Years as the No. 2 movie of 2013 behind Dallas Buyers Club and had Gravity at 5 behind Philomena and American Hustle. (Wolf of Wall Street was 9 of 9). Don't get me wrong - all were really good movies. Most were great (Wolf was just good). But that's the beauty - we don't have to agree - and we can still believe that L.A. Confidential is better than Titanic.
That said, none of those movies achieve the awesomeness of Tank Girl or Biodome. haha

 

Greatest movie ever made in my opinion.

 

No Country For Old Men was pretty sparse for the first 20 minutes and did very well. I think you can still do it. Maybe not 2001 or OUTITW sparse, but people still appreciate it if done well.

 

Watched District 9 again today and I realized we're two years overdue for the sequel. District 9, which I love, came out in 2009. The return was supposed to be three years later. We need a damn sequel!

 

It's such a good movie. Really well done. It's a great example of using CGI to support a film, rather than just using CGI for the sake of it.

 

Hawkeye really wasn't established in the Marvel movie universe before Avengers, but your point is well taken.

I think those types of stories can be good if they are done well. The comics have done stories with Wolverine having his healing factor taken away or greatly diminished. They even had his Adamantium removed.

The latter led to some very good stories. The character currently is without his healing factor in the comics, which is leading up to him being killed later this year (Marvel is already promoting it). The problem is the current Wolverine stories suck. Not because he doesn't have his healing factor, but because the writing sucks.

 

Well, that was kinda the theater version, too. Word is Scorsese was trying to cut a few minutes more from it and just ran out of time.

 

Superman wasn't evil, he was just like any other drunken asshole father.

 

Rapture-Palooza

I don't have the good sense to avoid bad movies. I really can't help it if one of my favorite actors or actresses are in it. This explains why I saw "3000 Miles to Graceland." So ... you know, Anna Kendrick made me watch this awful movie. Sure, a few parts were funny, but not because they were funny but because I was thinking about how they would piss off some of my uber-religious friends. But the film is so over the top, it shouldn't really offend anyone. I rank it as "so bad it's good" only because of the lovely Ms. Kendrick.

 

I'm with you on that, OOP. It's just very difficult to do them well enough to be interesting. At least with the Wolverine comics, they're building to his death, so I get it. Too often, as in The Wolverine movie, the writers take a character's power away because they can't think of any way to give a real sense the character is in danger. Lazy writing.

FWIW, I've never really read Wolverine as an "invincible" character (as he was basically presented in this movie). He has amazing healing powers, but I always kind of took it that, if you did enough damage and did it quickly enough, the potential for his death was there. Maybe I was wrong, but that's always how I viewed him.