Opinion Battles Round 12 – Favourite Chris Evans Role

Its time for Round 12 of Opinion Battles! We’re choosing our favorite Chris Evans role. While Captain America is quite iconic, I fell in love with Chris Evans and his charismatic and fun character in What’s Your Number!
Head over to Movie Reviews 101 and drop your vote! 🙂

Movie Reviews 101

Opinion Battles Round 12

Favourite Chris Evans Role

Chris Evans is your current Captain America, he has been involved in 7 comic book adaptations in his career to date but between these roles he has also taken his chances at a range of different genres. Today we will be picking our favourite roles but which one do you think it the best?

If you want to take part in later rounds on Opinion Battles the next round will be ALIEN BASED FILM so any film with an alien in a major involvement in the story. the entries will be needed by 26^th June 2016 and email your choices to moviereviews101@yahoo.co.uk.

Darren – Movie Reviews 101

Mace – Sunshine

Mace is on the crew of the Icarus II with the last of Earth resources to reignite the dying sun. Mace is the engineer who brings his military side opinions…

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Podcast: The Random Chat Show Reviews Captain America: Civil War!

This week, The Random Chat Show discusses the newest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America: Civil War! Its been a while since we’ve had such a strong discussion over a movie.  We each have things we can and cannot forgive in this movie. Before we start up the review, we have a little trivia on Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evan movies.

Hope you enjoyed it!
Have you seen Captain America: Civil War?

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

In the last two weeks, I geeked out a little over catching up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that I missed in 2015. Although, I don’t quite care for superhero movies much since its just everywhere, I did mention that Captain America’s franchise has been great.  I love the movies and the characters and the story.  It has great villains and it ties well into the Avengers universe that its worked so hard to build. With that said, I planned for an opening weekend viewing.  It was just my luck that one of my awesome friends messaged me to go see it.  Friday evening, great company and an anticipated movie: I’d say this sounds pretty sweet! 🙂 Oh yeah, and I think we disappointed the kids around us because we were Team Captain America…all the way!

Let’s check it out!

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Director: Anthony Russo & Joe Russo

Cast: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Sebastian Stan, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd, Emily VanCamp, Tom Holland, Daniel Bruhl, William Hurt

Political interference in the Avengers’ activities causes a rift between former allies Captain America and Iron Man.-IMDB

 Its always important for me to talk about my lack of knowledge of the source material of the actual comics.  Its great that my friend actually is very knowledgeable about it and she fills me in quite a bit. Its probably also why she can criticize it a little more.  However, on the car ride over, she filled me in on the Civil War comics and a few things she was worried about happen.  For the record, most of it did happen but it turned out to be a pretty funny moment.  On that note, Captain America: Civil War was really great.  I had a lot of fun watching it.  There were some plot holes here and there but still, as far as superhero movies, Captain America has been three out of three and that’s pretty awesome!

Captain America: Civil War was absolutely entertaining.  There was some serious story but they interjected a good bit of effective humor.  The crew is definitely getting bigger and a lot of the Avengers are part of it, especially the crew from the end of Age of Ultron. We get Ant-Man and then of course, the secret weapon of the trailer, our new Spiderman. They both are kind of the fan boys of the whole deal and they are definitely there for comic relief more than anything.  It also turns the full fight in the trailer into possibly one of the most hilarious action scenes I’ve watched.  I’m going to say that right now. It was so funny that I laughed almost non-stop.  Its supposed to be serious, I guess? But Ant-Man and Spiderman and all the dialogue was great. I mean, on top of that, there was Captain America showing off his muscles reeling in a helicopter which made me laugh because it was a little cheesy but in a lovable way (I guess?) Let’s not forget that what took me by surprise was the completely unexpected new character, Black Panther or whatever you called that superhero.

I always like to address the villain for a second.  To be honest, this villain isn’t really a superhero or non-human or alien or whatever. What makes him effective is that he puts into question the role of The Avengers and just whether they are serving the purpose they are meant to: protecting the people and society, even if they kind of are what attracts the danger also.  But, this is what sets off the Accord and in many ways, its also what causes the break in the “bromance” (that existed in a vague way) between Iron Man and Captain America.  But our villain is a regular guy (kind of!) who has an agenda to cause the Avengers to self-destroy by turning on each other.  He’s kind of shady and looks normal but he also is smart and pretty much a schemer because he manages to manipulate many situations to his favor and that is what makes him a little scary to deal with.  In that way, he is probably  more effective than the other villains in many of the Marvel movies so far.

