Yeah, man... This first half of this year is as busy as I've ever been. Finally starting to slow down. This is gonna be long but I'm sitting at work today almost literally by myself because I don't want to waste a personal day on a day where I can sit and do NOTHING all day.
I’ll start off by admitting I’ve got some catching up to do. I’ve only seen the real heavy blockbuster stuff this year, and I’m so far behind on TV that I don’t even know where to begin after I catch up on
Game of Thrones… I haven’t seen one second of
The Americans, True Detective or a handful of other shows I’ve wanted to dive into.
Just a couple of thoughts from this last page… I will not hear any
Napoleon Dynamite slander. None. It is hilarious and it holds up over multiple viewings for new hilarious tidbits to sneak up on you. That movie is pure stupidity greatness.
Watchmen – Good movie that doesn’t hold a candle to the graphic novel. I don’t know that they could’ve done anything to do the novel justice. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s good enough IMO. But I also really kind of dig Zack Snyder’s visual style, even if it does tend to bog down the story and he does come up pretty short in other areas.
Captain America 2 is my favorite movie of the year, bar none. This is what I want when I go to a comic book movie. A political thriller with action/comic elements. It was complex. Some great commentary on our society, great action pieces and it still managed to be funny in a way that didn’t feel out of place or forced. For me, a lot of Marvel movies feel like they’re strictly made to drive the story towards the next Avengers, like TV episodes building to a big finale. This stood on its own as a great movie.
Ant-Man – Is this Marvel’s first really big **** up? All we heard about was how Edgar Wright’s vision had helped shape the current Marvel Universe as it has played out on screen, and at the last minute with the cast set and filming ready to begin, they take his script and **** all over it? I don’t understand it. I LOVE Edgar Wright’s work and I think this has potential to be Marvel’s first real bomb. Iron Man 3 kind of sucked, but people flocked to see it because it was Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr. Will people flock to see Paul Rudd in a movie directed by the guy that made a ****** Jim Carrey movie and a movie about cheerleaders?
I went into
Godzilla fully prepared to walk away disappointed. I wanted it to be something really huge and massive in scale, but I was prepared for the worst. Man I was wrong. I loved what Gareth Edwards did. Rather than turning into just a big mind-numbing blockbuster with monsters fighting, this was a movie with build-up, trajectory and anticipation. I had friends gripe about “Not enough Godzilla! I want MONSTERS!” and whatever else, but you could feel Godzilla in every minute of this movie even if he wasn’t on screen. The characters and other arcs within the movie weren’t very good, but for a Godzilla movie, I thought this was pretty close to a home run.
X-Men: DOFP – Liked it, didn’t love it like I did First Class. I felt like this didn’t have its own identity. I felt like it was constantly swinging back and forth between the old trilogy and the new. And I guess that’s kind of the point, but it just never felt like Singer put his signature on it. Like he was doing a stylistic balancing act the entire film. The prison break scene with Quicksilver may be my favorite X-Men action piece ever, though. I just walked out at the end of this feeling like it missed a beat somewhere along the line.
With
Guardians of the Galaxy… I. Can. Not. Wait. I’m all in for anything Marvel that appears to go against the grain for what they usually put out. This looks different. It looks weird. And I love that.
At some point I’m going to go back a couple months through this thread and dig up some of yall’s thoughts on stuff a little further back I want to discuss like
Noah and
Lego Movie.
"); the camera confessions... it was all great. The guys have great chemistry and it translated into the film. We're the Millers was great because it highlighted Jason Sudekis and his style of humor, without adding 2 other comedic actors around him that sort of reduce how much we see from each of them. The writers also managed to not screw up the secondary characters' stories, which is impressive in a comedy about smuggling weed across the border. Not to say the audience ended up caring much about any of them, but their stories helped carry the movie and develop and grow their characters. The ending didn't fall apart, though it did wrap up sort of sloppily and just too neatly (not that a comedy needs a well thought out story as long as it's funny. I mean why would Ron Swanson just let them go when he's a DEA agent? [Ancient Aliens guy] 
welcome back brother. 
