Yawn...

When in the hands of a great director a comic book franchise can transcend it’s genre. Look no further than Christopher Nolan’s classic The Dark Knight for proof of such. Unfortunately, most of the time these properties don’t turn out the way fans hoped they would. The later X-Men films are good example of rushed productions, bad scripts, and studio interference. While Brett Ratner’s X-Men 3 was bad, the schlockiness really came to a head with the laughable X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The movie may be regarded as completely terrible by most sentient beings, but general love of the character Wolverine was enough to put butts in the seats. The film made $373,062,864 million worldwide, a sequel was greenlit, and the search for director to helm it has begun.
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The Stream is a new column that acts a venue for Filmdogs writers to post shorter reviews of movies they have watched on streaming video services such as Netflix, Hulu, or even YouTube. Let’s get started.

Goodbye Solo

Two men form an unlikely friendship that will change both of their lives forever.

Sometimes a film is so much more than it’s synopsis, such is the case with the indie masterpiece Goodbye Solo. The story, which takes place in Winston-Salem NC is simple. An old and weathered man named William pays a cab driver from Senegal named Solo to pick him on up a certain date and take him to a mountain peak outside of town. Yet, he never mentions being driven on a trip home. This fact immediately bothers the curious and friendly Solo who begins to take an interest in William’s life. William warms to Solo and his family, and you can see he harbors some great pain, but can he be saved? (more…)

Mr. Will was away on “business” so myself and Mr. Jason took it upon ourselves to handle the podcast duties this week. “In the Lounge with J and J” was the result! It’s just the two of us kicking back and discussing movies. This time, we hit recent films we had seen and it was a jolly good time. Some of the special mentions include: The Karate Kid trilogy, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and The 25th Hour, The Wrestler, Watchmen, Christine, and Godard’s Breathless.

We also discuss the new Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World trailer in the News. Check it out folks! Mr. Will, get on this sucka!

 

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I’ll always look back on this past decade in film as the one in which I as a film junkie plunged head first into the world of cinema. In 2000 “Gladiator” became the blueprint to which all other films in the following decade would have to live up too. Granted I was 16 at the time and could only hope to live a life interesting as Maximus. (more…)