I’ve never actually seen someone review a movie by mercilessly attacking three other films for seven hundred words or so and then briefly mentioning the film in the final paragraph.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Optimism opens the door to great things.
This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.
Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.
Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?
We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.
Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.
Only Democrats have agency, apparently.
A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.
Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
As long as McCarthy is Speaker, the House will never be in order.
Republicans do not pay their debts.
If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!
Nothing worth doing is easy.
Accountability, motherfuckers.
The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.
It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.
Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?
Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.
Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.
Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.
If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.
Tick tock motherfuckers!
Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.
Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.
bogart
Wow. I can’t tell if that guy is serious, or doing over the top satire of self-important film critics.
The Pale Scot
You bothered to read that whole thing? You need to get more J.C.
Walker
Shorter review:
Comic book films are taking themselves too seriously.
El Tiburon
I don’t know.
I’d say that one paragraph was probably more than Wolverine merited.
Probably hard to give much more to a film that is meant to be nothing more than an amusement park ride.
Were you looking for a “Deep Thoughts” Moment by Jack Handey?
John Cole
I just thought it was funny that the “review” of Wolverine was actually just a savaging of other films finished with a breezy “Wolverine wasn’t as bad as those.”
Made me laugh.
Joel
I only wish someone shared my vitriol for Gran Torino.
I’m eagerly awaiting the sequel: The Cast and Crew of Gran Torino Get Mauled By Bears.
Comrade Jake
That review reads like it was written by someone who was fairly heavily medicated.
SGEW
@Joel: Maybe Mel Gibson could make a bible pic out of it: “The Pissiness of Elisha” or something.
Dustin
If there’s one type of person I absolutely can’t stand it’s the idiots who bitch about comics, and comic based movies, “taking themselves to seriously”. I mean, really? They’re going to bitch because this isn’t fucking power rangers and actually has a point? That pisses me off and I don’t even read comics, I can only imagine what fans of the genre must think of assholes like this.
And don’t even get me started on the jackasses who pay 16 dollars (or whatever the going rate for 2 movie tickets is) to go see a film and then bitch because it’s too long. I mean, wtf is wrong with them? They’re paying for the entertainment factor, not some flash in the pan Sunday morning cartoon they can squeeze in before church.
A Squirrel
Hey, it’s IOZ. Bombast, sarcasm, and almost certainly drug-fueled.
Which is to say – usually one of the best reads on the internets. It’s like Jim Henley on a 48 hour meth binge.
R-Jud
@Dustin:
When I say a film is “too long”, I usually mean “there was a lot of unnecessary/uninteresting stuff they could have cut”. I don’t mind sitting through three hours (or much more!) of film if it’s all enthralling stuff. I do mind sitting through, say, Chase Scene #37, or ten minutes of too much expositional dialogue.
A Squirrel
And to be fair, I’m not sure if that was supposed to be “Wolverine: The Review” or “Kind of Rambly Meta-Post About Comic Book Movies Inspired by the Release of Wolverine, Which was OK.”
bjacques
I think he liked Wolverine because it was short and stuff blowed up real good. In a superhero movie, who needs more? Keep the darkness where it belongs–on the printed page. Alan Moore, who wrote The Watchmen, wanted the series to do things the movie could never do, and artist David Gibbons delivered.
That said, Spider Jerusalem and Those Annoying Post Brothers should take over print journalism and TV, respectively, forever.
PaulW
I *never* trust a movie reviewer who openly sh-ts on a film while pretending to be some effluent snob who’s five levels above this poor crap he’s been forced to review. And also takes an opportunity to p-ss on every other film made in the last 60 years that didn’t have Welles, Kubrick or Hitchcock in the director’s chair.
I’ve seen harsh critical reviews, and the ones I trust are the ones where there’s genuine rage expressed by the reviewer, not upturned-nose snobbery.
celticdragon
Reviewer being pretentiously contemptuous about movies he claims are pretentiously contemptuous.
PaulW
If you guys want good reviews, try Flick Filosopher. Yes, she can be brutal about some of the crap that’s out there, but she’s honest with her rage at the crappy films and honest with her joy at the great films.
