It's not the reparations they deserve, but it's the reparations they need right now.

Well that was nerve wracking.

Just watched all 7 of the X-Men movies with my kids, over a 2 month stretch.

X-Men - it set things up pretty well but it doesn’t hold up. The MCU has made this look bad. The fight scenes are tough to watch.

X2 - I still think this is really good. Great opening scene with Nightcrawler. It’s muddled a bit in the middle and there is a lot of “will they, won’t they” in the end, but I enjoyed this revisit.

Last Stand - pretty shitty movie. Way too many plot lines in such a short movie.

First Class - my favorite movie in the series. Michael Fassbender is excellent.

Days of Future Past - I remember not loving it at first because I hate time travel movies (still dislike Endgame), but they did it well here and it’s better upon 2nd viewing. The Quicksilver/Time in a Bottle scene is my favorite scene in all of this.

Apocalypse - pretty messy. The dude who plays Cyclops doesn’t work for me. He doesn’t look cool enough. Having Raven be a “good guy” because Jennifer Lawrence was big, was a weird decision. Apocalypse was boring. Needed more Psylocke. There was some potential in the Final Battle with Xavier, but they decided it needed more explosions.

Dark Phoenix - it’s messy too, but there was at least some real emotion here. The villains were meh. I don’t think Sansa works for Jean Grey, or maybe the part was just written so shitty. Had a lot of missed potential. I think critics were a little too hard on this, but the 2nd half is still a mess and brings it down.

After we were done, I told my kids to rank them but they have no opinions of their own and usually just mirror mine. I did get a kick out of my daughter taunting my son about how the female X-Men have better powers than the males. He didn’t handle that well.

Now watch Deadpool and Logan with them.

Tenet - Cool, but confusing. Someone summarize it for me.

Train to Busan - Here's your regular reminder that if fast zombies ever become a thing, we're all fucked.

each (out of 5)

Spider-Man: No Way Home is insane. I struggled a little with the plot setup, but holy hell, the 2nd half is fun.

samesies. The only thing that can save the plot is if it's revealed in the Dr Strange movie that he intended to open up the multiverse. Otherwise he looks like an idiot for not going over the conditions of the spell with an emotionally distraught TEENAGER before casting it. They way he says to Peter "the entire world is about to forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man" sounded like he was trying to get an emotional reaction from him. Or it could have been just a bad script.

I didn't believe the rumors about Toby and Andrew being in the movie at first, and then when it became apparent they were actually in it I figure it would just be cameos. I definitely wasn't expecting a cluster of Spideys! I liked both of their Peters in this movie better than I did in theirs, especially Garfield's.

Yes, it's a terrible list, but I'm totally cool with that #1.

100% but having the Dark Knight at 41 and Batman Returns at 40 seems like deliberate contrarianism, considering Dk should be top 5 and Returns shouldn't be on the list at all. Fruitdog would be proud.

Best sequels off the top of my head:

Fury Road
Godfather 2
Aliens
Empire
DK
Toy Story 2 & 3

Feel free to add to this list.

The Devil's Rejects at 100 was pretty low. It's nice that it's on there, but it's a much better movie than it needs to be and should be a lot higher. It's better than Matrix 2.

T2 at 34 is dumb.

Agreed on DK. Empire is way too low too.

I guess they’re considering Iron Man the original and all other MCU movies sequels? I’m cool with the choice of the Avengers but that’s ridiculously low. Paddington 2 deserves to be much higher. How to Train Your Dragon is too low. I would have chosen #3 but either way. T2, Logan and Dark Knight are stupid low. Weird choice for Star Trek. Have not seen it. Would put Wrath of Khan pretty high though.

Return to Oz is weird-good but no way is it better than any of the stuff above. Ocean’s 12 sucked.

Empire is 14 spots too low. Godfather 2 is correctly ranked.

*I have only seen 17 of the top 40

I haven't heard of half of them.

I stand corrected, I haven't heard of 26% of them.

Is this a foreign list? Lots of non-US movies on it that haven't heard of either.

Everything Everywhere All at Once -- No one else is allowed to make a multiverse movie ever again. This is the best it could ever possibly get. Holy fucking shit it was awesome.

This movie is insane and awesome and insane. It also made Mrs Tit cry toward the end. I could've used subtitles for the English parts but Prime wasn't showing any.

The Banshees of Inisherin -- About 30-40 minutes into the movie, I turned to my wife and said: "If they kill the donkey, this is the worst fucking movie I've ever seen."

This is the worst fucking movie I've ever seen.

I liked it.

I'm over-selling, but that did piss me off. It's lazy writing to me.

I've read that the whole thing is really about the Irish civil war which i know next to nothing about. I think the donkey could just be a metaphor for the innocents who get hurt during shit like this. But at least they didn't kill the dog.

The Irish civil war started because the king killed mels girlfriend

Babylon - 2 hours of 1920's Hollywood debauchery with a meh ending. Lots of boobies.

I remember now.

