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ANORA! MOTHERFUCKIN! SWEEP! I KNOW THAT’S RIGHT BABY. 🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾 MIKEY MADISON BEST ACTRESS. MIKEY I AM SO PROUD OF YOU BABY GIRL 😭😭😭 I feel like a proud parent, you have no idea. Like I’m legit in tears over the fucking sex worker movie sweeping the Oscars. I know I haven’t spoken about Anora on here because of my inactivity, but trust me when I say that, while Wicked and Dune won Best Picture at my awards show, Anora was a CLOSE THIRD . I love this fucking movie so goddamn much, Mikey Madison is a GODDAMN SUPERSTAR and trust that when I return from my hiatus, which will be soon, I’ll have A LOT to say about it.

ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS OF THE SECOND ANNUAL DANIE AWARDS! (The Big Ones)

(Please that this is my awards show, so this is my personal opinion.)

Winners are italicized

Best Voice Over Performance

Viola Davis as The Chameleon- “Kung Fu Panda 4”

Maya Hawke as Anxiety- “Inside Out 2”

Lupita Nyong’o as Roz- “The Wild Robot”

Kevin Durand as Proximus Ceasar- “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”

Robbie Williams as himself- “Better Man”

Best Scene Stealing Performance By An Actor

Channing Tatum as Gambit- “Deadpool & Wolverine”

Austin Butler as Fayed-Rautha Harkonen- “Dune Prt 2”

Bill Skarsgard as Count Orlok- “Nosferatu”

Bowen Yang as Pfannie and Bronwyn James as Shenshen- “Wicked Part One”

Charlee Fraser as Mary Jobassa- “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

Best Performance In An Action Movie

Daisy Edgar Jones as Kate Cooper- “Twisters”

Glen Powell as Tyler Owens- “Twisters”

Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa- “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides- “Dune Part 2”

Ryan Gosling as Colt Seavers- “The Fall Guy”

Best Performance By An Actor In A Horror Movie

Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed- “Heretic”

Justice Smith as Owen - “I Saw The TV Glow”

David Jonsson as Andy- “Alien Romulus

Bill Skarsgard as Count Orlok- “Nosferatu”

Nicholas Cage as Longlegs- “Longlegs”

Best Performance By An Actress In A Horror Movie

Maika Monroe as Lee Harkee- “Longlegs”

Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle/Margaret Qualley as Sue- “The Substance”

Lily Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter- “Nosferatu”

Cailee Spaeny as Rain Caradine- Alien Romulus

Chloe East as Sister Paxton- “Heretic”

Best ing Actor

Stanley Tucci as Cardinal Bellini- “Conclave”

Carlos Diehz as Cardinal Benitez- “Conclave”

Austin Butler as Fayed-Rautha Harkonen- “Dune Part 2”

Chris Hemsworth as Dr. Dementus- “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

Edward Norton as Pete Seeger- “A Complete Unknown”

Best ing Actress

Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica Atreides- “Dune Part 2”

Marissa Bode as Nessarose Thropp- “Wicked Part 1”

Isabella Rosselini as Sister Agnes- “Conclave”

Charlee Fraser as Mary Jobassa- “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

Felicity Jones as Erzébet Tóth- “The Brutalist”

Best Actress- Musical Or Comedy

Kathryn Newton as Lisa Swallows- “Lisa Frankenstein” 

Ariana Grande as Galinda Upland- “Wicked part 1”

Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba Thropp- “Wicked part 1”

June Squib as Thelma- “Thelma”

Zendaya as Tashi Duncan- “Challengers”

Best Actor- Musical or Comedy

Hugh Jackman as James “Logan” Howlett/Wolverine- “Deadpool & Wolverine”

Jonno Davies as Robbie Williams as a monkey- “Better Man”

Mike Faist as Art Donaldson- “Challengers”

Josh O’Connor as Patrick Zweig- “Challengers”

Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero (Wicked Part 1)

Best Actress- Drama

Zendaya as Chani- “Dune Part 2”

Mikey Madison as Anora/Ani- “Anora”

Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez- “A Complete Unknown”

Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva- “I’m Still Here”

Ryan Destiny as Claressa Shields- “The Fire Inside”

Best Actor- Drama

Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan- “A Conplete Unknown”

Brandon Wilson as Turner- “Nickel Boys”

Ethan Herisse as Elwood Curtis- “Nickel Boys”

Adrian Brody as Laszlo Toth- “The Brutalist”

Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence - “Conclave”

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winnie Holtzman and Dana Fox- “Wicked Part 1” (based on the musical by Winnie Holtzman and Stephen Schwartz and the novel ‘Wicked: The Life and Times of The Wicked Witch Of The West’ by Gregory Maguire)

Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts- “Dune Part 2” (based on the novel ‘Dune’ by Frank Herbert)

Robert Eggers- “Nosferatu” (inspired by the screenplay ‘Nosferatu’ by Henrik Galeen and the novel ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker)

RaMell Ross, Josslyn Barnes- “Nickel Boys” (based on the novel ‘The Nickel Boys’ by Colson Whitehead)

Peter Straughan- “Conclave” (based on the novel ‘Conclave’ by Robert Harris)

Best Original Screenplay

Jane Schoenbrun - “I Saw The TV Glow”

Coralie Farageat- “The Substance”

Sean Baker- “Anora”

Justin Kuritzkes - “Challengers”

Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold- “The Brutalist”

Best Director:

Denis Villeneuve- “Dune Part 2”

Jon M Chu- “Wicked Part 1”

Sean Baker- “Anora”

Robert Eggers- “Nosferatu”

Coralie Farageat - “The Substance”

Best Motion Picture- Animated

Inside Out 2
The Wild Robot
Flow
Transformers One
Kung Fu Panda 4

Best Picture

Anora
A Complete Unknown
Nickel Boys
Conclave
Challengers
Better Man
Wicked Part 1
Dune Part 2
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
The Substance
Nosferatu
I Saw The TV Glow

Winner Tally:

Nosferatu: 3
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga: 3
Anora: 3
Wicked Part 1: 5
Dune Part 2: 5

ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS OF THE SECOND ANNUAL DANIE AWARDS! (Technical Awards)

(Please that this is my awards show, so this is my personal opinion.)

Winners are italicized

Best Makup and Hairstyling

s Hannon, Laura Blount and Sarah Nuth- “Wicked Part 1”

Pierre-Olivier Persin, Stéphanie Guillon and Marilyne Scarselli- “The Substance”

Justine Sierakowski and Annie Johnson- “Anora”

Suzanne Stokes Munton, Traci Loader and David White- “Nosferatu”

Donald Moat- “Dune Part 2”

Best Visual Effects:

Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe, and Gerd Nefzer- “Dune Part 2”

Andrew Jackson, Dan Bethel, Xavier Bernasconi, Nathan Ortiz, Alex Whyte and Steve Oakley- “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

Erik Winquist, Paul Story, and Danielle Immerman- “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”

Florian Witzel, Charles Lai, Bill Georgiou, Ben Snow- “Twisters”

Luke Millar, Dave Clayton, Andy Taylor- “Better Man”

Best Editing:

Joe Walker- “Dune Part 2”

Eliot Knapman, Margaret Sixel- “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

Sean Baker- “Anora”

Myron Kerstein- “Wicked”

Louise Ford- “Nosferatu”

Best Production Design:

Patrice Vermette- “Dune Part 2”

Nathan Crowley- “Wicked Part 1”

Colin Gibson- “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

Craig Lathrop- “Nosferatu”

Judy Becker- “The Brutalist”

Best Costume Design

Jacqueline West- “Dune Part 2”

Paul Tazewell- “Wicked Part 1”

Jenny Beavan- “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

Linda Muir- “Nosferatu”

Jocelyn Pierce- “Anora”

Best Original Score

Hans Zimmer- “Dune Part 2”

John Powell and Stephen Schwartz- “Wicked Part 1”

Daniel Blumberg- “The Brutalist”

Tom Holkenborg- “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

Kris Bowers- “The Wild Robot”

Best Cinematography

Alice Brooks- “Wicked Part 1”

Greig Fraser- “Dune Part 2”

Jomo Fray- “Nickel Boys”

Jarin Blaschke- “Nosferatu”

Lol Crawley- “The Brutalist”

Best Individual Sequence

Anxiety Attack- “Inside Out 2”

Bye Bye Bye, Logan- “Deadpool & Wolverine”

Giedi Prime gladiator arena- “Dune Part 2”

Ephaba Defies Gravity- “Wicked Part 1”

Octoboss Assault on the War Rig- “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

This review may contain spoilers.

“There were two times I felt truly happy. The day I met Josh and the day I killed him”

my rating: Cinematic Cryptid (5 stars)

Finally, a movie for the 3 people who thought Ex Machina would be better if it was a romcom

My rating: yeahh, it’s not great (2.5/5)

Hoooooo boy, this is gonna be an unpopular opinion, and in order to explain it, I need to give you some context.

Are you guys familiar with “A Little Life”?? The 2015 novel by Hanya Yanagihara? It won a shit ton of awards, went stupid viral on BookTok a couple years ago with many people proclaiming it to be one of the best books ever written? I HATED A Little Life. Hated it with every single fiber of my being. It felt like misery porn. Misery for the sake of misery. 800 pages of the universe relentlessly shitting on our main character until he finally kills himself at the end of the book. The bad things that happen to the main character happen for no real reason. One or two bad things, sure, that’s understandable, but it gets to a point where it feels excessive. That’s how I feel about Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist

Now, to be clear, unlike Yanagihara’s novel, there are things that I truly do like about The Brutalist . Things I respect, even! I think Adrian Brody, Felicity Jones, Raffey Cassidy and Guy Pearce are all exceptional, with Brody and Jones turning in career best work. The film also looks breathtaking to look at and I ire Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s efforts to create the kind of sprawling epic that Hollywood doesn’t really make anymore and, despite the 2.5 star rating, I actually do think they’re successful to an extent. But, that’s where my praise ends.

Spread over 3 1/2 hours,  2 acts and an epilogue, The Brutalist  is the story of Lászlo Tóth (played by Brody), a Hungarian Jew who survives the Holocaust and, in 1947, travels to America in hopes of rebuilding the life that he had in Hungary. Before the war, Lászlo was a celebrated architect but, when he arrives in America, he finds himself forced to live in a converted supply closet in a furniture store owned by his cousin Attila (played by Alessandro Nivola) and his wife Aubrey (played by Emma Laird) working odd jobs to make ends meet (the first of many negative events that befall our protaganist throughout the course of the story). Things eventually take a turn for the positive when he crosses paths with Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. (played by Guy Pearce), a wealthy industrialist, and his son Harry (played by Joe Alwyn). Over the span of a decade, Lászlo’s life and the lives of his wife Erzsébet (played by Felicity Jones) and niece Zsofia (played by Raffey Cassidy) become intertwined with the lives of the Van Buren family as Harrison funds Lászlo’s greatest project yet, one that pushes him to the brink of his limits, all while the world keeps pushing him down.

Many people have compared The Brutalist to Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterpiece There Will Be Blood in that both deal with the ways that money, power and influence can corrupt people, and to an extent, I can absolutely see that. But I also can’t, because The Brutalist while it certainly is focused on those topics, it’s more about the ways that people in power can use influence to manipulate, take advantage of, and ultimately abuse, people they view as ‘vulnerable’ (itedly something There Will Be Blood also does), but it’s far more interested in something deeper. Unlike Yanigahara’s A Little Life, the bad things that happen to Lászlo have a purpose: the way in which our country treats, and in many ways always has treated, immigrants, and to an extent, I understand what Corbet and Fastvold were going for. But it gets to a point where it feels unnecessary and excessive. Honestly, The Brutalist was sitting at a 3/3.5 rating until it got to the scene where Harrison rapes Lászlo in an Italian marble quarry to assert his dominance, power and control over him. WE GET IT, MOVIE. WE GET THE POINT. You don’t have to go THIS HARD to show us how bad Lászlo, and by extension, all immigrants have it.

I wanted to love The Brutalist I wanted to see what so many others see in it, but I walked away depressed. Depressed and disillusioned. I was hoping to make a comeback to Letterboxd in the next few weeks but now, idk anymore. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I need time because this movie took so much out of me. Oh, and, if you DO love The Brutalist , if you see the masterpiece in it that I can’t, I’m happy for you. Truly. A lot of people love “A Little Life” despite me hating it. I harbor no ill will towards you if you love this movie. I truly wish I did.

Oh, and also, fuck generative AI. All my homies hate generative AI

I would like to officially announce that I’ll be making my grand return to Letterboxd next week! I’ve missed you guys. Share more soon

AND NOBODY IN ALL OF OZ, NO WIZARD THAT THERE IS OR WAS, IS EVER GONNA BRING MEEEE DOWN!!!!

My rating: Cinematic Cryptid

Guys…. Guys….. let me make this abundantly clear. I know that I have a tendency to over-rate movies, to enjoy movies that a lot of people don’t (just look at my takes on It’s A Wonderful Knife , a film which I completely stand by my love for and intend to rewatch this holiday season, or The Marvels , which I ALSO stand by my opinion of). I give out “Cinematic Cryptid” ratings and 5 stars like they’re fucking Halloween candy. It’s something I am going to work on. Just this year alone, I’ve given that title to everything from Dune Part 2 , Inside Out 2 , Furiosa and The Wild Robot , which aren’t just some of my favorite films of the year, but some of my favorite filme of all time. They are some of the most cinematic cryptid movies to ever cinematic cryptid. Part of a special class all their own, the best of the best. and my friends, today we gather here to induct a new member into the Cinematic Cryptid hall of infamy. Jon M. Chu’s Wicked Part 1 (or simply Wicked since Universal seems to want to hide that this is a two parter) is everything I wanted it to be and more as a fan of the musical. I need to see it again to fully collect my thoughts and I’ll HOPEFULLY offer a longer, more in depth review once I see it again, but until then, believe the fucking hype, my friends. No thoughts, only I love Wicked , I love musicals, I love cinema

🎶 Down, down, down the road, down the Witches’ Road. Down, down, down the road, down the Witches’ Road. Follow me, my friend, to glory at the end 🎶

My rating: Cinematic Cryptid

JAC SCHAEFFER YOU WILL BE PAYING FOR MY THERAPY BECAUSE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. You can’t keep getting away with this, Jac. Once is one thing, but TWICE??? TWICE???? Maybe it’s a good thing she’s not the showrunner for Vision/the show formerly known as Vision Quest.

I MET A GUY IN THE SUMMER AND I LEFT HIM IN THE SPRING, HE ARGUED WITH ME ABOUT EVERYTHING! HE HAD AN EGO AND A TEMPER AND A WANDERING EYE, HE SAID HE’S 6’2’’ AND I’M LIKE ‘DUDE, NICE TRY’”

My rating: Cinematic Cryptid

BREAKING NEWS: Olivia Rodrigo: GUTS World Tour just received a 9 hour standing ovation from me in my bedroom after watching it for the 200th time!

In all seriousness, as someone who didn’t get to go to the GUTS Tour (or SOUR Tour for that matter), I’m so glad this exists

My rating: Truly Amazing (4.5 stars)

TWIN CITIES FILM FESTIVAL 2024 OPENING NIGHT FILM

While I enjoyed Edward Berger’s 2022 adaptation of All Quiet On The Western Front well enough, but I definitely don’t think it deserved all the awards it got. Overall, it’s a solid 3 or 3.5 stars, a solid adaptation of a classic novel. The same can’t be said for his follow up, an adaptation of Robert Harris’ 2016 novel Conclave

Conclave follows Cardinal Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) who is chosen to lead the election process to find a new Pope after the current one (played by Bruno Novelli) dies. As Cardinals from all over the world descend upon Vatican City to take part in the conclave, Lawrence finds himself at the center of a web of secrets, deceit and lies left in the former Pope’s wake, a web that he must unravel before it shakes or even destroys the foundation of the Catholic Church, all while dealing with his own crisis of faith.

Every year, there’s at least one film that’s a serious awards contendor that proves to be divisive among audiences, particularly Film Twitter™️, and Conclave definitely feels like it will be one of those films for this year. If ‘a bunch of middle aged to old white guys (itely they are a fair number of non white characters, though very few of them have major speaking roles) sit aroubd and talk about the politics and inner workings of the Catholic Church’ doesn’t sound like something you’d enjoy, I’d advise skipping this one. That being said, and there’s no other way to say it, this is exactly my kind of shit. Conclave is the kind of thriller that Hollywood doesn’t really make anymore. Packed with drama, political intrigue, lies, deception and secrets and full of complex characters that allow the actors a lot of meat to chew on. While there certainly is a lot to ire about Conclave , whether it’s the script by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy screenwriter Peter Straughan, the gorgeous production and costume design by Suzie Davies and Lisy Christl respectively, the bombastic score by Volker Bertelmann, and the lush cinnematography by Stéphane Fontaine, the real reason to see Conclave is the performances. Ralph Fiennes delivers his best performance in years (I’d say his best performance since 1993’s Schindler’s List ) and is absolutely this film’s MVP, but he’s surrounded by a ton of great performances. Whether it’s John Lithgow as the more moderate Cardinal Tremblay and Stanley Tucci as the more progressive Cardinal Bellini, Sergio Castellitto as the flamboyant, vape smoking, backwards looking and cartoonishly evil Cardinal Tedesco, Carlos Diehz as the mysterious Cardinal Benitez and Isabella Rossellini as nun Sister Agnes, this truly is a film packed to the brim stellar performances. While the film certainly isn’t subtle about where it stands politically (and trust me, once this film releases in a couple weeks, right before the US Presidental election, its politics will no doubt dominate the discussion around it), and that lack of subtelty will absolutely be what makes or breaks this movie for a lot of people, it truly does feel like its heart is in the right place, at least to me anyway.

Conclave is a film that took me by surprise. I didn’t really have many expectations for it because it wasn’t really on my radar until fairly recently, but I’m so glad that it did end up on my radar because I dug the absolute hell out of this

Watched on Sunday October 6, 2024.

I’m seeing this in theaters on the 16th as part of the AMC x Blumhouse Halloween film series, but IHAD TO do my annual birthday rewatch. It’s a tradition I don’t intend to break any time soon

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away……

My rating: Cinematic Cryptid

I can’t think of better way to spend my birthday than watching this absolute CLASSIQUE piece of cinema on the big screen, acompanied by a live orchestra playing the equally iconic score.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, even if you *are* my least favorite vegetable”

My rating: absolute cinematic perfection (5 stars)

If we’re judging Studio Ghibli movies on the “funny lil guys” scale, this is easily the best (I mean, you have Turnip Head, the dog and Calcifer). If we’re judging Studio Ghibli movies based on quality… yeah it’s absolutely up there. Maybe not the best, but definitely top 3

Watched on Saturday September 14, 2024.

Watched on Saturday September 7, 2024.

Watched on Wednesday September 4, 2024.

My rating: Absolute Cinematic Perfection (5 stars)

God, I’m gonna miss Glen Powell/Twisters Summer. Yeah, I have it on digital and I absolutely plan to buy it on Blu Ray, but some movies just need to be experienced in theaters to get the full effect, and Twisters is absolutely one of them. No better way to send off Twisters Summer with a bang than to see it one final time in theaters. Kate Cooper and Tyler Owens, you will always be famous to me ❤️❤️❤️

Watched on Saturday August 31, 2024.

“It’s okay, Riley! You’re in good hands! Now let’s change everything about you!!”

My rating: cinematic cryptid

Took me a little longer than I would’ve liked to see Inside Out 2 a 4th time, but considering that it’s been in theaters for over two months and has no signs of slowing down (my screening was sold out), I may still be able to see it at least once more. All that being said, yeah, this is still fucking great. Easily in my top 10 animated movies of all time, regardless of studio, along with both Spider-Verse movies, Tangled, Inside Out, Coco, Soul, Up and Turning Red.

This review may contain spoilers.

“Please… Don’t let me…. Die”

My rating: truly amazing (4.5 stars)

Good fucking god, is Fede Alvarez’ Alien: Romulus a mixed bag, and it honestly really shouldn’t be.

The concept for the film is, in typical Alien franchise fashion, fairly cut and dry: a group of old friends living on a Weyland-Yutani mining colony called Jackson’s Star, made up of Rain played by Cailee Spaeny, channeling Gracie Abrams cosplaying The Last of Us Part 2 Ellie Williams), her adoptive/surrogate android brother Andy (played by David Jonsson), Tyler (played by Archie Renaux), his cousin Bjorn (played by Spike Fearn), Bjorn’s girlfriend Kay (Isabela Merced) and Navarro (played by Aileen Wu), decide to break into what they believe is a decomissioned Weyland-Yutani spaceship floating near the colony in order to raid it for supplies so that they can escape their mundane lives as gears in the corporate machine and travel offworld to find the life they feel they deserve, only to discover that the ‘spaceship’ is actually a giant space station divided into two halves: Romulus and Remus. In typical Alien fashion however, things very quickly go downhill as the trio of Tyler, Bjorn and Andy, who are sent in to loot the supplies, are attacked by facehuggers. Honestly, things are really good, great even, for the first 30-40 minutes, but it all grinds to a halt when HE shows up, and whoooo boy, let’s address the elephant in the room. ‘He’ is Rook, the ship’s science officer, and while the facial and vocal performance for the character are performed by Daniel Betts, the facial and audio ‘reference’ is that of Ian Holm, who famously played Ash in the first Alien movie. It’s also worth noting that Holm died in 2020, at the age of 88. In the wake of the film’s release, Fede Alvarez has spoken about how he got Holm’s widow’s permission to use his likeness in the film and how she reportedly said that Holm felt that Hollywood had ‘abandoned him’ after The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies in 2014 and that if he was alive, he would’ve absolutely lent his likeness to be used for the character. It’s also worth noting that, since Romulus is set 20 years after the events of Alien, which released 45 years ago, there’s no way Holm, who would be 92 if he were still alive, could physically play the role today, since it’s all but implied that Ash and Rook are the same model of android. That being said, while the de-aging would absolutely still look uncanny, it wouldn’t be nearly as ghoulish. Let me not mince words here: what Fede Alvarez and company did here is not only downright ghoulish and easily the worst example of digital necromancy put to film (it makes the Christopher Reeve and Adam West cameos in The Flash look tasteful, which should be impossible since unlike that film, Alvarez allegedly actually asked permission to use Holm’s likeness), but it also undoes why the reveal of Ash being an android still hits hard even 45 years later: because nobody suspected him to be, the reveal came out of nowhere. So, for Romulus to turn around and say that ‘erm, ackshully, there were OTHER androids who look like Ash’ negates the twist’s effectiveness.

