Name: heybuddymovies
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Every once and awhile I will give into my wife’s request to watch some girlie movie she wants me to watch. Every single Valentine’s Day from the time we first started dating, has been spent watching some eye gougingly bad movie that she enjoys and I can’t stand. Often times it is preceded by her telling me that she thinks I’ll like it…she has been wrong every time. This is one of those movies she begged me to see for so long and said I would like. Oh how wrong she was…how very…very…wrong.
Thirty something Jane, (Katherine Heigl, played to her usual annoying fervor) is always a bridesmaid and never a bride. One wedding after another she is in the wedding party of a friend and its starting to get on her nerves. She is hopelessly in love with her boss (Edward Burns) and has her younger sister, Tess (Malin Akerman) coming to visit. That same sister seduces that same boss and lies the whole time while doing it and ends up getting engaged to him with the wedding happening in three weeks time. Through this all, a writer named Kevin (James Marsden), who is cynical about love of course, meets Jane at one of her many weddings and is covering the engagement of George and Tess. But unbeknownst to Jane, this never happens in these types of movies, he’s really doing a story on Jane and her many bridesmaid dresses, because he found and looked in her planner. Jane can’t stand Kevin (which never means they’ll end up together) and watch her one true love go off with her spoiled sister.
Heard this story before? That’s because it’s been told a thousand times already with whoever the latest popular actress is. The problem is, it has been done better. Why is Katherine Heigl even a star, will somebody please explain that to me? Her mannerisms are beyond annoying, her whiny voice assaults the ears like a wounded cat coughing up a hairball full of sandpaper and she is moderately pretty, only to drop a few notches once she opens her mouth. James Marsden is better than this, only problem with him is that he can be a star but keeps picking the wrong roles. And Edward Burns must have just needed some spending money.
This movie is sooooo lame. The best thing about it is it gave me another article to write. Everything is predictable, every single thing. The male lead thinks marriage is dumb and love is even dumber, but wait about 45 minutes, ‘cause he’ll change his mind. In this movie, it’s because there was one drunken night of sex with Jane and that makes him rearrange his thoughts on love and marriage. That is extremely insulting to the audience. It isn’t a sacrificial circumstance or a heartfelt change of mind, but the fact that they ended up in bed together. This isn’t the only thing wrong with this character. He was hired for a specific job, but the entire time he is complaining about that job to his boss and whining about it, all because he thinks he’s better than that and should be doing something different. He thinks he should be doing what he wants, not the job he is paid to do. Then get a different job you gamook! Find someone hiring for that position and present your supposed skills in this area and let the hiring party decide if you are worthy or not. I can’t stand this in movies!
They took every romantic comedy cliché and slapped it together to make this trash. The musical montage of trying on clothes, the group sing along, the misunderstanding between the two leads that you can see coming a mile away, the mad dash of the lead actress to wherever the lead actor is to tell him she loves him and then having that speech in front of a huge crowd, blah, blah, blah. Why does Hollywood think this is all that love really is? No sacrifice, no real change in perception, well, not without sex anyway. One character does get a much-needed comeuppance moment, but it doesn’t redeem the movie at all. In the end Jane finally gets her wedding and the audience has already checked out and could care less. Thanks Abby for stealing another few hours of my life.
I walked out of the theater after seeing this film in a great mood and up until I finally drifted to sleep, I was thinking about this film and how awesome it was. I think the last time I was excited like this after seeing a movie was The Dark Knight. Is it better than that movie…no…but it is right up there with having been able to grip the audience with its story, acting and film style. This was a tremendous film with few flaws and the flaws it does have won’t fully take you out of the film.
The film starts off like the first X-men film, with a Nazi concentration camp where we see a young boy being torn from his parents only to release a power within him that crushes a gate. Only this time we see that a man interested in exploiting that power has seen the whole thing and plans to make it happen again. He does this by bringing Erik Lensherr, the young boy who would be Magneto, to a violent rage that brings his power to the surface. This Nazi soon becomes the films villain, Sebastian Shaw, played to creepy greatness by Kevin Bacon. In another part of the world, a rich young boy, Charles Xavier, has just met a young girl, Raven, who has special abilities different from his own and brings her into his home.
