Opening Everywhere: X-Men: Days of Future Past, Blended
Opening Somewhere: Cold in July, The Love Punch, The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
FilmDrunk Suggests: On one hand, I think X-Men looks pretty awesome. On the other hand, Blended looks like I sneezed a diaper into my hands and Rob Schneider crawled out of it and screamed, “YOU CAN POO IT!” into my ear.
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 91% critics, 99% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
I basically really enjoyed this movie, even while lamenting that I was enjoying it under mendacious premises and that there was something fundamentally cynical about its elegiac, retrospective tone. – Andrew O’Hehir, Salon
Some sequels have such a complicated back story they should come with printed footnotes. The latest sequel in the “X-Men” series requires an encyclopedia that can be read in a fun-house mirror. – Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Armchair Analysis: Vince didn’t tell me much about X-Men other than Booboo Stewart is as bad as we’d expect in his limited role [Vince’s note: Review here]. It fascinates me that he gets work as an actual actor in movies that are released so people can watch them. Do the young girls consider him to be attractive? Probably. Does that mean he should get to keep acting until he figures it all out and becomes slightly comparable to Taylor Lautner, who is so bad that even Adam Sandler’s gang was like, “Okay, Grown Ups 2 was enough”? No. So stop giving a guy named Booboo roles.
Blended
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 11% critics, 86% audience (that’s “Want to see” and not “Regrets seeing”)
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
A rehash of Adam Sandler’s 2011 comedy “Just Go With It,” only without Jennifer Aniston and without laughs. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
There’s a fairly decent movie trying to breathe here, underneath the infantile humor. Maybe one day, Sandler will liberate that movie. – Jocelyn Noveck, AP
Armchair Analysis: It’s a Sandler movie. Insert feces analogies, unlike the one I already made, here. Also, it’s awful to see that he dragged Terry Crews and Joel McHale into hell with him. Great.
Cold in July
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 95% critics, 90% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
Has enough nods to classic capers to make for effective pulp fiction – and revive Don Johnson’s career. – Scott Bowles, USA Today
“Cold in July” never actually turns into the film you think it’s going to, and even if that means there’s a few unanswered questions ricocheting around your head after, it also provides real, rich pleasures as it zigzags into the darkness. – James Rocchi, The Wrap
Armchair Analysis: This is the first movie in a process that will undoubtedly answer the question: Will we ever see Michael C. Hall as anything but Dexter? Additional question: Will his post-Dexter movies feature actors who make me want to pull my eyes out like some of the people on Dexter?
The Love Punch
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 29% critics, 73% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
A romantic comedy as painfully unfunny as a sock in the jaw. – Claudia Puig, USA Today
The movie, which feels like something made back in the late 1960s or early ’70s, is so relentlessly silly it’s hard to watch without a lot of eye-rolling. – Connie Ogle, Miami Herald
Armchair Analysis: I love a movie that uses “It’s the first time that we’ve seen Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan together” as a selling point. Are there people out there who are like, “Yo, I would LOVE to see Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan as a divorced couple that still has a fire. Sh*t would be REAL”? Because those people sound cool.
The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 8% critics, 85% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
Phil Alden Robinson’s overheated dramedy feels disconnected from reality in every emotional way, but at least he captures the impotent fury that hits everyone stuck in the wrong lane on Flatbush Ave. – Elizabeth Weitzman, NY Daily News
[Williams] has played against type before, but his presence feels like epic miscasting in this underwritten dramedy … – Sara Stewart, NY Post
Armchair Analysis: Of the 13 critics who have seen this movie already, 12 loathe it. That’s what you get for having Ashton Kutcher’s baby, Mila Kunis.