My Own Little World

By this point, there has been an established formula in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s a reason they are so successful at the box office: people see them as a reliable option for being entertained at the movies. That’s not a bad thing by any means – I thoroughly enjoy every single one of these movies and plan to for the foreseeable future – but it does mean that each successive film in the franchise needs to stand out at least a little bit from the rest to keep interest high. This year, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 partially failed at that with its convoluted plot and somewhat rehashed humor; on the contrary, Spider-Man: Homecoming successfully rebooted a character that has had problems in past in film, giving me a film that I really enjoyed. Thor: Ragnarok does something I didn’t expect in trying to change up the formula from the previous two films focusing on the character: it cranks the humor up to 11. OK, there’s more to it than that, like the way the film ...

A little over a year ago, Marvel released one of the first R-rated comic book films: Deadpool . It's huge box office returns changed the game for the genre, allowing studios to realize that their audiences were not just OK with their favorite characters being placed in more extreme films -- they actually welcomed the change. Fast forward to today, and Marvel is taking another stab at the R-rated comic book film with Logan . Unlike Deadpool 's attempts to parody and make light of the superhero genre, however, Logan  aims for the skies and tries to transcend the genre's limitations entirely. Instead of seeing itself as confined to any sort of box, it tries to be an "indie superhero film," for lack of better phrasing. It goes for a small-scale character-driven drama with some bursts of action along the way. And you know what? It works perfectly.  This is the perfect film to send Hugh Jackman's portrayal of the Wolverine riding off into the sunset b...

What do you do when you want to like a movie so much, but you walk out of the theater bored and wanting to just sleep away your problems? I've never had to ask this question until last night. I made the always-tragic mistake of putting my hope in some amazingly well-crafted trailers and expected the world with Suicide Squad . Instead, I got a movie that bored me. A movie with some of the greatest comic book villains of all time, and it bored me. I legitimately yawned several times towards the end and was just waiting to get out of the theater so I could do something far more interesting. I also want to put a bit of a disclaimer before the rest of my thoughts: this is no way because I want to align myself with the critics. If you remember my Batman v Superman  review (if you don't, just  click here ), you'll remember that, despite the negativity critics hurled at it, I quite enjoyed it. It was something far different tonally than anything else any comic book film had g...

Many of you know the high regard in which I hold film critics. Quite often, that Tomatometer score is my deciding factor as to whether or not I want to see a movie. It might be a bad idea to put so much weight on other people's opinions, but it typically works quite well for me, so I haven't changed the way I choose what movie to watch. Why am I telling you this, you ask? Because I want you to know how hard it is to say that I enjoy a movie that critics hate... ...like Batman v Superman . I liked this movie. Yes, there were some elements that made me a little uneasy at times, but on the whole this is a great example of how to make a really fully stuffed superhero film. That being said, there are some gripes I have with Batman v Superman  that make me dock it more than a little bit, and there are still others that I'm not decided on yet. In light of that, I'm going to try a new format for this review in which I'll separate the different aspects of this film...