Category Archives: 10’s movies
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: The Killing Joke 2016
Part of the reason why I decided to watch a bunch of animated movies during July was because I knew that Batman: The Killing Joke was coming out this month and there weren’t any other theatrical releases until August. What ultimately made this more special was that this film was something that I specifically called for almost 3 years ago, even calling for the R rating to separate it from the family fare. What’s probably most interesting about all this is that I haven’t actually read the Killing Joke myself. I’m acutely aware of it, not just for its critical praise and commercial success, but also for some of the more negative critics, specifically for its depictions and/or implications of violence against women and a piece of the large trend of Women in refrigerators. Even as fans started discussing this specific movie, there were also criticisms aimed against it for its new opening act that wasn’t a part of the original story. But for my part, I generally enjoyed the film but I can see some of the weak points in the story.
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Phantom Boy
Phantom Boy 2016
I can almost see the end of this month of animated superhero and comic book movies as I tackle this French animated film that has just now gotten a full blown English dub from GKids who also did the English dub for Wrinkles which I watched earlier this month, they were also gracious enough to send me a screener. I had caught wind of this film several months ago around when it was announced that GKids would be handling the English distribution, but I was unclear as to whether or not I would consider it to be a superhero movie or not. And while it does have a kid with super powers, it doesn’t really play like any superhero movie before it, but what does push it just over the top is the very theatrical and comic book styled mobster villain named the Face. It deals with plenty of non-superhero issues and also plays with a few of the villain tropes in a fun way. It does cop out a little bit with the ending, but overall I really enjoyed this film.
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Wrinkles
Wrinkles aka Arrugas 2011
Going full on into animation month here as I have decided to jump back and forth between animation geared for adults and those geared for kids. After checking out the latest kid’s Lego Justice League film I decided to check out this Spanish animated drama about an old folk’s home. And even though the original language track is often preferred by cinephiles, when I saw that Martin Sheen was in the English voice cast I decided to watch the English dub. And while I didn’t really know anything about this film aside from a couple recommendations and a quick mention of Alzheimer’s, I was surprised how much I loved this film. It alternates between making you laugh and making you cry in a heartbeat, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Lego Justice League: Gotham City Breakout
Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League Gotham City Breakout 2016
This is the latest in one of the many DC animated series that have been coming from Warner bros, typically all focused on either Batman or the Justice League. It follows the same general pattern where it’s much more kid friendly than the Warner Premier PG-13 movies, but it also has a lot more humor that adults will get a kick out of unlike the Batman Unlimited series. It seems like this one really cranked the jokes up to 11, especially if you’re a longtime fan of Batman with several references to the Adam West series and two plots going on at once which keep things going at a near breakneck pace. So far, this has been my favorite of all the Lego DC movies and a lot of fun, especially if you have kids.
June-ing the Cult: The Movie Rat and Zokkomon
Zokkomon 2011
My June-ing the Cult month is winding down as I get to my last two which are also the two most recent films in this line up. Over at the The Movie Rat, Bernardo suggested that I check out Zokkomon, which is only five years old at the moment and was actually distributed by Disney World Cinema. Aside from that, I had no idea what I was getting into other than I assumed there would be at least some musical numbers based on what little I’ve seen out of Bollywood. What I ended up getting was a weird mix of Batman, Harry Potter, with a little Matilda and even the Karate Kid thrown in for good measure. The high point was the colorful characters and the touch of a greater message that was only slightly heavy handed. Very fun film and easily recommended.
X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Apocalypse 2016
We are starting to get deep into the summer movie season as we kick into the latest comic book movie with superheroes fighting superheroes, but at least in this case every movie has been about mutants fighting mutants. And very similar to the last two theatrical releases this year, I enjoyed this movie as well, but thought that overall it had some notable issues with it. There were definitely moments where I had a nice fanboy grin plastered on my face, and there weren’t really any parts during the film where I thought it was dragging, but after it was all over and I started thinking about it a bit more thoroughly, there were just too many questions that kept dragging through my head. And as is often the case with theatrically released movies, there may be spoilers ahead so read on only if you’ve seen the film or don’t care about knowing what’s to come.
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ABCs of Superheroes
ABCs of Superheroes aka League of Superheroes 2015
I really do love Twitter, something that I have stopped doing for a while is scouring the internet for possible superhero movie titles that I may have missed. Instead, until I run out of titles to review I merely sit back and keep an eye out for any that might cross my path, which just so happened with this film. I noticed a retweet from one of the producers by Lloyd Kaufman so I reached out to him to request a screener knowing literally nothing about the film aside from its title. After watching the film it made complete sense that Kaufman RT’d it for a couple reasons, one was that he made a cameo in the film, and second because it has a very Troma-esque feel to it. Blood and nudity abound alongside low budget effects, questionable acting skills, and a very tongue in cheek humor about itself. And just like the best Troma films, it all combined to make a very hilariously entertaining film.
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Avenging Force: The Scarab
Avenging Force: The Scarab 2010
I’ve often said that the worst superhero movie that I’ve ever seen is an incredibly low budget and indie superhero movie based on a public domain comic book called Captain Battle. This falls right along the same lines, and even had one of the same distribution companies. It feels like it could have been a mockbuster, though it came out two years before the Avengers. It has many of the same issues as Captain Battle, though the filmmakers were technically much more competent, they were still a long ways away from being good. Everything about this film was poor from the story to the costume design all the way through the acting and directing. At least the actors pretended their guns had some recoil, so they have that going for it.
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Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: Civil War 2016
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is back with its latest installment of their ongoing franchise. And even though I watched this movie on opening night, I feel like everyone and their mother has already voiced their adoration upon this film, probably just because it was released in many other countries a week early. As a whole, Marvel films have been pretty high on my radar starting off with Avengers as the first MCU that was released since starting this site and most of the Phase 2 sequels were much better than the originals until they hit a bit of a snag with Age of Ultron that felt like they were too focused on setting up future films to worry about focusing on the current one. On that front, I felt like Civil War was a success, while it greatly helped to have knowledge of past films, Civil War felt much more self-contained than Age of Ultron. It has the fun aspect that permeates all of the Marvel films as well as some incredible action and some thought provoking themes, but it just didn’t quite knock it out of the park for me this time. And fair warning since this has just opened in the US, there may be spoilers ahead.
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Veggietales: The League of Incredible Vegetables
Veggietales: The League of Incredible Vegetables 2012
Coming into the home stretch for this month of kids’ superhero movies is what is likely to be the youngest skewing movie I will ever cover on this site, unless I run out of other movies to review. I’m not interested in reviewing something intended for preschoolers like Dora the Explorer: Superbabies, but even this is probably stretching what passes for an actual movie. For one thing, it only runs for about 48 minutes: the length of an hour TV show minus commercials. The target audience is also for around 5-10 year olds, but that’s not too far from the target audience for other superhero shows like Superfriends. And also, it’s part of the dreaded Christian propaganda machine. Not that I have anything against Christians in general, I still vaguely consider myself to be one, but their idea of entertainment usually falls more on the side of being preachy than being entertaining. But I have had my experiences with Veggietales as both an uncle and a father so I more or less knew what I was getting into, and I have to admit that I do enjoy the sense of humor that goes into these films. It’s just that message crammed into the end that sours it a little for me.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 