After not watching any movies for years, I've watched several in the last month.

Today I saw Indiana Jones and the dial thingy. My conclusion? I'm too old for that impossible crap.

I did feel funny when Marion showed up at the end.

I guess it gets 2 out of 4 for me.

The wifey and I saw the new Indiana Jones joint on Saturday. It wasn't as good as 1 or 3 but it was better than 2 or 4. A lot of the action was way more than what a typical 80 year old should be able to perform. I let a lot of it slide so I could immerse myself into the movie but I let out an audible "oh, come on!" when Indy was scaling a sheer face cliff. I liked how they closed the door on Shia LeBeouf taking up the Indy mantle for future movies.

The wifey was so pumped after watching the new one we did a marathon of 1-4 on Sunday. "Raiders" has been renamed to "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark". My first reaction was "muh chawldhud!!!" but then I remembered Lucas did the same with Star Wars so whatevs. The effects in the movie are a little dated but it still holds up as one of the greatest movies ever.

All five movies had the Lucas trademark Wilhelm scream and I laughed at each one of them.

The Flash - I liked how they brought in so many actors from historical tv shows and movies, and the story was good enough to keep me interested. What threw me was the CGI. It was really, really bad in some instances. Like, Leia in "Rogue One" bad.

The Iron Claw - This one isn't going to win any awards, but it was damn entertaining. It's a little on the cheesy side just like wrestling was in the 80s. I was into the local wrestling scene in the 80s, so this one was right in my wheelhouse. While they played a little loose with some of the details (like completely eliminating the youngest brother and making it appear that Kevin's wedding, David's and Michael's deaths, and Kerry's motorcycle accident all happened within months of each other when it was spread out over 7 years), it adequately captured the aura of the family and the time period. The soundtrack and score were put together by one of the main guys in Arcade Fire and there's an original song that's worked in that isn't bad.

My wife leaned over to me about 20 minutes in and said, "you mean they plan out before who is going to win?" I, of course, responded with, "it's still real to me, dammit!"

and half out of five

And Zac Efron was ripped. He had to be on steriods.

I would agree with 3.5. I used to watch WCCW with my dad on Saturday nights. I hear people all the time say “they took too many liberties with the story/book” or “they left out too much” and I’m always on the other side because I don’t know details of anything, nor do I read much, so I always like movies that are based on real events or books as they are presented. But with this one, I was the one that was disappointed that so much got rushed through/left out, because I know this story like it’s my own. I would have been fine with tripling its run time and giving the entire story. I will say I did learn about the coin flip from the movie though. May have worked better as a series. Still good though.

Also I know if you cast for body type, you’re limiting what’s available and you might get shit acting, but the guy who played Kerry could have used a lot more muscle. I thought the Ric Flair casting was shit. Yes, Efron is jacked.

The Heaven stuff or whatever that was, was too much for me. I get that it’s a reference to his suicide note, but it was way too cheesy for me.

They could have easily added another hour to the movie to cover the era between David's and Michael's deaths. That was the peak of their popularity and that felt like the part that was rushed the most. One thing I read over the weekend is that one of Kevin's kids took exception to the way Fritz was portrayed. I always thought he was a huge dick and the movie didn't do him any favors. Overall, I liked it and would probably spend money to see it again. I thought my wife would hate it and she was in tears through the whole second half. The ending scene was especially good. It would have been real easy to cheese that up and they handled it very well.

Yep. And those are my years. Even though I knew David’s story, I’m too young to remember watching much of him. Kevin and Kerry were huge parts of my childhood. I remember Mike but obviously he didn’t make it long. I was reminded of Lance though. Hilarious. He has a brief turn in the movie.

I think it was Kevin himself who didn’t like how Fritz was portrayed. I thought that casting was pretty spot on.

I also watched this movie. I agree with most everything said. I actually wanted more out of the other wrestlers. I wanted to know their connection to the "curse" and how they felt about it/interacted with it. Especially since many of them (Bruiser Brody, Geno Hernandez, Chris Adams, etc) died prematurely and violently as well. I've dreamt of this movie for so long that I knew it would never be the version in my head though. The danger was always making Fritz a cartoon character and I felt that happened in the end, specifically when he's yelling at Kevin that it was Kevin's responsibility. Chris after the toxic shock syndrome was pretty cartoony as well.

I actually liked the "Heaven" scene and the leaving of the coin in the boat. I'd never heard of the coin flip, and also I have no idea if that actually happened or not. Zac Efron was too jacked, it was distracting. Not because Kevin wasn't that jacked, it was just too much in general. Chris walking out into the field with the sleeping bag triggered my childhood urban legend recall, too. I had never heard anything about the Von Erich Curse preceding the brothers, either. Not sure if that was invented for the movie or not. I liked that Kerry's story started with the boycott of the Olympics, starting him off with disappointment to himself and his father. Also, I still love Maura Tierney. I agree that the compressed timeline made it feel rushed and maybe a six episode HBO series would have worked really well. Then the evolution of the business and Kerry's time in the WWF could have been explored, too. I'd always thought that Kerry had part of his foot amputated, not the whole thing. And I thought that he damaged it in the motorcycle accident but it was amputated after Fritz pressured him to get back in the ring too soon to try to save the promotion and weeks and months of shots to numb the pain caused him to damage it more. There were stories that he would shower with his wrestling boots on while in WWF because no one knew. He was wrestling someone in Japan who tried to pull him across the ring and accidentally pulled the boot off when it was discovered/made public. I also remember he was looking at some serious jail time for drugs when he killed himself, too.

