Avengers: Infinity War

What can I say about the MCU that I haven’t already said? By now you know that I’m just not into superhero movies. Sure, you occasionally get a gem like The Dark Knight or Logan or Wonder Woman, but for the most part, they are drab, unimaginative, paint-by-numbers affairs. A valid complaint other people have leveled against the MCU is that the ultimate goal is to get to the Avengers films, and all the films in between are just road bumps in that path. Sometimes, with how mediocre the “in-between films” are, it really does seem to be true. And so, Avengers: Infinity War arrives, as part one of a two-part extravaganza incorporating almost every character seen in the MCU so far. They have been teasing Thanos as the ultimate villain in the universe for some time, and now he finally gets to the front and center of the screen.

Captain America: Civil War AKA WTF Did I Just Watch?

Full disclosure, here is a list of Marvel Cinematic Universe properties I haven’t seen: Captain America 2, Thor 2, Iron Man 3, Avengers 2, Ant-Man, Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Amazing Spider-Man, and Amazing Spider-Man 2. So, I probably wasn’t prepared for Captain America 3: The Combining of All Properties Civil War. Seeing this movie presented an interesting experiment: watch a bunch of characters I’m not very familiar with cavort on-screen, and try to see if I can figure out what the hell is going on.

Civil War is about Selfless Captain America fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. Err, wait no, scratch that. Civil War is about Sanctimonious Captain America defending his psycho assassin best friend despite the fact he’s a murderous lunatic who deserves to rot in a prison cell.

Brik Hates the Academy Awards: 00s Edition

It’s no mystery that I hate the Academy Awards. Hollywood spends half the year binging on cocaine and hookers and the other half praising themselves for it. No other industry exerts so much energy and spends so much money on self-congratulatory masturbation than the film industry. These sick fucks have the cushiest, easiest jobs in the world, and they act like what they do is some kind of goddamn accomplishment. “LOL OH LOOK I JUST RECITED SOME LINES SOMEONE ELSE WROTE FOR ME AND SHED A TEAR AT THE SAME TIME! I’M A FUCKING ACTING GOD! QUICK SOMEBODY GIVE ME FIFTY AWARDS LOL!” In theory, I could get behind the awards if they actually awarded things that were deserving. You know, giving a Best Picture award to the best movie of the year. But the Academy rarely gives that award to the best movie of the year. Hell, they don’t even give it to the most popular movie of the year. Usually, they give it to whatever cool person produced the movie, or to the most obscure, independent, foreign piece of shit they can find. Typically, no one in the mainstream public will have even seen the winner. They’ve been pulling this shit for years. So, I decided to analyze the past years, offer my own nominees, and declare new winners. Best movie isn’t the one that makes you cry or makes you think. Best movie is the one that you want to revisit over and over again. A movie you watch once and never again isn’t good. It’s only good if you can’t help but watch it a million times. Rewatchability is the hallmark of something great.

This time around, I’ll be taking a look at the Best Picture winners from the 2000s.

It’s Pilot Season – 2013

The Fall 2013 television season is upon us. And that means we’re inundated with the worst the networks have to offer. Each year brings us new series; a few will be great, but most will be unwatchable trash. There’s far too many horrible series out there for me to review them all. So, I’ve decided to watch the three biggest pilots of this season and review them. Please note, my reviews are not necessarily what I think of the entire series, but simply my thoughts on the pilot episode.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD

Yawn.

Holy fuck, we start right out the gate with a major shitfest. Even on paper, Agents of SHIELD sounds like a horrible idea. An Avenger’s show without the Avengers in it? What could go wrong? Recently, Fox picked up a show for the 2014 season that would feature Gotham city without Batman. People started making fun of it immediately and/or bemoaning how terrible an idea it is to do a Batman show without Batman. And you know what? Those people are absolutely right. Nobody gives a fuck about Gotham City without Batman. So, why would we give a fuck about SHIELD without the Avengers? The reason The Avengers was a massive hit was everybody wanted to see Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and Hulk together on the big screen. I guaran-fucking-tee you that nobody said, “Ooohhh I can’t wait to see Agent Coulson and some other nondescript guys in black suits!” And that is exactly what Agents of SHIELD is. It’s a generic spy/sci-fi series about a bunch of nondescript guys in black suits. Watching it is painful. You just keep thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if Iron Man just blasted through a wall and started kicking some ass? But it’s not going to happen. Instead, we see a bunch of non-superheroes acting like a bunch of idiots. Thanks guys, if I wanted to see that, I could watch any other genre of film or television. From a conceptual standpoint alone, this series failed miserably.

The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises cast.

Since The Dark Knight Rises is a big fuckin’ deal, BrikHaus and Mrs. Brik have decided to do a tag-team review.

