THOR (2011)

As far as superhero movies go, I enjoyed this one. Thor is a badass dude who lives on another planet, called Asgard. His father, Odin, is the king and about to retire and make Thor king, when the Asgardian's mortal enemies, the Frost Giants, send a group of dudes to try and bust into the Asgardian's armory. They're defeated and Thor gets all pissed off and wants to attack the Frost Giants. Odin tells him to chill out, but Thor says fuck this shit and attacks the Frost Giants. Because of his arrogance, Odin strips Thor of his power and banishes him to Earth.

Once on Earth, Thor is confused and fucked up because he doesn't have any power, but things aren't all bad because his fall to Earth was witnessed by astrophysicist Natalie Portman.  But he doesn't have time for romance, because it turns out Thor's butthole brother, Loki, was behind all the shenanigans that got Thor kicked out!  So now he has to figure out a way to get back to Asgard and plant his foot up his brother's ass.

THOR was a fun film and even though I didn't know anything about the character of Thor beforehand, I thought the movie did a good job of quickly, but not too quickly, introducing him and his world. I'm not a huge superhero fan, so this review might be a little simplified...I have no idea if Thor's cape was the wrong shade of red or the incorrect thread count, but as far as entertainment goes, I liked it.

My only real complaint, besides Natalie Portman not being the owner of a nudist colony, instead of an astrophysicist, is the fight in the middle of the movie (the fire face robot thing) was way better than the final showdown at the end of the movie. Also, Tadanobu Asano should have had a bigger role. He's way too talented of an actor to just have hanging around in the background.

The Infinity Saga

Phase One
Part 1 - Iron Man (2008)
Part 2 - The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Part 3 - Iron Man 2 (2010)
Part 5 - Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Part 6 - Marvel's The Avengers (2012)

Phase Two
Part 7 - Iron Man 3 (2013)
Part 8 - Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Part 9 - Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Part 10 - Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Part 11 - Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Part 12 - Ant-Man (2015)

Phase Three
Part 13 - Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Part 14 - Doctor Strange (2016)
Part 15 - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
Part 16 - Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Part 17 - Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Part 18 - Black Panther (2018)
Part 19 - Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Part 20 - Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
Part 21 - Captain Marvel (2019)
Part 22 - Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Part 23 - Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Phase Four
Part 24 - Black Widow (2021)
Part 25 - Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Part 26 - Eternals (2021)
Part 27 - Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Part 28 - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
Part 29 - Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Part 30 - Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Phase Five
Part 31 - Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Part 32 - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
Part 33 - The Marvels (2023)

PAUL (2011)

Maybe I have a pickle up my ass, but I never even cracked smiled once during this movie. I like science fiction comedies (GALAXY QUEST, SPACEBALLS, etc.), but PAUL was a complete dud. Fucking FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR was funnier than this abortion. "Compliance!"

The story is about two sci-fi dorks who are on a road trip checking out different UFO tourist attractions when they witness a car wreck out on a desolate desert highway.  At the crash site they find Paul. Paul is an alien who's on the run from the government, so the two nerds decide to drive him to a location where an alien spaceship can pick him up. Many different alien anal probe and alien testicles comments later the film ends and I sat there in complete amazement that somebody could write a "comedy" script so lame and actually get it made!

I have no idea what anybody could even find funny about this movie. Was there even one joke? Maybe it was all nerd in-jokes that went right over my head. Whatever.  I found it completely weak, with too much drama bullshit going on for my comedic tastes.

Skip it and never look back.

ADALEN 31 (1969)

I'm not knowledgeable about the films of Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg, but according to IMDb this is one of his highest rated films.  Unfortunately I only found it to be mediocre.

From what I can tell, the story (also written by Widerberg) is based on the 1931 Adalen riots where soldiers fired on unarmed striking workers killing five and wounding five. That's an excellent idea for a film and strangely enough it's very reminiscent of Emile Zola's 1885 novel "Germinal", which I love. But the pace of ADALEN 31 is slow. Almost painfully slow. It opens with the workers living a peaceful country life during the strike, but then the owners hire some scabs, the workers attack and whip the shit out of them. The military is brought in.  During a march the workers are fired upon.

Nice story, but like I said it's slow! Honestly the 110 minutes you'll spend watching this film would be better spent reading the first few chapters of Zola's "Germinal" or watching Claude Berri's 1993 adaptation which I think is almost a masterpiece.