Category Archives: 00’s movies
Ghost Rider
Ghost Rider 2007
It’s Thursday night, my Steel post went up today and I realized that I didn’t have any more banked reviews. Doing three reviews a week this month is a lot tougher for my schedule than I expected it to be. Luckily I currently own the Blade trilogy, so it’s just a matter of getting to see the new Ghost Rider sometime this weekend. And to prepare for Spirit of Vengeance, I thought it would be a good idea to catch up on the original Ghost Rider movie. It seems like there’s not a whole lot of love out there for this movie, and while it does have some pretty bad moments, I spent most of the movie grinning like a fool and I’m psyched to see the new one.
Hancock
Hancock 2008
It’s time for my third movie that fits into February’s theme of Black Superheroes, and it’s probably one of my favorites for this month. I believe I watched it sometime after it had come out on home video and I had the same reaction of many people that I knew or read about online. The first half of the movie was great, but the second half sucked. And watching it again, it’s still pretty much how I feel about the movie although I feel like I’ve softened up to the second half a little bit. I was watching the unrated version this time, I think I watched the regular PG-13 version the first time. There wasn’t a whole lot in it that seemed to warrant the unrated part aside from one kinda sex scene which was played for laughs and possibly a few more swear words.
The movie is about John Hancock played by Will Smith. He’s basically what most people would really become if they were given superpowers. He’s drunk most of the time, anything he needs or wants he just takes, though he limits it to stuff he actually needs to survive plus copious amounts of alcohol and Jiffy Pop, and he plays the hero in his free time. But instead of doing things the smart way, he does it the brute force way. Watching Will Smith act like a jerk with superpowers was hilarious and I spent a lot of the first half of this movie laughing. Especially when he starts interacting with Jason Bateman, I’ve seen the movie twice and still don’t remember his character’s name, mostly because he plays the same character he always plays, but I love it. He’s a PR guy that decided to make over Hancock’s image and it starts with him going to jail for all the destruction he’s caused. My absolute favorite part that had me laughing on the lead up to it because I remembered what was coming was the jail scene… I’ll just leave it at that… no I won’t, there’ll be a picture of it right below this paragraph. I can’t resist.
The second half of the movie is where it goes a little off. The mythology of Hancock and how he came to his powers is that he is one of the last two immortals on Earth. Immortals who have access to their own off switch in the form of their mate, so when they grow tired of the eternity of life, they simply find their mate and they will become mortal, grow old, and die. The only problem is that Hancock’s mate left him 80 years ago and is married to Jason Bateman. That’s ok, but the way they reveal it is that she kisses Hancock, then throws him out of her house literally, meets him to explain their story but ends up fighting him in a big action setpiece instead. It just feels like a cop out excuse to have two superpowered beings fighting in the middle of the city, and why the heck does their fighting cause a storm? I also thought the final battle scene was handled pretty poorly, I wasn’t sure if she was actually supposed to be feeling his pain, or if they were trying to line up what was happening to each of them separately so they connected. Like he happened to get shot at the same time that the doctors used the heart paddles on her. I think it would have made for a better scene if the latter happened.
This movie surprisingly reminded me a lot of Super and Kick-Ass although in a different way. All three movies try to present superheroes in a pretty realistic fashion where the heroes face very real consequences based on their actions. But where the first two feature normal men becoming costumed crimefighters, this movie features a normal guy with a lot of flaws who happens to have superpowers and wants to do good. Kick-Ass and Super both deal with consequences like gunshot wounds and getting beaten up, Hancock deals with consequences like collateral damages, public opinion, and at least in the unrated version what happens when someone with Superman’s power climaxes. The other thing about the three movies is they follow a similar pattern of very comedic first and second acts followed by heavy drama in the third act. Aside from my complaint earlier, I think it works pretty well in Hancock’s favor. Will Smith does a great job conveying both the asshole moments as well as the more human side. Charlize Theron has her moments but for whatever reason, I just didn’t like her character very much, I liked her as Jason Bateman’s wife, but I just didn’t see her as a superhero. For whatever reason it just didn’t fit.
