Topic: Movie thread.

@FireMario887 I actually updated my Marvel Comics film preferences order the other day!

It goes a little bit like this:

1. Iron Man
2. Thor: Ragnarok
3. The Avengers
4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1
5. Black Panther
6. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
7. Spider-Man: Homecoming
8. Doctor Strange
9. Captain America: Civil War
10. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
11. Ant-Man
12. Captain America: The First Avenger
13. Iron Man 3
14. Thor
15. Avengers: Age of Ultron
16. Iron Man 2
17. Thor: The Dark World

Funny how all of the sequels (except from Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy) are often the least enjoyable films. I rewatched Avengers: Age of Ultron, Iron Man 2 and Thor: The Dark World last year, and I honestly cannot remember much about any of those three films at all...

@Peek-a-boo Forgive my ignorance, but isn't Logan part of the Marvel comics too?

While the X-Men franchise is Marvel, Fox has the film rights to the series, and hasn't let Marvel use the characters in the MCU.

Logan is still in the same canon as the X-Men films that started in the late 90's/early 00's.

It's also why it took so long for them to incorporate Spider-Man. Sony owns the character's film rights, and only after their Amazing Spider-Man films flopped did they decide to let Marvel use him.

EDIT: However, as Fox just reached a deal to sell most of their entertainment assets to Disney (they're downsizing to focus on their news and sports arms), the X-Men franchise probably will be rebooted into the MCU sooner or later.

@Peek-a-boo My list is pretty similar. Yeah I know, some of the sequels seem to redo tired tropes from the other movies.

@RR529 Actually, Disney appears to now have the rights to the X-Men franchise, as well as Fantastic Four, and likely Deadpool:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/14/media/disney-fox/index.html

Not sure how or if they're going to include those franchises into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it would be very interesting if they did. Most interesting would be how they'd include Deadpool if they'd include him. I can imagine some funny PG13 scenarios where he's about to do something rated R, but then breaks the fourth wall to avoid it and keep things PG13.

@OfNullAndVoid, yeah, I remembered about that deal and edited my original comment.

I imagine they'd have to reboot the X-Men to fit them in the MCU (the current series has nearly 20 years of history that predates the MCU), but Deadpool? He'd probably brush off the fact that he'd existed in an unrelated continuity before like it's no big deal, lol.

@RR529 I see, thanks. I didn't know that was the same Fox... And it feels like Disney owns the entire film industry at this point... I'm not sure that's a good thing!

@Peek-a-boo Of the ones I've seen...

1) Iron Man
2) Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3) Spider-Man: Homecoming
4) Ant-Man
5) Doctor Strange
6) Guardians of the Galaxy
7) Iron Man 3
8) Captain America: Civil War
9) Iron Man 2
10) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
11) Avengers: Age of Ultron
12) The Avengers
13) Captain America: The First Avenger

I'd say 1 - 4 are solid entertainment. 5 - 8 are flawed but fun or otherwise engaging. 9 - 11 are just OK. And the last two I hope I never watch again.

i will never understand the obsession people have with superheroes (mostly people from the US). i can watch some Batman (the trilogy from Nolan) and X-men films, but that's it.

@6ch6ris6 agreed. the marvel craze that started back in 2012 with avengers is something i don't get. the movies are entertaining sure, but god they all follow the same annoying formula with every single one of them. its become mainstream media that's easy to digest.

@boop22 that's why hollywood is producing so many superhero films. change a few parts of the same old script and that's it. low effort, high revenue

@Peek-a-boo I noticed you listed 17 films but there's 18 Marvel films, so as mental challenge I spent the next 2/3 mins staring at your list to figure out which one it was missing. It was the Ed Norton Hulk film.

@jump I should have probably clarified that my list are the ones I have seen thus far. It seems that I have watched every single Marvel Comics film bar one!

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I haven’t seen Norton’s take on the Incredible Hulk. Is it worth my time?

@6ch6ris6 Whilst I do believe that the comic book craze has gone slightly overboard in recent years, if the majority of them are fun to watch, who’s complaining?!

The ‘Phase 3’ films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther) are arguably the best and most diverse ones yet, and each film has its own story that subtly interweaves into the others.

Thankfully, not all of them are an end of the world cliche as they often were in Phase 1 and (some of) 2.

@Ralizah Ooh... It is quite unusual to see the first Avengers film right near the bottom of people’s favourite Marvel Comics films list, let alone Age of Ultron being the preferred one between the two!

I take that both Avengers films didn’t do much for you then? I ask out of curiosity, not in bewilderment.

I will say that none of the Marvel films can hold a candle to the first two Nolan Batman films (although Iron Man comes really close, and I'd say it's better than The Dark Knight Rises). The Dark Knight, in particular, is just so compulsively watchable. One of the few films I actually multiple bluray copies of!

@Peek-a-boo I found The Avengers to be an utterly mediocre film, full of boring action sequences, illogical character development, and dialogue that tries to be witty but just comes off as self-satisfied. I recognize I'm in the minority in this regard, and my dislike of the film particularly hurts considering how much I LOVE some of Joss Whedon's earlier work (and especially writing: his involvement with the original Toy Story's script is likely the reason the film is filled with such charming and memorable dialogue). I just... don't like anything about it. Age of Ultron wasn't great, but at least the villain didn't seem bored being there like Loki was, and I liked how it set up the next movie with the material about the infinity stones. Also liked the ideological rift that opened between Tony and the other Avengers that widened in "Civil War."

With that said, AoU still felt kind of generic, and I have no real desire to ever rewatch it.

I think I must have seen Marvel's Incredible Hulk film at some point (I honestly had forgotten about it!), but it's inferior to Ang Lee's treatment of the same character.

