Tag: franchise
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Madame Web (2024)
You know superhero movies are in trouble when studios start downplaying the fact they’re superhero movies. Sony’s marketing for Madame Web has focused on its supposed properties as a “suspense thriller”, which is a bit like trying to sell I Spit on Your Grave as a screwball comedy. Of course, anyone sensible knows it’s going…
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American Pie (1999)
American Pie wasn’t the first sex comedy to up the raunch and gross-out levels before Tom Green pushed them to their apex (nadir?) in Freddy Got Fingered. But it’s a milestone in teen sex comedies, sliding them a little further out of the Stone Age – as represented by entries in the ‘80s – to…
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Godzilla Minus One (2023)
I just saw Godzilla Minus One and it was good. Easily the best kaiju movie that I’ve seen in a long time; mostly the ones I’ve seen have been American takes on the genre. The one I grew up with was the 1998 Roland Emmerich disaster porno, Godzilla, which I mainly remember for all the…
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The Marvels (2023)
I saw The Marvels and it was pretty bland. You know it’s bland when one of the recurring themes of positive criticism around it is that it’s blessedly short for a superhero film. It’s a remarkably clunky piece of storytelling, lurching from one set piece to the next with no real ebb and flow. In…
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Jurassic Park (1993)
I watched Jurassic Park many times as a kid. It was the most thrilling and enthralling movie ever made when I was seven years old. As time’s gone by I’ve seen films that surpass it in my personal canon, but it remains an entertaining spectacle. It also remains the single unironically good film in the…
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Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Released seven years after the 1984 original, Terminator 2 famously makes a protagonist of the original villain, having Arnie sent back in time not to kill future resistance leader John Connor (Edward Furlong) but to protect him from another killing machine, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), a mass of liquid metal that can assume the shape…
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Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
So I saw Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One and it was… bad? I don’t consider myself a contrarian. I normally have views that fall somewhere in line with the general critical feeling. I might be more or less moved by a particular film than others were, but normally if one receives what can be…
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Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
Full disclosure time. These are the reasons why I went to see this film: Also, I have an affection for schlock, and Transformers as a concept is the schlockiest of that ignoble genre. (By this point in cinema, “schlock” is definitely a genre with its own context and history.) To explain my other reasons, although…
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Saw II (2005)
Here’s a question: what city do the Saw films take place in? According to Google, it’s New Jersey, but I ask because, more than how he makes the traps, I’m wondering how The Jigsaw Killer finds the real estate necessary to enact his schemes while police never seem to be in the right place at…
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Scream 4 (2011)
Having recently seen Scream 6, I decided to give 4 a whirl on Prime and somewhat to my surprise had a blast with it. I ignored it when it first came out in 2011 because as much as I love this franchise, at that point I felt that it was done. Sidney Prescott’s trauma was…
I Just Saw 