According to the TV tropes article on Logan, the film’s director, James Mangold, said Logan occurs in the same timeline as the film X-Men: Days of the Future Past. So if there is discrepancy in the timelines this is the fault of makers of Logan not mine. That’s why I said there are continuity issues with the other X-men films.
But I’m saying I don’t see a discrepancy, given what Mahaloth said: you’re rushing in to respond that any discrepancy is their fault and not yours; but you’re saying that in response to me saying that, given what Mahaloth had said, I see no fault — because, again, I don’t yet see any discrepancy.
Trainspotting is my favorite movie- it’s safe to say I was obsessed with it when it came out and I know it almost by heart. I wore out both soundtracks (the original film had 2).
I did like the sequel (lots of people do not) but it’s no where near the first. The actors’ performances (especially Robert Carlyle) and the dialogue are flawless in the first and the original film doesn’t flinch away from the ugliness of addiction. The second felt more like a high school reunion. I liked spending time with them again in the sequel but the most telling part was how flat the new “updated” Choose Life speech that Renton made in the sequel. I literally cringed and couldn’t wait for that scene to be over.
I wish they had stayed truer to the book Porno that parts of it were based on- I think that would have had a more authentic feel to it. The sequel was fine and I’m grateful it was made but I still feel compelled to watch the first several times a year but can’t say I’ll do the same with the second.
You’re right; I apologize for my mistake. My reply should have been directed at Mahaloth not you.
Regarding Star T*rek films, I agree Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn is better than Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In fact, I think the only Star Trek film based on The Original Series that is worse than the first one is Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
As the Next Generation Star Trek films, I think Star Trek: First Contact is better than Star Trek: Generations. Star Trek: Generations is probably the worst of the Next Generation films.
With the first set of Star Trek movies, it seems to me that all the even-numbered ones were good, while all the odd-numbered ones were like filler. Not sure how that works for the Next Generation and reboot movies.
Out of curiosity, did you see them in the theater as first-run films, or later?
I was only four when Alien was first released so no. I only saw them years later on video. To be honest, I liked the first two films so much I’m not sure that one is better than other. They are both great films especially compared to the sequels that followed them.
Deathstalker II is fun and sexy and the bloopers at the end are hilarious.
I’m one of the few who like Generations. I like the opening. I like Stewarts acting. I love the soundtrack. Shatner is very good.
Thats enough for me.
FC is fantastic. And I think Insurrection is worse than its reputation and Nemesis is better than its reputation.*
*That said…clones?? Mentally diminished Evil twins? Cmon guys. I don’t even know how to fix it except to remove the Data subplot and let the main plot run as is. The Borg have been done…Q doesn’t work for a movie…what other running villains did they have??
I recently watched (partially rewatched) the Re-Animator trilogy (got it into my head to watch all Jeffrey Combs’ Lovecraft movies, though I still haven’t got around to Necronomicon or Dunwich Horror)…Bride and Beyond are both far more entertaining than the original, which could have been cut down by half and tacked onto Bride as a prologue, and been much improved. Not that any of them are great films, but…
And, having also recently watched the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series, 2-4 and New Nightmare are all superior to the original (which is superior to 5 and 6), although 2 was sort of a strange installment, which goes places the rest of the series doesn’t - or actively avoids. (Bringing Freddy into the real world is a common way to attempt to dispose of him in later movies, not something he tries to do himself.) (The reboot is also an improvement on the original, though not without its issues.)
I get that some folks will see it less as ‘interesting’ and more as ‘weird’ — and it is pretty danged weird — but I’d argue, and ROTTEN TOMATOES seems to agree, that Michael Keaton’s second outing as Batman has more going for it than the original: he’s as terrific as ever, and if Christopher Walken and Danny DeVito exaggerating their signature schticks ain’t quite enough to equal what Jack Nicholson brought, Michelle Pfeiffer just knocks it out of the damn park.
(Also, and I can’t stress this enough: it’s fever-dream weird. Like, you can watch the first one without 100% catching on that Tim Burton’s mind goes to strange places; but this is a bit less “rich guy in a bulletproof costume hospitalizes crooks” because it’s a bit more “what mushrooms, exactly, did this storyteller take?”)
Wings of Desire is a pretentious, highbrow, artsy-fartsy Work Of Cinematic Art. (Don’t get me wrong. I loved it. But you have to be in the mood for and art film.)
Faraway, So Close! is less artistic, but more entertaining. It has more of a plot, a bit of suspense, and a great performance by Willem Dafoe as a character who might be an angel, or might be a devil.
Halloween I and Halloween II are pretty good but I also like HIII Season of the Witch. that’s a sequel that tries to send the series in a whole new Direction.
