Mad Max? Try Sad Max...

Okay, I'm gonna come out and say it straight away: The Secret Life of Pets (TSLoP) was better than I expected. For those of you who rabidly hate minions, you'll probably not like this as it cashes in on the same cute-factor with characters it tries to make into crowd-pleasers with one-liners and chubby cheeks. What it gives in cuteness, it lacks in depth; the plot is paper-thin and predictable, the characters act to serve the story, regardless of any motivation for how they ought to act, and I left feeling like I'd been watching the wrong dog's story for most of it. So let me re-tell it as it should have been told. Spoilers below for TSLoP, if you're interested...

In Defence of X-Men

So the X-Men movies have had a pretty rough go of it, haven't they? It's got to the point that people are in agreement, the best one is the one about time travel! When was the last time you heard about a good time travel movie??? That's right, Men In Black 3 (And hark at all who thought I was going to say Back to the Future!). But we can agree that for the most part, when introduced into a franchise in which it has previously been unacknowledged, time travel is weird and feels like a bit of a cop-out and it takes someone or something very special to introduce it and use it without it feeling gimmicky or like a quick get-out-of-jail-free card. And X-Men: Days of Future Past did that well, thanks to Bryan Singer and co. Their story was well-rounded, full of character and charm, witty but emotional and conveyed a real sense of desperation and hopelessness while still giving our characters a way out.

Not so for Apocalypse.

So much to catch up

So I've not been writing much on here recently, but at least this time it's because I've been hella busy: between getting a new job, trying to write several thousand words of fiction a day and vlogging nearly every day last month, it's been pretty hectic since the end of February.

With that said, shall we get on with this? We've got a lot to catch up on...