Flash forward and our rich kid is now a cocky womanizer who uses his gifts of telepathy to pick up on young coeds. While Erik has become a world traveling Nazi hunter looking for the man who made him what he is by killing what he loved. A CIA team has found something interesting that threatens the world with Sebastian Shaw’s new Hellfire Club and they have recruited Charles Xavier to help them stop him. On their first mission they meet Erik. Charles saves him and brings him into the team as nd they then start to recruit mutants around America to train them to become soldiers in a new kind of war. When the CIA component of this new team is annihilated, it is up to Charles and Erik to help the young mutants control their abilities to save the world.
Earlier this year this film was absent from my “most anticipated” list for the year and after seeing this, I am sure it will end up on my best of 2011 list, most likely in the top 3. I wasn’t interested because I didn’t think anything of it. The first pictures were okay and the first trailer didn’t really deliver the “I gotta see’s” in me. I was wrong. This is an absolutely engrossing film from start to finish and is a fantastic inclusion into the summer blockbuster category. But it goes beyond that with not only having a fulfilling story but having fantastic acting.
James McAvoy does well as the young Xavier and fits perfectly. After seeing the film, I can’t really imagine anyone else doing a better job in the role. Kevin Bacon is really good as the films main villan, and his introduction at the beginning of the film is his best part. Nicholas Hoult does great as Hank McCoy/Beast, Jennifer Lawrence is good as Mystique and the rest of the cast shines as well as the first X-men. But this film really does belong to Michael Fassbender. Every emotion jumps off the screen with this guy, when he hurts, you feel it with him, when he is happy with a single memory, you’re touched by his reaction and when he gets revenge, you can sense his satisfaction. The moments with him and McAvoy are great.
There are a few weak links that won’t bother most and can be glossed over if you’re able to. First off, the easy one, Riptide, the mute mutant, was hokey and pretty much worthless, didn’t need him. Next was the character of Darwin. For such an “open-minded” group like Hollywood and a movie theme that is supposed to be about acceptance and tolerance, they sure did kill off the black guy in stereotypical fashion, like a typical horror movie. Then there is the last flaw that plagued the last X-men movie from start to finish.
That last flaw is the ham-handed wink at gay rights and the Hollywood continuance of forcing this on the viewing public. After awhile I was waiting for the team of mutants to start chanting, “We’re here, we’re mutant, get used to it.” There were digs at DADT and many other gay rights jokes, which shouldn’t be a surprise since its original director, current producer is gay and the view of the industry as a whole is to push this onto us. Why? It’s just the flavor of the month and we must all be re-edumacated. Forget that the X-men were originally about prejudice and intolerance across religion, race, etc. No, it’s really just about gay people. I always found this odd since the cruddy movie before this one, that it was the villains who so ardently used the vocabulary and views of the liberals who force this on others. And it was Charles Xavier, the good guy, who always pushed for real tolerance, meaning, though some would not agree with him, we still had to live together in the same world and tolerate each other. In other words creators, just entertain me, don’t push your beleifs on me in your “subtle” way.
Regardless of that last paragraph, this is a well done film that will please fans of the superhero genre. It has outstanding acting, a great and engrossing story and well-balanced characters. The ending of the alliance between Charles and Erik could have used another movie to happen, but what can ya do? I look forward to seeing what might come next with this franchise.
This movie gets you from the opening club scene of vampire action. Yet another comic I hadn’t read before seeing or since. This was a fun film that had great action sequences. Wesley Snipes has fun with the title character and Stephen Dorff hams it up nicely. The vampire world created for this film is good and Donal Logue is funny as Dorff’s right hand man. Every action scene from beginning to end in this film is edited nicely and just pops off the screen. The following sequels may have brought this franchise to a lackluster conclusion, but this one could stand alone as a great action flick.
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Frank Miller is a stellar talent in the comic book world and this brought Zack Snyder to the forefront of inspired directorial visionaries that would prove his love for the source material for his following films (which is why I have full confidence in him tackling the man of steel). It’s hard to think that anyone could take Gerard Butlers place as the hardcore Spartan, King Leonidas. I read a review of this when it first came out comparing it to a great video game, in which each successive boss is an even better battle than the last one. I would have to agree with that, its fast paced and pulls no punches. It was also a great movie about not sitting with your head in the sand as your enemy seeks to completely wipe you out. Granted it’s correct history may have been only that there was someone called Leonidas in Sparta, it doesn’t take away from the fun you would have seeing this thing, especially if you’re an action junky who likes cinematography that treats the eye nicely.
