01 Saturday Feb 2020
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For us here at GOO Reviews, the year 2019 started out like any other — bleak, weary, depressed, and with the kind of ominous foreboding that the very idea of improvement of any kind seemed an absolute impossibility — but… it ended with a bit of a whimper. In that we didn’t write many reviews in the last half of the year. Like almost none at all.
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27 Friday Sep 2019
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So we’re not a news website in any way, shape, or form. We don’t have the resources, the people in place, or, really, the conviction or determination to stay on top of a beast as unruly as the news. It’s not something we do because we know we wouldn’t do it that well. But this is a big deal and we just happened to be awake early enough in the morning today to catch this news and write something about it.
So anyway, if you’ve been paying attention to these sorts of things over the last two months or so, you might have heard that Spider-Man, as played by Tom Holland for two solo outings and five appearances in total, was now out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Continue reading
27 Saturday Jul 2019
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All images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
It was the tail end of spring 2008, just before summer, that a little movie called Iron Man debuted from a little studio called Marvel. As the first self-financed and produced work from Marvel, who had, until that point, almost exclusively licensed its properties out to other studios, Iron Man was a big step forward even if the movie itself wasn’t opening to too much in the way of fan fair or expectations. But as the summer closed and the box office dust had settled, Iron Man had earned nearly $600 million. That was kind of a lot back then.
Far more importantly, though, Iron Man established a beachhead; it was the first stage in what would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a series of movies following the adventures of some of the greatest heroes of our age, and all, as it would turn out, taking place in the same world. What happened in one was reflected in another, our heroes would meet sometimes and even sometimes become integral parts of each other’s stories. Eleven years, 23 movies, and three unofficial “phases” later, Marvel has woven an intricate tapestry, a deep and epic backstory that rewards those of us paying attention while still maintaining the necessary accessibility for each of their individual chapters to stand on their own. Mostly. Continue reading
12 Saturday Jan 2019
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2018 was not a good year. For the world. So another bad year then. Again.
2018 is the year that James Gunn got fired for all the wrong reasons. 2018 is the year that Daredevil got cancelled. It’s the year that the Saga comicbook went on hiatus, that the Tide Pod Challenge got into gear, that Kanye kept saying things, that normal people learned who Logan Paul is. 2018 is the year that Anthony Bourdain died. 2018 is the year that Aretha Franklin died. 2018 is the year that f*cking Stan Lee died. 2018 is another year where Trump remained in office, which, in some very literal cases, meant that some people died that under normal circumstances, probably wouldn’t have (to say nothing of ‘shouldn’t have’), and while none of us want this blog about movies from an Edmonton perspective to get political, it’s impossible to ignore that a world with Donald Trump as President of the United States is the kind of thing that leaves none of us untouched, and as long as it stays this way there are going to be a lot of things that will keep going wrong in the worst, most evil and selfish and thoughtless and yet stupidest and laziest ways possible. And for us here at GOO Reviews, that meant 2018 was a year that kind of got away from us in terms of reviews coverage. For that we apologize, though it’s an apology accompanied with no guarantee that things, on that front, will get better. Continue reading
06 Saturday Jan 2018
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2017 was not a good year. For the world. And you know why.
It was an okay year for movies though.
The year 2017 brought us five new and very different superhero movies (seven if you count LEGO Batman and Power Rangers), a new mainline Star Wars movie that’s good partially because it’s divisive, some really great, deeply emotional indie movies, and… well, that’s the kind of stuff we get every year actually. For all of us sweaty nerds, we are truly living in a wonderland of delights, with movies about ideas and concepts we never thought we’d see on screen. And for you those of you out there bemoaning the current state of the movie industry, you’re not wrong, at least not totally, but you are being willfully blind and dismissive. There are still plenty of great, introspective, emotionally resonant movies out there, and, believe it or not, some of those movies are about superheroes. Continue reading
10 Monday Apr 2017
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31 Tuesday Jan 2017
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In these dark days of new Presidents, #fakenews, and #alternativefacts, we here at GOO Reviews thought it important that we all slow down for a minute, take a deep breath, and contemplate what’s really important: Batman.
Now we’re not sure exactly when it happened, whether it was a broader shift in society or if what Thom wrote about Batman in his review of Batman v Superman is true and it’s just a natural part of growing up, but at some point we the people got sick of Superman and took on Batman as our favourite superhero, and it’s a title the Dark Knight Detective’s been running away with ever since. Continue reading
07 Saturday Jan 2017
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Look, we know you have a lot of places to go to get your “Top 10 Lists” on. Hell, there are entire publishing industries built on them. But we’re glad you’re here anyway, however many or few of you there may be, to share in our year at the movies.
To be clear, what follows is only the movies we, after roundtable discussion and voting, liked best. We’re not claiming these are the best, there are probably at least a few 2016 movies that are technically better, and there are certainly many that are more acclaimed. You might even hate some of the movies in our Top 10. That’s great! That means you care! This is just what we liked, the 10 movies we liked best this year, the ones that gave us the highest highs and the lowest lows, the ones that made us feel and meant the most to us — the brightests of the bunch. Continue reading
