Tag Archives: superhero

Ant-Man and the Wasp review

14 Saturday Jul 2018

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You’ve changed, man!  It used to be about the ants!

by Thom Yee

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Ant-Man and the Wasp images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

I was actually pretty fired up for the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp last weekend.  Which was strange because the original Ant-Man was the first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie that let me down [and that’s not even mentioning how unlikely it is for me to be excited about anything in the first place].  I think part of my excitement stemmed from how much more I’d gotten into the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the release of Avengers:  Infinity War a scant two months (and change) ago, but if we’re being honest with each other, you and I, here at the end of all things (as it always feels like lately), I think the main reason for my expanded excitement for Ant-Man and the Wasp (See what I did there?  Expanded?  Because he grows?) was because, as much as Ant-Man let me down and as hard as I was on it in my original review, I like that first Ant-Man movie quite a bit now.  Certainly more than my three (of five) star review might suggest.  In retrospect, Ant-Man is a real good, solid movie.  It’s got solid characters, innovative action scenes, and some pretty decent laughs.

You’ll never convince me Ant-Man is great movie though. Continue reading →

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Deadpool 2 review

26 Saturday May 2018

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FFUUUUU—

by Thom Yee

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Deadpool 2 images courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Deadpool’s never really been my kind of comicbook hero.  He’s dangerous, unhinged from reality and doesn’t take life seriously, but not in a frightening, Joker kind of way.  Deadpool’s more of an annoying, won’t-shut-up, Spider-Man type, only, unlike Spider-Man, he’s not masking his own insecurities or expressing himself in a way he can’t in real life.  No, Deadpool’s just annoying, and he constantly f*cks with people because that’s who he is on the inside, and I don’t really like that kind of character (or person).  For a long time that was fine too, the only type of person that liked Deadpool was a certain type of comicbook nerd, a subset of a group of people nobody in reality cared about or wanted to spend any time around anyway, but then, all of a sudden, Deadpool was, like, the biggest deal in the world, the titular lead character of his own titular action-comedy movie, and played by one of the most comically handsome and spastically charming men in the world.  And by the end of all of that, I didn’t really like Deadpool much more. Continue reading →

Avengers: Infinity War review

05 Saturday May 2018

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Thanos was right

by Thom Yee

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Avengers: Infinity War images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

This world doesn’t make sense any more.  Californians are intentionally drinking untreated, unsterilized water they’re buying “off the grid” while people in Flint, Michigan still have too much lead in their taps.  A ridiculous, Immortan-Joe-esque ignoramous is the President of the United States.  Vaping is a thing.  And Thanos is a major figure in our popular culture.  Those four things might seem unrelated at first, but I’m pretty sure they all have megalomania and super-villainy at the heart of their origins.  But we’re mostly here to talk about Thanos today, because, as of April 27, 2018, people — normal people all over the world — know who Thanos is.  And the opportunity to talk about Thanos?  As if he was something or someone people might know about?  Someone people might actually care about?  That makes almost no sense!  That’s almost insane!
Continue reading →

Black Panther review

24 Saturday Feb 2018

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Am I woke now?  I think I’m woke now!

by Thom Yee

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Images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Something I hear a lot around this time of year is “Happy New Year!”  And not usually from Chinese people either, from people who, I think, feel a measure of personal progress when they say it to people who look like me.  “Happy New Year!” they say to us.  In the middle of February.  Weeks later than January 1st.  I’m not saying that I really mind when I hear it, I’m not trying to judge people when I hear them say it to me, almost any recognition and celebration of other cultures is a good thing, I’m just saying that when I hear Happy [Chinese] New Year, I can’t help but think to myself, “It’s not my New Year.”  Sometimes with several exclamation points at the end. Continue reading →

The Punisher (Season 1) review

09 Saturday Dec 2017

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Maybe you should just shoot him!

by Thom Yee

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The Punisher images courtesy of Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Netflix

