Category Archives: 00’s movies
The Crow: Wicked Prayer
The Crow: Wicked Prayer 2005
I’ve been meaning to watch this movie for quite a while after re-watching the original Crow and watching the first sequel, City of Angels. But considering how bad the first sequel was and I imagined it went downhill from there I just kept putting it off. But when I was scheduling an upcoming Filmwhys guest, I found out that he had never seen the first Crow, and while I had already covered that movie I finally decided it was time to take on another one of the sequels. I went with Wicked Prayer mainly because for whatever reason, that was the one that was paired with City of Angels on the bargain bin double sided DVD I picked up for this site even though it completely skips the third movie. But as with most of the Crow movies, there is no connection between them aside from the fact that someone is killed in a major dick move and they come back for vengeance, or as the “legend” puts it: “make the wrong things right”. This movie also has some star power backing it up more or less with the likes of David Boreanaz, Tara Reid, Edward Furlong, and Dennis Hopper. After watching the first sequel, it felt like a pale imitation of the original and this fourth one is much more like a hollow mockery of it.
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Graphic Horror: 30 Days of Night
30 Days of Night 2007
This Graphic (Novel) Horror blogathon is coming to a close and I’m finally coming around to one of the movies that first came to mind when I was thinking about movies that I should cover. I saw it back when it was still fairly new and quite enjoyed it, but hadn’t seen it since then and have never seen the sequel. I always thought it was an interesting concept for a vampire movie. One of the vampire’s biggest weaknesses was the fact that they couldn’t be out in the sunlight, but in the Arctic Circle there’s a full 30 days of night without any sun, not only that but according to this story the town basically cuts itself off from any other town South of it for the duration of the darkest part of winter so this clan of vampires can essentially feed at will for a full month without any fear of being discovered and stopped by a larger force from outside of town. There are also plenty of great visuals along the way that really had a graphic novel feel to them, whether or not they were actually taken from the pages of the original comic.
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Graphic Horror: The Cell
Graphic Horror: The Cell 2000
When I first decided to run this Graphic Horror blogathon, I was planning on only covering the movies that were actually based on graphic novels, but when no one jumped on the Cell, I couldn’t let that go considering that this was pretty much the first movie that I thought of when I came up with the entire idea for the blogathon in the first place. When I was younger, I never really got into horror movies much, but after seeing Seven there was a while where I would seek out these not-quite-horror movies focused on serial killers. I was also a big fan of artistic music videos like Nine Inch Nails and a couple of Madonna’s videos and this movie looked right in line with that surreal, dreamlike music video style, though honestly I don’t think I’ve revisited this movie since that time. But it has still always stuck with me as an interesting concept with beautiful visuals even though the other things like the plot never really stuck with me as closely. I had even forgotten that Vince Vaughn had a significant role in this movie.
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Defendor
Defendor 2009
This is the last of a small group of similarly themed independent superhero movies that I’ve come around to watching. Alongside Special, Super, and to a lesser extent Kick-Ass, this is definitely the one with the least amount of humor in it, but I think it’s coming to be the one that I like the most. It’s not exactly a big movie but it does have a nice cast consisting of Woody Harrelson as Arthur Poppington/Defendor, Elias Koteas as Officer Dooney, Kat Dennings as Angel/Kat Debrofkowitz, and Sandra Oh as the psychiatric evaluator. The way I like to describe the tone of the movie is if Forrest Gump was Batman. There is some humor in it, but the movie rarely uses Arthur’s mental disability as a source of humor, instead it uses it much more as a source of empathy. And instead of stumbling his way through significant moments in history, he stumbles his way through a local drug lord’s activities. It has moments of lightness, but also becomes a bit of a crime drama mixed with a bit of social commentary. If you can find it anywhere out there, it’s worth your time to check it out.
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Ghost World
Ghost World 2001
Once again I’m back with another non-superhero graphic novel adaptation, and another one where I knew next to nothing about this movie going into it aside from an early appearance by Scarlett Johansson, and when it popped up, I also remembered seeing a pic of this movie with Thora Birch wearing the Catwoman mask. It’s a little hard to describe this movie, it’s not really a coming of age story even though it mainly follows the life of one girl in an important transition in her life. It’s not really a romance movie even though there are some relationships throughout. It’s not really a comedy even though there are some laughs scattered through the movie. It’s not even what I like to call a slice of life movie as it is a bit deeper than that. One thing I can say about this movie is that it is quite thought provoking and full of relatable characters and typical situations, but with enough of a twist so that they are still worthy of being a cinematic creation. It has really stuck with me in a way that’s hard to describe, but that’s what I’m here to try and do.
