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.

Yeah, I loved Hulk chucking Ultron out of the plane. And Ultron's "Oh, for God's sake!" when the Hulk landed on it when he thought he was in the clear.

Hulk just tearing through that bunker in the beginning was pretty good, too.

Joss also obviously had a lot of fun coming up with different tag-team moves for the Avengers to use.

I personally was good with Ultron being more wise-cracking and less directly menacing. It felt like staying true to one aspect of the comics where his AI was modeled after his creator's brain. Though since it was Tony instead of Hank, we got more snark. The movie tried to push that element without spelling it out between him subconsciously quoting Tony to Ulysses Klaw and the part where he made a crack a split-second before Tony was about to.

I did like Ultron snarking "I'm glad you asked that, because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan." BAM!

Foz Meadows made a pretty interesting comparison:

"Saw Age of Ultron tonight. It reminded me of nothing so much as a weird reinvention of S4 of Buffy."

"Ultron = Adam, Cap = Riley, Natasha = Buffy, Bruce = Angel, Hawkeye = Xander, Tony = Willow, Thor = Anya, Fury = Giles."

"Quicksilver = Spike, Red Witch = Harmony. I mean, shit; the Vision was basically the Super Power-Up Foursome the Scoobies used to beat Adam."

It totally kind of works, how bizarre. Weird how stories simmer back up like that.

It totally kind of works, how bizarre.

Hah! You've seen Javier's takedown of Joss on Firefly/Alien Resurrection? Same algebra.

Wasn't that one somewhat intentional? It was like the next thing he did, like AR was a test run for FF. This is years later, and I feel like it's unintentional, and it's a funny look into the way writers return to wells.