What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching? ARCHIVE

Black Barney wrote: Is it ok that I'm attracted to that robot girl?

You're supposed to be.

that's the main difference with Her then, Shellhead. You're not supposed to identify at all with Phoenix in that movie. i don't think you're supposed to feel attracted to the computer.


I'm not one to put any credence into box office numbers but did anyone see the numbers from last weekend? It's striking.

1. Age of Ultron 191 million
2. Furious 7, 6.6 million
4. Mall Cop 2: 6 million
6. Cinderella: 3 million
7. Ex Machina: 2 million

I mean there's a lot going on there. The gap between 1 and 2 is so massive, it's nuts. I can't believe that many people went to see Mall Cop 2. Cinderella is one of the only kid-friendly movies playing right now and it only made 3 million. Usually kid movies ALWAYS get lots of money since people are always bringing their kids to whatever kid movie is playing, regardless if it's good (I hear Cinderella is decent, btw).

And then Ex Machina which is probably the best movie of the top ten and it only makes 2 million.

Just a really striking list, is all.

Hatchling wrote: Saw Age of Ultron and didn't like it. Whedon, trying to cram character development into it created a bottle neck of supposedly touching moments that fragmented and spilled all over the place and in the end meant nothing. The film had no tension. It felt very forced. It could have been a good 12-episode TV season, but as a film it was a mess.

I liked it fine, but agree that the pacing was way off and it wasn't as good as most recent Marvel movies. I've heard that Whedon's original cut was an hour longer. It felt like it could have used it.

Age of Ultron was good and if you are a fan of the Marvel movies to date you should go see it. It served a couple of purposes, the first was digging in to the back stories of a few characters who have not had the benefit of a stand alone movie in Hawkeye and Black Widow. There was good character work for both of them and the Hulk developments were an added bonus. The second point the movie drove home for me was the growing divide between the team, something that should come to a head in Civil War. The question of how to defend the Earth from powerful threats was the crux of the whole movie and we got some good debate between Cap and Iron Man. All told it was a solid story that covered a LOT of ground and thoroughly entertained.

I really liked Age of Ultron. Much more than the first one, but then again, while I enjoyed the first one, I was never quite as taken with it as everyone else seemed to have been. AoU has issues for sure, but many of the are the same issues with the first, and at least AoU hits the ground running. After the 4 origin stories that lead to the Avengers, an origin story for the team with infighting sprinkled about wasn't what I was hoping for.

AoU was three more origin stories and more infighting sprinkled about, so that's not really a difference you can hang your better opinion of AoU on.

@Barney

Doesn't seem like a fair comparison since Furious 7 and Ex Machina have been out for weeks already. The fact that Furious 7 has been out for a month and still made $6 million against the Avengers seems pretty impressive to me.

I managed to sneak out of life and go see Age of Ultron. I thought it was awesome. I'll write more about it in my post tomorrow, but I thought it was better than the first. It was also an unwieldy, sloppy mess. Where was Hulk/Banner for most of the movie, sitting in the Quinjet? What the hell was all that nonsense with Selvig and Thor? Why is Tony doing the Iron Legion thing after flipping out and blowing up all the armor in Iron Man 3? Why would you build a containment device for Hulk that is basically just putting a bowl over him? OF COURSE he's going to punch through the ground, I mean come on.

That was also kind of weird because it echoed Nick Fury's escape in Winter Soldier.

I absolutely LOVED that it started out like a Bond or Indiana Jones film- already in mid-adventure, no origin stories here. No introductions needed. Such a great opener.

Loved seeing War Machine and Falcon in action again, albeit briefly. Surely there was a way to fit Loki in there somewhere, he was greatly missed.

Loved Hawkeye's family, I thought the script did a really awesome job of validating his character and making him fit in more completely with the team. I walked out thinking that I wouldn't mind a Hawkeye standalone film, something more grounded and down-to-earth. I just loved- again- that it was more of a common man's story. I love that he's an Avenger and he goes home and has this very normal, very positive life with no psychosis, no constantly being hero'd up, no darkness. Except for the fact that he likely doesn't tell his family about all that stuff that happened when he was under Loki's control.

Klaw was great (bet he's the baddie in Black Panther). Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were great.

Ultron was handled really well, they could have gone Frankenstein's Monster but it really was more Pinocchio. It was kind of weird though how underplayed that allusion was. Just enough to register, but not enough to really do anything with it. Maybe in the extra hour that will be on DVD?