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This took the fun and energy of the first film and multiplied it by awesome. It had a great story of personal conflict over whether to be happy in your personal life or possibly using the gifts you have to sacrifice that life to save others. It was a enthralling story about true heroism to the point of one’s own sacrifice for others. The runaway train scene is one of the best in this genre and plays out well, setting up how much Peter Parker is willing to sacrifice to protect others. There was a great new villain played well by Alfred Molina, who you actually feel sorry for by the end of the film. It had everything, great pacing, good-looking sets, fine acting and a well-rounded story. Unfortunately, that would not be said about its sequel a few years later.
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The first movie from Marvel Studios began with a huge bang thanks to its competent director and charismatic star. Robert Downey Jr. brought so much energy to this role it seems he was born to play it. Cocky and confident and struggling to make right what he believes he helped make wrong. I never read any of these comics, because I'm a DC man, but you didn't have to have read a thing to have fun with this movie. It both introduces its hero well and shows his struggles to change for the better to help the world. The chemistry with the entire cast was very noticeable and helped make the movie feel natural. Also, Jeff Bridges playing a bearded bald bad guy? Can't go wrong with that.
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I hated, absolutely hated this graphic novel. I remember a member of the youth group I was helping out with, told me to read it because it was the best comic he ever read…I regret listening to him. It was pretentious and boring, so very boring, although it did have an interesting story idea. I actually was reading it while waiting in line for the midnight showing of The Dark Knight with the very same guy who recommended it. We went into the theater and the trailer for the following year’s release of Watchmen was attached. It blew me away. It looked fantastic and was one of the best trailers that year. When I finally got to see the movie, to me, it blew the graphic novel away. Went too far in some of its graphic scenes for sure, but when I walked out of the movie I was still thinking about its themes and the moral questions it raised. I like thinking about a movie when I am not only entertained but my mind is sparked with interest on what it was about.
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Hands down the best comic book movie ever made. Can it or will it hang on to that title, only time will tell. This was the last film I saw at a midnight screening before swearing ever doing that sort of thing again and I even saw it a few hours later the next day. It was the first film ever to successfully use viral advertising and I still remember receiving a call at work from a guy claiming he was kidnapped by a clown before a gunshot, maniacal laugh and then a dial tone. Who knew a Hollywood film would make a case for the war on terrorism and the Bush doctrine? Who knew that someone would come along and make Jack Nicholson look like an amateur? Heath Ledger did such a fantastic job that, even before the release of the film, people were talking Oscar. Who knows if The Dark Knight Rises will dethrone this one day, with Nolan behind it, it definitely is a possibility.
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Batman Forever wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as I hear people say it is. Batman and Robin was so horrible it’s no doubt Arnold gave up on acting and decided to ruin the state California instead. So when that film flushed that film franchise down the toilet, it was amazing to me when a few years later I found out that the Memento director was going to bring it back to life. I was very excited. I am a full-grown man and I still have an obsession with this character and even still read new graphic novels about him. I wasn’t sure about the choice of Christian Bale as the title character or that it was going to be set in a more realistic world than it had been before. When it came out, I salivated all over again about the possibilities that would be brought to me by Christopher Nolan. It is the best origin movie and had fantastic acting, even by smaller characters with big names like Tom Wilkinson.
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Most all reviewers I have read will disagree with me here and say its first sequel was the better film, but for me this first X-men movie was the best. I remember watching the X-men cartoon on Fox and a lot older than I should have been when watching it. While watching that cartoon, I wondered what it would be like to have a movie version of what I was watching. Could it be done? Bryan Singer came along a few years later and showed me it could. I remember seeing an early picture of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and thinking “who is Hugh Jackman? Wolverine looks like a weirdo.” Boy how wrong I was. I remember seeing the movie no less than 4 times in the theater and not being able to get enough of it. Ian McKellen was awesome as Magneto, Patrick Stewart was a no brainer, Cyclops was played as the annoying do-gooder he is well by James Marsden and Hugh Jackman made a believer out of me. (This list was made before I saw X-men: First Class and that movie would be here on this list if I hadn’t already reviewed it).
Top 10 Best Comic book movies List at heybuddymovies.com