300 (Netflix) - Fashionably over a decade late on this one, lol. It was a bit more odd than I thought it'd be, as many characters (particularly some of the enemy soldiers) were stylized to look more beast than man, but overall it was an enjoyable sord & sandal epic. Definitely adults only material though.

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

This one is a kind of a forgotten MCU movie, for some reasons:

1. The actor who played Bruce/Hulk was recast after this movie (Edward Norton to Mark Ruffallo).
2. The movie has an unusually serious tone for an MCU movie, though the series was just starting back then.

The movie doesn't spend a lot of time explaining how Banner became the Hulk, which is a great thing IMO.
At the start of the movie, Bruce takes refuge in Rio (by the way, some of the characters there are not native portuguese speakers and they sound kinda weird, hahaha) working at a soda factory and receiving online help by an anonymous person. Then the US military finds him and chaos ensues.

I liked Norton as Banner, and the action scenes are... Ok. Things explode and bounce around easily though, in typical Hollywood fashion.

Not a great movie in my opinion, but just way better than the 2003 movie.

It's worth mentioning that the Hulk looks horrifying in this movie, at least to me.

I haven't seen all the MCU movies, at least not the more recent ones, but I'd put Ant-Man and the Ed Norton Hulk at the bottom of my list, with some clear daylight between them and Thor: The Dark World. Guardians of the Galaxy, for me, is the one to beat, while Iron Man comes a respectable second. The rest are all solid, with some better than others. Even Ant-Man is watchable. I've slightly tuned out of them in the cinemas now, as it's simply an endless procession, and just wait for them to come to Netflix instead.

What about the non-MCU Marvel movies? Blade still stands up, I reckon, and I've always had a sneaky fondness for the much-derided Daredevil. The MCU Daredevil series is probably better, but the film had at least the benefit of a scenery-chewing Colin Farrell as Bullseye.

Isle of Dogs: Interesting film. The story is set-up like a kind of modern day fairytale (the Grimms' Fairy Tales, not the sanitized Disney versions), and follows an alternate history (and more than slightly dystopian) Japan that is controlled by a dog-hating clan. The current leader of this clan, Mayor Kobayashi, rules Megasaki City (which seems to be portrayed as the capital of Japan in this story) and exiles all of the city's dogs to an inhospitable and trash-filled island after a canine-borne disease breaks out. The Mayor's young ward sets off to this island to find his dog Spots and is helped on his journey by a ragtag group of dogs, including the cynical Chief.

Life is harsh on trash island, and the canines trapped in this place endure massive suffering, but the grim subject matter of the film somehow manages to never overwhelm the narrative, which often finds a kind of twisted humor in the strangest of places. The film's narrative is somewhat complex for a film of this type, oscillating between the boy's odyssey to find his missing dog and the efforts of a foreign exchange student on the mainland who is trying to uncover evidence of a conspiracy that goes all the way up to Mayor Kobayashi.

The real reason to see this film, though, is its fantastical, surreal, and sometimes overwhelming aesthetic. This is the best use of stop-motion animation I've seen since Coraline, and it creates a similarly evocative and nightmarish vision of a Japan that has gone very wrong.

It won't change your life, but if you have the opportunity to see it, I'd take it. Great movie!

Sicario: Another grim movie, we follow an FBI agent, Kate Macer, who finds herself traveling into the heart of darkness when she joins a government task force that is fighting against a powerful Mexican cartel around the city of Ciudad Juárez. She soon finds that she can trust almost nobody around her, especially the mysterious Alejandro Gillick, who is helping to head this task force, and that there are no heroes in this conflict.

This one is violent, methodical, and engaging if you open yourself up to it. Wonderful direction, acting, and cinematography.

Saw A Quiet Place the day before yesterday night. I have my issues with it, but it's overall an incredible achievement in focused direction and effective use of sound to build an atmosphere of tension and paranoia. It's nice to see a deliberately artistic, and not mainstream-by-design at all sort of film achieve this kind of success. Seeing this in a theater is a must. My heart jumped in my throat every time a sound distinct enough from the quiet pitter-patter of feet exploded from the speakers, no matter how unnoticeable it would have been in other films. The acting was pretty great as well, and the Clicker-esque monsters were pretty scary. I'm glad the wisely decided to keep them mostly hidden until near the end of the film.

The theater I saw it in was deathly silent. The film's incredibly spare sound design makes it where you gain a heightened sense of EVERYTHING around you, and it makes you nervous to cough, adjust your seat, or reach for a bag of snacks. It really is a brilliant parallel to the way the characters in the film had to be incredibly mindful of the sounds they were making. If you think about it, it's an emergent, incredibly context-specific experience that relies on seeing that exact movie in a dark theater, surrounded by other people. Seeing it at home would be an almost entirely different experience. It's experiences like this, I think, that still justify the expense and inconvenience of having to go on a pilgrimage to the cinemas.

Pretty good movie otherwise, though. It's always nice when these horror movies come along every few years and seem to redeem the existence of a genre that is dominated by terrible direct-to-video releases.

@Ralizah I haven’t been to the cinema since Black Panther came out in late February...

I do have tickets booked for an IMAX screening of The Avengers: Infinity War in the early evening on next Saturday though, which I am really looking forward to! I know you’re not a fan of The Avengers series thus far, but are you going to see Thanos potentially killing a few well known characters?

Just reading your most recent reviews makes me realised just how many films I am missing out on, although I daren’t read too much of what you thought of ‘A Quiet Place’ just yet.

My current ‘to watch’ list consists of:

• Coco
• Darkest Hour
• Early Man
• Isle of Dogs
• A Quiet Place
• The Shape of Water
• You Were Never Really Here
• Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri