Category Archives: 10′s movies
Scooby-Doo Mask of the Blue Falcon
I will easily admit to being a Scooby-Doo fan when I was younger. I watched many episodes of the Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo as well as A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, alongside the older episodes. They were goofy, silly, campy, and fun, but I enjoyed them. I also watched plenty of other Hanna Barbera properties back when Cartoon Network was new and filled most of its programming slots with classic cartoons and only a handful of fresh ones. Among them was of course Blue Falcon and Dynomutt either in their own show or one of the many Hanna-Barbera mashups like the Laff-a-Lympics. Scooby-Doo has never really seemed to completely go away, there’s always some new TV show or an endless stream of straight-to-home-video movies like this one. But many of the newest episodes and movies have had a lot sharper sense of humor while still retaining some of the goofiness and campiness the classic fans love. This one is no exception, there’s a lot of smart humor alongside the typical slapstick antics of Mystery Inc. It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve seen an episode or movie about Scooby-Doo, probably not since the live action movie, but I really enjoyed this movie, especially because of all the little background references and such.
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Iron Man 3
Iron Man 3 2013
This is the latest in the juggernaut that is Marvel Studios releases, and especially movies with Robert Downey Jr. in a metal suit. The early reviews were mostly blown away by the new sequel and as I had to wait an extra week for it to come out here in the States, I was starting to chomp at the bit to watch the movie. Of course, once it hit theaters around my neck of the woods, there started to be a few more rumblings of failure and a lot more opinion that this actually wasn’t the best of the trilogy. There were plot holes, and weak moments and ill-fated twists, and when I got the chance to watch the movie… I wasn’t quite sure what I really thought about it. It had it’s action moments, and Robert Downey Jr. doing what he does best as he has done in the past three movies including the Avengers, but there were also those plot holes and other things tugging away at the sides of my brain. I decided I couldn’t quite give the movie justice until I gave it a few days thought and watched the movie for a second time. 2D every time all the time for me FYI. I had an article previously where I talked about the Curse of Three, and while the impact has dwindled a bit with the release of The Dark Knight Rises, it hasn’t completely gone away and I still think there are weak elements in this movie that can definitely hinder the watching experience for some and completely ruin it for others. And fair warning, there may be spoilers in this review, I will try to be non-specific where I can, but I’m not going to dance around them if I need to call them out.
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Lego Batman the Movie: DC Heroes Unite
Lego Batman the Movie: DC Heroes Unite
This is a home video release by DC Premier and Traveller’s Tales releasing on Bluray and DVD May 21st, and it’s actually rather interesting because most of this movie is drawn from the Lego Batman 2 video game. Many of the scenes may have been reanimated to improve the quality and make minor corrections, and there has also been some new material created for the connective scenes, but aside from that it’s directly taken from the video game. While there have been many movies based on video games, I believe this is the first video game turned directly into a movie. I’ve been a fan of the Lego series of video games ever since the first Lego Star Wars games were released on the Playstation 2, they have a very irreverent sense of humor and a lot of meta jokes based around the fact that they are in a Lego world and Batman is no different.
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Superman Unbound
Superman Unbound 2013
This is the latest DC Animation home video release coming May 7th. I’ve been a fan of every one of these movies that I’ve seen and I’m still dying to get around to the handful I haven’t seen yet. This one continues their run of quality releases following the Dark Knight Returns, though it didn’t quite win me over as much as that one did. This follows Superman and his cousin Kara and their struggle with the Brain Interactive Construct that’s going through collecting the information of the universe as well as cities he keeps as souvenirs including Krypton’s capital city of Kandor, and now he has his sights set on Earth. Superman is the only one that can save the planet and he needs the help of his cousin. The quality of animation and voicework were spot on as usual, but there was just something in it that just wasn’t quite the story I was interested in.
Wonder Women!
Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroes 2013
You can watch this doc for free until June 14th at PBS’s website.
