Well just in February they updated this ranking, for the umpteenth time, of the top MCU movies: https://www.avclub.com/the-marvel-cinematic-universe-ranked-from-worst-to-bes-1834158288

At least the “cultural cry for help” part is spot on.

You are so right (re: the rage monkey thing). When I am feeling smarter than I apparently was this morning, I don’t comment on internet articles at all, because I know in advance it’s usually going nowhere good. But the 10% of the time that you get a good (and good-faith) discussion—which I think has mostly been the…

To be clear, I don’t actually care about defining cancel culture here, or proving one way or the other that it does or doesn’t exist regardless of how you define it. I just think the left has poorly chosen this response to the right’s non-stop fear-mongering about this issue. Claiming it *doesn’t exist at all* is a…

True indeed. People who are outraged about outrage cherry-pick examples with no concern for whether this represents a majority viewpoint, or a minority one, or just two fringe crazy shut-ins who tweet something 400 times a day. They don’t care, it’s just an excuse to whip up their audience.

I’m not being disingenuous at all. I’ve read that exact claim, nearly word for word, a number of times in articles and comments on this site. Maybe less of late, but it was certainly a popular take for all of last year. It strikes me as a bizarre response to right-wing crazy.

Don’t forget “cancel culture doesn’t exist (because so-and-so is still employed),” a completely unwinnable war that the left seems intent on waging anyway (even Stewart unfortunately lapses into it, sort of, in this clip).

There’s an entire middle part of this video where he states that both the left and the right in the internet age are working outrage like a rented mule. I don’t think he has stopped criticizing his own side (and you wouldn’t think that either if you halfway kept up with the show).

Was wondering if you’d share this segment while specifically not commenting on the part where he basically called out how this site operated for many recent years, and I was not disappointed.

Agree with about all of this. Rise of... is absolutely terrible, almost lacking any redeeming qualities apart from basic competence in direction and acting. It might be the only Star Wars movie I’ll never watch again. At least the prequels are fun to mock.

I believe it was roughly the same as Amazon and any number of tech start-ups: upend an existing industry by operating at staggering losses that functional companies with shallower pockets can’t compete with, and once you have a huge, addicted customer base, you figure out how to actually make money. Growth today,…

“Maybe we can stop relitigating it now?”

I was coming down here to post the same thing. Much of the “criticism” here reads like, “The show is still itself, and I’m tired of it.”

You aren’t wrong, but I will say this, as someone who has played the majority of the Tomb Raider games going back to the original one: there really isn’t much there worth adapting in a faithful manner. It’s not a rich text. The original games were a mash-up of Indiana Jones and James Bond; the character of Lara was…

Agreed. Not that I don’t feel for her, a bit, but everything I’ve read about the making of Fury Road makes it sound akin to surviving a war. You’re stuck in a remote location in an unfamiliar country with a harsh climate and a bunch of borderline-method weirdos, shooting long and grueling days. I’m sure it’s brutal.…

I think it’s great. But they really need to fix the awards show thing somehow. The Bear is funny often, but it has no business being submitted as a comedy. That's not its primary mode.

I both respect that and kind of laugh at it. There’s a reason most horror franchises either just resurrect the bad guy or introduce a copycat/family member/etc. The ambition of not doing it the easy way is laudable, yet their solution is so convoluted and makes next to no sense. 

Agreed. Honestly I am also put off by some of the really repellant, braindead slashers of the 80s, in a similar fashion, though those tend to be far less gory. There is, I guess, a similar focus on suffering as spectacle. Doesn’t feel to me like a real story is being told, or real style is being achieved, or anything…

I’m not into Cosmatos’s schtick. Mandy was sorta fun but the guy tries so hard at all times. Feel like maybe he should be designing promotional posters, not making movies.

I think the difference is in what the directors see in it and how they deploy it. Jackson’s gore was almost entirely intended to be funny—a “gag” in a different sense, that’s all. That’s true of Dead Alive, Bad Taste, and Meet the Feebles. Raimi was pushing envelopes to bring in teenage allowance money (he outright…