‘Holm’s’ cameo is part of the biggest issue plaguing Romulus: it’s less of a movie and more of a ‘greatest hits’ collection of the Alien franchise. It’s all here! A character getting impregnated by a face hugger leading to them dying by chest burster like in the first movie, the Xenomorphs keeping their victims in a bizarre borderline concious state after they kill them like in Aliens , Colonial Marine pulse rifles like in Aliens , a key plot point involves an human-alien hybrid like in Alien: Ressurection , Rook straight up namedrops Prometheus while Marc Streitenfeld’s score from that movie plays in the background, a character gives birth to a monster alien baby like Shaw does in Prometheus and last but certainly not least, the film literally STOPS DEAD IN ITS TRACKS for a character to basically look at the camera and say “GET AWAY FROM HER, YOU BITCH!” Yes, this film is so shameless with its pandering that it resorts to having a character say not only THE most iconic line from the entire Alien franchise, but arguably one of the most iconic lines in all of cinema, regardless of genre. So… why did a lot of it work for me?? Like genuinely? I’ll openly it that I love when franchises I love bring out ‘Glup Shittos’, especially Marvel and Star Wars (the franchise that initially gave birth to the term ‘Glup Shitto’), but there is a line. Just because I enjoy some fanservice every now and again, I can tell when a movie is pandering to me. It’s clear that Alvarez truly is a fan of the Alien franchise because only a true fan would think to pick and choose references from close to ALL of the franchise’s movies, even the ones people like to ignore. But his love is the kind that somewhat comes at the expense of telling a unique and compelling story. So.. why did it work for me?? Like, fanservice aside, genuinely, when Alien: Romulus isn’t winking at the audience, it’s really fucking great. Like REALLY fucking great. which is why I can’t rate it lower than 4.5. Some of the scenes here, like Tyler, Rain and Andy attempting to avoid the facehuggers (who can track hear signatures and sound) by turning the temperature of the room they’re in up to the temperature of their bodies, Rain and Andy obliterating the Xenomorphs with pulse rifles while in zero gravity are truly some of the franchise’s best. Hell, even the ‘get away from her, you bitch’ scene worked for me because it made sense with the dynamic that Rain and Andy have. Speaking of Rain and Andy, their dynamic is absolutely one of the best parts of the film. They’ve literally grown up together, to the point that Rain gets offended when people try to remind her that Andy ‘isn’t real’. Andy has been defective since Rain’s parents ‘adopted’ him, and his defective programming causes him to exhibit traits of human disabilities, primarily autism, and Rain is deeply protective of him, especially after their parents’ deaths. Their dynamic feels real and authentic thanks to Spaeny and Jonsson’s performances.

At the end of the day, Alien: Romulus is an atmospheric, genuinely horrifying return to form for the franchise that is ultimately prevented from becoming as good as the movies that came before it due to its obsession with the past, even if some of those moments did kinda work for me

My rating: true cinematic perfection (5 stars)

I’ve seen this movie countless times on DVD but I’d never seen it in theaters, so getting to see the 15th anniversary rerelease/remaster in 3D was an absolute treat.

You look like you don’t belong here, Gretchen”

My rating truly amazing (4.5 stars)

If I had a nickel for every horror movie I’ve seen in 2024 that was distributed by NEON and starred one of the Euphoria girlies as an American woman who travels to a secluded place in Europe where surreal and creepy shit happenint, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

In all seriousness, holy fuck did I dig the hell out of this movie. This is the kind of audacious, wholly original movie that we need more of. Less concerned with making any real sense (and as the movie continues, it truly does become more and more nonsensical) and more interested in creating a creepy ✨vibe✨ and atmosphere. Hunter Schafer is fantastic here, but the real MVP is Dan Stevens, who makes the scenery into a five course meal as a smarmy, creepy hotel owner complete with cartoonishly over the top German accent. Schafer and Stevens’ performances represent two possible interpretations of director/writer Tilman Singer’s often open ended script. Schafer is playing it absolutely straight, playing up the coldness and moodiness of American teenager Gretchen in a way that feels authentic but never (to me, at least) crosses the line into unlikable or bitchy territory. Schafer is able to find and play into the drama of the story, whereas Stevens ABSOLUTELY knows how campy and batshit this script is and absolutely leans into it. These opposing approaches to the material never feel as if they clash, instead complimenting each other beautifully and making for a cinematic experience I won’t soon forget

“Well, that’s great! That’s just fuckin’ great, man! Now what the fuck are we supposed to do?! We’re in some real pretty shit now, man!”

My rating: Cinematic Cryptid

If Alien is a textbook example of a perfect horror movie, then Aliens is a textbook example of a perfect action movie. James Cameron took all of the groundwork that Ridley Scott had laid with the first movie and amplified it times a billion, uping the ante on the action and stakes while not losing the memorable characters, horror or biting satire and critique of mega-corporations that made the first movie so memorable

“commerial towing vehicle ‘The Nostramo’
crew: seven
cargo: refinery processing
20,000,000 tone of mineral ore
course: returning to earth”

My rating: Cinematic Cryptid

I said this when I watched the original Mad Max back in May to prepare for Furiosa but it’s crazy to look back on films that launched long running franchises and see how small scale they are in comparison to what they would become. If Alien was released today, it would be considered a low to mid budget movie, but in all honesty, that’s part of the charm. It doesn’t matter that the technology on this ‘futuristic’ space ship looks super antiquated 45 years after the film’s release, but again, that’s part of its charm. Watching it in 2024, all of the visual decisions make sense or seem intentional, even if they were made because that’s just how technology was back in the late 70s. All that being said, Ridley Scott is a director who I’m kind of hit or miss on, especially when it comes to his later work, but when he cooks, he COOKS and fellas, he and screenwriters Dan O’Bannon and and Roland Shusett fuckin’ cooked here

“Fear’s the reason you do it. You don’t run from your fears, you ride ‘em”

My rating: Absolute Cinematic Perfection (5 stars)

Ohhh Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar Jones, I’m so scared of you, I’m literally shaking in my boots. I guess that means I have to ride you 😌😏🙂‍↕️

HE HAS RISEN, BABYGIRL!”

My rating: absolute cinematic perfection (5 stars)

I can’t even explain it, but this movie has the same, almost addictive quality that the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and Captain Marvel/The Marvels have.

“if you weren’t young and dumb, you never fucking be brave enough to do anything.”

My rating: Cinematic Cryptid 

So, tomorrow is my birthday. I turn 30. Perhaps it’s sad to say, but in a lot of ways, I relate more to my 18 year old self than I’d like to it. I’ve been depressed for a long time, for as long as I can , really, even if it manifested itself in different ways when I was younger, but I feel like 2012, when I was 17, on the cusp of turning 18, was the last time things felt ‘normal’ for me. Everything after that feels like a fucking blur. Sure, there have been some moments where I’ve been happy, but since 2012, it just feels like every time things get to be going well, like I’ve got my shit together, something happens. idk if it’s myself or the universe or what it is, but something always gets in the way, it all comes crashing down, and it’s made me scared to move forward. I bring all of this up to say that Megan Park’s sophomore directorial outing My Old Ass might be the most ‘me’ movie to have ever been made. Like, legitimately, I feel like if I could make my dream or ideal movie, something that truly felt like the essence of who I am put to film, it would look something like My Old Ass. This is a movie so good that it stars an (alleged) predator (Percy Hynes White) and I’m not detracting any stars because of it. This movie made me feel seen in a way that I haven’t felt since AT LEAST Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person In The World back in 2022, but definitely since Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, and thst came out in 2018. 6 years ago! Honestly this feels like the spiritual successor to Eighth Grade in many ways. Throw in two fantastic performances from Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza as the older and younger versions of Elliot and you have the recipe for a film that, in my opinion, takes its place as one of the best coming of age movies in recent memory, alongside classics like Lady Bird and the afformentioned Eighth Grade. It’s a film I saw at the perfect moment in my life and, while I didn’t have it when I was 18, I do have it now. Happy (early) birthday to me. Tomorrow, on my actual birthday… something special, before I disappear back into my little hiatus cave for just a little while longer

My rating: truly great (4.5 stars)

(Early Screening with Live Q&A with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield)

The cinematic adaptation of Cooking With Flo really took a lot of creative liberties with the source material, goddamn

“: YOU ARE the Matrix. Everything comes from you, everything IS you

My rating: Cinematic Cryptid

Like, I fully understand thst this movie is, among other things, a commentary on the comodification and sexualization of women’s bodies in the entertainment industry, but my god, the outfits they had Margaret Qualley in…. I’m looking as respectfully as possible but also not respectfully at all because MY GOD, she’s hot.

In all seriousness, this was a fuckin’ TRIP. Easily one of the most disgusting, hilarious, and batshit insane things I’ve ever seen. This feels like the most insane drug trip, full of pulsating synth heavy score, frenetic editing and cinematography.. it really is an assault of the senses, and I adored every single depraved, twisted second of its nearly 2 1/2 hour runtime. This has some of THEEE most unsettling sequences of body horror and horror in general I’ve ever seen (seriously the first scene with Elisabeth and Sue in the bathroom up there with the chestburster from Alien in of “most disturbing body horror sequences I’ve ever seen”. Though itedly, I’ve not delved too deep into the body horror subgenre). This is EVERYTHING I wanted MaXXXine to be. The performances are all fantastic. Margaret Qualley is perfectly cast as the younger, more idealized version of Demi Moore’s character. She oozes confidence, charm and sex appeal, while also being cold and more than a little bit intimidating. Moore, on the other hand, gives the best performance of her career. She believably conveys Elisabeth’s descent into madness while never coming across as hammy or cartoony. By the end of the movie, you *do* want both Elisabeth and Sue to be successful, even if you know that’s impossible. The true MVPs of this movie though are Dennis Quaid with his hamminess meter turned to 11…… Thousand and the incredible prosthetics (the “final design” of Moore’s character looks like the love child of Glen Close and Gollum). EASILY my favorite horror movie of the year, tied with Strange Darling , The Substance is an insane ride that needs to be seen to be believed. From its abstract intro to its cartoonishly gorey finale, this is a sleazy, slimy, gritty, gross, campy, hilarious ride, and a truly unforgettable one at that.

Alexa, play “Paint The Town Red” by Doja Cat

I’ll be back soon, guys. After my birthday, which is next Subday. I’ll explain everything and have LOTS of reviews to share, including the first 6 days of my “31 Days of Halloween”, a challenge I’ve set for myself to watch a different horror film every day for the month of October. Finally watching some stone cold classics I’ve embarassingly never seen and revisiting some old favorites! I can’t wait to bring you along on the journey. Love you guys ❤️

“I AM Home”
“You do not belong here. This is a wilderness.”
“And I am a WILD ROBOT”

My rating: CINEMATIC CRYPTID

CHRIS SANDERS, YOU WILL BE PAYING MY THERAPY BILLS BECAUSE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK 😭😭😭😭😭

Y’all, when I tell you The Wild Robot is THEEEE best DreamWorks Animation movie, I’m not joking. It’s better than Puss In Boots: The Last Wish , it’s better than the How To Train Your Dragon trilogy (which I don’t talk about NEARLY enough on here, but are some of my favorite animated movies ever). It’s just…. A masterpiece beyond words. A tender, beautiful story about self discovery, identity, love, and most importantly family, Sanders’ script (based on Peter Brown’s series of children’s books) is poignent, funny, emotional without ever feeling manipulative and quiet and contemplative when it needs to be. Add in some breathtaking animation and a stellar voice cast (Lupita Nyong’o as Roz, Pedro Pascal as Fink and Boone Storm and Kit Connor as Brightbill are the standouts) and you have a recipe for not just the best animated film of the year (tied with Inside Out 2 for me, even with all the production drama/info about the crunch the animators were placed under to bring it to life), but one of the year’s best as a whole.