I don’t like to “better than” with the Alien franchise, simply because Alien and Aliens are two distinctly different types of movies, set in the same universe.
Both stand up very well for what they are, respectively; personally, I like Aliens slightly better than Alien. Aliens came out while I was stationed in Bamberg, Germany, and the entire theater groaned in sympathy at Hudson’s line, “Oh, man… and I was getting short. Four more weeks and out.”
For many of the examples given, it might be more accurate to say that they’re of the same caliber with about half of people coming on one side and half coming on the other depending on individual preferences for genre, actors etc.
Jumanji 2 surprised me in that I think most people would prefer the second, especially if their appreciation for the first isn’t based in childhood nostalgia.
What might be even rarer is a bad first movie which is followed by a decent sequel.
Well, if the first one didn’t make any money, there won’t be a sequel. It’s the pretty rare bad movie that is a hit anyway, and rarer yet that someone takes a chance on lightning striking twice.
I didn’t think of it earlier, but I liked Despicable Me 2 better than the first movie. I don’t know if that’s the prevailing opinion, though.
I think that the next two movies in the 1950s British *Quatermass * series were much better than the first.
The Quatermass films started as BBC 6-part serials, all films and serials written by Nigel Kneale*. The first serial and movie were both titled The Quatermass Xperiment. The movie version was released as The Creeping Unknown**. It ran all the time on WPIX’s Chiller Theater in New York, which is where I first saw it. The film is well-done and atmospheric. The premise is that the First Men Into Space encounter a weird Alien Thing that sort of melts their bodies and takes them over – the 1950s British SF movies frequently featured aliens “taking over” people, a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but usually featured pretty goopy and slimy aliens*** . Quatermass Xperiment ended up with one of these in spades – a disgusting pulpating fungal mass climbing around on the scaffolding inside Westminster Abbey. In the film, they hook the scaffolding up to a high tension line and electrocuting the thing before it has a chance to reproduce, just like James Bond did in Oddjob in Goldfinger. Not all of the serial exists anymore, but the script does. Penguin published it when the serial aired. In the serial, Professor Quatermass appeals to the “souls” of the three astronauts still embedded in the fungal horror, and they essentially “will” it to death.
Quatermass2, released in the US as Enemy from Space, again starred Brian Donlevy as Professor Quatermass****, this time stumbling across something that looks like his projected moon base sitting out in the British countryside. It turns out to be the base for Invading Aliens, who are using it to acclimatize themselves to Earth’s atmosphere. The aliens “take over” humans by dropping meteorite-like hollow “bombs” that contain parasitic organisms that control people and force them to build the base. The aliens turn our=t to be even goopier than the one in The Quatermass Xperiment. But it’s a better and more satisfying film.
Quatermass and the Pit (released in the US with the confusing title Five Million Years to Earth was arguably the best. The serial is good, but the film, starring a very British Andrew Keir as the professor (and also a young Julian Glover – later to play General Veers in the Star Wars films and Maester Pycell in Game of Thrones) is also good, and filmed in color, finally. The film was released the same year as 2001: A Space Odyssey, and, like that film, revolved around an alien civilization interfering with human ancestors and remaking them into what became us, and leaving behind artificats that are still active. A great little film.
Both the sequels are, I think, better than the first.
But the less said about subsequent Quatermass films and entries, the better. The Quatermass Conclusion is highly forgettable.
- who pretty famously hated SF fans.
** not to be confused with the abysmal film The Crawling Unknown, which MST3K made fun of.
*** and, surprisingly often, Forrest Tucker in the cast. I think he was their idea of the Big Tough American Hero type. He wasn’t in any of the Quatermass movies or serials, though.
**** He wasn’t in the serials. I never understood why they used him in the movies. He looks and sounds more like an American gangster than a British Rocket Scientist.
*Gremlins 2 *is much, much better than the first one, although it’s a weird movie to watch in the Trump age.
I saw *Jumanji *again last month and it’s… not good. It’s not a matter of aging special effects; it’s just a screeching, chaotic, unpleasant little movie. The new one is better. In fact, I’d say that the half-forgotten semi-sequel *Zathura *is also much better than the first film.
Since someone already mentioned Jim Wynorski…
I have to say that Hard to Die is one of the most enjoyable sequels I’ve ever seen, and much better than either Sorority House Massacre or Sorority House Massacre II. One might argue that it is not technically a sequel, but it IS the next in the series and it shares a lot of the same characters (even if they were killed once or twice already in the series). But it is definitely a crazily goofy movie that is hard to turn off. Besides, you get a cameo by Forrest J Ackerman.