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X-Men: First Class (2011)
X-Men: First Class (2011)
2011 | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
After Kingsman: The Secret Service director Matthew Vaughn left X-Men: The Last Stand because of its rushed production schedule, Fox decided to bring him back to direct this reboot of the series. Things worked well overall, though the introduction of James McAvoy as Professor X did draw some criticism. Michael Fassbender’s role as young Magneto went down very well but fans still missed the original actors. The film was nicely paced but without a compelling villain, the overall script suffered.

https://moviemetropolis.net/2019/06/01/the-entire-x-men-franchise-ranked/
  
Wanted (2008)
Wanted (2008)
2008 | Action, Crime
5
6.8 (26 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Based on the graphic novel of the same name, I think the main draw of this for me (and, I'm sure, many others) is Angelina Jolie's character of Fox, with lowly frustrated office worker Wesley (a pre X-Men James McAvoy) discovering he is the son of a famous assassin, and that he shares his fathers almost superhuman killing ability.

There's a fair point to the criticism that this is almost a Matrix rip-off, but I have to say: this is far nastier (doesn't shy away from the guts and gore aspect) and filthier (language wise) than that earlier movie.
  
The Alphas Pack (Kit Davenport #6)
The Alphas Pack (Kit Davenport #6)
Tate James | 2020 | Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy
9
9.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
128 of 200
Kindle
The Alpha’s pack ( Kit Davenport 6)
By Tate James

The time is now.

It seems all I’ve ever wanted was vengeance. I did everything right: I protected my friends, I pushed myself to the limits, and I saved lives. Once upon a time, I was an internationally renowned thief known as The Fox. Nobody knew me. Nobody could catch me.

Nobody but them, my men, my partners in crime. But their love for me, it's cost them dearly.

Our enemies keep coming for blood. They cut me. They hurt my friends. They push and push to see what will happen.

I’m Kit Davenport, and I’m going to show them what happens.

This is the end.

Theirs.




This has been one hell of a series! I’ve enjoy it so much. Absolutely loved this book Kit going dark was one of the best parts! I thought it was finished off well, I’m looking forward to reading more from Tate James!
  
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Bill Nighy recommended Bringing Up Baby (1938) in Movies (curated)

 
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
1938 | Classics, Comedy, Romance
8.8 (5 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"""With Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, I have to stay there. I don’t know how people can act that quick. I’m a big fan of quick acting, and i’m going to try to build it into my career from now on – I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. I think in the old days, everybody used to act really quickly because Hollywood was built by theatre people. And I don’t believe that cinema is a non-verbal medium, I believe people should have t-shirts made with, “Cinema is a not a non-verbal medium,” because I don’t know how that entered the language – it’s from people who can’t write presumably. I don’t believe that, in some way, having a theatrical background should exclude you from the movies, which was a fashionable thing in the 1970s. It’s ludicrous given that Hollywood is built by mostly European theatre people. You can’t speak any quicker than Cary Grant speaks in most of his movies – it’s really cool – and everybody gets everything, nothing misses. I love to watch those two together, because they’re dry, they’re witty, they’re fuuny and it’s romantic, and they get together in the end. I’d have said The Godfather, because it is one of the greatest films ever made, but it’s too obvious! I also like to watch Sign of the Times with Prince, because he does the splits whilst playing the guitar and comes back up on the backbeat, and anyone who can do that is good enough for me. Also The Last Detail, with Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid, which is a marvellous movie, and all those 70s movies like Dog Day Afternoon with the young Al Pacino. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. The Servant with James Fox and Dirk Bogarde is another great English film, that if you want to see two halves of the 60s British films, check out Performance with James Fox and check out Le Serpent with James Fox, and then you get a pretty good idea; both ends of the spectrum."

Source
  
Savannah James: Pendale High Class of ‘87
Savannah James: Pendale High Class of ‘87
Candi Fox | 2021 | Romance
4
4.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
117 of 250
Kindle
Savannah James: Pendale High Class of ‘87
By Candi Fox

Once read a review will be written via Smashbomb and link posted in comments

Welcome to 1987, where the high school antics include hot rock stars running beside the smoking jocks.

Savannah James wants love and finds it with Stone Blackwell when he rescues her from an embarrassing speckle with punk metal bassist Aaron Angel.

But all is not fair in love and war, and Stone makes a terrible mistake. Can their connection be saved or will the star QB Thad Harrison make his pass and win the girl?

Pendale High, Class of ’87 is not a YA novel.


I wanted to like it and please don’t be put off this is just
My opinion!
I thought I t started really well but was seriously rushed in places. I know she’s a mature 17 year old but my god she still came across a child or just all felt a little wrong to me. The ending was very predictable and a little cringy. This was a girl damaged from abuse throwing herself at and man showing her attention. I found it quite toxic!
  
The Wolverine (2013)
The Wolverine (2013)
2013 | Action
An ok film that could have been so much more.
Here we have the 6th entry into the X-Men franchise, and the second solo outing for Wolverine.

I, like many comic fans, was thrilled when it was announced that this film would be diving into Logan's time in Japan. It's arguably one of the strongest solo Wolverine storylines from the comic!
The finished film however misses the mark. Not completely - remnants of the comic are left intact, buts it's clear that the studio meddled once again. When The Wolverine is concentrating on the dialogue heavy scenes, it's good. When it throws Logan against ninjas, it's (mostly) good.

However, FOX obviously didn't have enough faith in this as a whole, and opted to push James Mangold in the direction of dodgy CGI orgies.
The climatic battle against a massive CGI robot ninja (referred to as Silver Samurai - the bloody cheek), is so out of place, that it nearly ruins the whole film.

