It wouldn’t really be accurate to accuse X-Men: Apocalypse of being the worst of the four major superhero movies released in the first five months of 2016 (with three more to come! A record!), but it is surely the least interesting. Deadpool had its fiery, filthy sense of postmodern humor; Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had its balls-out crazy ambition and mythological grandiosity; Captain America: Civil War had neither […]
New rule: Bryan Singer should only direct X-Men movies, and X-Men movies should only be directed by Bryan Singer. For here we are with X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is almost indisputably, I’d say, both Singer’s and the franchise’s best picture since X2 back in the long-ago of 2003 (from which early perch it remains, I would insistently claim, one of the five best superhero comic book movies of […]
With X-Men: Days of Future Past breathing down our necks as the third superhero movie in a two-month span, Hit Me with Your Best Shot does a bit of time traveling all its own. Nathaniel R’s selection for tonight is the first X-Men, the movie that kicked off the present superhero fad 14 years ago, and the subject of the very first episode of HMWYBS, so long ago that The […]
Author’s note, June 2016: I was pissed as hell at this film when I saw it, but time has mellowed my opinion. I’d still stick it on the “rotten” side of the register, but 2/5 was needlessly harsh. I don’t know if something is wrong with me or with society, but when something I find so gruelingly antiseptic as X-Men: First Class can be met with more-or-less positive reviews from […]
X-Men Origins: Wolverine. There’s something threatening in that overdetermined title, don’t you think? Just Wolverine would be a perfectly competent title, especially matched with a poster of Hugh Jackman’s be-sideburned face. Or if we must have something that lines up with the other films on the shelf, X-Men: Wolverine would surely have sufficed. But this is to be a special case of an X-Men film, for it is an X-Men […]
May, and the official start of Blockbuster Movie Season, is still a week away, but I hope you’ll forgive me for jumping the gun a bit. Incidentally, there are fewer summer movies this year that I’m even vaguely interested than in any other year of my adult life. A sign of worse films, or my growing cynicism? Read on! 5.1.2009The earliest tentpole release ever (it appears that next year will […]
Author’s note, June 2016: I was much too kind on this one. Few reviews from the first year of this site’s lifespan have caused me more subsequent problems than the 2.5/5 I gave this movie – 2/5 would be much closer to the mark, maybe even 1.5/5 if I was feeling especially feisty. When last we saw the X-Men, they had just starred in one of the best superhero movies […]
Greetings and welcome back to Raspberry Picking, where we look back at Golden Raspberry Award winners and decide whether they really deserve to be called the worst movies ever. This time, we’re looking back at Gigli, serial murderer of careers, reputations, and romances, nominee for nine Razzies, winner of six including Worst Picture, and eventual nominee for Worst Movie of the 2010s. The Razzies can smell blood from many months […]
Greetings and welcome back to Raspberry Picking, where we look back at Golden Raspberry Award winners and decide whether they really deserve to be called the worst movies ever. This time, we’re looking at Catwoman, nominee for six Razzies, winner of three (including, of course, Worst Picture), and the widely acknowledged Turd Standard for superhero movies of the 21st century. But first! ‘Twas January of last year when the overlords of Alternate […]
With Lightyear having come out this weekend, bearing the baffling premise that it’s the Star Wars-style movie that inspired the cartoon character that inspired the toy that Andy loves in Toy Story (we think?), Tim, Carrie, and Brennan (subbing in this week for Rob) have decided to discuss their childhood favorites! Brennan Top 5: The Little Mermaid X2: X-Men United Airplane! Bartok the Magnificent Big Fat Liar Carrie Top 5: […]
The entity that is MTV has obviously changed considerably since the channel first killed the radio star in 1981. While anyone whose birth year starts with a “2” might only know it for reality series or teen soaps, MTV’s historical prominence as a conduit between music and mainstream culture cannot be overstated. While their previous efforts to bring that part of their brand to feature filmmaking have only been intermittently […]
Not everyone will agree with me, I know, but to my mind, 2017’s Wonder Woman sets up a pretty high bar to clear, as one of the few superhero movies of the 2010s to successfully thread the needle between “superhero comics are modern mythology, with all the gravity that entails” and “popcorn movies need to be energetic and fun” and “the lady in the colorful outfit punches and guns go […]
