items tagged with X Men First Class

Every January, I share my numerical rankings of the 10 most enjoyable movies I saw during the previous year. I do not, however, share my numerical rankings of all the other titles I caught during those 12 months, as such a list would, I think, be hopelessly arbitrary, terribly self-indulgent, and something that only a person with too much time on his hands would attempt.

Let’s get cracking, shall we?

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

Modern romantic comedies are in such generally dismal shape that I feel ungrateful for wishing that Friends with Benefits were better than it actually is. But while it’s impossible to fully dislike any movie that finds a nitwit shrieking “John Mayer is our generation’s Sheryl Crow!” or features a couple making a solemn vow on the Bible app of the woman’s iPad, I left director Will Gluck’s latest thinking that the film had just missed its mark. And that, after two frequently hysterical features in a row (2009’s Fired Up!, Gluck’s directorial debut, and last year’s Easy A), its helmer had just missed his trifecta. Damn it.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

If you had told the 10-year-old me that Hollywood would one day release a series of big-budgeted, serious-minded films based on the X-Men comic books, he probably would’ve done cartwheels for about a week. And if you told that same mini-me that he’d one day grow almost completely apathetic toward this film series, he probably would’ve laughed in your face.