RISE… OPTIMUS PRIME
my rating: absolute cinematic perfection (5 stars)

Y’all… we are so motherfuckin back. Like we are SAUR back.

I’m not gonna come out and say that this is the best animated movie of the year (that title belongs to Inside Out 2 ) or even the biggest surprise of the year (that belongs to Strange Darling ), but that doesn’t mean that Transformers One wasn’t a genuine surprise. When the first trailer dropped, I truly thought it looked awful, full of all the tropes I hate about modern ‘lowest common denominator” animated movies, primarily forced humor and characters who never shut the hell up. But then, early reviews from fans who had had the chance to see early screenings began to proclaim it the “best Transformers movie ever”, even moreso than the animated movie from the 80s, even moreso than Bumblebee , and that was enough to pique my interest to check it out, and the critic reviews only added to my interest to see it, so I decided to go to the early fan event screening and.. y’all…… BELIEVE THE FUCKIN’ HYPE because, just like its title characters, there truly is more to Transformers One than meets the eye.

I’ll be upfront and say my knowledge of Transformers comes from the movies mainly, though I have seen some random episodes of various iterations of the cartoons. But I don’t need to be an expert in Transformers lore to know that Transformers One is something truly special. A huge part of that comes from our leads, Orion Pax (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry), the lowly miner robots who will become Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively. Tyree Henry is absolutely the standout, imbuing the character of D-16 with a growing sense of darkness and anger that makes his inevitable turn to evil make sense, albeit still an emotional and devistating one. However, as good as our two leads are, Transformers One greatest strength lies in its script, written by Thor: Ragnarok, Black Widow and Godzilla vs. Kong screenwriter Eric Pearson and Ant-Man and The Wasp screenwriters Gabriel Ferrari and Andrew Barrer, based on a story by Ferrari and Barrer, which allows Pax and D’s friendship to really shine, allong us to get attatched to them as characters and as friends. Once the twist happens near the end of the film’s first act, we’re allowed to sit with the impact that it has on both Pax and D and come to understand the betrayal and rage that D feels as a result of the twist. The duo’s differing reactions and ideologies when it comes to how to move on from an earth shattering revelation begins to slowly drive a rift between them, but the script also goes a long way to make you empathize with D and the decisions he makes. The rest of the cast, made up of Scarlett Johannsson as mine supervisor Elita-1, Keegan Michael Key as B-127 aka BADASSATRON , or The Robot Who Will Be Bumblebee, a robot whose time working alone in the trash incinerator has made him more than a little cuckoo for cocoa puffs, are entertaining in their roles as well, but unlike Hemsworth and Tyree Henry, who truly disappear into their roles (Hemsworth even does a damn great Peter Cullen impression near the end of the movie, while still putting his own unique spin on Optimus), they truly do feel more like celebrity stunt casting, although Key is nowhere near as obnoxious as Bee as I feared he would be based on the trailer. He does talk A LOT, but Key is able to sell the obnoxious yet endearing nature of the character and a lot of his lines do get a ton of laughs. Add in some absolutely gorgeous animation and a fantastic score by Bryan Tyler and you have a recipe for a truly great animated movie, one that puts its own unique stamp on the Transformers lore and legacy and truly feels like a great tribute to the franchise’s 40 year history.

AUTOBOTS, ROLL OUT

For those of you who may be worried about me, don’t worry, I’m just on a break from ALL social medias, and I’ll hopefully be back mid-September. The only reason I came back is because I saw a film so good, I had to gush about it on here. Don’t worry, I’m keeping a log of all the movies I’ve seen during my lbx hiatus, complete with reviews, so you will get a lot of content when DO I come back in a few weeks

🎶 Love hurts, love scars. Love wounds and mars 🎶

My rating: CINEMATIC CRYPTID

Consider this one of the biggest surprises of 2024 for me, if not the biggest. I had little to no expectations for JT Mollner’s Strange Darling because, until a couple weeks ago, I had no idea the movie even existed. The only thing that I knew going in was the poster, that the basic premise was “a one-night stand gone horribly wrong” and that it was a horror thriller. I never saw any trailers for it, nothing. But then, this little movie I’d never heard of started getting some of the best reviews of any movie, regardless of genre, released this year. That piqued my interest enough that I decided I HAD To check it out, and oh, I’m so so glad I did.

Told over the course of less than 24 hours and six nonchronological chapters, and gorgeously shot on 35mm film by Giovanni Ribisi, Strange Darling is a wild cat and mouse game between two people known only as “The Lady” (played by Willa Fitzgerald) and “The Demon” (played by Kyle Gallner). The two genuinely hit it off before they engage in a wild one night stand in an Oregon motel room, fueled by drugs and full of very fucked up, very kinky sexual role play. However, things quickly take a sinister turn and “The Lady” soon finds herself on the run, being pursued by “The Demon”. Without spoiling anything (because this is a film that you NEED to experience blind) whar follows is a truly warped little thriller that is wholly unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, one packed with twists and turns that constantly flips tropes of the horror genre as a whole and the serial killer subgenre on its head and subverts them in clever ways. But, as whip smart as Mollner’s script is, what truly puts Strange Darling over the top and solidifies it as an instant favorite are the performances from Fitzgerald and Gallner. Gallner is truly menacing (it doesn’t hurt that most of the scenes with him are soundtracked by a pounding, percussive, and creepy score by composer Craig DeLeon), but the true MVP here is Willa Fitzgerald, who gives a career best performance here, one that’s full of layers and nuance that keep you rooting for her until the film’s final moments.

We have never been both more back AND less back at the same time. I didn’t even think that was possible, and yet.. here we are. Why? Why, Marvel? I mean, I know why. You guys took risks, audiences and critics absolutely despised those risks, so you’re most likely never going to take risks again. At least not in your event movies. We finally get MCU Doctor Doom, but.. at what cost?? There are so many incredible actors who could’ve absolutely bodied the role (Downey Jr.’s co star and fellow Oscar winner Cillian Murphy, for instance), but no. You wanted to “recapture the magic” and, in the words of Marvel Jesus, “Disney brought him back to life, and they’re gonna make him do this til he’s 90!” What’s next? Are you gonna ring up Chris Evans and ask him if he wants to play fucking Magneto?

On the other hand, this… this truly felt like the inevitable move. Marvel tried Kang and, even before Jonathan Majors decided to be a piece of shit on main, it was clear that he just.. wasn’t working (it doesn’t help that Marvel had their nect ‘Thanos level threat’ get trampled to to the point of near death by giant ants in his first movie appearance). I don’t think Kang can work in movie format because, with all his variants, we have no time to get attatched to them. Hell, it’s worth noting that the most memorable Kang variant, Victor Timely, WASN’T EVEN EVIL. As cliche as it sounds, I truly feel like “one of the OG Avengers but evil” was the most obvious way to cap off the Multiverse Saga. I just wish they hadn’t taken a character people have waited YEARS to see done right and make him… evil Iron Man. That being said, Downey is absolutely gonna devour as Doom and of course I’m gonna be there opening night in the off chance that my pookies (Carol, Kamala, Wanda, etc.) get even a few minutes of screentime, and, as much as you hate to it it, a lot of you will be too. At least Fantastic Four looks good. The Fantastic Four and Mutants are really gonna cary the new MCU timeline, huh?

”ya know what? You’re a fuckin’ joke. No wonder the Avengers didn’t take you. Or the X-Men, and they’ll take fuckin’ anyone. I mean, you are a ridiculous, immature, halfwit MORON. I have never met a sadder, more attention starved jabbering little prick in my entire LIFE, and that’s sayin’ a lot, cause I have been alive for MORE 200 FUCKIN’ YEARS. I’ll tell ya, that bald chick was right about one thing: YOU WILL NEVER SAVE THE WORLD. You couldn’t even save a relationship with A GODDAMN STRIPPER. Motherfucker, I wish I could say you die alone, but it’s one of GOD’S BEST JOKES THAT YOU CAN’T DIE, EXCEPT IT’S ON ALL OF US”

It’s Sunday, so of course I had to worship at the church of Marvel Jesus (MJ if you’re nasty)

“You feel like you don't belong here. You don't. They can't begin to comprehend what you are.”

my rating: hehehe TRASH (1.5 stars)

If X-Men: Apocalypse crippled the momentum that the first two films in the new X-Men timeline had built up, X-Men: Dark Phoenix takes that momentum out back and fucking shoots it dead, Old Yeller style. This is bad, and it didn’t even need to be. Simon Kinberg gets a chance to readapt the Dark Phoenix saga after bungling it 13 years ago with The Last Stand and he even gets to direct this time, after Bryan Singer left the project after being exposed as a sexual predator in 2017, and the result is… okay, this is where I have to say something controversial: I think in of the actual Dark Phoenix stuff, Jean’s motivations for turning on Charles and the X-Men actually really works here. It’s not perfect, as I don’t think think the idea of adapting the Dark Phoenix saga after only having spent ONE MOVIE with this version of Jean (see my review of The Last Stand for why I don’t think the Dark Phoenix saga can ever be adapted as a movie). If the Dark Phoenix saga was to be adapted successfully to the big screen, it would have to be an Avengers level event movie, possibly a two parter, after AT LEAST 4 years and multiple movies spent establishing Jean and allowing audiences to feel connected to her. As it stands, I think Sophie Turner does a really great job with the material she’s given. I just wish it was in a better movie. See, unlike past X-Men movies that have missed the mark, the issue here is not with the content itself (for the most part), but the way it’s executed. Simon Kinberg is a seasoned writer and even more seasoned producer, but this was his first time ever directing anything, and, considering his work on the Jessica Chastain spy movie The 355 a couple years later, I think he should stick to writing and producing. This looks like a first time director made it. It just looks sloppy and ugly in ways that even the worst X-Men movies didn’t.

While I said the issue wasn’t with the content itself, that’s not entirely true. While Professor X (both the James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart versions) were often portrayed as flawed, Charles’ manipulation of Jean in this feels out of character. It made sense in The Last Stand because he was keeping the Phoenix personality at bay inside of Jean’s mind, but here??? No. Absolutely not. Charles was wrong and the other X-Men getting mad at him for lying about manipulating Jean’s mind is absolutely understandable. Performance wise, I think after First Class, this is my favorite performance Nicholas Holt gave as Beast. He and Turner are the absolute standouts here. The villain on the other hand… yeah, no. Jessica Chastain’s bland, generic alien villain is easily the worst villain in any of the X-Men movies because she’s barely developed. Speaking of the villain… Hoo boy, we have to talk about the ending, or more particularly, the discourse around the ending. For those who don’t know, in the leadup to the film’s release, James McAvoy let it slip that the film’s ending, which involves Jessica Chastain’s Vuk and an army of her shapeshifting alien D’Bari soldiers attacking a train carrying the mutants, was not the original ending and that they had to change it “due to another film that came out a few months ago”, which people quickly figured out was Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s polarizing Captain Marvel. While it’s true that the portrayal of the actual Phoenix Force itself was changed so as not to draw comparisons with Brie Larson’s MCU heroine and the D’Bari were originally meant to be Skrulls, it’s now believed that poor test screenings in mid 2018 were what lead Kinberg to reshoot the ending, replacing the original grand space battle with the train battle. The reason I bring this up is because defenders of this movie (yes, this movie has defenders) point to this as the reason the film ended up the way it did, as if, had Captain Marvel not come out when it did, the movie would be better. Having finally seen the movie after all these years.. yeah, no. The movie still would’ve been a mess from a visual and structural level, regardless of how it ended or who the villains were.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a solid adaptation of the Dark Phoenix saga that has a couple standout performances, but, for the most part, is a boring visual and narrative mess. This is how the X-Men franchise died. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. But hey, at least we finally got the iconic blue and yellow costumes and got to see Genosha on the big screen. The road to Deadpool and Wolverine is over, and for those of you saying “hey, isn’t there another X-Men movie????”, don’t you worry. I’m saving that movie for a special occasion

This review may contain spoilers.

