Best Birthday Party Ever – “Skyfall” Review

You’re late, 007, but maybe that’s a good thing. After 2008′s Quantum of Solace, a scatter-brained and unworthy follow-up to Daniel Craig‘s first outing as James Bond in Casino Royale, Bond producers knew they’d done wrong, as filmmakers and as torch-bearers of the longest running franchise in movie history, which has now hit its golden 50th anniversary. Four years later, they’re backto prove themselves and Britain’s top spy once again, with Skyfall.

Batman’s Best – Top 10 Moments from Bat-films

Since 1989, the “B” in blockbuster stands for Batman. There have been total misses in terms of the completed films, but there are wonderful moments that stick with you forever: moments you reenact at parties, use as code in conversation with friends, quote when you play Batman with little kids. Batman is in each and every one of us movie lovers. Let’s look back on some of Batman’s best moments.

Batman Born Again – Top 6 Potential Reboot Stories

One of the spectacular aspects of Christopher Nolan’s Batman saga is how rewarding it is for Batman fans who are well-versed in Batman comic book lore. Nolan and his writers draw upon dozens of great moments, themes, concepts, and set-pieces from various comic stories to build an incredible single story. For example, The Dark Knight was a delicious blend consisting of parts of the 1996 maxiseries Batman: The Long Halloween, the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run on Detective Comics in the 1970s, the 2003 comic series Gotham Central, and, crazily enough, a lot of 1940′s Batman #1!

However, outside of WB/DC’s direct-to-DVD animated features, there have not been any direct adaptations of a Batman comic or series. Now that Nolan is finished, Warner Bros. is guaranteed to go back to the DC Comics well and try to mine some new gold. The wonderful thing about Batman is that he can fit into any genre, any tone and the character will always work. He’s just that great. WB will probably try to stay within the tone of what has worked so well over the decade, the dark, realistic Bat-world. I doubt they are going to change much. I say, let’s look at some other stories in the Bat-canon that would not only make potentially fantastic movies, but also spur the powers that be to think outside the box a little when it comes to the Caped Crusader.

Earth’s Mightiest Decade – Part 6: Predictions

The last ten years have been filled with huge successes and tremendous learning curves. One thing this decade’s audience loves to do is speculate. Let’s do that for a bit. We’ve seen where we’ve been, now let’s think about where we might go. The following list is our top 10 predictions for the decade ahead…

Earth’s Mightiest Decade – Part 4: Best Moments

During the last decade, after watching each new superhero teaser or trailer or film, many conversations started with, “Dude, did you see…” We would think about the moments that got our blood pumping, that satisfied an indescribable need for a film to just kick our ass. So, whether they be teasers, trailers, or scenes from films, these are our top 10 best moments from the last decade.

Earth’s Mightiest Decade – Part 1: 10 Years of Hero Worship

Marvel’s The Avengers opens May 4th 2012, a decade and a day after comic book blockbuster Spider-Man opened. After May 3rd, 2002, the following 10 years had every summer packed with comic book to film adaptations. Where the 70s had grim and realistic films dominate the box office, the 80s had cop-oriented high concept action films, and the 90s had all-star romantic comedies, the 00s had mega-budget films about capes and tights.

Requiem for a Fanboy – A Poster Prelude

[Editor's note: Stay tuned for Bryan's complete Top 20 posters of 2010.]

One of my favorite things about movies, theater, concerts–any event that needs to be advertised–is the poster. They have to sell something, an entire 90-minute event summed-up with one picture. While the specific qualities and purposes for the posters are often very different, the goal is still the same: to catch someone’s eye and make them remember it. With movies, the process is in overdrive.

Shame of a Nation: Rosko, Find Hungry Samurai

[Editor's note: The point of this column is to focus on the iconic movies that we've somehow shamefully missed. In fact, that's what inspired the name of this column, even though it's not on his list, Bryan has never seen Howard Hawks original 1932 Scarface (aka Scarface: Shame of a Nation). Each one of our contributors has prepared a list of the top ten films they are most ashamed to have missed. Stay tuned as each of us reveals the awful truth about the classic films we've yet to see... Veritas vos liberabit.]

“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” Review: Don’t push play, press start.

Finally. A good video game movie.

Since the dawn of the days of button-mashing, there has yet to be a great film based around video games. Sure, there have been adaptations of various games, and films that have incorporated video games into the story (like Tron or The Last Starfigher), but today marks the day that a film has come around to deliver the video game experience within the context of a movie.

Xavier Institute 10-Year Reunion

We are gathered here today to recognize the 10th anniversary of Bryan Singer’s X-Men. It was this very month that the comic book genre was kick-started, ushering in a decade overflowing with billions of dollars worth of attention paid to one of the toughest crowds ever in the history of entertainment: the nerd.

Days of Future Past – Summer 2011

I hope you all are weathering this current movie shitstorm with lots of streaming Netflix, books and video games. While I wish I could say Red Dead Redemption is so far the best movie of the year, I can’t. Aside from Toy Story 3, I haven’t seen ANYTHING that blew my cock off. Additionally, I haven’t been really excited for anything to the point of looking at my calendar and measuring how much longer I’d have to wait for whatever movie I was excited about. Not even Iron Man 2 made me do the movie happy dance. Inception has been the only “wait and see and hope” movie this year, I think. After the release of Predators, I wondered if I was growing out of my love for movies, or the movies we’re just that fucking bad. Thankfully, I’ve discovered it’s the latter, and I have news about it too.

Next summer isn’t looking much better…