While Captain America: Civil War is just pure awesome fun and I really loved it and it made me laugh a lot and feel for the characters and if anything, the story of Captain America and Winter Soldier and all that stuff makes the most sense out of all of these Marvel superheroes and done in a good way and its credit goes to the directors.  There were some rather cringe-worthy parts and some random parts that felt a bit weird.  I mean, the whole recruitment bit of Spiderman was entertaining for its means but everyone had a consequence but Spiderman just kind of vanished? I think the new Spiderman is alright, there’s not enough to define whether he is a fitting cast yet but we had this discussion about how Peter Parker acquires his Spiderman skills seemingly younger and younger and his Aunt also is cast younger and younger. You know, little technical details, right? Nothing that is an issue, just a weird observation.  On top of that, I heard that Vision and Scarlet Witch is a thing in Civil War (in the drive to the theatres from my friend and what she didn’t want to happen so yeah…its a thing.  Guess this is spoiler-alert), and their scenes are super awkward.  Maybe a little cringe-worthy? I can’t figure how I feel about it yet.

Overall, Captain America: Civil War was an awesome addition to the Marvel franchise.  Its actually a refreshing and unexpected feeling.  While I’m a huge fan of the direction Captain America franchise has gone, there’s a point when a franchise loses their steam and a lot of times its when it hits the third movie but luckily, that didn’t happen in this case.  I had a lot of fun.  I liked the story and the villain was good.  There were some wildly entertaining action scenes along with some pretty intense ones as well.  The relationships between the characters and building it up was pretty good as well.  There’s still some questions about little details but the point of a superhero movie is to have fun in its blockbuster glory and Captain America: Civil War did exactly that and even managed to surpass my expectations.

Have you seen Captain America: Civil War? What are your thoughts?

1UP Box: April 2015

What do you know?

1UP Box got their act together and got back on track with April’s box and it arrived on last Thursday!

What’s even more awesome than arriving early? Its that this month’s theme is in anticipation for the opening of Avengers: Age of Ultron and themed HERO!

How many of us aren’t even a little anticipating Avengers: Age of Ultron? So this superheroes theme comes right in time!

Let’s check it out!!

Funko Pop! Captain America

I’m not exactly sure how to not geek out over this! Other than the fact that I like Captain America and its all Marvel and whatnot, its because I’ve been hoping to get an ACTUAL Funko Pop! figurine thing since I’ve been ordering these boxes.  I got the weird Walking Dead one that winds up and the keychain but finally, an actual one!

I probably shouldn’t start another collection but isn’t this one just awesome!!!!

Super Key Cover: Batman

Super Key Cover: Batman

Remember how I geeked out over getting Boo in the last box.  I really like this one as well.  It was 50/50 that I might have gotten Superman.  I’m not a huge fan of Superman so this one was perfect 🙂

Legendary Hero Necklace

Legendary Hero Necklace

This is possibly a Zelda item again.  At least that was me and my boyfriend’s deduction.  It does look pretty cool 🙂 I don’t think I’ll wear it ever but it might look nice as decoration or maybe just put it in my display cabinet.

Superhero Iron-On Patch

Superhero Iron-On Patch

I haven’t ironed on a patch since elementary school.  That’s quite a while back.  This does look incredibly nice so I’m actually thinking where I could iron it on.  Probably on a messenger bag or a backpack? I don’t know yet.  I’ll think about it 😉

Spiderman Air Freshener

Spiderman Air Freshener

If you sniff this stuff long enough, its going to be bad for you.  This air freshener looks alright.  I like Spiderman but I don’t love the smell of this air freshener so I think this might end up going into the trash soon.  Its making everything in the box smell like it and I’m trying to air it all out as this goes up. I’ve been trying to figure out what the smell is.  It might be a really strong citrus smell or at least its trying to be? But then, smells are pretty subjective so who knows…maybe someone else enjoyed it more than me.

1UP Exclusive T-Shirt: Mushroom-Signal

Mushroom-signal T-Shirt

This T-Shirt just won me over to think about whether I want to continue subscribing to 1UP Box for another round.  Mario & Batman themed shirt! Let me go freak out with excitement first, k? Go ahead judge my life choices but 1UP Box just upped their game even more.

