Cyanide

Talk about differentials between RT and Metacritic - True Romance's discrepancy is wild.

4.5, per profightdb. Shibata/Ospreay got 4, as well.

Since my girlfriend lives 10 miles south of Joppa, finally bit the bullet on checking out an EVOLVE show with a ticket to next Friday's EVOLVE 78. Riddle, Yehi, ZSJ, Keith Lee, Jeff Cobb, ACH, and company sound like a great way to spend a night.

If The Dirty Dozen had Christoph Waltz chewing scenery like his life depended on it, then I would have had a choice on my hands.

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx be damned, helping assert the supremacy of Hard Boiled over The Killer is a small victory I will cherish.

New Beginning 2/11: Watched the three singles title bouts. Loved Shibata/Ospreay. Shibata does his thing without making Ospreay look like a geek, and the Aerial Assassin is able to give as good as he gets at a couple points, while generally working all his spots in in a manner befitting a heavyweight bout. Also Ospreay busts out this dope ass Tony Jaa-esque sequence on the outside at the beginning that is SO good. Hiromu/Dragon Lee is the INSANE spotfest you expect it to be, with the degree to which you will love it or hate it predicated on how much you get down with that sort of thing. It is a wrestling match in only the loosest sense, composed of equal parts absurd counters, crazy bumps to the outside, and cringe-inducing neck-and-headdrops. I personally chose to embrace the sheer ridiculousness of this thing and dug it, but YMwill-almost-certainlyV. Naito/Elgin was another awesome bout between two guys who have incredible chemistry together. Just an amazing match that keeps building and building while playing off each's familiarity with the other at this point. With what I'm guessing is the "new normal" of King's-Road-length mains in 2017, it's hard for me to keep the totality of all these things together in my head, but I can't see how this thing doesn't get the full boat, and it's gonna be right up there with the last two big event closers come MOTY time. Unreal start to the year for NJPW.

As someone who used to stat nerd over 5x5s and the prospect of ever seeing another quadruple double, this is a deeply upsetting development.

Holy shit what a great Badlands poster. Props, @RIPPA

Christ, so many of these are amazing. [Bring Em/Take Me] Out is perfect. Also, X Gon Give It To Ya x Bring Me To Life suffers from the chorus transition, but otherwise it is like a straight up evolutionary Gravediggaz track. Move Bitch x A Thousand Miles. dyin.

I watched Synecdoche at a time in my life where this was everything to me: Part of me feels that me was an asshole, part of me (especially at this point in time) still agrees wholeheartedly.

"I have to return some jean shorts."

I think this and a certain notable other one are the only "comic book" movies on my list, with Avengers getting the nod over other Marvel fare by being THE comic book movie in my eyes. The way it captures the aesthetic and tone and visuals of a huge superhero crossover event, coupled with it somehow overdelivering even on the incredible hype and promise surrounding a four-plus year development cycle tying in multiple big budget properties, really makes it something special and a truly memorable achievement to me (even if it may not specifically be a better example of "craft" than some films I ended up ranking below it).

@S.K.o.S. wins for dopest movie night curator at this point.

Fish Tank was one of the brutal last ones out in my honorable mentions territory pile. Glad it got some love.

New Beginning 2/5: Watched from the 10 man onwards. That, the junior tag, and the three way with the heavies were all fun scramble-type deals with not much else to write home about. Elgin/Naito and Hiromu/Dragon Lee will be off the chain next weekend. Juice Robinson was outstanding in his bout with Goto. Really great match, and I was almost expecting Juice to end up aligning with Suzuki-gun as their secondary singles guy after how he opened this thing up. The main... if Omega/Okada got six stars, this fucker might get seven. Suzuki puts on a virtuoso performance as a gnawing, tearing animal, and Okada is just out to survive long enough to pick his spots and hit his signatures to hold off the onslaught. Felt like it went pretty long, but such an engrossing story I have no idea what the time ended up as. Surefire MOTYC.