I feel that James Mangold is not to blame. He clearly has respect for the source material, and isn't about big CGI blowouts - he would go on to direct the stellar Logan a few years later.

A wasted opportunity then, and a storyline I really hope Marvel Studios revisits again in the future
  
The Dark Knight (2008)
The Dark Knight (2008)
2008 | Action, Crime
Heath Ledger's performance (0 more)
Wanna know how I got these oscars?
directed, produced, and co-written by Christopher Nolan and Based on the DC Comics character Batman.

the second installment in Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy.
 Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale) allies himself with Lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to reduce crime in Gotham, but are seemingly outsmarted by a criminal mastermind known as the Joker (Heath Ledger) who seeks test Batman's influence by creating chaos in Gotham.
 also Michael Caine reprises his role as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred Pennyworth, Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes, and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox.

This was unfortunately Heath Ledger's final movie before his untimely passing and is considered his greatest portrayal, which won him the Oscar award for best supporting actor.

The Dark Knight grossed over a billion dollars worldwide, becoming the fourth film in history to gross more than $1 billion worldwide and the highest-grossing film of 2008.
  
Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)
Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)
2019 | Adventure, Family
Isabela Moner - outstandingly perky as Dora (0 more)
Irritating monkey. Even more irritating (and bizarre) fox. (0 more)
A fun family movie.
Here’s a film that is not trying to be anything other than a fun and much needed summer outing for families. Disney used to do this sort of live-action family film thing so well in the 70’s and 80’s, before they got obsessed with pointless recreations of their cartoon classics.

The director is James Bobin, who’s formerly directed a number of the Muppet movies, and this movie breathes with the same sense of anarchic fun without being too up itself.

The film occasionally makes you cringe, with some dreadfully (and deliberately) naff songs, but I enjoyed it and for the right audience (kids 8 to 12) I think they’ll have a blast.

For the full review please check out One Mann's Movies here - https://bob-the-movie-man.com/2019/08/24/one-manns-movies-film-review-dora-and-the-lost-city-of-gold-2019/
  
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Never Never (Detective Harriet Blue, #1)
James Patterson | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
6
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Harriet "Harry" Blue is a detective with Sydney, Australia police department. When her brother is accused of a terrible crime, her superior sends her away on assignment to keep her out of the way. He sends her to the desert to investigate the disappearance and/or murder of three miners working in the uranium mines. She is given a new partner, but is not sure if she can trust him or anyone. In the middle of the never never, you are one of the hunted, the object is to make it out alive. Will Detective Blue be able to find out who is behind this hideous crime before she becomes a victim herself.

This is a new series by James Patterson and Candice Fox.

I gave this book three stars because I wanted to know more about Harriet. Maybe as the series develops we will get to know Harriet better. We know her "mother was a prostitute and a drug addict." We also find out that she and her brother were in and out of foster homes most of their lives. I love female lead characters and I hope this is a series I will be able to get into and enjoy.

Sent into the hot desert of Australia, Harriet Blue is completely out of her element. The mine is its own community that includes bilbies(prostitutes), a drug dealer, and protesters who are against the mining. It's a tight nit community that doesn't take well to outsiders. While everyone has a fear of the killer, money is much more important than clearing the mine to find a killer. I'm not sure why the story of Harriet's brother was integral to this story, but I hope that story line will develop more over the series.
  
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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) in Movies

Dec 2, 2019 (Updated Jan 13, 2020)  
X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
2019 | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
With the (eventually true) whispers about the Disney-Fox merger doing the rounds around Dark Phoenix's release, it arrived to little fanfare. Most people had already written off as a pointless film, and it was a prime target for negativity. So much so, that it was actually the first and only X-Men film I ended up missing in the cinema.

I recently watched it on home release, really not expecting much. After the swing-and-a-miss of Apocalypse, I wasn't feeling too invested in the characters.
So imagine my surprise when I remained glued to the screen for most of the runtime.

Dark Phoenix isn't perfect by any means, and far from the lofty heights of the top tier X-Men movies, buts it no where near as awful as I had heard.
I thought the story was actually ok. I was glad that it partially took place in space, like the original comic, and unlike The Last Stand.
Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are fantastic as they usually are, as is Nicholas Hoult. I also thing Jennifer Lawrence I makes a good Mystique, even though I'm still not a massive fan of this franchises portrayal of her character.
Ty Sheridan and Sophie Turner are given more to do this time around, and are both fine. It's a shame that Evan Peters' Quicksilver is sidelined for this particular adventure.
There are some genuinely powerful emotional beats throughout the film, and it's clear as day that all the actors involved care about their characters, and are having fun.

My main criticism is predictably the villains. The D'bari are a fairly uninspired choice for such a big storyline, and they look like generic CGI aliens. I found Jessica Chastain quite wooden and uninteresting, and they made for a very underwhelming force if evil.
The main focus of Dark Phoenix is of course in Jean Grey's turn to the dark side, so vanilla bad guys shouldn't really be that important anyway.

Dark Phoenix does a slightly better job than The Last Stand of adapting this beloved storyline, but so can't help but feel that it would benefit from multiple movies, instead of cramming into one feature, a I really hope that's something that happens going into the MCU with these characters.

We still have New Mutants to go (if it ever actually comes out) but as a last main entry into the FOX X-Men franchise, you could do a lot worse. It's not the best, it's not the worst. Dark Phoenix sits somewhere quite comfortably in the middle.
Dare I say, I think it might actually be better than the first film...