Recently Watched Films

Zero budget speculative fiction. Rough around the edges, but it's got a pretty decent underground alternative soundtrack. And there's a somewhat prophetic explosion near the end.

This went slightly better than before, now that I actually knew all the characters beforehand, which kinda helps just a bit  

My initial opinion mostly stands, though, that from a pure action and spectacle standpoint, it's by far the best Phase 1 movie, but there's enough silliness and moments where the characters are forced to act dumb just for the sake of dragging things out, that I can't consider it a personal favorite. It's definitely entertaining all the way through, though, but parts of it just made me shake my head like crazy. It's probably slightly behind the first Iron-Man, for my favorite on this run so far.

I already know what Civil War is about, and just based on the concept, I fully expect to absolutely loathe that movie, lol

Not near as good at the first two. It's about three quarters of the way there, but the plot with the Pope is fucking stupid, and there are other bits and pieces which just don't ring true..

Well, I was actually wrong about one thing, that being that I actually liked Guy Pierce just fine in this one, so it does in fact buck the trend of Iron Man movies with annoying actors playing the villain. My initial opinion of this being my favorite MCU movie pre-Winter Soldier still stands, though. It's hard to even explain why, since it's still as silly as ever, but somehow on a more personal level a lot of the time, and I find it's the MCU movie that keeps me the most consistently entertained from start to finish, without any scenes I don't enjoy (but yeah, I remember Winter Solder topping it, so we'll see how that goes on Tuesday.)

Not as fun or charming as the first movie, and it lacks the fish out of water feeling that made that one hilarious at times, but it still has some great action as usual, and there's some really good scenes in the second half. Definitely more of a middling MCU movie, though.

 Later this week I have Ant-Man and Civil War, my two most dreaded MCU movies of all (well also the second Ant-Man, but I may end up skipping that one) back to back, but then afterwards there's nothing I'm overly concerned about until Ragnarok and maybe Eternals.

This one was solid, if somewhat of a mixed bag, as I was expecting. The action sequences were great as always, and I loved a lot of the comedy (especially Ultron's cheesy quips and the whole saga of Captain America being teased because he told Iron Man to watch his language, then he swears near the end and Fury asks him "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" ), but the story was definitely inconsistent. 

I think my biggest issue is I like pretty much all the characters on their own (even Ultron was a very fun villain, imo), and some of them do work well together, but in the first Avengers movie there were times where I felt they just didn't work great as a team, and this movie only makes that more obvious. I get some of that is intentional and likely meant as a setup for Civil War (which as a 2 and half hour movie of in-fighting sounds like a recipe for a 0.5 star movie if I ever saw one, LOL), but man, some of the pure stupidity in this movie is just ridiculous, and has me concerned Infinity War and Endgame wont be overly enjoyable for me. I guess we'll see when I get to those. But yeah, this was fun overall, just kinda frustrating at times.

And now I've reached my most dreaded stretch, watching Ant-Man tonight, then Civil War tomorrow. My concern for Ant-Man is it looks incredibly silly and stupid based on the trailer, and I just have a feeling I'll end up hating it and switching it off early. Civil War.... Well, I've already expressed my concerns for that one. I fully expect to wanna switch it off, but I'll try and sit through it since I'm guessing it will be important in the long run. At the very least, after those two I get Doctor Strange, which I've been looking forward to for a while, then Guardians 2 and the first of the new Spider-Man movies, both of which I also have high expectations for.

Well, the good news is I did actually manage to survive it, and was maybe slightly less awful than I expected. It still sucked horribly, though I won't sugarcoat it: That was one of the worst movies I've sat through in ages. 

I liked Hope and her father (enough so that I'm slightly interested in seeing her role in the sequel), and I actually found the hero's powers somewhat interesting, but man, everything else sucked. The action was very dizzying at times, with the constant changes in size paired with how fast it went at times, and holy crap was the dialogue bad. I like most MCU humor I've seen so far, but man Luis was one of the most annoying characters I've ever experienced in anything, and pretty much any attempt the movie made at being "funny", instead just made me sick. It also doesn't help that I found every character aside from Hope and Dr. Pym to be terrible (Scott included), and the villain was especially terrible. I guess I can at least say the bar is so low after this one, the only thing that may not clear it is its sequel (and I guess the third Ant-Movie as well, which I'm definitely "excited" for )