Geek Heaven! Sci Fi/Fantasy Movies of 2011

Hey folks, Ambush Bug here. Though Prof. Challenger reviewed THOR and I offered my own review of the film last week, the rest of the Holes wanted to chime in and offer their own views on Marvel’s big movie offering that hit theaters last Friday. Below is a conversation held in the @$$Hole Clubhouse over the weekend after the @$$Holes had seen the film.

ROCK-ME AMODEO: I LOVED it, and loved all the little Easter eggs for the fanboys: the Don Blake nametag, the slump of Loki’s shoulders, the SHEILD archer named Barton, and just the thrill of seeing Kirby’s incredible imagination made “real.”

SUPERHERO: The Hawkeye thing was a bit unnecessary, mostly because we haven't seen him in any movie before. If it had been Robert Downey, Jr. or Scarlett Johanssen or Don Cheadle then I think it would have been worth it. But no one but us fans has any idea who this guy is supposed to be. So to a non-fan he just looks like some weird secret agent with a bow fetish. That being said...I cannot wait to see what they do with him in THE AVENGERS. And Renner in his own movie as Hawkeye would be absolutely fantastic.

JD: Doctor Selvig also mentions a gamma specialist that S.H.I.E.L.D previously dealt with, and if a non-fan didn't see HULK they wouldn't know what he was talking about.

BUG: Speaking of cameos, did anyone catch that it was JMS attempting to pull the hammer out of the ground when it was first discovered and failed. Maybe if he would have finished a few of his comic book endeavors he would be deemed worthy, but as is, a more accurate example of his ineptitude couldn’t be more exemplified.

Hey folks, Harry here... and I'm getting the SUPER 8 fever. If you've been paying attention online in the last 6-24 hrs, there's been a lot of material released - with a new TV spot from JJ's flick that got released to today that... well it is intense looking.

The key piece of information that has been frying my brain, got posted all the way back on Aprill 22nd, 2011 over at The HeroComplex, http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/04/ ... d-super-8/ in this article - it has 7 films that JJ Abrams reportedly told them helped shape the eventual... whatever, that SUPER 8 is. Here's those 7 films:

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

JAWS

John Carpenter's THE THING

ALIEN

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

SCANNERS

E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL

What exactly has JJ made with SUPER 8?

Now, I'm not asking anyone to tell me what the film is... cause I do not want to know until I see it... but I love looking at all this stuff, with those 7 films in my mind... realizing that 5 of the 7 are horror, paranoid thrillers with a healthy dose of conspiratorial U.S. military problems too.

Deadline is reporting that Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON will be moving up two days from its July 1, 2011 release date to June 29th, the Wednesday before. They did something similar with the second TRANSFORMERS film, I believe, and they probably want more wiggle room for the other early July releases.

Word around the geek campfire is certainly sounding more optimistic this time around.

SPOILER ALERT !!
There seems to be a cry for me to review SUPER 8 through sheer critical analysis. To discuss the many elements separately and with a cold logical mind skewering what ever morsels there are to skew.

That is so not what this movie is for me. To look at this film without nostalgia is to entirely miss the point. As a child of the 70s, as a child of Spielberg, Cronenberg, Carpenter, Dante, Landis, Scott… there was something impossibly cool about the era we grew up in.

Beyond all the geek cool that this film has going for it, the number one thing that speaks to me are the kids here. I just remember how awesome it was as a kid to leave the house on your own at night to hook up with friends and do whatever. I never got caught. Ever. I never had permission – and the adventures I had with my best friend Rylan Bosher are the sorts of things that when we see each other, as we too rarely do, we see ourselves as kids the second we hook up. Floods of stories.

JJ’s film isn’t a Spielberg clone, it is its own thing.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is a rare thing - a prequel that not only works but improves on the films before it. In fact, it's as if the previous X-MEN films led up to this one, in a weird way. There's not a bit of fat on the thing - it moves at a rigorous pace, and yet we get rich characters and genuine emotional moments even through the relentless plot. Matthew Vaughn has made the perfect superhero movie here, one that stands next to THE INCREDIBLES and SPIDER-MAN 2 as a definition of what we want to see from this genre.

As superhero films go, I have no hesitation in ranking X-MEN: FIRST CLASS among the very best ones. It's one of the most satisfying films so far this summer. It's smart, entertaining, has great emotion and character but isn't afraid to get big when it needs to, and Vaughn skillfully juggles 20 years of characters and story into a cohesive whole.

I did not see this one coming, and I'm not sure why. To varying degrees, I like all of director Matthew Vaughn's work (LAYER CAKE, STARDUST, KICK-ASS), but the X-MEN franchise just kept getting more and more scattered after Bryan Singer's second film to the point where it seemed impossible to get this right with an almost-entirely new team in front of and behind the cameras. But as the cast came together, I became more and more hopeful. Mixed in with a few lesser-known young actors are a handful of genuinely fine performers who elevate this material to such a degree that the final product ranks among the best that Marvel Studios has put together in its existence. And by setting the film mostly in the 1960s (during the Kennedy years), it opens up the possibility for future X-MEN films that could be set pretty much in any decade that seems appropriate.

What's fascinating with FIRST CLASS is watching how Xavier and Lehnsherr's roles become more clearly defined. Yes, it's fun to see how the team got their code names and how the X-Men name was coined. But I enjoyed watching Charles train his newer teammates, calling upon them to focus and often putting himself in mortal danger to help push these young mutants to control their powers. Whereas Charles becomes almost the phys-ed teacher, Erik takes on the role of philosophy professor, instilling his fear of human behavior and prejudice into the youngsters. It's a calculated practice as Erik drops little time-delayed specks of fear into their minds.

I expected an origin story, which is there, but what I also got was an emotional history lesson, a moral quandary, several coming-of-age stories, and a story of a friendship that was torn about by circumstance. I really loved this movie, and it's difficult for me to imagine that anyone who purports to love the X-Men as a comic book series won't be moved by someone getting it this right.

Infinitely better than the first X-MEN along with both of the apocalyptically dreadful and tedious X3 and WOLVERINE. The real benchmark is... how does it compare to X2? I personally feel that given multiple viewings I'm going to end up preferring X2, but I could be wrong. There's a lot to love about this new one. From the Silver Age time frame to every moment of Fassbender & McAvoy's Magneto & Xavier.

As a film, it is incredibly entertaining, there's two very strong emotionally resonant moments in the film that are pulled off exquisitely - and I will most certainly not ruin them. Best use of "F***" in a PG13 film in a real long damn time, if not the best.

Every FX shot is better that anything in X1, X3 & Wolverine. I love that we get to see recruiting and teaching of how to use powers, plus awesome rec-room showing off. Plus fights!

It is one of the best Marvel films, but... what keeps me from going over the moon for the film is my far stronger love for the original comic material.

Hey folks, Ambush Bug here. There’s a lot to like about X-MEN: FIRST CLASS. The film has a likable and talented cast (for the most part) and honors a lot of things well from what I remember from the comics. I say “from what I remember from the comics” because although X-MEN was probably one of the main reasons I got into reading comics almost 30 years ago, I stopped reading them about five years ago because I felt that the comics line had become a bloated monster, diluting all that was special about the X-Men in the first place. Plus to be quite honest, the movies, which tried to incorporate too many storylines in too half-assed a way (especially the awful X-MEN 3 THE LAST STAND and WOLVERINE), left a sour taste in my mouth the comics couldn’t wash away. The best thing about X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is that, being a prequel, I could imagine X3 & WOLVERINE didn’t exist and just enjoy the film as it was.