April 2015 1UP Box pin: HERO

And that’s a wrap for April 2015 and my 3 month subscription for 1UP Box! I’m putting some serious thought into whether to subscribe again. One of the main factors is money. I’m still human and gotta worry about the bills 😉 It also depends on the theme.  Decisions, decisions…that I will ponder.  We will see if I’m back for more, right?

This box (and the last one here) is all sorts of awesome! Funko Pop, Mario, Batman: all of these things win my heart over so easily! I’m pretty pleased with it all (except the air freshener).

Happy Monday! 🙂

Christmas Lights, Hangouts with Friends, and Movies!

This weekend has been crazy with horrible snow and ice and all sorts of crazy precipitation.  I spent a good part of it shoveling and sitting at home catching up a lot of stuff. Thats actually a pretty good thing, except the shoveling part since I like fluffy snow but technically I was just picking up ice pellets and it was crazy heavy.

Now that I’ve had my rant on the weather.  Friday night was super awesome.

You know that crazy person that walks in a crazy snow storm and then pulls out their camera to take pictures, yeah, that was me! I have to revisit for a few shots in Old Montreal but in front of the Notre Dame Church it had some super nice lights.

Lights outside Notre Dame Church

Outside Notre Dame Church

That snow in that area was so high.  I almost fell flat on my face walking across there to continue on my path to meet up with my friends. The night out with friends is always fun.  We went to Les 3 Brasseurs (me and my best friend’s favorite hangout spot) for dinner. We all had steaks.

Steak at Les 3 Brasseurs

It has some fried onions and sweet potato fries and cooked vegetables as sides.  All very delicious! I had  craving for beef so that pretty much took care of that.  Afterwards, we headed to play some Glow in the Dark mini-putt at this joint that opened up their branch in downtown called Putting Edge.

 

Going into Putting Edge

 

One of the ending parts. Very cool! 🙂

You see the shadows of my friends at the far end if you look really hard. I was the last person since I was responsible for the scores.  I was doing so well in the beginning and then ended up losing.  I was never very good at this but hey, it was super fun and thats what counts! 🙂

After that, we ran off to catch a late night movie: THOR THE DARK WORLD in 3D! Yay! The review for that will be going up tomorrow. But at the theatres, we had a bit of time before the movie so we played a game of air hockey and fooled around with the movie promotional panels there.

First for Captain America…

My best friend and I

And then, right next to it was Rio 2! I never saw the first one but I was in the mood to be silly and my best friend joined me also 🙂

Hilarious stuff, right? I was out pretty late.

Saturday was a day with one of my good friends as well.  He needed to wrap up his Christmas shopping and I decided to tag along. We went for a nice brunch at Allo Mon Coco in Quartier Dix30.

His meal: Weekend Special Egg Benedict

My meal: 2 eggs with bacon and sausages!

Super delicious! Was great! 🙂

Despite walking in the on and off ice pellets falling from the sky, I stopped and took some shots of Christmas decorations.

Christmas Tree in Square Dix30

 

 

Around the Christmas tree in Square Dix30

Sunday was a lot more calm as I was mostly trapped at home from all the ice pellets and the snow truck passed by two times and I wanted to punch them because I couldn’t shovel fast enough.  It took me two separate times: the first about 20 minutes and then after that, an hour and a half or so to wrap up everything.  I had already shoveled another 20 minutes the day before probably on Saturday after the shopping.  Winter just started and if ice pellets are whats happening, I’m already fed up.  Any volunteers?

Either way, we celebrate the Lunar Calendar’s celebration of Winter for dinner tonight and my mom whipped up a simple and delicious meal.

My mom is THE best cook in my life! 🙂 She’s just awesome! If I could acquire a fraction of her cooking skills, I’d be set.

This weekend, I also managed to bake three different treats, it’ll be up very soon, so keep your eyes out for it! 🙂 I just have one more thing I’d like to do, then it’ll be pretty cool.

I’m already late with my weekend personal post so I’ll end it here!

Hope you had lots of fun this weekend!

I’m looking forward to my time off very soon to catch up on TV series, 2013 movies and maybe more baking, or and I have a specific sort of movie I need to watch…its just so much more fun to watch Christmas movies..haha!

Here’s a cat picture of my darling cat who is using her way to move me from my chair so she can sleep on it last night (and every other night as well).

Don’t we just love cats? Talking about that, its bedtime for me!