NutellaonToast
IOZ writes some really good stuff, but he’s a perfect example of that crazy guy who is convinced that it’s everyone else who’s crazy.
I mean he’s right, except, well, he’s crazy, too.
El Tiburon
To be honest, I thought the latest Batman sucked. The last 30 minutes was a waste.
I was totally unimpressed with Ironman.
The latest Hulk was better than both of those.
And, I think all of the Spiderman movies sucked donkey balls, except for the third one, ’cause I never saw it.
Spider-man was my favorite comic book as a kid.
And don’t even get me started on that Superman movie. WTF?
Maybe it’s just me.
tim
IOZ is one of the five best reads on the tubes.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
Didn’t read the review. Did he mention that Wolverine sucked? Cuz it did. Superhero cheese cranked to 11 – even Jackman couldn’t save it.
Short Bus Bully
That review was pretentious asshattery taken to Spinal Tap levels. After realizing I wasn’t going to get the 5 minutes of life back it took me to read that spew I flew into an impotent teeth gnashing rage and spent ten minutes writing a really scathing comment which I’m positive no one will ever read.
I r teh awesum.
dslak
Wolverine was a disappointment because it seemed as if its creators didn’t care at all about their characters. What was the point of the opening scene at Logan’s childhood home? Why introduce all these entertaining and interesting characters only to kill them before developing them?
The director couldn’t even maintain a plausibly consistent storyline. How is a guy who can smell and hear bad guys a mile away going to fall for a cheap stunt like a blatantly faked death? Did he think to test out his absurd thesis that you can penetrate a wall of metal by shooting it with a bullet made out of the same metal?
The Other Steve
I wonder what this guy thinks of the movie Crank? Personally I loved it.
I’m not sure about Crank 2, but hey what the hell.
JK
Wolverine currently has a 38% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wolverine
As someone who has no love for films based on comic book superheroes, I’m very grateful to see so many negative reviews for Wolverine.
Other reviews of Wolverine
http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-04-29/film/x-men-origins-wolverine-wait-for-the-bootleg/
http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=b634cce8-4982-4e08-b7db-974faef72d02
dslak
@JK: I often enjoy movies based on comic books. I’m not a fanboy who expects purity or authenticity, but a coherent and entertaining plot should be a given.
I did like the review at RT that suggested those who stole the leaked workprint got exactly what they deserved.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Were it not for this review I would have completely forgotten that at least one area comic book store is giving away free comic books.
Otherwise: Wha?
MNPundit
More reason they need to make movies based on Manga. While the Japanese pour out a lot of crap that gets turned into movies (like newest Dragonball movie, heh) they generally have a much higher level of story-telling ability than American super-hero comics.
Blue Raven
@MNPundit: Agreed, though I want them to do it more respectfully than what’s happened to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Which I can’t say I’m counting on.
The snobbery toward comic book movies in this thread is a delicous piece of irony. Also.
Stephen1947
I didn’t finish the 2nd paragraph – and I’m almost as peeved as if I had clicked a link and ended up in M. Malkin’s cesspool of a website! Guess I’m getting too old to be entertained by the rants of insecure wanna-know-it-alls.
lovethebomb
Wolverine is a short macho hairy Canadian and that’s why you all are cluthing your pearls. Threatened you are. He has bigger peenie. If point of movie you saw, then no need to write. Words matter no longer.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@Blue Raven:
Just to be clear, I love superhero movies – if they’re any good. Wolverine isn’t.
bago
Crank 2 is crank 1 on more steroids than the MLB, NBA, and NFL combined.
Jim
I have no plans of seeing Wolverine, I’ll probably multitask through it on cable one hot day this summer, but I am glad to see I’m not the only one who thought the Heath Ledger Batman movie was seriously overrated. Really frickin’ boring when Ledger wasn’t on screen, IMHO, and just above average when he was.
Comrade Desert Hussein Rat
@Comrade Jake:
Actually, I was thinking it was written by somebody who might have forgot to take his medication recently.
Ejoiner
Just saw it with my 8 year old son.