“🎶I know that I can’t take no more, it ain’t no lie. I wanna see you out that door, baby, bye bye bye🎶”

My rating: …… 

Finally, a romcom for the grumpy x sunshine trope girlies

I’m of two minds when it comes to Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine. On the one hand, it’s a riotous, well and truly unhinged buddy road trip movie where much of the humor comes from just how opposite our two leads are. It’s a celebration of and love letter to nearly 25 years of X-Men movies. On the other hand, it’s an immature, deeply cynical cash grab where characters from past Marvel movies that were critical flops and have been forgotten to time are trotted out so that audiences can cheer and clap like the mindless seals they are because the person from the thing they know from 20 years ago just showed up, all while a multi-billion dollar corporation pokes corporate approved fun at itself and the audience is expected to laugh because they’re in on the joke. It’s okay that Marvel has been inconsistant since Endgame because they know that. They it it and are willing to poke fun at that fact, all while placating and validating the most toxic and depraved side of the Marvel fandom. I should hate Deadpool & Wolverine. It (quite literally) desecrates the grave of a movie that I consider one of my favorite movies ever for the sake of jokes and an opening credits sequence where Deadpool massacres numerous TVA agents with the adamantium bones of Wolverine’s corpse in increasingly gratuitous and graphic fashion, which is soundtracked by *NSYNC’s ‘Bye Bye Bye’ and is intercut with scenes of Deadpool doing the music video choreography. This is how the movie opens, and it only gets more truly and deliciously unhinged from there. 

If you can’t tell, I feel extremely conflicted when it comes to my thoughts on Deadpool & Wolverine. I know that I should hate everything this movie stands for and represents, but… I can’t. There’s some carnal, primative part of my brain that was scratched by this movie. Getting to see Wesley Snipes’ Blade and Jennifer Garner’s Elektra again and FINALLY get to see Channing Tatum suit up as Gambit (complete with the most cartoonish, intentionally incomprehensible French Creole accent I’ve ever heard) and getting to see Dafne Keen as a teenage/adult X-23 (the scene with her and Logan at the campfire genuinely reduced me to tears because I love Logan so much). If you’ve been following along with my “The Road to Deadpool & Wolverine” marathon of all the previous X-Men movies, you’ll know that, for me, the X-Men franchise was certainly more hit than miss but was a lot rockier than the MCU and often struggled with developing the mutants who weren’t Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean, Storm, Prof. X, Magneto and Mystique, be they heroes or villains, so getting to see versions of Pyro, Toad and Sabretooth that we haven’t seen since *2000*, 24 YEARS AGO, and where barely developed or established in the one movie they were in is… interesting. While Deadpool & Wolverine is a celebration and love letter to the Fox X-Men films, it also attempts to be an almost Avengers: Endgame style sendoff for the franchise and it doesn’t fully work because, save for Hugh Jackman, none of the characters people truly are attatched to from either timeline of the Fox movies show up here. No Ian McKellen, no Patrick Stewart, no Hallie Berry, not even James Marsden or Famke Janssen show up here. That’s the other issue with Deadpool & Wolverine. For a movie that billed itself as this huge, gamechanging moment for the multiverse saga, with Kevin Feige calling it an 8 in of its impact on The Film Formerly Known As Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, this is a fairly self contained story, about Deadpool and Wolverine being recruited by the TVA and Mr. Paradox (a hilariously dry Matthew Macfayden) before being banished to and journeying through the Mad Max style Void and encountering characters that time forgot, eventually teaming up with a small ressistance (the afformentioned Blade, Elektra, X-23, Gambit and Chris Evans’ Human Torch) to take down the film’s big bad, Cassandra Nova (played by Emma Corrin with their cuntometer cranked up to 15). The Deadpool films have always had fairly self contained stories and this is no different. Hell, this movie has less of a “story” and more “reasons to throw cameos at you”.  What impact it truly has on the MCU going forward.. well, that remains to be seen. As it stands though….. yeah, it’s 4 stars for me. It both did and didn’t meet what expectations I had for it, and it’s a movie that I can definitely see myself throwing on when I want a laugh. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s not the film that’s gonna ‘save’ the MCU because the MCU doesn’t need saving. It’s a fun time, but I think I had more fun with The Marvels lowkey, and it’s not even the most fun I’ve had with a movie this year (that honor goes to Twisters). That being said, it’s still a hell of a fun time. It’s a funny, irreverent, often politically incorrect (the ‘r word’ joke keeps this from being a 4.5. Call me ‘triggered’ all you want. As an autistic person, I do not fuck with that word period and I’m disappointed Marvel approved that joke) romp packed with some absolutely hilarious banter between our two leads, but that ultimately lacks the emotional weight and impact that the best MCU movies do (yes, even The Marvels). But it does have one thing that even the greatest MCU movie doesn’t, and that’s Dogpool.

“🎶 ‘Cause I’ve been shaking, I’ve been bending backwards ‘til I’m broke, watching all these dreams go up in smoke. Let beauty come out of ashes? Let beauty come out of ashes. All I ask is can beauty come out of ashes? 🎶”

My rating: truly great (4.5 stars)

Deadpool 2 is MASSIVE improvement over the first movie, and honestly proof that the right director makes all the difference. I didn’t HATE Tim Miller’s directorial choices on the first movie, but David Leitch has built his directorial career around the type of frenetic action and hyper violence that Deadpool is known for, so he seems like the perfect fit for the character. (The fact that Marvel didn’t bring him back for Deadpool & Wolverine is yet another, sadly increasingly common, Marvel Studios L, but we did grt the delightful The Fall Guy out of it, so, ya win some, ya lose some). The jokes are funnier, the action is bigger, the new characters (particularly Zazie Beats’ Domino, Julian Dennison’s Russell Collins/Firefist, Rob Delaney’s Peter and Josh Brolin’s Cable) are all fantastic and memorable, the story has some real weight, stakes, emotion and heart to it, and it features Deadpool going on a murder spree soundtracked by Dolly Parton’s ‘9 to 5’ and an opening credits sequence that parodies those found in James Bond movies, featuring a fantastic original song by Celine Dion. So.. you expect me to NOT give this 4.5 stars?! It’s not 5 star material, don’t get it twisted, but still an absolute blast and an absolutely sauced up sequel

“Nature made me a freak. Man made me a weapon, and God made it last too long.”

My rating: cinematic cryptid

I was lukewarm on James Mangold’s first Wolverine outing, 2013’s The Wolverine. The same can not be said for his 2017 followup, Logan. Let me not mince words here. Logan isn’t my favorite X-Men movie. Logan isn’t my favorite Marvel movie. To me, this is a movie that goes beyond that. To me, James Mangold’s Logan is the greatest comic book movie ever made, one of the greatest westerns ever made and one of my favorite movies ever. Like in my top 10. This is about as close to a perfect movie as you can get to me.

Not only is Logan one of my favorite movies ever, it’s one of the most bleak and depressing movies I’ve ever seen. While Wolverine as a character has always had a layer of cynicism to him, particularly the movie version, seeing depressed, suicidal, dying Wolverine in this movie is like the first time you saw you saw one of your parents cry and you realized that they were human too. While Hugh Jackman has always been incredible as Wolverine, his performance in Logan is a career best for him. But, the ing cast is equally incredible, including a performance from Sir Patrick Stewart that isn’t just his best performance as Charles Xavier, but is, in my opinion, one of the best performances of his 5 decade plus long career. Yet, somehow, it’s 11 year old Dafne Keen, who’s the MVP of this movie, out acting both Jackman and Stewart.

The script, which Mangold wrote with Scott Frank and Blade Runner 2049 screenwriter Michael Green and loosely adapts the ‘Old Man Logan’ comic series, is, again, about as close to perfect as you can get for a comic book movie. I love the family road trip atmosphere the movie has (Mangold has said that, among other films, the writing trio was heavily influenced by Paper Moon and Little Miss Sunshine when writing the script, and I can absolutely see that). Honestly, despite being a comic book movie, this is one of the most gritty, grounded movies in the genre. Thanks to the R rating. Every battle, every fight scene has a sense of brutality and finality to it, all building to an absolutely devistating conclusion. There are only two comic book movies where just thinking about the ending reduces me to a blubbering mess (the other being another 2017 cbm, Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2). While I was always a little apprehensive about how Jackman returning to the Wolverine role for Deadpool & Wolverine would impact how perfect the ending of Logan is, I also understand that Jackman’s one condition for reprising the role post Logan was if they ever did a Deadpool and Wolverine teamup movie because he wanted to play with that dynamic on screen with Ryan Reynolds. Regardless of whether or not Deadpool & Wolverine pisses on Logan’s grave (I’ve heard mixed reports), I won’t be offended. Not only do I know that the version of Wolverine in Deadpool & Wolverine is another variant, it doesn’t undo the fact that Logan will still be there. Even as rocky as the X-Men films were in of quality, Logan remains, standing as a shining beacon of what the X-Men franchise was at its very best.

I wasn’t expecting to get through 3 movies today, but here we are. Tomorrow, Deadpool 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine and Friday…… something very very VERY special (just because I’m seeing Deadpool and Wolverine tomorrow doesn’t mean “The Road to Deadpool & Wolverine” will be over tomorrow. We’re still gonna have some fun on Friday. iykyk ;))

“Always the same, and now all this. No more stones. No more spears. No more slings. No more swords. No more weapons! No more systems! No more! No more superpowers... So much faith in their tools, in their machines. You can fire your arrows from the Tower of Babel, but you can never strike god!”

My rating: it’s fine, I guess, closer to a yeah, it’s not good (3 stars, closer to a 2.5 stars)

How? Why?? How was this allowed to be released???? X-Men: Apocalypse takes any good will the franchise had built up with First Class, Days of Future Past and even Deadpool and squashes it. This is a film that reeks of Fox executives seeing what Marvel was doing with Thanos and the Infinity Saga and being like “I wanna do that! Oh, and let’s try to beat them to the punch by almost 2 years!” How does a movie that introduces THE X-Men big bad, a millenias old, almost god like mutant, a movie with a story written by the same writing team who did X2 (and Simon Kinberg) come out THIS BORING? THIS BAD?

It’s not all bad though. Lawrence, McAvoy and Fassbender are all great as per usual, even if you can kind of tell they’re all kind of getting sick of playing these characters. Some of the new cast , namely Sophie Turner and Tye Sheridan all slot into their roles well (and I’d even argue I prefer Turner’s Jean to Famke Janssen’s), while others (namely Alexandra Shipp as Storm).. not so much. Honestly, the film’s biggest flaw is criminal misuse of Jubilee (again) and Psylocke. However, the TRUE MVP of this movie, and honestly the only keeping it from being below 2.5 stars, is Oscar Isaac, who dons a bulky prosthetic costume to play the film’s villain, En Sabah Nur, aka Apocalypse. Isaac is clearly having the absolute time of his life hamming it up as the character, playing him like a combination of a fire and brimstone preacher and your racist uncle showing up uinvited to *insert holiday here* dinner. Oh, and Quicksilver’s back too, I guess, and they do a cheap copy of the ‘Time In A Bottle’ scene from Days of Future Past. Honestly, I’d have more of an issue with their lazy attempt to recreate the magic of the original scene if A) Evan Peters wasn’t so charismatic in the role and B) ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of These)’ wasn’t such an eternal banger. Everything else??? Underwhelming. Not offensively bad, but just.. underwhelming. But hey, this film ends with a setup for a more accurate adaptation of the Dark Phoenix saga, so that’ll be good! There’s no way they’d screw THAT up again, right?? At this point, it was clear that the X-Men franchise was starting to run out of steam. They’d need a miracle to course correct, an even bigger miracle than First Class and, come on, what are the chances of THAT happening????

