Thursday Movie Picks – Comic Book Movies
Once again I saw a very appropriate topic from Wandering Through the Shelves Thursday Movie Picks theme for this week. The last time I joined in the topic was superhero movies, and this time it’s the other end of the spectrum that I cover for this site: non-superhero comic book movies. Check out his picks as well as the other choices over there.
Rather than picking three of my favorite, or what I think of are the best films based on graphic novels or comic books, I’m going to showcase a few lesser known titles from the past few years that you might not have heard of for various reasons. Click the posters to check out my full review of the films.
Bounty Killer came out just a couple years ago and I think it’s a timely choice considering that the latest Mad Max film just came out and this film is heavily inspired by Mad Max. It’s ultra violent, has a gorgeous woman in essentially the lead role even though the guy is the namesake of the movie. It has some great comic book inspired visuals for transitions and brief cameos from Beverly D’Angelo, Gary Busey, and a couple others. It’s not serious by any means and I imagine it would pale in comparison to Mad Max, but it was also done on a fraction of the budget. It’s worth checking out for a little bit of the ol’ ultraviolence.
We Are the Best came out just last year and it’s a Swedish coming of age film about three young girls growing up in the early punk scene in Sweden who want to start a punk band despite two of them having absolutely zero musical experience. It’s much more grounded and realistic than most coming of age films, there’s no big climactic scene involving a pirate ship in a cave filled with treasure, there’s just a whole lot of little moments that help shape the main character Bobo along her way into puberty.
The Scribbler is a bit of a psychological thriller with touches of Fight Club, Girl, Interrupted, and the Cell. Suki has disassociative identity disorder aka multiple personalities and is undergoing a new treatment that will help get rid of those personalities one by one. The question that really defines the movie is the question of whether or not Suki is actually the dominant personality or if she was created by one of the crazy personalities to try and fit in with the other normal people. On top of that there’s a bit of a murder mystery and some superhero elements without ever really being a superhero movie.
And those are my three, I do want to mention Road to Perdition as it’s a film that I watched just a few months back for the first time and really fell in love with it. It’s such a gorgeous film in more ways than one and I would consider it one of the best if not the best graphic novel adaptation out there.
Posted on May 21, 2015, in Blogs, Lists and tagged blogathon, film, graphic novel, movies. Bookmark the permalink. 22 Comments.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 
Haven’t seen any of these and they all sound excellent. I especially need to see The Scribbler. Great picks. And yeah, Road to Perdition is all sorts of awesome!
Scribbler is great especially if you watch Arrow. Katie Cassidy is the lead and she is almost unrecognizable.
A History of Violence is based on a graphic novel and is also pretty great
I almost mentioned that one next to Road to Perdition as another great one. Surprisingly didn’t see it on the other lists I checked out from this week.
The Scribbler sounds interesting. Great picks!
It’s definitely interesting, not for everyone but I quite enjoyed it.
Oh, I’ve been meaning to watch Bounty Killer for a while now, thanks for the reminder!
– Allie
Sure thing, it’s a ton of fun!
Love that you went for lesser known titles. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy the series so is discovering new films, I try and do the more obscure as well. Of your three the two action films sound like fun and the Swedish one intriguing. I probably seek out The Scribbler first.
I agree, I exclusively cover superhero & comic book films here and still caught two films I hadn’t heard of before.
I did not realise We Are The Best was a comic book!
Yeah, it was written by the director’s wife and called Never Goodnight I believe. Very neat.
Nice picks! I have We Are The Best in my Netflix queue, I haven’t heard of the other two, but they sound interesting.
Definitely give We Are the Best a shot, of the three it’s overall the best from a critical standpoint. The other two have their faults but are quite enjoyably fun.
We Are the Best is one of my favorite films from last year and the more I think about it the more I absolutely love it…like…LOVE IT!
Haven’t seen any of your choices, but I have heard of We are the Best which sounds very intresting. The tagline on Bounty Killer makes it sound pretty exciting, haha.
We Are the Best is excellent, Bounty Killer is a guilty pleasure if you like bloody action films that don’t take themselves seriously.
Nice spin!
I’ve heard that We Are The Best is really good elsewhere too so I’m keeping a look out for it. The Scribbler sounds interesting as well.
We Are the Best is worth seeking out, the Scribbler isn’t for everyone but still worth checking out.
I’ve never heard of the Scribbler before, but you definitely make it sound interesting and I really love that cast! I’ll have to check it out soon. We Are the Best is another one that I have head nothing but good things about.
Both well worth checking out, thanks for stopping by!