In Laman's Term: The Power Of Proper Build-Up

In Laman's Terms is a new weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

SPOILERS FOR WONDER WOMAN AND THE GODFATHER FOLLOW
I love the feeling of anticipation. That sensation that builds up in your stomach as you see the waiter approach your table with your meal or seeing Christmas presents under the tree you get to open in just a few days, there's something about being so close yet so far to an object or event you want ever so much that can be quite exhilarating. Many movies get to replicate this phenomenon by way of leaving the viewer on the edge of their seat via the process of build-up, which in movies can make certain character revelations or action sequences all the more powerful. Today, I thought I'd take your dear reader through two excellent examples of proper cinematic build-up by way of examining an individual scene from two separate movies that both manage to demonstrate the power of well-done build-up.

Batman v. Superman Gets Off To Massive Box Office Start At Thursday Night Showings

Night (or should I say knight) has fallen on the box office as Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice got off to a massive $27.7 million start last night at Thursday night screenings that began at 6 PM. That's the second biggest gross for a superhero movie at these kind of screenings, only behind the $30 million sum garnered by The Dark Knight Rises at Midnight showings back in July 2012. This $27,7 million sum puts Batman v. Superman puts this Zack Snyder film ahead of The Avengers, Man Of Steel (which grossed $21 million at 7PM screenings, tickets to which could only be bought at Wal-Mart, and midnight showings) and Avengers: Age Of Ultron. It's also, just from these screenings alone, already the eighth highest grossing movie of Jesse Eisenberg's career.

Five Not-So-Great Trailers For Great Films

I love movie trailers. They can function as a way to get excited about a film you already know about, as a means to entice you into seeing something you previously had no knowledge about or even serve as singular works of art in their own right. But not every movie trailer can be a winner, even if they're promoting motion pictures of top caliber quality. Inspired by The AV Club's examination of what makes a good trailer, today I'll be examining five movie trailers that I find to be subpar, a sharp contrast to the excellent films they're supposed to be raising awareness for.

A Look At The Highest Grossing Movies Of The 21st Century

In the first 14 years of the 21st century, a wide variety of films have come around to arise as champions, in that they became the biggest movies of their respective years of release. Looking over the movies that have managed to achieve such a feat, I was surprised to see high quality features usually (emphasis on usually) top the years box office. The Avengers, Toy Story 3, The Dark Knight, The Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King and Avatar (yes, I know I lost respect from many of you right there) are all excellent films that managed to make untold amounts of moolah.

Can We Start Giving Superhero Movies Some Respect: Part Two: Electric Insult Boogaloo

Well hey! Like anything that's successful, here's a sequel to my earlier editorial surrounding the topic of giving superhero movies some respect. It's a subject that I'm not alone in advocating for, as someone very high up in the industry has spoken out in favor of giving superhero films some respect from people. What's triggered this kind of chitter chatter, and this editorial sequel, you ask?

Who Should Play The New Spider-Man?

A barrage of questions hinge on the extraordinary news that Sony and Marvel Studios are teaming up to incorporate Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with him popping up in an MCU movie before his own solo feature in July 2017. But here's the million dollar question everybody's wondering...who should play the legendary web-crawler?

Try, Just Try, To Watch The New Avengers: Age Of Ultron Trailer And Not Get Chills

Last night there was a massively important college football game which carried a new trailer for The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. Giving the world the first new footage from the film since it's first trailer back in October, the new trailer has already raked up nearly 3 millions views in under 12 hours. Add to that hefty viewcount by watching the trailer below!

Home Alone Is Mildly Inconsistent, But Surprisingly Effective Yuletide Cinema

Welcome to 25 Days Of Christmas Pop Culture! From now until Christmas Eve, I'll be tackling one piece of Christmas pop culture! It could be a book, movie, TV special, song....so long as it's festive for this time of the year, it'll be checked out in this daily column!

I see a lot of people talking about how movies were better "back in the day", which always makes my eyes roll. People have always wanted good storytelling when they go to the cinema, that's never changed. Frankly, I'd actually say the years top movies are indeed better than they used to be. The past few years top features have included The Avengers, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2, The Dark Knight and Toy Story 3, all excellent films. Bizarrely, the biggest movie of 1990 was not Goodfellas or Awakenings, but rather Home Alone.

