I don’t mean to turn this into a movie review blog, but I’ve been to a few of the summer blockbusters and feel the need to render opinion. For those of you without the time to linger, here are the one-word summaries:
1. Godzilla: Dreadful
2. Amazing Spiderman 2: Meh
3. The Fault in our Stars: Yech.
4. The Signal: Huh?
5. Days of Future Past (hey, shouldn’t that be Passed?): Yeah!
I am not including Winter Soldier because I’ve already done that (see below) and it’s Captain America and he is far above mere blockbuster-ishness.
Now, the details:
1. Godzilla. A better title would be, “Guest Starring Godzilla,” or, more appropriately, “Cameo Appearances by Godzilla.” If you’ve seen the trailers, then you’ve seen pretty much every single frame of Godzilla in the movie. The rest is some confused mishmash about a Mothra/Cockroach monster
that wants to mate so decides to level San Francisco. Must be some kind of turn-on. Anyways, the stoic Japanese guy wants to use a strangely absent Godzilla to put a stop to all this nonsense. I wish someone had put a stop to all this nonsense before I went to see it. Two hours of my life, gone.
2. Spiderman 2: That is not Electro. Electro is some guy in weird green-and-zapbolt suit who likes to rob banks. 
The movie Electro (dreadfully played by Jamie Foxx) has Godlike powers. Spiderman doesn’t fight guys with Godlike powers—that’s the Avengers‘ job. Get it straight! Green Goblin isn’t the Green Goblin, either. It’s Green Goblin, Junior, and, you know, they did sort of a respectable job with him, for the six minutes or so he was on screen (he and Godzilla must have gotten the same contract). Then there’s the loooooong draaaaaawn out sequences with Staaaaaacy. You pretty much had to wait until the end of the movie before Spiderman became Spiderman and began a fight with Rhino, in a pretty cool-looking Rhino suit but…Paul Giamatti? Are you kidding me? Didn’t lose two hours because I caught some naps during the draaaaawn out sequences.
3. The Fault in our Stars: You are not allowed to criticize this movie because it’s about perky dying teenagers. Don’t you DARE say anything about it! Boy, did this suck. It’s essentially the First-world problems of sophisticated and very mature parents/children as they regard approaching death with much sophistication and maturity, dispensing with all thoughts of eternity and Afterwards in about, oh, two lines, and devoting much, much, MUCH more time on showing just how sophisticated and mature they are: in other words, how people from the West Side of NYC deal with life. For example, only people who live on the West Side would think a valuable use of Make-A-Wish (thinly disguised as something called Genie in the movie) is sending teenagers to Amsterdam (always a good idea) to meet J.D. Salinger. About twenty minutes into it, I was wishing for recurrence. Yeah, I said that.
4. The Signal: pretty cool until the ceramic legs showed up, then, it was all WTF? Not a waste of two hours because I’m still trying to figure out what it’s about, which I guess is hallmark of a decent movie. I mean, I didn’t want to rip my eyes out or anything. But I still don’t know if I liked it or not (feel the same way about the movie Blue Ruin). Go see it and let me know.
5. Days of Future Passed: ah, my XMen. I loves me some XMen; they pretty much approach Avengers status in doing no wrong. Hey, I even liked XMen 3, so, sue me. Days was outstanding. I got nervous when some Wolverine: Origins stuff began to show up, and I’d love to have seen a little more Havok and Toad. But, the Sentinels were cool. And it’s got Peter Dinklage!
Guardians of the Galaxy. Soon, very soon.