Mrs. Brik

I would like to preface this review by letting you know that I am not a particularly big fan of comic book movies. I only watch them if they look interesting (and they rarely do). I liked the first Iron Man. Lots of witty dialogue and ass-kicking, the story made sense, and it was paced well. Iron Man is an example of what Hollywood is almost never capable of doing: making a big-budget movie into something good. (I cannot, however, say the same thing for Iron Man 2.) The Hulk is an example of Hollywood at its worst. They made the same movie repeatedly and did a mediocre job of it each and every time.

Having said all that, Rises made all of my wildest dreams come true. 

Avengers Assemble for a Giant Circle Jerk

The forces of Photoshop are here to save the day!

Ever since the 2008 film Iron Man was a success, comic book studio Marvel has been trying to get people excited for a movie starring several of its most famous superheroes. Four years, and four movies, later Marvel has finally done it. Marvel has been cramming all their other movies with unnecessary Avengers bullshit, just for the sole reason of getting people interested in the upcoming Avengers movie. Did Thor need a huge Avengers sub-plot where agents of SHIELD took his hammer and he had to get it back? No. Did Iron Man 2 need a huge Avengers sub-plot with Samuel L. Jackson trying to recruit Tony Stark into SHIELD? No. In fact, that particular bullshit ruined the entire movie. And I won’t even get started on what a hokey piece of shit Captain America was. Every time Marvel shoe-horned in an Avengers sub-plot into one of their movies, all it did was serve as an annoying distraction from the rest of the film. It’s almost as if Marvel was telling the audience, “Don’t worry about all this origin story nonsense, we just want to get this out of the way so you can watch The Avengers later.”

I was certainly not excited for The Avengers. In my attempts to become a world-class blogger, I typically watch a film 6-12 months after theatrical release, just long enough for my review to be irrelevant. I figured I would try something new this time. And since I am such a big fan of Summer Shit Spectaculars, not to mention excruciatingly long lines, and headache-inducing 3D, I really had no choice but to see this movie opening weekend. And how did it turn out? Well, it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it was going to be. I didn’t feel like Marvel was taking a huge fart in my face. But that doesn’t mean the movie was particularly good either.

Screw You, Marvel

This is exactly what Marvel is doing to their properties.

All of Marvel’s upcoming movies are going to be trash.

A decade ago, movie adaptations of comic books were a joke. With the exception of the 1989 Batman and 1978 Superman films, they were laughable at best, and huge steaming piles of shit at worst. The problem was that nobody took it seriously, not even the creators. They made them campy and hokey, and self-referentially stupid. They were the lowest common denominator of movies. They became a self-fulfilling prophecy of crappy movie-making. After all, if the filmmakers themselves treated the properties like shit, then the movies would inevitably turn out to be shit. The industry chugged along, and churned out turd after turd with the occasional, anomalous decent movie like Blade in 1998.

Fast forward to 2002, and the release of Spider-Man. Suddenly, we had a GOOD live action version of a comic book movie. How did it turn out good, you ask? Well, let me answer that for you. The simple reason was that the director, Sam Raimi, had been a longtime fan of the comic book series. He wanted to stay as true to the character as possible while adapting him for the more difficult live action film environment. Naturally, certain things needed to be changed, but they were done with as much care as possible. The characters and situations were taken seriously, and given the right amount of gravity with occasional moments of levity thrown in to keep things fun. The script was solid, the actors were well cast and talented, and everything flowed together seamlessly. It just worked. Worldwide, that movie grossed over $800 million. People were screaming about how awesome the movie was, and all of a sudden it wasn’t nerdy to like comics any more.

Sexman Monday: Iron Man 2

“Sexman’s Back! Tell a friend!”

Film connoisseur and perennial genius Sexman has graced us with another one of his brilliant reviews, this time of Iron Man 2. I’ve got to say that for once in my life I disagree with him. You totally do notice that Don Cheadle isn’t Terrance Howard. It was an annoying recast, and it was a terrible idea. It’s like the Hollywood executives thought, “We’ll just replace one black guy with another, the public won’t notice it since they think all black people look the same.”

Plus, who the fuck did they get to write that movie, anyway? It’s like whoever wrote it didn’t bother to watch the first movie. They changed a bunch of the rules set up in the first movie, and added a bunch of retarded crap like the entire Avengers sub-plot. “LOL! Tony Stark’s dad made Captain America’s shield! LOL!” (*dismissive wank*) But I digress. Anyway, on to Sexman’s review of Iron Man 2, featuring bonus mini-reviews of The Mummy 3 and Dora the Explorer.

On the other hand, who am I to disagree with this site’s official film critic? By the way, did anyone notice how fucking PUMPED Sexman was in this video? That alone makes this one of his greatest reviews ever.