17 Aug
More for you.
This is by far the quickest I’ve got to 20 new-release movies in a year, as we’re still only in August. Sadly it’s a lower-quality batch than the first ten of 2019, but I still enjoyed myself with most of these, and there’s still plenty of time to bring the year home strong.
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23 May
Let’s do this again, hopefully not for the only time in 2019. Ten movies, ten words each. In general I’ve really enjoyed the movies I’ve seen this year, from the family-targeted fare to the unusually gigantic superhero action, with a Netflix debut thrown in. There’s much more to come but the year has already made quite an impression.
And get ready for some really colourful movie posters. Man, Hollywood has stepped up their saturation game recently.
Very mild spoilers may follow.
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3 Nov
Ten more movie impressions for you now! This batch is much less blockbuster-y than the last one – there are some spicy ones in here and I’m feeling pretty good about some of them making my year-end list (which is less than two months away – yikes). Enjoy skimming.
Mild spoilers may follow.
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13 Jun
Hey hey, it’s that time of year again! I’ve just hit ten new-release movies seen this year and so it’s time to smash out some ultra-quick, ultra-digestible, ultra-colourful reviews and get on with the next ten. It’s been an extraordinarily dense six month period for big-name films so you won’t see any real surprises here. These ten are pretty much all blockbusters.
Very mild spoilers may follow.
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18 Sep
So apparently the last one of these that I wrote did rather well. Go figure – people like quick summaries of things.
Thanks to some brutal old-fashioned competition between the cinemas in my area and the general enthusiasm of my friends, I have already seen 20 of the movies released this year, either in cinemas or via on-demand video services. That puts me well within range of doubling the paltry thirteen I managed last year and puts me in good stead for a nice, meaty top ten list at the end of the year. But it also means I can do that thing again. You know, the one where I unfairly reduce ten movies I’ve seen this year to just ten words each.
Mild spoilers may follow. Read my earlier oversimplified 2017 list here.
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29 May
There are a few things I don’t like when it comes to properly discussing movies – or any piece of entertainment media, really – but two of my biggest pet peeves are
Yet here we are in the middle of the year and I have written virtually nothing on this site about movies, mostly due to heavy time investment elsewhere in life. What’s more, I have somehow already seen ten films in cinemas this year (Throughout the entirety of 2016 I saw just thirteen). These two facts have combined with my itchy keyboard fingers and a couple of spare hours to create what you see now: Ten movie releases from 2017 so far, each conveniently (and poorly) summarised in ten words. That means lots of those two things I hate to fall back on. Desperate times, people.
Fun times though. I suppose mild spoilers may follow.
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31 Dec
I’m not sure if 2016 was a better year for going to the movies than 2015, but it was definitely a much better year for my motivation to go to the movies, and that mostly came about due to the comparatively high volume of “event movies” – or films a large number of people were talking about – that hit cinemas throughout the year. And as it turns out, even though a handful of those event movies were pretty average (spoilers: you won’t see Independence Day: Resurgence on this list), more than enough of them were good to make up what I think is a fairly decent top ten. So let’s finish this.
While it’s easy to look at the plot of Marvel Studios’ adaptation of Stephen Strange and point out its rather generic “origin story” flow, leaving the assessment of the movie at that would be dramatically underselling it. Doctor Strange‘s place in the catalogue of MCU movies is as much about its unique look as its plot, characters and corresponding performances (which are great, by the way). The action that unfolds on screen is visually creative in ways matched by no other superhero movie – and the sequences only escalate in creativity and impact throughout the movie right up until Strange’s memorable final confrontation. Another good one, then.
31 May
Had to sit on this review for a while to give it some thought, and that ended up making it a long one.
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Starring: James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac
Director: Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men)
Rating: M
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Well, it turns out that couldn’t last.
The X-Men movies continue to exist, for better or worse, as the only discernible remnant of the superhero movie scene pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe. The way they have always done things sits somewhere between DC Comics’ macabre big screen blockbusters and the MCU’s lighter escapades, boasting an embarrassment of riches in the character department to mine for both humour and drama. When the movies are good, they feel like giant middle fingers to the critics who think there are too many superhero movies kicking around these days. When they’re bad, they tend to become the easiest targets for said critics, as at their core they tend to feel extraneous and disposable.
X-Men Apocalypse isn’t a bad movie, but it is the worst X-Men film since X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and as an X-Men fan first and foremost within the superhero movie realm, that stings a little.
26 May
Ooh boy, been waiting for this one for a while…
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Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender
Director: Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men)
Rating: M
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What’s this? A good multi-superhero movie that isn’t made by Marvel Studios?
As movie franchises go, the X-Men movies mean a lot to me. Not only do I remember where I was when I first saw X-Men III: The Last Stand in cinemas back in 2006, I also remember what I was wearing and who I was with. I was so damn excited for that movie and to see it play out as such a mess after the first two X-Men films had literally made me interested in comic book mythology was not the greatest feeling. Three years later the release of the underdone and just generally awful X-Men Origins: Wolverine meant the franchise was suddenly “only 50% good”, and while 2011’s X-Men First Class was a triumphant return to form with a fun political twist and last year’s The Wolverine didn’t suck, the franchise was still lagging far behind the efforts of Disney’s Marvel cinematic universe. And there was still that lingering bad taste in my mouth from 2006. Well, not anymore.
Vagrant Rant 