X-Men: Days of Future Past

I must say that I didn't know what to expect from this movie going in. I really enjoyed all of the X-Men movies that have come out, even the much maligned X-Men: The Last Stand. I think X-Men was my favorite cartoon growing up, so there have always been some expectations for the movies, more so than for other comic book movies.

Not to belittle the movie itself, but the most amazing feat in the movie is to get this amazing cast together, now there are a few different groups of characters, but there are so many awesome actors in this movie, and it was nice that they stuck with actors from the original series, and also have brought in some new ones as well.

This is not my favorite X-Men movie, in fact it might be 4th out of the 5 that have been made, but it was still a fun and enjoyable movie. There was not as much action as I would have liked in this movie, but I was still quite interested. I think they tried for a little bit of a different feel than other X-Men movies, and if that was the intent then it worked. They don't introduce that many new characters, but there are a few of them. I honestly would have liked to see Quicksilver a little more, he was the comic relief early in the film. I guess I had missed that Quicksilver had been in the credits of Captain America: The Winter Soldier? He was portrayed by a different actor, but that is something I would like to look at again, he will be portrayed by the same guy who played Kick-Ass in the Kick-Ass movies, so that should be interesting.

It really seems like they tried hard to show Mystique as Jennifer Lawrence a lot, when the character would have likely been in normal blue state, but I guess if you have Jennifer Lawrence in a movie you are going to show her being Jennifer Lawrence. I could really mention all of the different cast members and say that they all did a good job, which they did, but come on is there more perfect casting than Hugh Jackman as Wolverine? Even in the terribly written Origins movie he still was great as Wolverine. I am glad that they were able to work in more Beast action, in the other movies the character has been in, he hasn't been all that involved. In this movie he is part of the movie for the majority of it, he was my favorite character growing up.

I do feel like a little something was missing from this, maybe it was just some extra fighting, but when the mutants are all on the same side, for the most part, the fighting is kept to a minimum. If they mutants were to fight the humans too much it would just lead to dead humans in all likelihood. I also was happy that they actually had sentinels in this movie, I remember sentinels as much as any other things from the cartoon growing up, and the way this movie ended they could easily pop up in the future in similar ways to that of the cartoon as well.

It is really hard to try to describe this movie, and try to relate it to other things. This is a bit of a spoiler, but what this movie did is that it can actually be watched in the same cycle as the first set of X-men movies, but then its also possible that this series can get back into the events as the first series, yet both happened? It rebooted the whole thing, while also validating what had already happened in the other movies. So they could actually make X-Men movies in the past which would be following up this story line, while also making X-Men movies in today's present times, and they could all be in the same time stream. I know I am making this more complicated than it needs to be.

I have a bit of a rant to on for Marvel movies in general. I am going to create that as its own post in the next few days.

I think all of the movies that I have seen this year have been good, and borderline ownable. Its really hard to rank this, I have to put it just ever so slightly ahead of the Lego Movie this year, but that is really a toss up for me.

2014 movie rankings:
1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. X-Men: Days of Future Past

3. The Lego Movie

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

For reference, this was my favorite book in the series, I just liked the many elements of the story and how it added to the story of the first book. I liked the many twists and surprises that happened in the book. Along with liking the first movie, this was definitely something that made me optimistic about the execution of the 2nd movie.

I really should have written this back when I saw the movie, because it is not quite as fresh as it was when I had saw it. I remember leaving the movie being quite impressed with the it. I thought it was a bit more consistent with the book than the first movie was, but then again I read them right before the first movie and I have not revisited them since. I also just enjoyed this movie more than the first in general.

I really wish I could remember more of my thoughts from the movie, but nothing is really coming to me. I enjoyed it more than the first one, and I am very interested to see what they do with the 3rd book, although I believe they are turning it into 2 movies, which as the 3rd book was my least favorite could make for 2 bad movies instead of one decent one.

I liked the movie, and had some trouble deciding where to rank it this year, but I decided that it belonged before Iron Man 3.

10. Pain & Gain
9. Thor: The Dark World
8. World War Z
7. Pacific Rim
6. Iron Man 3
5. Hunger Games: Catching Fire
4. Star Trek Into Darkness
3. This Is the End
2. The World's End
1.Gravity

The Hunger Games

I recently started reading the books of this series, I am currently a bit over half done with the 2nd. I really enjoyed what I have read, and I enjoyed the movie, but I didn't think it was that great of an adaptation of the book. There were so many details that were either changed, or left out completely. A few of the huge laughs the movie could have had were cut out completely. The character of Haymitch definitely does not have his shit together, at least not in the first half or so of the book.

I understand that not every item can be included in the book, but there is just so much more going on. I wish there would have been a way to include some of the inner monologue that is in the book, it is easy to overdo it, but so much of the information that adds to the story was completely left out from the movie. I think the movie could have done an even better job of getting people to like Katniss if it had included even more of her perspective.

I thought Jennifer Lawrence did a great job of playing Katniss, can't fault her for doing a good job, even if I thought the structure of the movie could have been a little bit different. You couldn't even tell that Elizabeth Banks was the person who plays Effie, which is a good thing she was definitely good at embodying the character. I was worried that Lenny Kravitz wouldn't do that good of a job, because when has he ever acted in anything? I actually liked what he did as Cinna.

Well the following could be spoilers, but the following are items I would have liked to see in the movie:
They barely even showed Haymitch drunk, He didn't take his tumble off the stage, nor did he slip in his own mess on the train.
Without the inner Monologue, you don't know that decorating Rue's body was an act of rebellion by Katniss.
They left out District 11 sending bread to Katniss as thanks for helping Rue.
They left out lots of other gifts.
They left out Katniss almost dying of dehydration early on.
The dog creatures were supposed to be wolf creatures with resemblances to each of the dead tributes.
The Mocking Jay pin was a gift from Madge in the book, which gains even more meaning in the 2nd book.

I am sure there are many other things that could have been better as well, but I will stop here for now.
I would give the movie a B overall. I would give it a C- for the adaptation of the actual book though.
The guy who plays Gale totally looks like Joe Mauer.

X-Men First Class

With this post, I am going to start putting movie reviews into their own posts, no one wants to read through all of my other writing just to see what I thought of a movie.

My Review of X-men: First Class: I really, really, really liked this movie. It really built a great back story to the X-Men. A little bit of it had been previously shown in movies, but this really builds the story up. The performances by Michael Fassbender and James Mcavoy. I also enjoyed Jennifer Lawrence but that might be because she was either wearing a short skirt, or wearing little more than blue paint.

This movie is darker than the previous X-men movies, and really shows the anger and rage, and instability behind the character of Magneto. It also shows the compassion that Charles Xavier tries to instill in all of the fellow mutants. I like that they didn't use all of the same old characters that had been used. They introduced some characters that I was previously unaware of. They did make reference to some of the better known characters if you pay close attention to the movie. This movie has a lot of drama, as well as relationship building to it, as well as teenagers searching for their true identity, which I think we can all relate to.

I think most people who wanted to see this movie, have done so, or have plans to do so. If you are still on the fence, I say go see it. It was not quite what I had expected, but it was very enjoyable, and it passed my expectations.

I also enjoyed hearing Kevin Bacon speak German in this movie. I usually enjoy getting to listen to some German in just about anything at all.