But as I mentioned in the beginning, I really liked this movie and had a blast watching it. The funny parts are really funny, the touching moments are pretty touching, and the action scenes are pretty decent. There’s really only three action scenes in this movie, the first one is great even though it’s pretty subdued where he takes out the robbery as his first act as a real superhero, the second one is kind of annoying with unnecessary special effects, and the third one is overtaken by overblown dying drama. This is another movie like the Incredibles that I would only half love to see a sequel to. I think Hancock is a great character, yet I’m not sure if there’s really a worthy story to make into a sequel. As far as Jena’s part, she didn’t watch this movie but I would have let her, she just wasn’t interested. Coming up next I go back to the downside of Black Superhero movies with Blankman. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Catwoman
Catwoman 2004
I’m ready for the first movie of February. I do have a theme for this month and I’ve got 9 movies picked out ready to go for it. Plus three extras movies because they’re new. So to start things off I’m watching the movie which may or may not be the worst movie of the month, you’ll just have to wait to find that part out for sure. It’s the 2004 comedy Catwoman. I’m sorry it’s not technically labelled as a comedy but there were a lot more laugh out loud moments in this movie than there were in Super or Kick-Ass. The only problem is that the moments in this movie were meant to be taken seriously.
I vaguely remember the advertising and buzz for this movie when it was first coming out. I believe they were building on the buzz of Halle Berry’s role as Jinx in the Pierce Brosnan Bond movie which to this day is still the only Bond movie that I’ve ever seen. Not sure what that says about my movie preferences. Instead of doing a spinoff movie of the Jinx character the powers that be in Hollywood decided to create this movie which was supposed to create a new franchise. Apologies if this entire paragraph is a load of crap, it’s all stemming from my flawed memories instead of doing a little bit of typing and actually looking it up. I find it to make things more interesting that way.
Anyway, this movie was a chance for Halle Berry to have a starring role and to spin off Catwoman into her own movie franchise if it was successful. Long story short, it was not successful. They reworked the origin, outfit, and pretty much everything that made Catwoman Catwoman. Instead of being a slightly more criminal foil to Batman, in this movie she was chosen to be another in a long line of Catwomen by an Egyptian cat that tests her by seeing if she’ll climb out onto a ledge from a high rise apartment building to “rescue” the cat. And of course during that she is saved by a conveniently passing cop who thinks she is a jumper and of course they immediately like each other. She also conveniently overhears a diabolical secret of the cosmetics company that the new line of beauty cream they are getting ready to launch makes people sick, addicted, and ruins their face if they stop using it. She is then killed and conveniently resurrected by the same Egyptian cat and all of his cat friends. This gives her cat powers like being able to see and hear better, and she gets all the catlike traits of batting at quick moving objects, sleeping on high ledges, loving catnip, hissing at dogs, the list goes on and on. Pretty much every cat trait you can think of, Halle Berry does at some point during this movie. And it’s funny less than half of the time.
What’s more funny is the even worse cliched one-liners that she spouts during any of the so called action sequences. They usually amount to her running around the walls like a cat using the early CGI actor replacement which turns her into a shiny videogame-esque character that they try to hide with fast moving cameras and quick cuts. There’s even the bad bait and switch plot which is ruined because they show Sharon Stone talking about the harmful effects of the cream at the beginning, then set up the whole fact that she is playing Catwoman into her own plans which feels like it’s supposed to be a surprise for the audience, but the audience already knows that Sharon Stone is in on it the entire time. And because Catwoman wouldn’t be a real hero unless she was facing off against someone else who is superhuman in some way, they throw in the fact that Sharon Stone has been using the cream so much that her skin is as strong as marble and she feels no pain anymore… yes really. So it’s a magic cream that gets rid of wrinkles, gives people headaches, makes them addicted, destroys their skin if they stop using it, but makes their skin rock hard yet still beautiful if used over the course of years. Riiiiight.