For my money, there wasn't a funnier or more humanizing scene in either of the films than the Avengers sitting around drinking and trying to pick up the hammer. Great stuff, and it had an AWESOME payoff later on.

It was also nice to see that heroes were behaving like heroes after that horrendous Batman vs. Superman trailer. Like, you know, saving people and stuff. People have forgotten that some of the best scenes in the original Superman films were when he just saved people...not when he was wallowing in self-pity/self-doubt or focusing entirely on his personal problems/enemies. I really liked that Whedon went out of his way to show the heroes helping the common man instead of acting like civilians don't really exist or matter in the superhero world. It was a true all ages comic book movie, not a comic book movie made by, for and about depressed man-children

Oh, and Hulkbuster fight. Jesus. I can't imagine any comics fan not squealing through that sequence. Awesome.

I tried watching Jupiter Ascending and couldn't do it. No idea what the hell was even going on or if the aliens or whatever were supposed to be that horribly acted. When that chick turned her flying motorcycle invisible so the muggles couldn't see I shut it off.

Disgustipater wrote: @Barney

Doesn't seem like a fair comparison since Furious 7 and Ex Machina have been out for weeks already. The fact that Furious 7 has been out for a month and still made $6 million against the Avengers seems pretty impressive to me.

Nono I know, but that's sort of part of the analysis of this huge gap. Studios knew that everyone was going to see Avengers so they didn't put anything out that would get shut down by people seeing Avengers 2 instead. So that sort of explains the giant gap. Furious tickets sales were driven by girlfriends that refuse to see Avengers 2 for some reason. "I'm not seeing that, let's go see Paul Walker's last flick. I can't believe he's been taken from us. That great talent...*sniff*"

anyway, what a gap. I can't wait to see the numbers after epVII opens

Michael Barnes wrote: It was also nice to see that heroes were behaving like heroes after that horrendous Batman vs. Superman trailer. Like, you know, saving people and stuff. People have forgotten that some of the best scenes in the original Superman films were when he just saved people...not when he was wallowing in self-pity/self-doubt or focusing entirely on his personal problems/enemies. I really liked that Whedon went out of his way to show the heroes helping the common man instead of acting like civilians don't really exist or matter in the superhero world. It was a true all ages comic book movie, not a comic book movie made by, for and about depressed man-children

Oh, and Hulkbuster fight. Jesus. I can't imagine any comics fan not squealing through that sequence. Awesome.

Ummm, if you are referencing Man of Steel here you just countered your own point. Iron Man wasn't able to save everyone in the fight with Hulk. No way a building comes down like that without casualties and I'm pretty sure the final battle with Ultron resulted in thousands of deaths. How is this different than the battle with Zod? Don't hand me any bullshit about Superman not caring about the collateral damage or that he never saved anyone. Go back and watch the movie and tell me he didn't save lives, and don't try to tell me he had a choice in battlegrounds either. If that's true then why didn't Stark fly Hulk into an unpopulated area?

And you fuss about angsty-angst in the DC films but Banner/Hulk is a troubled anti-hero at best. How is his plight any different than Superman's struggle to connect with humanity or contain his immeasurable power?

Cinderella's been out two months, it's still making pretty good money. How much of that is driven by Frozen fans I wonder...

bob, yeah I think Cinderella is the last kid's movie to come out. THeatres will always try and carry one or two kids movies knowing that parents will bring their kids to anything so there's always a market for that (I just brought Emily to Monkey Kingdom on Saturday as an example). So there'a always a market each week for kid movies

Green Lantern wrote:
Ummm, if you are referencing Man of Steel here you just countered your own point. Iron Man wasn't able to save everyone in the fight with Hulk. No way a building comes down like that without casualties and I'm pretty sure the final battle with Ultron resulted in thousands of deaths. How is this different than the battle with Zod?

wot? Tony Stark doesn't give a rat's ass about civilian deaths. The guy is an arms manufacturer. He and his father are indirectly responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Superman doesn't play in those swamps. The guy is pure lawful good. It's normal to hold Superman to task on this kind of stuff.

I took my 3 year old to Cinderella (she has been obsessed with the cartoon), and she loved the movie.

craniac wrote: Is the latest Iron Man worth ten bucks, with arabic subtitles?

It's not the subtitles you have to worry about it's the potential censorship