Good night/evening/morning to all of you, wherever you are! 🙂

Captain America:The First Avenger (2011)

A lot of you probably were not following when I posted up the Avengers review (like HERE), I went to that movie with practically no knowledge of anyone or anything except for the movie posters.  I didn’t even watch any trailers of the 5 movies that built up to it, but the effort was there when I bought Ironman 1 & 2 and Thor.  But, it was my busy phase (when am I not?) so I never actually watched them.  The Avengers was awesome enough that I spent the next 2 days watching these movies to catch up.  Unfortunately Captain America was still in the super expensive (in my budget) zone so for Boxing Day I finally snatched it up and after 2 months finally managed to watch it.

Director: Joe Johnston

Cast: Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Stanley Tucci, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones

Back in the war days, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is a small weak man who is patriotic and wants to join the army to protect his country.  However, because of his long list of diseases and small size, he was rejected over and over again. His friend, Bucky (Sebastian Stan) had gotten into the 107th brigade and was about to go off to war.  In the midst of partying before Bucky leaves, he sees another recruitment sign and he tries again with another fake name and city.  This time he gets recruited by Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who had other intentions for him and he in turn volunteers to be part of his experimental program.  At training in the camp, he meets Colonel Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), who one doubts Erskine’s choice and the other remains hopeful for using him as the subject  to turn him into a superhuman (super soldier?).  After Rogers turns into the superhuman successfully, he becomes Captain America.  At first, he loses his initial goals but eventually, with a little help he turns into the patriotic selfless superhero who with the help of Bucky, Peggy and a crew of good men go off to stop Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), also called Red Skull, who leads the Hydra organization.

I’ve said it once with Avengers and again with Amazing Spiderman review (HERE), that I’m really not very familiar with any of the comic book superheroes, be it Marvel or DC.  Nothing, nada! You give me Tintin (HERE), I’ll know a bit more because thats just how my childhood was.  So I won’t go and comment on the similarities but rather as a movie itself, the entertainment I got out of it.  Captain America was really gripping at some moments but also embedded some funny and/or lighter  moments from Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan and a few other supporting actors. It was just so fun to watch with the action and the whole setup and scenes.

The concept of making the straight out good guy and turning him into a superhuman to fulfill his goals in life and protecting his country is not new but for Captain America, I was convinced by Chris Evans that he genuinely wanted the world to be at peace and for good to happen for everyone.  The best example would be when he was recruited, Stanley Tucci’s character, Dr. Erskine asked him a question if he wanted to kill Nazis and his answer shows his simple and kind heart when he says “I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t like bullies.  I don’t care where they’re from.” I think thats one of the most important parts of a super hero movie is to be convinced that this guy defending everyone is really out there some way or another to help and has that good heart exposed or hidden, whichever works for him (or her). Chris Evans is an awesome Captain America. Another quote that was said by Erskine about his choice says it all: “That is why you were chosen.  Because a strong man, who has known power all his life, may lose respect for that power.  But a weak man, knows the value of strength and knows compassion.”

So to match a great good guy, we need to have an evil villain, and who can beat Hugo Weaving at it. Okay, maybe you will have a few on your mind but lets just follow my flow here.  Hugo Weaving pretty much can be declared an expert in being a bad guy.  As Red Skull, he is just so horribly mean and has no compassion at all.  He’s like a robot that just wants to kill and take over the world with his minions.  This guy just sends off all the bad vibes a villain could possibly have.  I was convinced and he actually made me feel a sense of danger with the action sequences and the schemes. Although his face wasn’t that menacing but lets say it wasn’t very pretty either so it worked enough to convince me that he was indeed evil villain.

 

They have a great cast here. I love Dominic Cooper who is an inventor or scientist called Stark who aids Erskine with his experimental program.  Tommy Lee Jones was awesome and I’m not very familiar with Sebastian Stan (I think I saw him in another movie) and he was pretty awesome as well.  In general, I really enjoyed the supporting cast. The group of men they chose to be Captain America’s team to invade Red Skull’s plants was so fun, comedic and brave.

All in all, Captain America is one of the better of the 5 movies to Avengers.  I think Ironman still rates a bit higher than this one.  However, now that I know who Captain America is.  He is one hell of a superhero.  I can’t wait to see some more of him and Chris Evans! 🙂

What is your favorite of the 5 movies that lead up to The Avengers?