Movies

I'm not really seeing one that will work on that movie. I don't even know where I'd get a Hastings' gift card, anyways. There used to be one in Bloomington, if I recall correctly, but it closed down. The nearest one now is in Indiana.. Probably why no one sells their cards here.

As far as I know, Amazon gift cards only work on Amazon, BestBuy gift cards only work at BestBuy or on BestBuy.com, Walmart gift cards only work at Walmart or on Walmart.com, etc. Did you think I meant those prepaid Visa cards or something? I've tried those in the past, and no longer deal with them.

I am so happy Fox proved once again they fucking get the X-Men and Deadpool. People can complain all they want but once again Fox proved people wrong. Good for them. I can't wait to see Deadpool. Also that superbowl spot for X-Men was great.

Are any of you guys excited for X-Men: Apocalypse? I'm worried that they might not be able to create a good follow-up after making three really great X-Men movies. I mean, I saw the trailer, and nothing really struck me as particularly interesting apart from seeing a bald James McAvoy which was pretty weird. We're given the obligatory scene of Storm doing some weather-related shenanigans while her eyes go all white, of course. The Wolverine gave us the entirely Wolverine focused (insert joke about how all of the X-Men movies are already all about Wolverine) movie we deserved, Days of Future Past had a truly grand scale, and Deadpool was just comedy gold. What will Apocalypse really bring to the table? Only time will tell.

The X-Men films have at least increased in quality as time has gone by so I have high hopes. Here's a quick rundown of my thoughts on each X-Men film, spin-offs and all since the first trilogy...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Something of a guilty pleasure, this film has some major, major flaws, yet still manages to be a pretty enjoyable action flick. The fight scenes are well choreographed, but the way that the film is completely unironic and takes itself awfully seriously makes it somewhat laughable. While I usually like works that have plenty of characters, this film simply has way too many and nearly all of them are completely underdeveloped. There are many inconsistencies with the rest of the X-Men trilogy that confuse many to no end. It is, at the very least, memorable in spite of, or more accurately because of, it's flaws. 5/10

X-Men: First Class - A great improvement over Origins, First Class actually gave its smaller cast of characters a bit of proper development and made them interesting to watch. Nevertheless, the dialogue is often quite hokey and forced, but the actors are clearly trying, whereas the actors in Origins seemed like that they knew they were in a stupid action flick so didn't really try their best. Yeah, some things the characters do don't make much sense, but the real focus of the film is obviously on the relationship between Charles and Erik and their histories, and it was interesting. 7.5/10

The Wolverine - This one fixed a lot of the things wrong with Origins. Instead of trying to develop loads and loads of characters and lacking any sort of focus on the main character, The Wolverine actually is mostly about its title character. The action scenes, like the one on the bullet train, are breathtaking. The story explores the true implications of being nearly immortal and indestructible, themes which aren't touched upon in Origins at all. I also like the story's more grounded settings as we see things from the perspectives of ordinary people at times. Unfortunately, the film doesn't have quite as many particularly memorable moments as the other films. The scene at Hiroshima, the afformentioned bullet train sequence, and the climactic fight between Wolverine and the Silver Samurai are all that really stick out in my head. 7/10

X-Men: Days of Future Past - What is possibly the magnum opus of the main X-Men series, Days of Future Past has a grand, epic scale, a truly intriguing plot that keeps the audience on the edges of their seats, and introduces the Sentinels into the film-verse after ages of their unexplained lack of appearances. The Sentinels prove themselves to be a tremendous threat. There are so many great and memorable moments here. Quicksilver whizzing around in the Pentagon, the Free Mutants' brutal battles against the future Sentinels, Magneto lifting up an entire stadium, Wolverine briefly freaking out upon losing his memories in the past, Charles saying the f-word, and one of my most favourite scenes in all of the films is when Beast and Mystique are seen by the public and are filmed by them in low-resolution '70s cameras. The stakes are so high that it's hard not to get invested in the plot, and considering that the original arc that the film is based on was pretty short, it's amazing how much they expanded upon it and managed to implement their own ideas into the plot seamlessly. That said, there are some quite annoying little plot holes and things that come straight out of nowhere, like Beast suddenly having a partial cure for his appearance and all that. 9/10

I don't care what anyone says, Man of Steel was epic! The Winter Soldier was great, too. I need the 3rd one, now! ;w; Dumb and Dumber 2 and Night at the Museum 3 were decent. Previous entries for both were better, though. Sad Amy Adams didn't return. She was FANTASTIC as Amelia Earhart. I don't know if I've seen her anything where I didn't like her performance, to be honest.

#BehindTheTimes

The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon actual movie is coming out at some point. It's about time that we found out just what the Ginosaji is and why he torments Jack so much, and apparently the film will provide answers. The thing is though, the original short film/parody trailer was funny, while the sequel series such as "Ginosaji vs. Ginosaji" gradually grew less and less funny as the comedy aspect was played down and the dramatic aspect was played up. I mean, episode 4 of Ginosaji vs. Ginosaji was a complete rehash of an earlier Ginosaji-centric short film called "Spoon vs. Spoon". What I'm saying is, I don't want the full movie to just rehash Richard Dale's older material, but it looks like at least a fair portion of it will involve Jack's continued misguided attempts to kill the Ginosaji and inevitably fail as he literally always does. I just want this to turn out good.