While Scooby-Doo technically topped the box office this week back in 2002, we made sure to send one of the Treadstone assassins to do to that dog what they did to poor Eamon’s retriever in The Bourne Identity.

This one’s our first 10 on the nostalgia-meter — and quite possibly my favourite film. We get to explore the seedy underbelly of international espionage while witnessing a brand-new way to make an action movie, a style and approach that still echoes through the genre over two decades later.

Some of our favourite questions upon rewatch:

• Does amnesia actually work like this?

• Did Wombosi really think that blackmailing the CIA was a good plan?

• And why did the world’s top assassin decide the best way to handle one fat, middle-aged, probably out-of-practice Frenchman… was to jump off a building?

I love Matt Damon.. but I can't help but wonder whether Burt Reynolds could have just bounced off his immaculate chest hair when hitting the foyer of that appartment building.

chroniclesofcritic@gmail.com

Ah, The Mummy... sacred, ancient, cinema-treasure of a bygone childhood. While I doubt anyone who saw Tom Cruise's effort at the property when they were nine years old will look back with the same level of nostalgia upon the 2017 version as we do the 1999 edition, we’re pleased to say this effort wasn't a total loss!

We went into this expecting that watching it would be like going to the video store to rent Transformers and ending up popping the crappy knock-off Transmorphers into the DVD player instead. Yes, we're in our thirties and remember things like "DVDs" and "video stores." And yes, Transmorphers was a legit movie.

Save for the down-your-throat exposition, the late-to-the-game character reveal that will confuse the uninitiated, and the fact that 48% of this movie’s script was allocated to the ambition of a cinematic universe that never went anywhere—this movie is not a complete and utter waste of time. What you get is a crappy Tom Cruise film... but in the same way that “there’s no such thing as bad pizza,” there’s something oddly satisfying about getting “Cruisified”, no matter how low on the list it is.

Perhaps the one big criticism we did agree with is that the movie just... lacks a little heart. Maybe they should’ve left that organ intact when they mummified this project, am I right?!?

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Not sure if this should be called Notting Hill or Nodding Off... I kid — though it does run a bit long — because honestly, it’s hard to fault another Curtis classic brimming with snappy dialogue, charming meet-cutes, and... manic emotional blowouts?

Thankfully, Hugh’s signature floppy-haired aloofness, paired with an outstanding turn from “Spike” in the co-pilot seat, brings enough charm and hilarity to smooth over the film’s more noticeable cracks — like the runtime, the vague mechanics of how this romance even lifts off the runway, and, oh right, the small matter of white-washing London.

That said, the stellar acting, familiar supporting cast, and warm ’90s rom-com fuzzies are exactly what most people come for — and this movie delivers in spades. What’s not to love?

Little did we know that it would actually be the "Disney Live-Action Remake-a-verse", rather than the MCU, that would end up being the bane of our existence when we started this project. But alas, here we are.

Why, oh why, did someone decide that this movie needed to be "Part of Our World", when truly, the ideas for this meandering sea slug should have been left "Under the Sea" with the rest of the bottom-feeders? And by that, I mean among actual aquatic animals, not the grumbling execs over at Disney scraping the bottom of the barrel for their next unoriginal remake.

Yes, Halle Bailey does a rippin’ job with the songs, but watching her act opposite an eerily photorealistic crab and a male lead who hasn’t figured out he’s not doing actual musical theatre makes me want to impale myself on the bow of a wrecked ship.

And even more egregious than somehow managing to add 52 minutes of runtime to a children’s movie is the fact that they yanked my boy René Auberjonois clean out of this movie like the guts of one of his famous hors d’oeuvres.

Ursula, grab your quill—I'm ready to sign away my soul to avoid seeing this movie ever again.

chroniclesofcriticpod@gmail.com

At first when we saw that Mel Gibson had left us a voicemail, we were really thrilled... but then we listened to said voicemail. Yikes.

What a lovely day it is when you find yourself speeding through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, guzzling mother's milk, guzzoline, and sand... so much sand. Mad Max: Fury Road is a "barely-time-to-stop-and-catch-your-breath" production that manages to divert the energy of two stars nearly coming to blows into something that somehow enhances the experience for all us lowly, water-addicted viewers. The visuals, production design, sets, and stunts are out of this world, and there's no mystery as to why it won the Oscar for Best Editing.

Chow down on this pursuit thriller, for this movie really is "a movable feast," if you will.

chroniclesofcriticpod@gmail.com except for you Mel.. no more messages from Mel.

Well... out of respect for the subject matter of this movie, we'll probably keep the horsing around in this description to a minimum. But if the film can open with an intentionally light-hearted, borderline stereotypical depiction of young gay men in the early '80s, then let me just say—what a lifestyle these lads were living at the outset of this film. It was the Top Gun volleyball scene meets the beachy goodness of Weekend at Bernie’s. And are you the "tight-green-banana-hammoc" or "Napa-Valley-chardonnay-in-a-wicker-basket" type of beachgoer?

From there, the film does the best it can with its budget and young cast to chronicle the lives—and the heart-breaking experience—of the AIDS crisis as it began to ravage communities through the 1980s. This is a wonderful yet harrowing human story of loyalty, commitment, fear, and love. The movie does an excellent job of introducing the lived experience of a very specific time, place, and culture to the world at large.

chroniclesofcriticpod@gmail.com

In the immortal words of DMX, "X Gon’ Give It 2 Ya!" — and boy, does this movie ever give it to us! The costumes, the miniature work, the sets, the acting, the stunts, and Huge Jacked-Man’s guttural Wolverine yell that sinks Rod Steiger’s 'January Man' yell-acting to the bottom of a medical-grade aquarium faster than a she-ninja full of Adamantium.

This might just be the movie that made the studio X-ecs realize the neo-superhero franchise had real potential — launching us into the Marvel-ized world we know today. Or maybe someone just really wanted an "X-cuse" ...an "X-Twose?... to film Hugh Jackman in his birthday suit. We may never know.

This movie is fun. Maybe it’s starting to show its age ever so slightly, but a pristinely “X-ecuted” early-aughts action romp worth its salt — and one that still holds up today — will always be a yeah from me, dawg. Oh and Shawn Connery and Chewbacca show up... sort of.

chroniclesofcriticpod@gmail.com

Well, it finally happened... we’ve stumbled into Martin Scorsese’s favourite innovation in film—the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Before the corporate juggernaut that is Disney began force-feeding us this particular IP ad nauseam, there was a brief period of time known as “Phase 1,” when we all finally got to experience what it would be like to watch the ultimate crossover episode play out in all its glory on the big screen.

Great VFX, snappy writing, and the “face that launched a thousand ships” of a movie that would spearhead a sort of gold rush, leading to the domination of superhero movies in cinemas and tv screens for more than a decade (and counting). The Avengers is the ultimate buster of blocks, featuring the hardest of... abs... and I’m here for it.

Also, if you’re here to see Sean Connery, Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes, Jim Broadbent, Diana Rigg, or Honor Blackman—those are horses of entirely different colours...