Last movie watched...

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Drunken review of X-Men Days of Future Past

As someone who watched X-Men 1 in the cinema as a kid with bated breath  this was a tremendous exercise in nostalgia. Blending everything from 2000 to 2011 with enormous charm and expert pace Days of Future Past is not necessarily comic-continuitastic but as a pure love-letter for those who went breathlessly to the cinema at the millennium it is utterly perfect and should be commended for keeping the tone so level

[CrazyFoxMachine]

That was quite restrained for a drunken review I think I meant "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!"

<-- me the whole way through

[ThryllSeekyr]

I must have been in my later twenties when I saw the first X-man live action film.

Back then, I had my own transport (Thanxs to my dad!) and I was looking forward to seeing that film since it was the first of a few more comic book adaption in a time when they could make it look real enough to believe.

I don't care about the secret messages or politics that the film makers and original authors have tried to in corporate into their work.

I just like the pretty colours.   

[Famous Mortimer]

the first X-man live action film

Never heard of it mate

[I, Cosh]

There can't be many film series where the seventh installment is the biggest hit, if not the best, at least able to hold its head up in polite company without shame. Fast & Furious 7 was a lot of fun but it's the first time since 2 Fast 2 Furious where there's a noticeable step down when compared to the previous film. It's also the first of the reborn FF films not to have Justin Lin directing and it seems that this might be a loss to the series.

That said, there's still plenty to like. Statham makes for a decent villain, although none of his subsequent scenes match his first fight with The Rock. The traditional rolling hijack scene is the ludicrous high point of this one but I thought it suffered by not having a finale to sit alongside the safe heist or runway scenes from the last two. And yes, I'm aware that I'm describing a sequence in which [spoiler]The Rock tosses aside the spent minigun he ripped from a Predator drone which he brought down by driving an ambulance off a bridge into it so he can use his Magnum to shoot down a helicopter by firing at the bag of grenades hanging from the runner where they were tossed by Dom Toretto when he launched his Dodge Charger out of an exploding multi-storey car park[/spoiler] as  low key.

These films have always managed to keep a straight face around the absurdity and, from the start, the group dynamic and all those wonderful and cheesily but admirable ideas of loyalty have been central to the way things have developed. If there's not at least one scene of Vin Diesel presiding patriarchally over a barbeque pit, I want to know why. What this means is that the final scenes, reflecting on Brian getting out, don't seem forced or manipulative but a natural part of the story. Dom's final voiceover, with its plain dual meaning, carries a real punch and I don't mind admitting that the simplicity of that closing scene brought a manly tear to my eye.

[ThryllSeekyr]

the first X-man live action film

Never heard of it mate

Ru kidding around....

X-men

That's right there, released in year 2000...

I vividly recall the opening scene where Logan would rely on his abilities to win money fighting in some small Canadian town and the scene where he stole a motor bike.

The cheeks on either side of his face pulled back by the force of acceleration.

I thought his Hugh Jackson portrayal of that character was good enough in that film and in spite his impressive physique he seemed to be phoning it in in later films.

Not doing enough of what of his physical mannerism and quotes.

I've read that Gary Sinise was contender for the role of Wolverine as well...

That might have been interesting. As I thought he was supposed to be well built muscular, but short man. 

[blackmocco]

Two great little horror movies: Spring and Housebound. Don't really want to say too much about them. Better to go in cold.

[Professor Bear]

The Emperor's New Clothes - Russell Brand's "film" about the unequal distribution of wealth in western societies never quite gets past the truly hilarious central premise of Russell Brand doing a documentary about economics, but if you can see past that, it makes a great companion piece to Adam Curtis' Bitter Lake, as they share a very similar structure and narrative drive in using footage of normal families to show the victims of dominoes set in motion by plutocrats decades earlier who safeguarded the interests of a small group of wealthy individuals under the guise of serving the best interests of society as a whole.
The film explains in terms so simple even I understood it how Thatcher and Reagen got around a table and over their mutual admiration of the discredited fringe economist Milton Friedman created not a society geared towards upwards mobility and individual enterprise but towards funneling into private hands the cash usually meant for funding of "socialist" mechanisms that were actually necessary to make capitalism work as it should and the economy grow (public transport, healthcare, etc), and now there are huge amounts of money that no longer contribute to society but instead are channeled into offshore accounts where they do nothing but accrue interest on behalf of a small number of individuals, and how this has snowballed from a simple cash-grab in the 1980s to a worldwide post-millennial shell game predicated on maintaining the illusion of a mountain of debt that is being traded instead of real money and which is constantly being paid off by the poorest in society.
The message is that capitalism has gone horribly wrong and we're probably all fucked - or 99 percent of us are, at any rate - but that things will be okay because change is constant and inevitable and things get better, an approach which sets the film apart from the usual political documentaries that often try to end on sour notes as a call to action.  Brand instead almost calls for inaction in offering no alternatives, not even his often-referenced idea of decentralised power returned to an increased number of smaller self-governing and self-sustaining communities, and the uplifting moments come not from grand game-changing events but from smaller, human victories over corporate power and the inescapable notion that people aren't stupid or cowed and that change for the better is genuinely around the corner even if the political elite don't look to be a part of it.

[Keef Monkey]

The Cosh's review of F&F7 is bang on, I agree on all fronts.

[Goaty]

Drive Angry - so dumb action film, and that Mr Cage's hair! lol but strange best thing about the film is that coolest William Fichtner as The Accountant.

[Professor Bear]

Avengers: Age of Ultron.  I enjoyed it and it is very well made, but...
A lot of it felt forced and contrived, from the witty banter to the clumsy setup of new characters.  Maybe I'm rose-tinting my memories of the first one, but in my mind it seems a bit more effortless than this one, which is convoluted but not actually complex, full of characters but lacking in personality, looks spectacular but feels hollow, and like Star Trek Into Darkness has a third act that drags on regardless of the curveballs or action scenes it introduces.  Scarlet Witch also seems to be Poison Ivy from Batman And Robin, and once that got in my head, it was hard not to see James Spader's wisecracking Ultron as anything other than Arnie's Mr Freeze, certainly not when his masterplan was revealed to be a plot to [spoiler]extinction mankind in an artificially-created ice age and then the superheroes have to save some people from falling off cliffs.[/spoiler]  I liked Batman and Robin, though, so it's far from a deal-breaker, I just find it amusing that people will gleefully accept ludicrous superhero shenanigans only if you strip the homoeroticism out of it.

[JOE SOAP]

I liked Batman and Robin, though, so it's far from a deal-breaker, I just find it amusing that people will gleefully accept ludicrous superhero shenanigans only if you strip the homoeroticism out of it.

Fnar! I don't know if garishness and Akiva Goldsman can be wholly claimed for homoeroticism but I think Thor and his merry-men are probably the most homoerotic grouping since the Spartans of 300 - one of only 2 Zack Snyder films I've managed to enjoy.

[Link Prime]

one of only 2 Zack Snyder films I've managed to enjoy.

Can we assume Dawn of the Dead was the other?

[shaolin_monkey]

one of only 2 Zack Snyder films I've managed to enjoy.

Can we assume Dawn of the Dead was the other?

It can't possibly be Watchmen, due to the distinct lack of squid.

[JudgeOiNK!]

Well there's no prizes for guessing what movie quite a lot of us have as out 'Last movie watched' tonight!