There’s also the whole split personality that is explained as a side effect of the whole Catwoman origin process. Instead of being a shy, mousy, frumpy woman, she becomes a confident, independent, sexy woman. In the early part of the movie she seems not in control of this, mouthing off to her boss then immediately wanting to take back what she said. And later she seems to be more in control of it by embracing it fully while she’s wearing her Catwoman outfit yet still using it sparingly during the rest of her life. The costume is equal parts ridiculous as well, with a cat-eared mask that makes it look like she has a giant head, to the S&M inspired leather bra, shredded pants, and a whip. They even use an early moment to “explain” the whip where she rips off a beer tap and uses it for a whip then has the “aha” moment. You can almost see the lightbulb going off above her head during this scene. I skipped over this, but there’s plenty of these lightbulb moments early on like when she discovers her newfound agility by… being good at basketball.
There’s just not enough words to go through how many places this movie just fails to hit the mark. It’s cliche after cliche, from the bad costume to the bad villain, to the bad love story, to the bad dialog, to the bad funny sidekick in Alex Borstein. I enjoyed watching this movie only because I found it hilariously bad. Pretty much any time Halle Berry opened her mouth during a fight scene, it made me laugh. And I knew it was going to happen from the beginning, but Jena loved this movie. She loved all the cats in the movie and constantly asked if Halle Berry was turning into a cat. Although I suspect that on some level she liked the movie’s awfulness the same way we did. There were several moments when she started laughing at scenes that were just bad instead of funny . Stay tuned for Sunday when I watch Spawn as my second movie for the easiest “can you guess the theme” for February. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
The Incredibles
The Incredibles 2004
It’s Friday evening and I’ve been looking forward to watching The Incredibles again. This has got to be one of the best superhero movies that I’ve ever seen, and next to Batman this is one of Jena’s favorite superheroes as well and she loved the movie from start to finish. While the Incredibles aren’t based on any existing comic books, they epitomize the classic Superhero types and of course they are very strongly inspired by the Fantastic Four. Some people even go so far as to say they almost directly copied them. Instead of Mr. Fantastic Reed Richards, there is Elastigirl Helen Parr. The Invisible Woman Sue Storm is replaced by the daughter Violet. Those two are pretty much direct copies, especially Violet since I’ve never heard of any other superhero that pairs invisibility with forcefields. The baby Jack Jack has a brief touch of the Human Torch’s powers and Dash has a little bit of the Torch’s personality. And Mr. Incredible is the brawn of the team as is The Thing, but those connections are a bit more of a stretch. And it’s not like one can’t count dozens of superheroes from different publishers that are essentially the same. I personally don’t think it’s a big detraction of the movie and I’m not even sure many people other than a few fanboys on message boards. In fact I think it’s kind of funny when I read that parts of the Fantastic Four script was changed because it was too close to this movie.
The movie starts off in the past, with an interview of all the heroes talking about what they would like out of life, and it turns out later on that later in life they all end up wanting the opposite of what they want at that moment in time. Like Mr. Incredible says that he’d like to take a break from heroing, and yet fifteen years later, all he wants to do is to be a hero again. It also shows the heroes in their prime with a great action setpiece filled with a lot of funny bits like the obligatory cat in the tree and of course there’s the standard superhero rescues like a bank robbery, a train disaster, and the kid sidekick. And yet there’s enough of a twist for all of these to make them feel fresh, even the kid fan that goes on to screw things up. I noticed this especially with the train scene and there’s that quick moment where Mr. Incredible braces himself for the train impact. It’s not the typical steeling himself that usually accompanies these moments where the hero grits his teeth and prepares for impact, but instead he turns his head and closes his eyes. He’s prepared for it, but in a much more realistic way. I also really like the subtle nod to one of my favorite films when Mr. Incredible is trying to remember Incrediboy’s real name and starts off by calling him Brody, which was the name of Jason Lee’s character in Mallrats, he also happens to voice Incrediboy and later Syndrome. And it ends with the wedding of Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl.