As a great work of art/genre classic/deep/dark/post-modern opus on the superhero, etc. etc. etc. – no, not a very good movie.
As a fun summer movie that we both enjoyed for the afternoon – perfectly fine.
BTW – yes it has some plot holes and one too many *quick zoom out* “Noooooooo!” scenes but it was just as the other XMen movies. Actually a lot better than X3 which still stands up there with SpiderMan 3 in suckatude.
Best sequence – the fight with Dead Pool on the reactor lip at the end.
Jrod
X-Men 3 is possibly the worst superhero movie ever released, and I’m counting the old Captain America B-movie from the eighties in my tally. Hell, I’m counting straight-to-DVD cartoons in my tally, and I haven’t even seen those. They couldn’t possibly be worse.
Therefore, if Wolverine at least has Ryan Reynolds cracking jokes with explosions in the background, it’s a step up for the series.
dslak
@Jrod: I’m afraid Ryan Reynolds’ wisecracking was criminally underused in this film. If that’s what you want, I recommend just watching Blade 3 again.
gil mann
I think he’s pretty self-aware, actually, but if he ever copped to a moment of doubt, he’d lose his magical ability to reduce his readers to sputtering rage. Hell, look at the responses to his post here; that’s a real talent, raising strangers’ blood pressure through sheer obnoxiousness.
Of course, when he’s taking on one of my pet issues, then he’s just being a nihilistic dick.
Jrod
@dslak: Thank you for saving me nine dollars on that ticket. They put Deadpool in the movie, had him played my Ryan Reynolds, and didn’t have him constantly wisecracking?
Maybe it is worse than X3…
dslak
@Jrod: For most of his on-screen time, Deadpool is unable to talk. This is understood (but not made clear in the film) to be punishment for his big mouth. Moviegoers may have understood it instead as punishment for having even the lowest of expectations.
mgordon
I saw it last night and thought it was pretty good. But then again I like the comics so I didn’t go into it with a chip on my shoulder. Really, what do people expect “Gone with the Wind”? It’s about a fucking mutant with claws and metal fused to his skeleton.
NutellaonToast
@gil mann:
I don’t think so. At least, he never seems to indicate that he thinks that his “solutions” would fail just as badly as all the others. The dudes thinks a city state model for America, only with the internet, is the solution to all our problems. He’s nuts.
Sleeper
Some people here have said that this Ioz is actually a pretty good, or at least entertaining, writer. Too bad I’ll never know. That review was the first and last fucking thing I’ll ever read by that flaming jackass.
MazeDancer
Hugh Jackman was on Oprah Friday. And Oprah, herself, was having trouble not drooling all over him. And after they showed all the clips from the movie of him naked with the frequent assurance that this was “All Hugh, all the time”, as in no body doubles for the nudie shots, pretty much the whole audience was ready to not just go see it twice this weekend but pre-order the DVD.
So, it looked like a well-marketed date compromise hit. Lotsa things blow up. Lotsa buff and bare Hugh Jackman. Something for everyone.
Brachiator
@gil mann:
If you spit on a plate of food, it might raise people’s blood pressure. But it wouldn’t make you a food critic.
Corner Stone
@MazeDancer: Man, Hugh was on TDS the other night and he is freaking strapped. I got a little turned on for a while.
Corner Stone
@lovethebomb: Master Yoda! Into exile you have gone, no longer.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@PaulW: Thank you for the link to Flick Filosopher – she’s my kinda critic. Awesome stuff.
Contrast with possibly the pompousest-ass movie review evar.
Anton Sirius
@tim:
You’d never know it from that review, which seemed like it was written by a bright, socially retarded 14-year-old who’s trying to pass as an adult.
Anton Sirius
@dslak:
Recommending that someone watch Blade 3 is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. Be thankful we don’t prosecute people for that in this country.
Gringo Starr
Good Lord, Balloon Douchers. You all can’t seem to decide if IOZ is a prolix teenager or a hyper-intellectual snob. He’s apparently either a dumbass who’s acting smart, which is worthy of contempt, or he actually is smart but doesn’t have the courtesy to dumb it down so as not to make a bunch of knuckle-dragging troglodytes feel insecure.