“🎶 JUST CALL ME ANGEL OF THE MORNING, ANGEL. JUST TOUCH MY CHEEK BEFORE YOU LEAVE ME BABY 🎶”

My rating: fine enough, I guess (3 stars)

I’m honestly shocked at how well 2016’s Deadpool has aged. The Deadpool movies, and to a degree the comics, aren’t meant to age well.  They’re meant to be funny in the moment and full of topical references, most of which cause the material to age like milk. I think there’s two reasons as to why Deadpool works as well as it does. One is the screenplay by Zombieland writing duo Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and the other, obviously, is Ryan Reynolds’ performance as ‘the Merc with the Mouth’ himself. Reynolds truly is the MVP of these movies and feels like the charactee stepped out of the comics and into the movie. He is Deadpool, or better or for worse. There really isn’t much I have to say about Deadpool because it’s a fairly slight movie, at least when compared to other comic book movies of the time, due to being filmed on a “microbudget” of $58,000,000 because Fox didn’t know if an R rated superhero movie would be successful. There’s a charm to that smaller scale though, allowing us to focus more on Wade’s story and his character arc. It also benefits from aome great performances from the ing cast, mainly Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, Stefan Kapicic as Colossus (Kapicic’s portrayal of the character is easily my favorite movie version of Colossus, far suring the Daniel Cudmore version from the original X-Men trilogy and Days of Future Past), Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, Brinna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Karam Soni as Dopinder. The same can’t be said for the film’s villains. Ed Skrein is fine as Ajax, but him and his minion/sidekick Angel Dust (who I guess must’ve been played by Lady Not Appearing In This Film because they kept talking about a character named Angel Dust but she never showed up. Funny that. In all seriousness, fuck Gina Carano. Her appearance keeps this from being 4 stars)

Overall, a fun, crude, irreverent, pulpy little superhero movie that certainly gets the job done well enough, but doesn’t do much more than that and does start to get grating at times. But it also doesn’t seem like the people involved wanted it to be any more than that

“When you love something, you spend your whole life trying to understand it”

My rating: absolute cinematic perfection (5 stars)

At the recomendation of my friend Alli, I decided to check Twisters out in Dolby before Deadpool & Wolverine takes over the format theaters on Friday (the fact that Twisters is only in formats for a week is criminal) because I’m not cool enough to live anywhere near a 4DX or a D-Box theater and this is the closest to that, and.. my god. This is the way Lee Isaac Chung intended this movie to be seen. Twisters in Dolby is up there with opening weekend of the Eras Tour movie, Avengers: Endgame opening night and seeing Interstellar and Dunkirk in 70mm IMAX with one of my favorite theatrical experiences. I love everything about Twisters. I love Daisy Edgar-Jones, I love Glen Powell, I love the Tornado Wrangler crew, I love David Corenswet’s cartoon ass ‘villain’, I love the soundtrack, I love Kate Cooper and Tyler Owens and their relationship, I love movies so fucking much

Trailer thoughts:


Cailey Spaeny final girl era unlocked (Alien: Romulus)
SOPHIE THATCHER SOPHIE THATCHER SOPHIE THATCHER (Heretic)
Oh look, my 13th reason (It Ends With Us)
🤫 (Speak No Evil)
Josh Hartner rennaissance is upon us (Trap)
Man, this Lady Gaga biopic looks weird (Smile 2)
I can’t wait for this damn robot to make me sob my eyes out (The Wild Robot)
More like YAPFormers, amirite?? (Transformers One)
The best character is gonna be The Rock’s piss bottle (Red One)
WE MAKING IT TO THE EMERALD CITY WITH THIS ONE (Wicked Pt. 1)

“The past: a new and uncertain world. A world of endless possibilities and infinite outcomes. Countless choices define our fate: each choice, each moment, a moment in the ripple of time. Enough ripple, and you change the tide... for the future is never truly set.”

My rating: Absolute cinematic perfection (5 stars)

After over a decade, Bryan Singer returns to the X-Men franchise as director, and, since he didn’t get to adapt the Dark Phoenix saga like he initially had wanted, why not let him take a crack at adapting another iconic X-Men storyline to the big screen: Days of Future Past (as director only though, the screenplay was written by the First Class writing team of Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and Simon Kinberg). 

X-Men: Days of Future Past is kind of a mess. This is a film that undoes the “original X-Men Timeline” to that Fox doesn’t have to acknowledge “the bad X-Men movies” (Origins: Wolverine and The Last Stand), but in doing so, it creates a brand new timeline so that what were supposed to be prequels to the original trilogy are now in their own universe where things like The Dark Phoenix saga happen in the ‘90s as opposed to 2006 and what does that mean for The Wolverine in of canon and oh my fucking GOD the X-Men timeline is confusing. It really shouldn’t be, but, if you choose to ignore Dark Phoenix, these can still function as prequels to the original trilogy, but no, they just had to make it all confusing and shit. In some ways, it makes other continuity errors such as Bolivar Trask appearing in The Last Stand played by Bill Duke (an actor who’s black and not a little person) and in Days of Future Past played by Peter Dinklage (an actor who’s white and a little person), why William Stryker is in this movie, set only a few years before Origins: Wolverine took place and have him be a lot younger and not played by Danny Huston, and why in X-Men, Sabretooth looks less like Liev Schrieber and more like wrestler Tyler Mane. It’s all veryy confusing.

Rant about continuity out of the way, while I think Days of Future Past is a mess at points, especially when it comes to its effects on the timeline, it’s still peak X-Men to me. It’s so fun to see Wolverine get to interact with the younger/prequel(??) cast, especially after his instantly iconic cameo in First Class. Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence all turn in great performances, but the true MVP of the film is Evan Peters as Ralph Bo- I mean Peter Maximoff/Quicksilver. Yes, they Americanized his name, yes, like the MCU, they errased his Romani heritage. I don’t care. Fox!Quicksilver has more personality in two movies than the MCU version had in one movie. I said what I said. (I do really like Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Quicksilver though, don’t get it twisted). Peters is absolutely fantastic here, bringing a rebellious, youthful, almost punk like energy to the role and the sequence of him in the Pentagon kitchen remains the best visual representation of a character with speedster powers, even a decade later. I also really love that this film continues First Class’s retro spy movie/political thriller tone. 

It’s not all perfect though. As the Sentinels are some of my favorite X-Men villains, I wish we got to see more of the non protoype versions, or that the prototype versions looked more like their comic counterparts. The movie also continues the fatal flaw of the X-Men films: introducing cool new mutant characters (in this case, Warpath, Blink, Sunspot and Bishop) and basically having them be background dressing. They’re in the film enough to warrant character posters and showing up on the main poster, but they have very little development outside of that and aren’t given a ton of importantance to do. But, because that’s a common trend in all the X-Men movies, especially the original trilogy and Origins: Wolverine, it’s hard to dock points off of this movie specifically for doing it, though it does lose some points for wasting Omar Sy as Bishop, who TRULY looks like the character from the comics came to life. Not enough to bump it down to a 4.5 star, but still.

This review may contain spoilers.

“There was a time when our enemies knew honor.”

My rating: Good, not great, but good (3.5 stars)

Well… it’s better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine, at least, so that’s something. Barely, but it’s still better.

In all seriousness, I don’t have a ton to say about this one. James Mangold’s The Wolverine serves as something of a redux of Origins: Wolverine, in that it heavily involves Logan’s past and some of the more complex themes that Origins was playing with, and a lot of it really does work a lot better here. In this case, however, it’s much more of a genre piece, taking inspiration and influence from samurai movies. The only downside is that, by portraying Wolverine as a ronin type figure, he often comes across as the only interesting character in the movie. The Japanese characters, while the actors do a good job with the material, truly aren’t memorable enough. The action’s cool though! We need more American movies with sword fights cause they’re truly great when done well. Honestly my biggest critique is that I wish Fox hadn’t made it so clear going in that Silver Samurai was the villain, thus making the twist reveal have a ton of impact. Regardless, it’s still a solid enough action movie that hinges on the boring side, but that serves as a setup for the peak that would follow

“Excuse me, I’m Erik Lehnsherr”
“and I’m Charles Xavier”
“Go fuck yourself”

My rating: Absolute Cinematic Perfection (5 stars)

After the disappointing critical and audience reception to 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand and 2008’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, 20th Century Fox decided to cancel any and all future installments in the potential X-Men Origins series of spinoff solo movies. One of these films was to be known as X-Men Origins: Magneto and would’ve focused on Magneto’s time as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII before he’s liberated by a squad of allied troops lead by a young Charles Xavier, before jumping forward in time and primarily focusing on the friendship and eventual rivalry between the two characters. Screenwriter Sheldon Turner described his script for the movie as “X-Men meets The Pianist”. When Fox canceled the movie, they decided to take a lot of the ideas Turner had come up with and develop a movie about the origins of the X-Men, atill set in the same universe as the one the original Bryan Singer/Brett Ratner trilogy had established. They brought on Matthew Vaughn, who had originally been hired to direct X-Men: The Last Stand after Singer left to direct Superman Returns to direct and help write the screenplay, while giving Turner a story credit on the film.

In a lot of ways X-Men: First Class really shouldn’t have worked, largely because the film was casting younger versions of characters like Professor X, Magneto and Mystique. As good as Rebecca Romijn’s portrayal of Mystique is in the original X-Men trilogy, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen’s performances as Professor X and Magneto were so perfect, so instantly iconic, they became ubiquitous with the characters as a whole, not just the movie versions. To say James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender proved to be more than up to the challenge is an understatement. Add onto that a great performance by Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique and the fact that the film introduced a whole host of new mutants like Havok, Darwin, Riptide, Banshee, Sebastian Shaw, and Emma Frost, and, yeah, this film is far better than a film with 6 credited writers (excluding Jack Kirby and Stan Lee) has any right to be

There’s no way Ican be unbiased towards X-Men: First Class. This is the movie that introduced me to the X-Men, made me fall in love with them as characters. I genuinely love everything about this film, from the ‘60s spy movie influenced tone and story to the character interactions to the fact that Fassbender and McAvoy somehow have EVEN MORE CHEMISTRY than McKellen and Stewart did… yeah, I adore First Class. To me, it’s the pinacle of what an X-Men movie should be, dethroning X2 for the title of ‘my favorite X-Men movie’, at least for now anyway.. After two lackluster installments, First Class was a breath of fresh air, featuring killer action, great writing, and characterizations that are in line with the older versions of the existing characters that we’d come to know and love, and it still holds up 13 years later

“See, the only difference between a winner and a loser is character. Every man has a price to charge, and a price to pay. Yeah, I've paid mine in spades.”

My rating: yeah, it’s not good (2 stars)

Well, folks. We made it. The first of the 3 X-Men movies I’d never seen before. I wanted to like this. I wanted to say “this is better than people give it credit for”, but.. it’s not. It’s realllyy not

In retrospect, with how popular Hugh Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine was in the first 3 X-Men movies, giving him a spinoff was inevitable, and given his immortality and indestructability, there was so much that you could do with an origin story for the character. It’s just a shame that the film that we got is so…. Generic. Like, the words “mid” and “generic” were invented to describe X-Men Origins: Wolverine. 