It then goes on to touch upon the public’s distrust of superheroes and their love for litigation, which causes the government to discontinue their superhero program and place all of the current heroes into basically the superhero protection program. Jump fifteen years into the future and Mr. Incredible is a pencil pusher who’s gained a lot of weight and Elastigirl is now a happy homemaker with three children. Violet who is the shy, unsure of herself teenager who can become invisible, Dash is the hyper troublemaker with superspeed. The powers feel in this context feel a lot more symbolic than just being copies of the Fantastic Four. The introduction of both of the kid’s powers feel pretty organic, interesting, and funny.
Throughout this movie, there is what feels like a great blend of drama, humor, and action. The emotional scenes feel earned, and the action scenes are all exciting. My favorite of the action scenes are the two infiltration scenes with Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl alternately breaking into Syndrome’s inner lair. It’s not too often that someone with Mr. Incredible’s power sneaks in through the back rather than going into a frontal assault through the front doors. It’s also rare to see a hero get to where it feels like he’s truly been defeated. It’s a very subtle, yet fantastic moment after Mr. Incredible thinks that his family is dead and you can just hear him quietly sobbing in the background.
I can go on and on about what this movie does right, from the hilarious Edna Mode, to the great voicework of the kid actor playing Dash. I especially love the amount of joy and enthusiasm he has when he first gets to let loose with his superpowers on the volcanic island. Even the subplot of Mirage turning against Syndrome to help Mr. Incredible. And I’ve been thinking about it for a while, there’s just not much that this movie does wrong. My only question is that the interim fifteen years are rather glossed over. There seemed to be an awful lot of superheroes out there, and once they all go away, things just carry on as normal? Were there any supervillain uprisings, or did the supervillains pretty much go away too with no superheroes to pit themselves against? And if things were perfectly calm during those times, then does the world really need the superheroes to return? And even though I’ve heard a lot of people clamoring for a sequel, especially more than a sequel to Cars or Monsters Inc., but I’m honestly not sure what kind of story they could tell in a sequel and have it come out as complete as this movie. I get the feeling if they tried to create a sequel, it would end up just being much more of an action setpiece. Maybe if they set the movie several years in the future again and have the children ready to set out on their own, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen anytime soon, if ever. Regardless, this is a fantastic movie and will be one of my favorites for a long time. This was a movie that I devoured when I got it on DVD. In fact, I believe several of my favorite moments talked about in the film’s commentary or special features. Which is something I don’t explore as much as I used to. I was even able to get Jena to talk about this movie for a little while, check it out right below. This Tuesday has a special bonus review of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths instead of my usual blog, keep an eye out for it. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Superman Returns
Superman Returns 2006
I started watching this movie with a preconceived notion in my head. I originally watched this movie when it came out in an IMAX theater and I enjoyed it, even though I wasn’t too impressed with the few 3D scenes. I later bought it on DVD, but it wasn’t an immediate buy, I bought it because it was on a super-discounted sale and I don’t think I ever watched it after I bought it, maybe once, and I think I watched some of the special features. But instead I became influenced by the opinion of the internet which dubbed this a mediocre and boring sequel with a lot of dumb ideas. So when I started watching this movie again, I was expecting a certain level of mediocrity. I was wrong. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t blown away by this movie, but I was interested and invested in it through most of the almost two and a half hours of it. I say most because it did go on a bit too long. I also noticed the starting of a dichotomy in the way I watched this movie since writing these review blogs. In some parts of the movie I caught myself watching with an extra critical eye, and yet other places I still got carried away in the movie. Jena in the meantime had to practically be dragged downstairs to watch it, wouldn’t stop talking, and really just wanted to go back upstairs and play. The only time she was mostly quiet during that 45 minutes or so was during the shuttle sequence.
One of the biggest things going for this movie is the fact that Bryan Singer knows his Superman. There are tons of references to all sorts of previous incarnations of Superman, some are nice and smooth like the fact that Lois doesn’t know how to spell, while others are a bit of “look at that, Superman is posing just like he did in Action Comics #1”. You could almost play a drinking game – take a drink anytime an older Superman is referenced. It helps a lot that I just watched the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies not too long ago, as the director himself has said that this movie is kind of a spiritual sequel to Richard Donner’s Superman II. There also seems to be a lot of the Christ metaphor that Richard Donner has said to have used in the original Superman movies, especially the scene where Superman is falling to Earth from space in the shape of a crucifix and more or less is resurrected shortly afterwards.