The pompousness is part of the deal at his blog, but someone who frequently responds to criticism with quotations from The Big Lebowski can be safely assumed to not take much of anything too seriously. Unlike most of the visitors from here, who seem to get their feathers extremely ruffled if someone done sounds like he’s one of them fancy-pants book-larned types. Why, you’d never guess that this site used to have a strong Republican bent to it.
Hey, the ‘tubes are big enough for both. You all can sit around here waiting for pictures of Tunch’s latest hairball or an open thread where John asks for advice on how to get rid of a stubborn foot fungus if that’s more your intellectual speed. We aren’t worried about it, so don’t get your heart rates all elevated over people overanalyzing a comic book.
Joel
@El Tiburon: The denouement of Batman did suck, but I liked the movie quite a bit.
Iron Man, I never got. It was a standard action flick, not even Independence Day caliber. Thoroughly average.
Rarely Posts
I thought Wolverine was better than the last Batman or X-Men 3. Among other things, Hugh Jackman is extraordinarily hot. It really made the movie. It was a little strange that his hair only got mussed in about two shots — one would think all of the being thrown around, exploded, and such would disturb the hairdo.
Also, the plot contained some surprises. But, I would agree that the MAJOR surprise was something of a cheat.
My advice: go to a matinee with low expectations and be pleasantly surprised.
Bobbie Thomson
Wolverines!!!!11!
tammanycall
It looks like one of the millions of aintitcool spawnsites, trafficking in poorly written rants.
Ian
That is the whole point and pleasure of IOZ. He’s cranked up to 11.
IOZ
Hey JC – thanks for the link.
Hey Other Steve – I thought that Crank was everything you could want in a movie except a movie.
Cyrus
I’ve seen IOZ here and there, but not enough to be familiar with him before this. His Wolverine review is interesting: it’s substantially correct*, but stated in a way that practically demands offended yet futile attempts at rebuttal. (Or, to put it more simply, he’s trolling, but that word could describe itself when just thrown out there willy-nilly, so…)
The politics and philosophy of The Dark Knight and Iron Man, like it or not, were incoherent and arguably wrongheaded. And you can’t give the writer/director a pass on that by saying that it’s all about the characters and in real life people often are flawed, because there weren’t too many actual characters either. Protip: giving the damsel in distress some sassy lines might earn you some credit for feminism, but it’s really by far the least you could do. As for Watchmen, they called it unfilmable for years, and guess what, they were right. It’s a great book, but the ground it broke is now well-trod and some parts of the story just can’t transfer from one medium to another and the Cold War looks very different with 20/20 hindsight. I really enjoyed those movies and they still managed to be smarter than a lot of action and/or superhero movies, but I don’t have any illusions that they were particularly meaningful.
Like Batman and Iron Man, Wolverine distills the core elements of a decades-old pastiche superhero into a two-hour linear narrative. Unlike them, it has no pretense of universality; Logan’s struggle for basic human decency is not an essay on whether order can ever triumph over chaos or whatever Christopher Nolan was trying to figure out. And unlike Rorschach, Logan knows perfectly well that violence doesn’t solve everything, it simply makes him feel better. So given that all these movies were similar in some basic ways, if people being so much more critical of Wolverine, why would that be? Maybe because they wanted pretentious, sophomoric big ideas, then?
Now, if IOZ had simply written what I just did, this would have been boring. “Hey, come on, Wolverine was fun, I don’t know why everyone’s complaining about it. Sure, it didn’t try to have political commentary like some other superhero movies you all liked, but was the political commentary really what you liked about those or was it just an excuse to enjoy an action movie?” What’s to disagree with about that?
Start off by comparing Heath Ledger to the object of lust of a stereotypical theater club director, though, and now we’re getting some arguments started…
(*)Except for complaining that Batman’s action sequences were too badly lit and moved like a hummingbird. Other people have made this same complaint in addition to IOZ and they’re wrong too. YMMV and all that, but overall it was intentional and a good choice to show the audience Batman, part of the time, the same way the average criminal sees him: briefly and out of the corner of your eye.