I’ve enjoyed:

• Jumanji reboots - more an ensemble piece but he does well
• Hobbs and Shaw - ridiculous and over-the-top but entertaining
• Doom - not often he plays the baddie
• Southland Tales - not exactly a Rock film

The Rock has always prided himself on being the hardest working guy in the room, which is fine but can lead to dickery (like pissing in bottles). Cena has a similar work ethic but puts it towards being a great guy. It’s notable that James Gunn has a tight team around him that contains people he knows work hard and work well with others and Cena is now part of that team. I don’t expect to see Black Adam in the Gunniverse, unless it’s a quick cameo.

“The single perspective never changes, but everything around it does,” Zemeckis tells Vanity Fair in this exclusive first look. “It’s actually never been done before. There are similar scenes in very early silent movies, before the language of montage was invented. But other than that, yeah, it was a risky venture.”

I’m sure it’s been done before but quite where is eluding me.

Red trunks! Terrific!

It gets better - between the movies and TV shows you get a range of Lostprophet songs. It’s not like the lead singer is one of the worst pieces of scum alive. 🤔

Exorception

The intrinsic problem is the classic Lovecraft story is: scholar discoveries some terrible, ancient evil and goes mad or runs away. Thus doesn’t lend itself to a big movie adaptation and the most successful Lovecraftian films have worn their inspiration lightly. I’d have loved to see what GdT did with MoM but I don’t quite know how you could jazz it up for the general movie-going audience.

This is a real pity as Marvel needs to expand the horror side if their offering to keep their output fresh. We’ve already got Man-Thing, Elsa Bloodstone and Werewolf by Night, throw in Blade, Ghost Rider (one of the younger ones with Cage returning to pass the torch) and you have your Midnight Sons ready to roll. You can bounce that into Marvel Zombies (as they did with Marvel Zombies 4). As Marvel Zombies 3 includes Machine Man and leads into 4, we are almost there for Nextwave. Create a separate bit if the MCU for it, as they did for GotG so someone can noodle away on it without too much studio interference.

Really looking forward to this - hope it gets shown in UK cinemas.

Lockdowns help highlight a lot of “just because it’s what you do, not because it’s actually good” things for people.

Lockdown hit entertainment venues across the board as people found it cheaper and more convenient to just stay at home. The manager of my local pub says a chunk of his clientele just never returned. The cost-of-living crisis has just made it worse as prices soar.

Theatres are generally awful.

I have excellent options where I am - a community-run cinema a few minutes away and a multiplex 15 minutes away (that has reclining seats, good air cin, plenty of space, etc and I have a monthly pass which hammers the price down - I usually cover the cost in a week).

As one commentator says, they’re over-complicating it - they just need to create stories people want to see, not feel they have to in order to keep up or because the franchise holder needs X amount of content a year. If people are force-fed from the corporate sausage machine then they tend not to like it. I’m pumped to see Deadpool and Wolverine, as I was for GotG 3 and The Suicide Squad. Most other Marvel movies (and most of their TV shows) have been about introducing or reworking characters for some future project, not about telling a great story this time around. I’m still enjoying most Star Wars TV shows but Kenobi was awful because it felt so corporate-mandated - let’s rework that film we mothballed into streaming content. In fact that problem arose because Disney decided that, come-what-may they were going to have a Star Wars film a year and it all went horribly wrong because they didn’t bother with an actual plan for the Sequel Trilogy. It’s just amazing we got a great film out of it (although with hasty reshoots) and a decent one (more Donald Glover as Lando please). And don’t get me started on the Sony Spider-Man Universe!

Meanwhile, everyone involved in Deadpool and Wolverine seem pumped that they get to tell this story, James Gunn has been given a free hand to make the films he wants to see and if they form part of a franchise then that’s gravy - not the point (you’d better not let my down now Gunn!).

It’s not “superhero fatigue” it’s “almost nobody fucking stays home from the theater when they’re interesting infectionsly sick” fatigue.

I go to the cinema a lot (5 times this week, but that’s because I’m doing the Lord of the Rings trilogy over three days) and never caught Covid - big cinemas have good air conditioning and I’ve yet to have anyone coughing and spluttering during a screening. Meanwhile, my friends keep passing Covid around the pub like it’s free cake.

I think “superhero fatigue” is in large part “write a film I give a shit about fatigue”. Marvel especially have been writing films that serve the franchise rather than telling story creators want to make and people want to see - BP 2 was the worst example of that. The best recent examples are GotG 3 and The Suicide Squad (which have me optimistic about DC’s upcoming output), with an honourable mention going to Shang-Chi (although it threw it away in the last act by making it a standard CGI slugfest).

The first 10 minutes might be the best bit - you can feel your IQ drain away as the film continues.

While there will be some minor cuts, none will affect the “the integrity of the storytelling” or the “Deadpool spirit.”

I believe it’s the 11 Paul Rudd jokes, as the Chinese love him.

Adi Shankar is an interesting guy, just seems to go out and make the movies he wants to see.

I just realised The Holdovers sneaks into 2024 - I was crudely sorting my ratings by year, which obscured it’s actual UK release date. I might throw it in at #7 and then consider moving it up.

Still umming and ahing over the top 10 this year but a rough list so far would be:

1. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
2. Dune 2
3. Civil War
4. Late Night With the Devil
5. Abigail
6. Poor Things
7. Furiosa
8. The First Omen
9. Boy Kills World
10. Lisa Frankenstein

I expect Deadpool & Wolverine to steal the top slot. Other contenders: Longlegs, Joker 2, and possibly Alien: Romulus.

Worst: Madame Web

Being a pasty ginger, I understand his reluctance to bare unprotected skin outside.

I’d quite like a piss-take if the prequels, then one of the sequels. Although, quite a lot of the Sequel Trilogy took the piss anyway.

It definitely seems to be Covid partly to blame - people just found it cheaper and more convenient to watch at home. It’s the same with pubs - I was talking to the manger of my local and he said there was a contingent who just never came back.