I almost disagree with the thought that this is a spiritual sequel to Superman II though, because in my mind it feels like it tries to cover a lot of the same ground as the first Superman movie. Superman’s been gone for 5 years so the world is more or less at a point where it’s like there’s never been a Superman. When he returns it’s just like when he first arrived, the only difference is that people are asking “where has he been?” instead of “where did he come from?”. Not only that, but Lex’s entire scheme is more or less the same as it was before, only bigger. Instead of buying up cheap land in the desert and knocking the rest of California into the sea, he’s creating new land and forcing most of the USA into the sea. There’s also no real fight scene, the biggest action setpieces are Superman saving people from disasters, not supervillains. He even reintroduces himself to Lois with a flight around town and an exclusive interview. But instead of falling for a single Lois, he’s trying to break up Lois’s steady relationship even though she’s practically dating a surrogate Superman/Clark Kent hybrid. He flies, he’s a reporter, and he’s there when she needs him. Not only that, but in her time of most dire need, Richard chooses her while Superman chooses Metropolis.
The relationship was almost the biggest part of this movie and when you look at it from that perspective, I thought it did a good job of portraying such a complicated relationship. Lois loved Superman, they got together in the second movie but her memory was erased of it. In fact I just realized that she supposedly had no memory of their night together as per Superman II, that leads the question of how quickly did Superman leave after that night, and how quickly did she get into a new relationship? Anyway she loved Superman but he left her without saying goodbye and she rightly moved on.
Aside from the relationships, there was some action in this movie. There were a couple disasters like the shuttle sequence near the beginning of the movie and the Metropolis destruction from the crystal’s EMP. Both of these scenes were well done with big budget special effects and kept me hooked. But the climax of the movie, where Superman gets beaten up on the Kryptonite crystal island, stabbed with Kryptonite and yet all it takes is a little sun and he’s got enough power to lift the entire Kryptonite island into space when in the first movie he couldn’t even get out of a pool with a little Kryptonite necklace around his neck.
And finally there’s the biggest all around complaint I’ve seen about this movie – Superman’s son. From the beginning it’s really clear to the audience that it’s Superman’s son even though all the characters are doing their best to deny it, claiming it’s Richard’s son. He’s also presented as an extremely fragile and sickly boy with various allergies, asthma, and whatever else he has. And yet after exposure to Kryptonite – my theory anyway – he begins to show signs of being Superman’s son, like violently crushing a man to death with a piano. Thatta boy! As well as hints of superhuman sight finding Superman in the ocean. I’m not mad that the kid is Superman’s son, but there’s just so much stuff that could have been handled differently. Like the fact that Superman’s been gone 5 years which would make him 4 years old, yet he looks and acts much older. He had no knowledge of the boy so he had to have taken off very soon after Superman II, and Lois had to have quickly hooked up with Richard for everyone to think it’s Richard’s kid. But in the grand scheme of things, most of those problems could have just been explained better without changing the movie.
Finally, how did I think this compares with the original Superman? I thought Christopher Reeve played a much better Clark Kent. Brandon Routh does an ok job, but I thought it was ridiculous when the jokes were made comparing the two and all the other characters laughed it off, when for me Routh’s Clark had a little too much confidence to be all that separate from Superman. I also thought the original flight with Superman and Lois had more wonder to it than this one, other than the whole “can you read my mind” voiceover. But the action scenes in this one were much better, the improvement in special effects really does a lot in this respect. And Kevin Spacey‘s Lex Luthor is a lot more cold and calculating, yet he still retains a bit of the old humor even if it’s a lot darker this time around, which I do like. And continuing my trend in finding interest in the side characters, I really enjoyed Kitty in this movie. I thought Parker Posey had a lot of fun with the role. I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on Superman Returns, next week I’ll be taking a look at the old and new Captain America movies for the first time. Until next time this is Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 