Editorial: The Non-Marvel Shared Universe Movies Need To Stop

(Or: What Hath The Avengers Wrought)

After Marvel's extremely risk plan for combining stand-alone movies into one massive feature film called The Avengers paid off big time, studios began to scramble to join in on the newest cinematic craze; shared universes. The first franchise not from Marvel Studios to test this out was The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which took it's 2012 Andrew Garfield reboot and tired to stretch it to include hints at future spin-offs and sequels. The film was a calamity quality-wise and disappointing financially, which you'd think studios would take as a sign that not all movies need a shared universe.

Nope.

Summer Movie Memories: All It Took Was Time Travel To Revive The X-Men Movies

Over the next seven days, I'll be looking at seven different summer movies from Summer 2014 and analyzing what really made them stand out this summer, for reasons both good and bad. Obviously, SPOILERS for X-Men: Days of Future Past lie ahead. 

Ranking All of The Marvel Studios Post-Credits Scenes From Best To Worst

Post-credits scenes have been around for ages, but very rarely did they do more than have Ferris Bueller tell you to go home or an extra gag at the end of a Pirates of The Caribbean movie. Today though, they're a major part of the moviegoing experience for numerous films, particularly ones coming out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To date, all ten of their films have had a stinger of some kind, and three of them even managed to have two. Now, I've taken it upon myself to rate all 13 of these Post-Credits scene in order from Worst to Best. Join me won't you, for this exciting voyage into mystery!

Obviously, tons and tons of spoilers for all the Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Avengers and Guardians of The Galaxy movies ahead.

Marvel Studios Just Released New Release Dates And Ant-Man and Avengers 2 Comic-Con Posters!!!!

Comic-Con starts today, and as one might expect, Marvel Studios has quite the presence there. They'll be presenting their panel in Hall H Saturday, which will show off their upcoming slate of films. Just ahead of that, they've not only added numerous dates to their schedule, but also released Comic-Con exclusive posters for the two movies they'll be promoting the most at their panel; The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man.

So, I Was On Netflix: The Starving Games Review

If you see this poster, just run. Run far far away!!!

There are numerous directors whose works have passed me by. I've only just now dabbled in the films of Quentin Tarantino, while most of Paul Thomas Andersons filmography remains a mystery to me. Luckily, the works of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have also eluded me, with such critically beloved films as Date Movie and Meet The Spartans remaining just bad trailers to me. But for this column, I decided to suck it up and finally give one of their films, a Hunger Games parody entitled The Starving Games, a watch.

Begin Again Review

First you get the music, then you get the sugar, then you get the women.

Considering all the changes the music industry has undergone in the past decade and a half, a film focusing on a music executive and his attempt to bring a new singer into the spotlight might be an excellent way to look at those changes. And if you wanna ignore that, cool. I'm sure this is a fantastic opportunity to utilize the talents of folks like Mark Ruffalo, Kiera Knightly and Hallie Steinfeld in a film that's exceptionally well written. That's that? The movie is a disappointing mixture of cliches and tediousness? Well now, ain't that a kick in the head.

New, Extended Guardians Of The Galaxy Trailer Remains Nicely Spoiler-Free...AND AWESOME!!!

I was worried that a new Guardians of The Galaxy trailer dubbed an extended look would be chock full of spoilers, but thankfully, Marvel Studios is still keeping plenty of surprises for us excited viewers to see when the film hit theaters August 1st. However, plenty of new footage (including the first words from Gamora and Ronan!) can be heard, as well as an awesome joke at the end. Yes, I think this may be truly something special. Check out the trailer below.

Editorial: Why I Hate CinemaSins

I decided to not post an article yesterday devoted to the new created
Honest Trailer for Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, simply because not only was everyone else already doing it, but because channels inspired by Screen Junkies (which hosts the Honest Trailers) have, in the last two years, been run on cynical content that just reduces the magic of cinema to quick cynical gags. It's hard to promote something that's helping reduce peoples perception of movies to simply unfunny cynical one-liners. Admittedly, at least the crew behind those Honest Trailers (which more often than not are at least diverting) have some respect for some of the movies they parody, unlike the horrific channel that has endured popularity amongst the internet for bewildering reasons.

The haven for lazy, nitpicky critiques of film is without a doubt the channel dubbed CinemaSins.