That’s not to say it’s all bad, as there are a number of things that I like. Jackman is, as always, fantastic as Logan/Wolverine and I do really like the places the story went in of his internal termoil, though I wish they’d played more into it. I REALLY liked Liev Schrieber as Victor/Sabretooth and wish he was the version of Sabretooth that was coming back for Deadpool & Wolverine and not the version from the first X-Men, as well as the dynamic he has with Logan. I liked Danny Huston as the younger version of William Stryker, Taylor Kitsch as Gambit (though I wish we’d gotten Channing Tatum in the role) and Ryan Reynolds as Wade (minus, ya know..), even if the later two are COMPLETELY WASTED. Throw in some cool action sequences and fights, and yeah, there’s a lot I really dug about this. But those are outweighed by just how damn generic the plot is. There are some fantastic ideas here, one that, in the right hands, could make for a fantastic origin story that not only did the character of Wolverine justice, but was in line with the first two films in the X-Men trilogy. But it wasn’t placed in the right hands, and was instead placed in the hands of people who I don’t think truly understood the X-Men as characters, leading to a messy film full of mischaracterizations, completely misused and wasted characters, and some of the worst continuity errors I’ve ever seen in a movie. I didn’t hate this nearly as much as some people do, but it’s not great either

“This cure is voluntary. Nobody's is talking about extermination.”
“No one ever talks about it. They just do it. And you go on with your lives, ignoring the signs all around you. And then, one day, when the air is still and the night has fallen, they come for you. “Excuse me, but...”
“It's only that you realize, while you were talking about organizing and committees, the extermination has already begun. Make no mistake, my brothers. They will draw first blood. They will force their cure upon us. The only question is, will my brotherhood and fight, or wait for the inevitable genocide? Who will you stand with - the humans... or us?”

My rating: it’s fine, I guess (3 stars)

Even though the X-Men have had many truly iconic story arcs over their 6 decade history, none are more iconic than the “Dark Phoenix Saga”, so, when Jean Grey (played by Famke Janssen) sacrificed herself at the end of X2: X-Men United and the film ended with the shadow of a phoenix flying over Alkali Lake, where she sacrificed herself, it became clear that the inevitable X3 would be adapting the Dark Phoenix storyline. While this was always the intention for the third film, according to director Bryan Singer, when Singer left X3 in order to direct Superman Returns, leading Matthew Vaughn and ultimately Brett Ratner to be brought in as director and X2 screenwriter Zak Penn and Mr and Mrs Smith screenwriter Simon Kinberg to be brought in to write a new draft of the screenplay, everything changed. The finished film is.. a mixed bag. It’s not bad, not by any means, but what it IS is a film of two parts, as Penn and Kinberg opted to not only adapt the Dark Phoenix saga but also the Joss Whedon penned Gifted arc (Whedon was actually offered the opportunity to direct when Singer left, but he turned it down to direct his illfated Wonder Woman movie). Because of this, X-Men: The Last Stand is a film with a very confused identity. On one hand, you have an extremely compelling story about the ways Professor X’s X-Men and Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants react to the development of a ‘mutant cure’, which is a very obvious allegory for both gay conversion therapy and genocide/the Holocaust, and feels extremely in line with the thematic elements found in the first two films in the trilogy. On the OTHER hand, you have the Dark Phoenix stuff that, even putting aside the fact that, because the Phoenix Force, an esential component for the Dark Phoenix Saga, hadn’t been introduced in the movies, attempting to adapt the Dark Phoenix saga after only two movies gets at the heart of why I don’t think the Dark Phoenix saga can ever work as a movie. When the Dark Phoenix saga happened in the comics, audiences had had YEARS to come to know Jean Grey as a character, which made her corruption by the Hellfire Club and turn to evil even more impactful. Same goes for when the storyline was adapted by the ‘90s X-Men cartoon. Here, it not only doesn’t have the impact that the comic or cartoon versions had, but it also has to serve as a glorified b-plot to the cure storyline. All of this leaves X-Men: The Last Stand a very mixed bag. Had they opted to just focus on adapting the Gifted story arc, there was potential for a film just as good as X-Men, if not X2, but the actors were only contracted for 3 movies and the Dark Phoenix saga is arguably the most iconic comic storyline ever, so there was no way they WEREN’T gonna try to adapt it. You have no idea how much it pains me to rate a movie that introduces my girlie Kitty Pryde into the X-Men film franchise 3 stars, but, alas. But hey, at least the people behind the X-Men movies learned their lesson and never attempting to adapt the Dark Phoenix saga for the big screen ever again.

“You know, outside the circus, most people were afraid of me. But I didn't hate them. I pitied them. Do you know why? Because most people will never know anything beyond what they see with their own two eyes.”
“Well, I gave up on pity a long time ago.”
“Someone so beautiful should not be so angry.”
“Sometimes anger can help you survive.”
“So can faith.”

My rating: pure cinematic perfection (5 Stars)

NOW THIS IS WHAT I’M FUCKIN TALKING ABOUT, BABY! In 2000’s X-Men served as a solid cinematic introduction to Marvel’s iconic band of mutants, X2: X-Men United is everything an X-Men movie should be. Great action, nuanced and complex characters, and memorable villains (this time in the form of Alan Cumming’s Nightcrawler and Brian Cox’ William Stryker). It advances and further develops the characters and themes from the first movie and introduces new mutants like Iceman, Pyro, Colossus and.. Jubilee??? Why did I not Jubilee was in this?! Honestly, given how popular she was in the ‘90s cartoon, you’d think she would’ve been one of the main mutants in the first movie. If Hugh Jackman’s performance as Wolverine was one of the highlights of the first movie, he’s one of the MVPs here. He’s given more to do, while not taking focus away from the rest of the team, and it all but establishes Jackman as one of the greatest comic book castings ever (even if he looks very little like his comic counterpart). The other MVP is Alan Cumming as Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler. This movie made me love Nightcrawler as a character, and he’s now one of my favorite X-Men anti-heroes/villains. While Brian Cox is good as William Stryker, Cumming absolutely steals every single scene he’s in. One of the things that I love about X2 is the way that it makes the villains, namely Magneto and Mystique, more complex and three dimensional as they’re forced to reluctantly team up with the X-Men to save Professor X and a whole bunch of mutant children. What makes Mystique and especially Magneto so dynamic in the comics is the fact that they aren’t just cut and dry villains. There’s a nuance to them and, even with the ideological differences they have with Professor X and his X-Men, they aren’t afraid to team up with them if it helps the common good. There’s a beauty to that nuance, as it frequently comes across as more complex than the wishy washy “why can’t both sides work together??” Argument that we often see in politics. By choosing to include those complexities in the film version of the characters, it highlights the fact that, at the very core of the entire franchise is a friendship between Charles and Magneto, a friendship that even despite their differences, is still important to them. 

X2: X-Men United is everything a sequel, not just a comic book movie sequel, should be. It takes what made the first film a hit and expands upon it, making it bigger, better, and more complex, and hey! It ends on a tease that the inevitable third film would adapt arguably THE most iconic X-Men story ever, and there’s no way that could go wrong. Right, guys? Right, guys????

In order for me to see a film more than twice during its theatrical run, you have to be doing something genuinely special. So, behold, the movies so good, seeing them twice in theaters just wasn’t enough. I’ll be considering original theatrical runs only here, and not seasonal or anniversary rereleases

• Wicked

  6 times between November 2024 and Janury 2025

• The Polar Express

  5 times between November and December 2004

• Cars

  5 times between June and August 2006

• Captain Marvel

  5 times between March and May 2019

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

  5 times between May and June 2024

• Inside Out 2

  4 times between June and July 2024

• Dune: Part Two

  4 times between March and April 2024

• Barbie

  4 times between July and September 2023

• Poor Things

  3 times between December 2023 and February 2024

• The Marvels

  3 times in November 2023

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A non ordered list of my favorites from the genuinely incredible year for film that was 2024.

• Dune: Part Two

  S

• Inside Out 2

  S

• The Wild Robot

  S

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

  S

• Wicked

  S

• Twisters

  A

• Strange Darling
• The Substance
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

  
  

• Challengers

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My very controversial ranking of the MCU, complete with a lot of ties, including Disney+ shows and Special Presentations

Tiers/Categories:

5 Stars: God Tier (If a film is in this category, that means it’s one of my favorite MCU movies ever. All of these are basically interchangable with one another, and I love them all equally)

4-4.5 stars: Bordering on Greatness Tier (if a film is in this category, it means I consider it really good, bordering on great. Not one of my all time favorites, but I love it more than some of the other films on this list)

3-4 stars: Good, But Flawed Tier (if a film is in this category, it means that, while it’s certainly flawed, there are redeeming elements to it)

3 stars and under: Awful Tier (if a film is in this category, I consider it to be the bottom of the barrel in of the MCU. I’m normally pretty lenient or generous when it comes to MCU movies, so to end up here, a film has to be REALLY BAD)

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier
• Captain Marvel
• The Marvels
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
• Black Panther
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special
• Agatha All Along

...plus 34 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My favorite movies ever/comfort movies (and some TV Shows), with Taylor Swift lyrics that I think best fit the themes, characters and or plot of the movie. Inspired by Althea

• Pan's Labyrinth

  seven
  
  “and I’ve been meaning to tell you I think your house is haunted, your dad is always mad and that must be why.”

• The Devil's Backbone

  marjorie
  
  “What died didn’t stay dead, what died didn’t stay dead. You’re alive, you’re alive in my head”

• Crimson Peak

  Ours

  “You never know what people have up their sleeves. Ghosts from your past are gonna jump out at me”
  

• The Shape of Water

  Ours
  
  “Don’t you worry your pretty little mind, people through rocks at things that shine and life makes love look hard. The stakes are high, the water’s rough, but this love is ours”

• Ready or Not

  You’re On Your Own, Kid
  
  “I looked around in a blood soaked gown and I found something they can’t take away”

• Last Night in Soho

  The Lucky One
  
  “New to town with a made-up name in the angel’s city chasing fortune and fame, and the camera flashes make it look like a dream. You had it figured out since you were in school, everybody loves pretty, everybody loves cool, so overnight, you look like a ‘60s queen. Another name goes up in lights, like diamonds in the sky”/“They tell you that you’re lucky, but you’re so confused, ‘cause you don’t feel pretty, you just feel used, and all the young things line up to take your place. Another name goes up in lights, you wonder if you’ll make it out alive. And they’ll tell you now you’re the lucky one, yeah, they’ll tell you now you’re the lucky one, but can you tell me now you’re the lucky one?”

• No One Will Save You

  You’re On Your Own, Kid
  
  “You’re om your own, kid, yeah you can face this. You’re on your own, kid. You always have been”

• Inside Out

  Innocent

  “Wasn’t it easier in your lunchbox days? Always a bigger bed to crawl into. Wasn’t it beautiful when you believed in everything, and everybody believed in you”
  

• Turning Red

  Never Grow Up
  
  “Oh, darling, don’t you ever grow up, don’t you ever grow up, just stay this little. Oh, darling, don’t you ever grow up, don’t you ever grow up, it can stay this simple. I won’t let nobody hurt you, won’t let no one break your heart, and even though you want to, just try to never grow up”

• Inside Out 2

...plus 28 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Any film to earn the illusive “Cinematic Cryptid” rating on my rating scale, aka films that have left a lasting impact on me in one way or another

• Pan's Labyrinth
• Last Night in Soho
• Inside Out
• Turning Red
• Tangled
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Mad Max: Fury Road

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Logan

  #1

• X-Men: First Class

  #2

• X2

  #3

• X-Men: Days of Future Past

  #4

• Deadpool 2

  #5

• X-Men

  #6

• Deadpool & Wolverine

  #7

• Deadpool

  #8

• The Wolverine

  #9

• X-Men: The Last Stand

  #10

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Movies where the soundtrack (not the score) is so good, it almost becomes a character in its own right. Movies where characters are the ones singing (such as musical biopics or movies about fictional musicians/bands and the music indistry in general) qualify, but actual movie musicals (both original and jukebox) do not.

• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
• Inside Llewyn Davis
• Baby Driver
• Last Night in Soho
• Barbie
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
• Rocketman

  Literally the ONLY exception to my “no movie musicals” rule, as it’s a musician biopic that uses elaborate musical numbers and setpieces to tell the story of the life of Elton John. I don’t view it as a traditional jukebox musical in the vein of something like Mama Mia, but rather a music biopic masquerading as a jukebox musical

Mention any of these within 50 miles of me and prepare for me to yap for the next eternity

• The Lego Batman Movie

  LEGO

• WandaVision

  Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch

• Captain Marvel

  Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel

• Guardians of the Galaxy

  The Guardians of the Galaxy

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier

  Marvel Cinematic Universe

• Star Wars: The Last Jedi

  Star Wars

• Tangled

  Tangled

• Frozen

  Frozen/Frozen II

• Mad Max: Fury Road

  #1 (tie)

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

  #1 (tie)

• Mad Max 2

  #2

• Mad Max

  #3

• Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

  #4

The worst, most irredeemable films I have ever seen. Movies devoid so devoid of quality or so offensive that their existence feels like a crime. This is where the lowest of the cinematic low go to die

• Transcendence

My ranking of all the films and TV Shows that take place in a Galaxy Far Far Away. 

Because The Mandalorian is not on Letterboxd, I’ll go ahead and do a breakdown of where the individual seasons would land because, unlike Clone Wars and Rebels, the quality of the Mandalorian seasons vary greatly.

Season 1: between Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith
Season 2: Between the Clone Wars show and Last Jedi
Season 3: between Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones

• The Empire Strikes Back

  #1 (tie)

• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

  #1 (tie)

• Andor: A Disney+ Day Special Look

  #2 (Andor)

• Star Wars: Clone Wars

  #3 (Clone Wars TV show 2008-2020)

• Star Wars: The Last Jedi

  #4

• Star Wars: The Force Awakens

  #5

• Solo: A Star Wars Story

  #6

• Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion

  #7 (Rebels TV Show)

• Star Wars

  #8

• Ahsoka

  #9

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

  #1

• War for the Planet of the Apes

  #2

• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

  #3

• Rise of the Planet of the Apes

  #4

• War for the Planet of the Apes
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

As the title suggests, this is a list of my favorite artists and bands in order to give you guys an idea what my music taste is. I’ll be including my favorite albums and my favorite songs from them. For the most part, each artist or band will be represented by either a movie starring them, a documentary or concert film with them in it or a song with them on the soundtrack to the point that the movie is heavily associated with them, however for some, I will be stretching and including movies where I think the vibes of the artist’s music fit with the movie

• Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

  Taylor Swift
  
  Favorite Albums(s): 5 way tie between Speak Now, The Tortured Poets Department, RED, folklore and evermore
  
  Favorite Song(s): Innocent, This Is Me Trying, Mirrorball, The Archer, Style, Cruel Summer, Getaway Car, Right Where You Left Me, Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve, Florida!!!, Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me, But Daddy I Love Him

• Twilight

  Paramore
  
  Favorite Album(s): brand new eyes, After Laughter
  
  Favorite Song(s): When It Rains, Let The Flames Begin/Part II, Caught In The Middle, That’s What You Get, You First

• Waitress: The Musical

  Sara Bareilles
  
  Favorite Album(s): Bright Lights and Cityscapes, The Blessed Unrest
  
  Favorite Song(s): Once Upon Another Time, Many The Miles, Uncharted, She Used To Be Mine, Orpheus, December

• OLIVIA RODRIGO: driving home 2 u (a SOUR film)

  Olivia Rodrigo
  
  Favorite Album: SOUR
  
  Favorite Song(s): driver’s license, good 4 u, get him back!!, all american bitch, jealous jealousy, traitor, brutal

• Work It

  Sabrina Carpenter
  
  Favorite Album(s): Singular Act 1, Singular Act 2, emails i can’t send
  
  Favorite Songs: because i liked a boy, No Words, Sue Me, Looking At Me, Almost Love, read your mind, vicious, fast time

• Barbie

  Dua Lipa
  
  Favorite Album: Future Nostalgia
  
  Favorite Song: Levitating

• Frozen II

  AURORA
  
  Favorite Album(s): Infections of a Different Kind (Step I), A Different Kind of Human (Step II), The Gods We Can Touch
  
  Favorite Song(s): Runaway, Running With The Wolves, Murder Song ( 5, 4, 3, 2, 1), The River, The Seed, Everything Matters, Giving Into The Love

• Pan's Labyrinth

  #1 (tied)

• The Devil's Backbone

  #1 (tied)

• Crimson Peak

  #1 (tied)

• Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

  #1 (tied)

• The Shape of Water

  #2

• Pacific Rim

  #3

• Nightmare Alley

  #4

• Hellboy

  #5 (tie)

• Hellboy II: The Golden Army

  #5 (tie)

• Cronos

  #6

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Worst Person in the World

  #1 (tie)

• Thelma

  #1 (tie)

• Oslo, August 31st

  #2

• Reprise

  #3

• Louder Than Bombs

  #4

• Kong: Skull Island

  #1

• Godzilla

  #2

• Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire

  #3

• Godzilla vs. Kong

  #4

• Godzilla: King of the Monsters

  #5

A non ordered list of my favorites from the genuinely incredible year for film that was 2023

• Past Lives

  (Would be tied for my #1 if I was ranking these)

• The Zone of Interest

  (Would be tied for my #1 if I was ranking these)

• Killers of the Flower Moon

  (Would be tied for my #1 if I was ranking these)

• Oppenheimer

  (Would be tied for my #1 if I was ranking these)

• Barbie

  (Would be tied for my #1 if I was ranking these)

• Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

  
  

• Godzilla Minus One

  
  

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

  
  

• Poor Things
• The Boy and the Heron

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Arrival
• Interstellar
• Last Night in Soho
• La La Land
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
• The Marvels
• Lisa Frankenstein
• Dune
• Dune: Part Two

My favorite movies set on or around my favorite holiday, Christmas! These are films that always fill me with the Christmas spirit and that I try to watch at least once a year during the holidays

• It's a Wonderful Knife
• Anna and the Apocalypse
• Elf
• The Polar Express
• Klaus
• A Charlie Brown Christmas
• Arthur's Perfect Christmas
• The Muppet Christmas Carol

The title is self explanatory. My favorite film(s) from each year I’ve been alive. I say “film(s)” because some years will have many many MANY ties

• The Lion King

  1994

• Toy Story

  1995

• Scream

  1996

• Titanic

  1997

• Saving Private Ryan

  1998

• Toy Story 2

  1999

• The Road to El Dorado

  2000

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

  2001

• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

  2002

• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

  2003

...plus 47 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Tom Cruise’ beliefs <<<<<<

Tom Cruise when he has a literal death wish >>>>>

• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning

  #1

• Mission: Impossible – Fallout

  #2

• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

  #3

• Mission: Impossible III

  #4

• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

  #5

• Mission: Impossible

  #6

• Mission: Impossible II

  #7

I can’t believe there’s more than one movie that fits that niche description, but I’m so glad there is

• The Lego Movie
• Barbie

When I say “best YA franchise of the 2000s/2010”, you say

• The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

  #1

• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

  #2

• The Hunger Games

  #3

• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2

  #4

• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

  #5

My very controversial ranking of the MCU, complete with a lot of ties. This list does not include the Disney+ shows or Special Presentations

Tiers/Categories:

5 Stars: God Tier (If a film is in this category, that means it’s one of my favorite MCU movies ever. All of these are basically interchangable with one another, and I love them all equally)

4-4.5 stars: Bordering on Greatness Tier (if a film is in this category, it means I consider it really good, bordering on great. Not one of my all time favorites, but I love it more than some of the other films on this list)

3-4 stars: Good, But Flawed Tier (if a film is in this category, it means that, while it’s certainly flawed, there are redeeming elements to it)

3 stars and under: Awful Tier (if a film is in this category, I consider it to be the bottom of the barrel in of the MCU. I’m normally pretty lenient or generous when it comes to MCU movies, so to end up here, a film has to be REALLY BAD)

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier

  #1 (tie)

• Captain Marvel

  #1 (tie)

• The Marvels

  #1 (tie)

• Guardians of the Galaxy

  #1 (tie)

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

  #1 (tie)

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

  #1 (tie)

• Black Panther

  #2 (tie)

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

  #2 (tie)

• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

  #3 (tie)

• Spider-Man: No Way Home

  #3 (tie)

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• No One Will Save You
• Totally Killer
• The Final Girls
• Talk to Me
• Watcher
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Last Night in Soho

My ranking of Christopher Nolan’s movies, updated as I see the ones I haven’t seen yet (Following, Memento and Insomnia)

• Oppenheimer

  #1 (tie)

• Interstellar

  #1 (tie)

• The Dark Knight

  #2

• Inception

  #3

• The Prestige

  #4

• The Dark Knight Rises

  #5

• Batman Begins

  #6

• Dunkirk

  #7

• Tenet

  #8

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

  #1

• Raiders of the Lost Ark

  #2

• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

  #3

• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

  #4

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

  #5

My top 10 films of 2021. Yes, there are some ties, don’t @ me. Okay, there’s a lot of ties. Still, don’t @ me

• Last Night in Soho

  #1 (tie)

• The Worst Person in the World

  #1 (tie)

• CODA

  #1 (tie)

• Pig

  #1 (tie)

• Encanto

  #2 (tie)

• The Mitchells vs. the Machines

  #2 (tie)

• Dune

  #2 (tie)

• Spencer

  #2 (tie)

• Drive My Car

  #3

• Petite Maman

  #4 (tie)

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My list of the best movies of the 2010s, with many many ties. Literally all of these are 15/10s and some of the best films I’ve ever seen, so just because a film is lower doesn’t mean anything

• Interstellar

  #1 (tie)

• Tangled

  #1 (tie)

• Arrival

  #1 (tie)

• Mad Max: Fury Road

  #1 (tie)

• Logan

  #2 (tie)

• Parasite

  #2 (tie)

• Inception

  #3 (tie)

• La La Land

  #3 (tie)

• Annihilation

  #4 (tie)

• Ex Machina

  #4 (tie)

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My favorite movies of 2022. Yes, there are many ties. Don’t @ me

• Everything Everywhere All at Once

  #1 (tie)

• Turning Red

  #1 (tie)

• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

  #1 (tie)

• Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

  #1 (tie)

• Babylon

  #1 (tie)

• TÁR

  #2 (tie)

• Aftersun

  #2 (tie)

• The Menu

  #3 (tie)

• Glass Onion

  #3 (tie)

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

  #3 (tie)

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Scream

  #1 (tie)

• Scream 4

  #1 (tie)

• Scream VI

  #2

• Scream

  #3

• Scream 2

  #4

• Scream 3

  #5