Wonder Women is more or less a documentary about the history of Wonder Woman and her effect on feminism in America. It’s interesting how closely Wonder Woman has been connected to the feminist movement throughout the years. The documentary is presented as a series of interviews with both figures connected with the Wonder Woman character, like comic writer Gail Simone and actress Lynda Carter, as well as figures prominent in the feminist movement like Gloria Steinem and the lead singer of Bikini Kill. All of the people represented in this doc are interesting to listen to and presented a lot of information I never knew about. And all of it is connected with plenty of artwork from Wonder Woman comics animated in a somewhat motion comic-esque way.
Iron Man Rise of Technovore
Iron Man Rise of Technovore
This is a home video animation produced by a collaboration between Sony Pictures Entertainment and anime studio Madhouse. It’s a follow up to the 12 episode Iron Man anime series, though it’s a stand alone story that I was able to follow without having seen any of the previous episodes. There were four different Marvel properties that were turned into anime series, though I think Iron Man seems like it would be the easiest transition from Western Animation to Japanese Animation considering anime has a prevalence of mecha similar to Iron Man and some of his enemies. It ended up being an interesting mix of the two mediums with the obvious Japanese style combined with some of the more American personalities. I loved it for the most part, although I thought some of the philosophizing was a little slow and overly cerebral.
All Star Superman
All Star Superman 2011
One thing that I enjoy about this site is when I go into a movie completely blind. I’ve done a bit of research and have had help to create a very inclusive list of comic book and superhero movies, and yet when I actually choose one of the movies I’ve never seen before, I don’t seek out synopses, or watch trailers, I like to go into the movies completely blind, and this was the case with All Star Superman. Many of the Superman stories I enjoy the most are the ones that try to get to the heart of his humanity, and yet All Star Superman really embraces his alien nature more than just about anything I’ve seen before. I have to admit that at first it was quite offputting, but by the end of the movie there was enough heart in it to win me over.
Jonah Hex
Jonah Hex 2010
I hadn’t heard anything very good about this movie, it pretty much tanked at the box office, even my wife didn’t really like it very much. I don’t watch too many westerns, but I do occasionally enjoy them, especially westerns with a slight sci-fi twist, something along the lines of the rarely duplicated Brisco County Jr. So my expectations were fairly low coming into this movie and I was not let down. I was surprised that it wasn’t a horrible movie by any means, it was just mediocre. There weren’t any laughably bad scenes with cheesy acting nor were there any edge of your seat action setpieces. The concepts were far-fetched, the humor was uneven, and the action was nothing special. I didn’t hate it, but I won’t be eager to watch it again anytime soon.
Gantz
Gantz 2010
I enjoy watching a lot of anime, or at least I used to. I just realized I haven’t watched a good anime in a long time, but that’s beside the point. One of my favorite types of anime are the ones that are so out there and weird, they are hard to describe. Gantz is one of those anime. And a couple years ago I saw that it had been made into a live action movie, and when I saw the trailer for it, it looked like they did a good job matching the look and style of the anime so I had to watch it, and I wasn’t disappointed. I will do my best to describe the general concept. There is a giant black ball in the middle of a room, it transports people who have died to the room every few nights with little explanations except for a picture of an alien, briefcases with black leather suits and weird high-tech guns. They are given a time limit to kill this alien in reward for points, if they get 100 points they can have their memory erased and put back into the real world, or they can resurrect a fallen teammate. There’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s the gist of it.
All Superheroes Must Die
All Superheroes Must Die 2013
aka Vs
This movie is something that was completely off of my radar aside from the fact that it was on my full list of superhero movies under the title “Vs”, and then a couple weeks ago I saw a review of this movie on Today I Watched a Movie, so when I saw it available at Redbox I picked it up. (And because Redbox asked so nicely, you can look to see if it’s available at your local Redbox by clicking here) It’s an interesting premise: Four superheroes get captured by their archnemesis and placed in a town littered with explosives and hostages where they must play an almost Saw-like game to escape with their lives. It is low budget and it shows, though they do have a clever excuse that the villain suppressed their powers with a serum so they never get a chance to showcase any of their powers, and as a result the movie feels more like a psychological thriller than an actual superhero movie. I think there’s still a lot to like in this movie and was invested from start to finish.