Aside from NJPW's Fantastic Four for 2016, I think Ishii is hot on their heels, and KUSHIDA deserves all the love for the junior scene. Shibata's wearing thin but he still earns it I think. Elgin takes a hit because of his injury prior to Power Struggle, but you can't overlook his tremendous matches with Omega and Naito, as well as a stellar G1 run; he probably also gets a bump from his indie work. Similarly, I feel Kyle O'Reilly, Ricochet, and Ospreay also get the nod on the junior side of the house on the strength of their NJPW work, with resumes that are likely bolstered when taking ROH/PWG/UK indies/LU into account.

I know he loses points for getting basically shafted from fall onward, but Sami Zayn from WrestleMania weekend through the summer deserves all the love.

Going through old MiSu stuff in advance of Sunday's bout with Okada, and from the non-NJPW World category, there are still much worse ways to spend 17 minutes than him and Kawada beating the shit out of each other:

I blame everyone but me for this thing still being open and having submitted over a month ago and out of nowhere this morning I'm all FUCK I FORGOT NIGHTCRAWLER WAS A THING.

This was the first show I've seen since SummerSlam, and boy it is disheartening how much everything and everyone is bent over backwards for the part-time brigade, especially given the depth of their roster (which apparently Vince and co. have zero faith in). The only match that stuck with me aside from the Rumble itself was Styles/Cena, which I dug, but is still freighted with all the criticisms of Big Match John bouts from the better part of the last decade. And I see all the rumors about the plans heading into Mania and intellectually I can understand where they're probably going, but seeing it all unfold thus far there is really nothing there that gives me any faith in where the direction of the product is heading in the foreseeable future. And I know we're in the "wins and losses don't really matter" era... but Orton wins the Rumble, a guy I last saw getting his head staved in by Brock, who chumped out half the roster before being sent packing once again by fucking Goldberg. And this is a good part of your backbone for Mania - three guys who can basically (and two who will definitely) peace out for an extended period at any time. And that's without even delving into the Undertaker and whatever the fuck they're going to try to do with Reigns at this point... ...the Elimination Chamber's a cool gimmick though, so I'll probably watch that.

Good deal! Yeah, looking at it a bit more, RT's listing seems like it tends to sync up better with wide/US release, rather than festival debut/local market, so that works for me. And yes, it is deeply, deeply weird.

Similar question, but lower profile: just happened to stumble over the fact that movies like The Lobster and Eye In The Sky are 2016 releases according to RT, when just about every other source in the world would have them in 2015, and was curious if anyone else had come across any potential outliers like this, and how they're treating the spirit vs the letter of the criteria? This seems like a common sense thing... but I get hung up on the details, haha. (Also... speaking of outliers, my tendency to catch up on Oscar season releases via Redbox means I'll have seen a grand total of one movie from the Big Four category nominees when I pull this thing together. THE SHAME.)

I'm in for this. Finally caught Arrival last night, which I believe puts me up to 18 films seen for 2016. Hoping to get at least to an even 20 over the next weekend or two.

Finally watched the big four, along with the Junior tag and ROH title bouts. My only real thought on the latter two is surprise at the relative paucity of 2.9~dom and how quick the finishes the came given the stakes, but that would obviously seem to owe to their position on a stupidly stacked card. KUSHIDA/Hiromu was great, even with what seemed like two pretty badly blown spots back to back in the heart of the match. KUSHIDA may be the best worker on the planet pound-for-pound (cue impassioned arguments on behalf of various lucha minis). The NEVER title bout may have been the best Goto match I've ever seen, though I'm admittedly already pretty foggy on last year's G1 finale. Naito/Tanahashi was simple, excellent storytelling from two of the maybe three best in the world at it right now. Wonderful stuff. The main certainly deserves its props, and I fully understand why it is an Important(TM) addition to the modern Big Match(C) canon. But I don't know if I found it demonstrably better than Omega/Naito from the block B finale last year (which, again, I do cop to being foggy on), and personally I don't think it tops Ishii/Okada from block A in terms of being as close to perfect of a match you can put on at present. But I feel any criticism I could offer would simply be a product of it being SO hyped, and it remains so, SO good on its own merits. The whole end run was absolutely molten, and exactly what you'd want to see from both guys coming off their respective 2016s.

Only one of the two ended up making my final list, so adjust your appreciation accordingly.