He was great in A Most Violent Year.

I've heard great things about both Inside Llewyn Davis and A Most Violent Year, and I think I'm gonna check them out.

He is great in both. A Most Violent Year got lost in the end of year Oscar rush, which is a shame because I thought it was a very interesting unique script with extremely good performances.

Yeah, Ultimate universe has a lot of really terrible stuff in it (personally The Blob eating The Wasp wins the "WTF is wrong with you people?" contest) but I hadn't known about Teppy's white font before and that's rather horrific, too. Which is why I'm not super-thrilled that they've decided to combine the universes.

When they first came out with the Ultimate universe I thought some of their new takes on characters were interesting (and Colossus' crush on Wolverine was adorable) but as it went on it rapidly spiraled into WTF land. I think Ultimate Spider-man was the only book that didn't go completely off the rails.

Oh my god, Marvel. That's not the good crack.

SO TRUE.

I think Ultimate Spider-man was the only book that didn't go completely off the rails.

ALSO TRUE.

I read Ultimate Spidey for a LONG time. It was good stuff.

I mean, I get (and approve of) the fact that Whedon was (shockingly, given the CLUSTERFUCK OF ANGEL/CORDY) wanting to make explicit the idea that MEN AND WOMEN CAN HAVE DEEP MEANINGFUL NON-BOINKING FRIENDSHIPS, but fucking hell, YOU DO NOT NEED TO BRING FUCKING ULTIMATES INTO THE MIX FOR THAT.

I've heard great things about both Inside Llewyn Davis and A Most Violent Year, and I think I'm gonna check them out.

I despised Inside Llewyn Davis more than any other movie I've paid to see in the theaters in the past decade. I was kind of surprised at how much I hated it. Usually movies work for me or they don't, but this one punched buttons I didn't even know I had, mostly due to the main character. Who I hated. So. very. much.

I saw it with an older friend who'd been into the folk music scene in the late 60s. She loved it, and I spent 15-20 minutes after the movie just sort of "hmmm"-ing and trying not to harsh her squee. But dayum.

Just saw Age of Ultron. I loved enough things about it to be pretty satisfied. But I want to see it again with closed captioning because I missed a few things that were said too low.

My take on Natasha's description of herself as a monster was in reference to the training to be an assassin. It was all very fresh in her mind because of the Red Witch dream. It might have been things that she had trained herself not to think about too much and so she was a little raw.

I adored the Vision. He was always a favorite Avenger for me. And he did swoop in and save Wanda from the train car where she'd tried to kill Ultron.

But, the whole Thor takes a side trip to exposition land seemed really weird and shoe-horned in.

And the Hulk got to toss Ultron out of the plane, so there's that. Not quite Loki, but mighty green muscle over evil brains is always fun.

The only thing that was missing, for me was Coulson. I would have loved to see the looks on their faces!

Anyone seen Ex Machina? I just saw it yesterday and liked it a lot.

I saw it and loved it for the reasons mentioned. As hard as those scenes were, they did add a darker, visceral quality to a movie which had been fairly cerebral and chess-playing with the plot.