I can't find a source for this, but I swear I remember either one of Keven or Kerry's daughters got in trouble for sending threatening mail to Obama. So they skipped that as well.

That's great. That must have been right before he killed himself.

I just vaguely remember David's death and that's around the time I started paying attention to wrestling.

I read an article after I saw the movie where the director confirmed the coin toss story as true. He also talked about how much he had to cut from the story to make it all fit. That included disregarding Chris and having no mention of Kerry's family.

I'm always amazed at how many people met some of the Von Erich's back in the day. I met Kevin and Mike at some sort of wrestling event in the mid 80s and my wife and her brother met Kerry on a Southwest flight.

The wife dragged me to "American Fiction" this weekend. Something about a black journalist. I can't begin to explain how much this movie sucked balls. All of them balls.

One out of 4.

I watched the Irishman last night and it was really good and I even got through it in one sitting, but I laughed real hard in a sad way, when Deniro was kicking the shop owner who pushed Peggy.

“The Greatest Night in Pop” /Netflix. It chronicles the making of We are the World and boy oh boy, is it an awesome documentary. Do you enjoy nostalgia? I surely do and this has a lot of it.

Do you like sidebars too? Here is one: I didn’t know it at the time, but this whole experience was created on January 28, which is my birthday. The year was 1985. I was 14 and into angry music then and sappy songs chock full o platitudes to pander to the I stand with Ukraine crowd of its day didn’t resonate with me. That was 39 years ago though. 39. Please have a moment of silent reflection and know that a good bit of the pop icons in that video are dead now and the rest are in stages of their 70’s, 80’s, and even 90s. Some, like the oft-cited Kenny Loggins, are barely recognizable anymore. Spoiler: he’s had a lot of plastic surgery. Wow. The brevity of life my friends.

Anyhoo, I walked away with a deep appreciation for Lionel Ritchie and Quincy Jones. I was annoyed by Cyndi Lauper and Stevie Wonder. I don’t judge you, Waylon. I was confused by Dan Ackroyd’s involvement. Bob Dylan was funny in his befuddlement. There’s other stuff too but I don’t want to spoil it. My wife cried when Lionel was in the empty studio where it all went down and said something about home is people and not a place and when the people are gone all you can see is what is not there anymore. It’s true. I don’t even mind the song anymore.

It was good stuff. 5 out of 5 for me

It was a good watch. A lot of that footage from that night was in a documentary that came out when the song was released. There's a Tik Tok out there with a high school teacher having her kids try to ID all of the soloists before the ensemble chorus at the end. Surprisingly they hit about half of them. James Ingram was the only one that tripped me up.

My mom's birthday was January 28. She died when she was 53. I hope you make it to 54, buddy.

It was a pretty good documentary, though I think I was pretty in tune with most of the story already. I know the Huey Lewis interview pieces are aged - he can barely speak anymore. I did laugh at the Waylon Jennings/Bob Dylan segments. Al Jarreau also came across as douche-y.

I liked the song at the time. I recognize the cheese factor now but it still holds nostalgia.I was 7/8 and it had Huey Lewis, Bruce, Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Steve Perry, Kenny Loggins, and Daryl Hall. Fuck, that was incredible for me.

I read up on Huey Lewis. His voice wasn’t mentioned but it looks like he is suffering from major hearing issues/impending deafness. Sucks. He talked about suffering from tinnitus. That’s ringing in the ears, fyi. I have that too. Sometimes it can drive you crazy if you notice it and dwell on it too much. How do you pronounce tinnitus when you read it? It seems like it sounds like ten-I-tuss, but you’ll sound like a hayseed if you say that to an uppity audiologist. It’s ten-uh-tuss. I was corrected. Huey also talked about how out of the blue one of his ears went bonkers and it was like it had filled with water and was stopped up and wouldn’t pop. My left ear did that a few months ago and freaked me out. I took a cycle of prednisone I had in stock and it cleared up, but I also saw an audiologist. Took a hearing test and everything. I aced the part where they just throw words out you to repeat. I felt relieved too and then I took the frequency part and bombed it. I do notice I have a hard time understanding fast low talkers, particularly whisper talking women. They recommended hearing aids. For some reason, I am totally fine with diminished eyesight and needing readers, but the thought of hearing aids feels like a disability I don’t want to advertise. Hearing otherwise is fine. The tinnitus varies in intensity. Mods, please move this to Growing Old With Tit.