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A History of Violence
A History of Violence 2005
Slowly but surely I’m progressing through some non-superhero comic book adaptations this month. This is one area of movies that I cover for this site where I’m extremely unfamiliar with the movies. Before I started reviewing movies for this site, I had already seen dozens of superhero movies which I’ve been re-watching to review, but movies in this category are much fewer and further between. So when I picked A History of Violence to watch the other night, it was honestly based solely on the runtime, being about half an hour shorter than the other options I was considering. I knew absolutely nothing about this movie other than the title, the fact that it starred Viggo Mortenson, and it was based on a graphic novel. What I ended up watching was a very compelling story about a man trying to live a simple life only to have his dark past come back to haunt him, causing him to find a way to free himself of that past once and for all. This movie really surprised me in a lot of great ways, and I was never entirely sure of what direction it was going to take until the credits finally rolled. Movies like this are why I so greatly enjoy writing for this site.
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Timecop: The Berlin Decision
Timecop: The Berlin Decision 2003
I don’t think I even knew that there was a sequel to Timecop until I started looking up information about the Jean Claude Van Damme version. It’s not surprising because it came out several years later, direct to video, with none of the same stars. Instead of Van Damme, we’re given Jason Scott Lee as yet another foreign lead and Timecop. And the villain this time around is also a member of a group trying to eliminate the Timecop program as a member of the Society for Historical Accuracy, or something like that. There is a bit of a problem with plot clarity, but there is quite a bit more questioning of the possibilities of time travel, including the beginning and titular scene where Brandon Miller seeks to kill Hitler while timecop Ryan Chan stops him in order to preserve the timeline in spite of any possibly positive repurcussions. I also noticed a surprisingly improved fight choreography, as Van Damme is a noted martial artist himself, though there are a few fight scenes that were better than anything from the first one.
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Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies 2009
Happy New Year! There hasn’t been a lot of voting in my “what I should watch in 2014” poll, but the winner in both the poll and the comments was non-superhero movies. So at least here in January, I’ll be watching some more varied movies that are still based on comics. But today I’m doing what I thought I did a couple months back until I realized that there was still a DC animated movie that I had yet to review, even though I had seen it before my website days. Public Enemies was the first of these movies to really focus on the Batman/Superman team up, and while I didn’t like it as much as Apocalypse, I still had a lot of fun with it.There’s a ton of cameos of various supervillains and some lesser known heroes, but it brings back the ever familiar voices for Batman, Superman, and Lex Luthor which is always a good sign even if it has a couple odd patches here and there.
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Justice League: The New Frontier
Justice League: The New Frontier 2008
I think one of the hardest part about watching and reviewing some of these DC titles is the fact that so many of them are in different, overlapping continuities and when there is that continuity that connects in a great way then it’s that much harder to connect with any different continuity. And that’s really my biggest problem with The New Frontier. It was one of the earlier efforts by DC Animation coming out after Doomsday and even though I watched it fairly early on it didn’t really connect with me then. And watching it again, there have been a few other animated projects that did connect strongly with me that now that I’m finishing my run of the currently released DC Animated movies, this is the one that tends to fall flat with me considering that almost all of the members of the Justice League represented in this movie except for possibly Martian Manhunter, I can think of another movie that represents what I think of as the definitive version of that character. But considering that this is one of the earlier movies, it still holds up well and has a lot more violence in it than I remembered it having, and yet still nothing near what has been in some of the most recent titles. It could be considered a sort of origin story for this incarnation of the Justice League, even though there is mention of the breakdown of the Justice Society, and there are a few origin stories laced throughout the movie for some of the individual members, but there’s also an underlying theme of trust and coming together for the good of us all.
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League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2003
I had heard a lot of the behind the scenes stories about this movie, it’s Sean Connery’s last on-screen role before going into retirement, and there were a lot of struggles between him and the director. It got a lot of negative press after it came out because the source material is very literate while the movie is much more of a dumbed down action movie that spells out any references it makes so that more people will catch the reference, like when they make the Around the World in 80 Days reference, and then points out exactly where it came from. But I did enjoy the movie then, and I still mostly enjoyed it now even though I recognize a lot more of the flaws in it this time around. I think it helps that I’m not actually familiar with the source material comic. It’s not an incredibly deep movie by any means, but it does have some fun bits inbetween the ridiculous moments.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 