Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is back, with less to live for than ever. Yet he can’t die – it’s his superpower. He ends up meeting up with a kid who is struggling with anger and his superpower, Firefist (the totally magnificent Julian Dennison) who decides that Deadpool is his going to be his role model. But things don’t go quite as planned.
I think I enjoyed this more than the first, which I believe is a fairly unpopular opinion. But I really like Dennison and I look forward to following his career. I also thoroughly enjoyed the magnificently horrific rescue scene with the paragliders, and just all of the ridiculousness.
Whilst I love comic book films, I’ve never really read many comic books. Well, okay, I did love Asterix as a kid, and MAD magazine, but not really more than that. So, I have no idea who this Deadpool guy is. Luckily, this film is an origin story film, so I learnt that there was a guy, Wade (Ryan Reynolds) who was a bad guy but with a wild sense of humour who fell in love with this chick, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) but then he got a terminal illness and put himself through an experimental process to heal him which made him immortal, but also scarred him a lot, so he was unwilling to show his now ugly face to his beautiful woman. And then there are bad guys and a couple from the X-Men (I think) turn up and there are a whole heap of fights.
It’s funny. The type of funny that is often offensive and didn’t really need to be as offensive, but I found myself laughing more than being annoyed… I guess I’m saying that a lot of people will be offended, and it wouldn’t have been hard for me to be more offended, but I wasn’t. And I’ve used that word way too much. I think that the film is worth seeing for the insane extreme slow-mo first sequence, but stick around. I look forward to seeing more of Deadpool in sequels and hopefully in some other films.
Meet the Croods – father Grug (Nicholas Cage), mother Ugga (Catherine Keener), Gran (Cloris Leachman) and the kids, including the eldest, daughter Eep (Emma Stone). After seeing many of the families around them killed through a variety of factors, Grug keeps them safe most of the time in a cave. But Eep is not happy with this, and wants to be free. Then she meets Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a different kind of person who showed then a different way to life their lives, and after their cave is destroyed, they need to follow him or meet their end.
I loved that the women in this film were not drawn as spindly, crazy-skinny stick figures, but had some shape and spunk. It’s a fun film, yes the morals are pretty stock standard for a kids animation – parents need to let their kids make mistakes and cannot protect them forever no matter how dangerous the world may be. But it was fun, with a good sense of humour and just a lot of good, nice stuff going on.
The Croods was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year, as well as a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film and a BAFTA for BAFTA Kids Vote – Feature Film.
You know what I’m really enjoying about watching all of these X-Men films in close succession? The way they play with time. Characters are introduced in one film but not properly introduced, but then their story becomes clear in the next film. So here we are at X-Men Origins : Wolverine.
Logan (Hugh Jackman) and his brother Victor (Liev Schreiber) are brothers who, from a very early age, discover they are both mutants who cannot be killed and don’t age (though I got confused on that, as one moment they were little boys, then they were adults. What’s that all about, aging?). The title sequence shows them fighting in a variety of wars over time, but Logan chucks it in when his unit begins killing innocents. He gets a quiet job in a forest, meets a girl and settles down. Then Victor turns up again, and things get nasty.
Reading a bit about the reception of these films, this is the low point, but I disagree. I really liked it – Hugh Jackman got to be brooding and angry and the bad guys got beaten in a way that didn’t quite negate the stuff that happened in the earlier films, which were actually later in the timeline of Wolverine’s existence. Cool fun.
Safe House is the best action/drama ever. Alright, that’s a ridiculously big call. But I just loved it. The only reason I saw this movie was that it was on at a good time. Seems that is often how I pick movies – probably not the most intelligent way to pick them, but now and then, it really works.
This film is dark, gritty and real and I loved the filth of it. The filth of the characters and the places and the plot.
The opening sequence really set up the way the story was going to be told – lots of jump editing, hand held camera work and dark shadows. By editing several scenes together with the audio from one over the top (no, not a montage as such, but more like a jigsaw) director Daniel Espinosa it able to pack in a whole heap of character and plot development into a short time. At almost two hours, it’s a pretty long film, but it covers so much in that time.
Ryan Reynolds plays a young CIA agent who ends up on his own with a rogue agent (actually, I’m not sure he’s called that, but I got all Alias for a moment) played by Denzel Washington. I didn’t really know who Reynolds was (a bit like the way I didn’t really know who Ryan Gosling was until Ides of March) but I was pretty darn impressed with this performance. I have to admit, the storyline of the young, naïve company man who ends up disillusioned with the company is getting a bit tedious for me. Especially when too much of the film is slow, close-ups on said man as the penny drops. Still, I liked this one. Washington is a very attractive man, especially when he smiles, and thank goodness he gets to do that a lot in this film. Plus he gets to look cool with a gun. I do like that. Plus the wonderful Brendan Gleeson is in it – I’ll see anything that man does, although it’s hard to get used to him with an American accent.
The film often confused me – something happened and I had no idea what or to whom, but I didn’t care. Eventually, it became clear, and that was all that mattered. The foley was amazing – things really sounded real, especially in the many, many fight sequences. The cinematography was also wonderful, often showing things from a single character’s point of view, leaving the audience missing the same pieces of information that the character was. This really heightened the excitement for me.
Overall, awesome. See it on a big screen with big sound. It needs it.
ireckonthat 