Rate the last film with your terrible opinions

Damsel - Netflix

Truly awful but it was entertaining whilst I was getting drunk on a Saturday night.

By the end I was so much more invested in the pour than anything else in the movie

Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 - Dinny

I kind of assumed this would be superfluous stuff but actually it’s pretty emotional. James Gunn knows what he’s doing. It’s not as anarchic as The Suicide Squad and you feel like some characters are in there primarily for fan service (in the comic geek sense, not the anime sense) but what can I say? I found it quite moving.

8/10

Perfect Days: 9/10.

Cosy and heartwarming. Ideal for a Sunday.

I watched Tremors just last week, still holds up pretty well

I’d not watched it for maybe 20 years

Ricky Stanicky (Prime - 2 ad breaks)

3 kids make up a friend and run with it. Fairly harmless, full of dick jokes and Cena steals the show in dress up.

6/10

X2 (2003)

My rewatch of the X-Men films continues with this one, the best one*.

And it's really held up very bloody well. The shock of the moment when Wolverine pins a dude to a fridge which his claws may have abated slightly in the last (ulp) 21 years, but the way they manage to juggle multiple characters, giving everyone apart from Cyclops something meaty to do, is really masterful. And the set-pieces still astonish: Nightcrawler in the White House, the attack on the school, Magneto's escape, Mystique infiltrating the base... I think, arguably, we're a bit more familiar with superhero tropes and studios are more willing to just let us accept some weird shit, so some of this still feels a touch on-the-nose, and maybe-just-maybe some of the emotional beats aren't entirely earned. But that's me nit-picking. It's fantastic.

Five Xs out of five.

*Apart from Logan.

It's just because James Marsden has a really annoying face.

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Glad to hear it holds up though. It's sitting on the shelf, but X1 was a bit underwhelming (i remember thinking it was great at the time), so it's been on hold for a while.

Yeah the first X-Men wasn't even great for the time. X2 was a huge step up in terms of quality. Very close to being a perfect action film.

Halle Berry and Alan Cumming would disagree but you can blame Brian Singer being a cunt for that.

He had a cool leather jacket though, with the stripes down the front. I have one of them myself but it no longer fits.

I didn't enjoy the first X-Men as much as I used to, so I was worried this had dipped. But yeah, I think it really holds up. It's quite impressive, really, how they manage to wring depth out of so many characters - or at least give them cool moments, like Mystique flipping the bird as she slides away from the military goons in the base.

It's what I love about Captain America: Civil War, where they gather all the Avengers for a big fight, but they still manage to put these little characterful grace notes in, so no one feels perfunctory or forgotten.

I wonder how much influence Blade had on X-Men. Possibly none at all, but maybe it did; they share a tone, really, and a down-to-earth grittiness. And a fondness for black leather...

But broadly I agree that Blade/X-Men were both in response to Batman & Robin and the perceived campiness of superheroes. I would imagine the seriousness influenced Nolan for Batman Begins, which in turn also lead Marvel to make Iron Man as "realistic" as possible - or at least gave superhero films a realistic "base" from which to begin, again, to explore more fantastical concepts.

It's interesting to chart the progress, I think!

Blade still holds up really well imho. It's darker and more violent, but it's also fully OTT and cheesy, in a good way.
Great action too.

I feel like it was the forerunner of the superhero boom. Before that we'd really only had batman movies.

I remember X-men being really good at the time. A 'proper' serious superhero movie, with good actors and some iconic roles etc.. Although even at the time the fight scenes were pretty badly choreographed and we won't talk about Storm.

Since Blade was a bit more nice (and rated 18?) X-men was probably the first of the proper superhero boom and set the template, but when I rewatched it a lot of bits just feel quite limited. The fight scenes that were never great seem even more basic now, it has a lot of spoken exposition and some plot jumps, and it feels like they didn't really have the budget/sfx for the finale they wanted.

Some iconic scenes though, and the first half up until the end of the train station scene is good.

I guess Spiderman 1 was the one that mainly set the tone and template for the following marvel movies though. (though it owes a lot to Superman and Batman 1)

Still not watched the DB series, also a big fan of the original, either as a film or as the longer full series. It was one of the first things we watched when I got a DVD player and 5.1 setup in 1999. Despite us watching on a 32" TV (which seems tiny now, but felt massive then) by the end we're all huddled up in the middle of the room, terrified of the pipes bursting all around us.