“Sure, I use a lot of automatic weapons and they have their place in combat.  But I also have gone into my share of combat with a pump shotgun.  The U.S. Marines use a Remington Model 870.  I made great use of several in Vietnam, where I kept a cut-down shotgun close to me at all times.  We’d cut down the barrel to, like 10” and load it up with 00 buckshot.  Because, when ambushed, you might get the piece pointed in the general direction before you pulled the trigger.  But, sometimes that was all that would be needed.  Rapid-fire shot loads have the same effect as machine-gun fire, especially when there’s more than one shotgun.” Continue reading →

Justice League review

25 Saturday Nov 2017

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Meanwhile, in the universe formerly known as the DCEU

by Thom Yee

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Justice League images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

If you had told me back in 2007 — just one year after the disastrous X-Men:  The Last Stand stalled that franchise to the point of needing a soft reboot and just one year before Robert Downey Jr.’s debut as Iron Man would kick off Marvel’s own Cinematic Universe — that the next ten years in movies would be dominated by superheroes, I’d have thought you were joking.  And yet, here we are, a full ten years later and a full five years of reviewing them here at GOO Reviews (yesterday in fact marked our fifth anniversary), and superhero movies have gone from rarity to occasional hit to the driving force behind Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters.  It’s superhero movies that make most of the money in Hollywood these days, it’s superhero (and superhero-like) movies that executives want most to produce and fanboys want most to see, and it’s superhero movies that, as of 2017 with the release of Logan, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man:  Homecoming, Thor:  Ragnarok, and the subject of this review, are now coming out at a rate of at least six per year (and that’s not even counting tangential 2017 superhero releases like LEGO Batman or Power Rangers). Continue reading →

Thor: Ragnarok review

11 Saturday Nov 2017

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That was… a lot…

by Thom Yee

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Thor: Ragnarok images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

If it feels like it’s been a while since we’ve talked about Thor here on GOO Reviews, you’re right, it has been a while, not since 2013 in fact when we published our review of Thor:  The Dark World.  And that’s actually a little weird because it’s not as if Marvel movies went away or became less popular in the four years since then, quite the opposite in fact.  It’s just that Thor’s only managed one other movie appearance since then, 2015’s Avengers:  Age of Ultron, a paltry number in comparison to his fellow Avengers, Captain America and Iron Man, with whom Thor ostensibly shares the title of that team’s “big three”.  In that same four-year timespan, as well as appearing in Age of Ultron, Captain America headlined two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s biggest and most eventful chapters in Captain Americas Winter Soldier and Civil War and Iron Man co-starred in and often even outshone the titular characters in Captain America:  Civil War and Spider-Man:  Homecoming.  That’s two more movies each for Cap and ol’ Shellhead to become even more the central figures of the MCU whereas Thor’s been mostly off world, doing gods know what in adventures that either had little to do with the MCU’s main, Earth-bound stories or that we had no real interest in (like [again] Thor:  The Dark World [just as an example]). Continue reading →

The Defenders (Season 1) review

09 Saturday Sep 2017

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Not even one of you is a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist?

by Thom Yee

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The Defenders images courtesy of Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Netflix

Ohai there!

So first of all, I’m not dead.  Also, this site isn’t dead.  But this past August in movies?  So, so dead.  For me, it started with Atomic Blonde, which I decided not to see (I’m not a big John Wick fan anyway).  Then The Dark Tower opened, and I thought I could skip it (like everyone else did).  I was looking forward to The Glass Castle, but who needs to see movies like that when they get reviews like this?  And that’s when I kind of lost it, and what started with not really paying attention soon made its way into a full-on zone out as we didn’t review anything for the whole month of August.  My staff writers kept up with their weekly updates, the loyal little underling/peons/unknowing hostages they are, which meant you had something new to read here every week, but a whole, full-fledged review?  I just couldn’t do it with this year’s late summer movies.  So I didn’t.  But we’re back!  For a few more months at least!  So on to The Defenders.  At least I could watch that from home. Continue reading →