Yeah, that's fair.

The 1995 film worked fairly well on it's own, but was definitely sub-standard from fan's point of view. It tried to establish it's 2000AD credentials with the appearance of the Angel gang, Rico and even the ABC warrior - I don't recall the ABC Warriors ever making it into Dredd's storyline in the comics, but there were several crossover appearances in 2000AD - I remember an ABC Warrior in a Nemesis The Warlock storyline - so I suppose that's acceptable. My main gripe with Stallone's movie was the tone - it was far too humorous in places; at least it felt that way for me.

The 2012 film was one of the few films that did some justice to it's (non-Marvel/DC) comic book origins, in my opinion. A rare thing indeed.

I'm still scarred by Ghost Rider, TMNT and Men in Black.

Judge Dredd definitely does get too humorous too quickly...

Part of my liking of the early comic book films is that I was still quite young when I saw them

I also didn't really 'get' Batman '89 until I saw it again years later for instance.

Premium Rush - it's just average, just totally middle of the road (kinda appropriate). It's well-made and all the rest of it, but it's almost a Sunday afternoon movie bar some choice words. Watch it if it comes on TV, but even then check the schedule

You think those were bad, try Spawn.

Been meaning to watch that again to see if it's as bad as I remember it.

I fancy seeing 'World's End' and 'Wolverine', but I hardly ever have time to go these days.
I only managed to see Star Trek into darkness because I happened to be staying in a hotel next to the cinema in Aberdeen one night.

Everyone needs to stop saying Wolverine to me

Just seen the trailer. Looks ruddy awful.

The trailer I saw wasn't too bad. I'll check out the reviews first but could wind up going anyway, as it turns out.

There's a wolverine story Frank Miller wrote & illustrated (years back) set in Japan. It's basically the story of how Logan falls in love with a Japanese woman but her family won't accept him because he's a mutant and it all goes horribly pear shaped. Ninjas are involved and it turns out Logan's unwilling future father in law is a samurai master swordsman (really). Makes no sense but it's Miller so it hangs together with style and generally, it's fun. The film looks like somebody read that while drunk, understood little of what was good about it and decided to make a film based on what they remembered the next morning.

Hansel and Gretel : Witch Hunters

Summary : Rubbish.

Longer summary : Hansel and Gretel (Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton) survive their experience in the witch's cottage made of gingerbread and grow up to be mercenary witch hunters, wandering the land killing cackling but lethal crones by the use of an outlandish assortment of clockwork firearms. Taking what they think is a routine child retrieval job they end up meddling in the plans of Grand Witch Famke Janssen, leading them back to the defining event of their childhood...

OK. Somebody saw 'Van Helsing' and decided 'that was good, let's do that again'. And does so. Badly. The plot doesn't really have much to do with the fairy tale (although they try), Arterton and Renner are given next to nothing to work with but still manage to phone it in. The SFX are reasonable but with the unfortunate side effect of making the main baddie's henchmen look like members of Green Day. There's a bunch of gore which is pretty gratuitous and not even funny, in fact the main issue with the whole film is that it tries to be a knockabout action movie but all the jokes it tries fall utterly flat, with the one exception that his experience in the gingerbread house as a child has made Hansel diabetic. And now I've spoiled that joke for you. The 'steampunk tech' is badly done and real 'deus ex machina' stuff that just leaves you saying 'well, why didn't you just use that stuff at the beginning?' Seriously - they repeatedly try to take on the main baddie hand to hand then reveal they had an enormous anti-witch point defense weapon in their cart all the time. The other problem is - it's not scary, at all. The whole point of Grimm's is they are stories to scare children. If you do an adult version, there should be some sense of menace. There just isn't. Despite our heroes getting beaten up, thrown around, dropped from great heights, hit with tree trunks and, in Arterton's case, almost raped (Guys? You can do 'menace to a female character' without including sexual violence, you do know that right?) you never for a second think they're in any real danger. Or possibly you think they are but you just don't care at all, I'm not sure. The only character you do feel any sympathy for is pretty much obviously going to die from the moment she appears on screen - at which point she's already being water boarded. Guys? it's 'Grimm', not 'Grim'.

The one saving aspect is actually the main baddie played by Famke Janssen. She manages to exude a certain relish in the devilment her character is required to do to move the plot along, even though it's entirely obscure for next to the whole film why she's doing it. She also looks fantastic, both grotesque and actually quite sexy at the same time. But even she's hamstrung by a plot which is poor on almost every level and only allows pantomine villainy when a really fearsome protagonist would have worked much better. There are only two decent scenes in the whole film, and she's in both of them. And Arterton and Renner aren't in either.

In summary? I'd avoid it. There are any number of better action films you could watch which will be less of a waste of your time.

X-Men - First Class

Remembered I hadn't watched it the whole way through! Good film, especially for a 'tell the origin story AGAIN/we've got some amount of characters!' affair.

It doesn't really slow down, and the dialogue's never truly terrible. It even manages to stay within it's 'sequels', if that makes sense. Nobody gives a crap about that first Wolverine movie anyway.

The only bad things I can think of are, well, the baddies. Pure cheese. Ham too , and January Jones is just plain awful. Though she was allegedly banging the director, so...

The Wolverine cameo made me smile.

Yip

I saw Hick at the weekend and it was pretty cool.