Category Archives: 10’s movies
Alter Egos
Alter Egos 2012
It’s been a while since I’ve gotten around to watching a proper superhero movie to review here, I’ve been busy with Channel: Superhero as usual as well as work stuff. But I finally caught up with this film that I had heard of back when it got picked up by Kevin Smith for his new SModcast pictures presents which was quickly renamed to the Kevin Smith movie club where it ran for three years until 2013. I had no idea what the movie was actually about aside from the catch phrase “Alter Egos” and honestly thought it had more to do with the real life superheroes that these lower budget indie superhero flicks tend to move towards. But instead, it has built a world all its own and it only focuses on a small portion of that world. It has a fair amount of humor, and uses the minimal special effects to the film’s advantage to craft an all around entertaining movie. I really enjoyed this look at the struggles of a superhero’s persona with the hints of the larger world revolving around it.
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The Posthuman Project
The Posthuman Project 2015
Even though I try to keep myself up to date on superhero movies coming out, I rarely search out indie projects and obscure films anymore. Instead, I rely on my social networks and newsfeeds to point them out to me as they show up on other people’s radar, which is why I didn’t find out about this film until a few short months ago when it had its wide release through digital outlets. I’ve watched a fair number of low budget, indie superhero films and I do find myself coming at them from a different perspective. The acting won’t always be there, and neither will the special effects, but there’s usually something in the writing or direction that I can grasp onto and see what the filmmakers were going for. There is some of that here in the Posthuman project, but not quite enough for me to love this film in the way that I have with All Superheroes Must Die, or Squid Man. It’s got some good ideas, and a couple good characters, but it suffers in several places from trying to reach beyond its limitations.
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Lego Justice League: Attack of the Legion of Doom
Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Attack of the Legion of Doom 2015
I’ve been a big fan of the Lego brand for ages, along with their video games since the Lego Star Wars games and their movies from last year and this year. They came out with their Lego Batman straight to home video movie last year which essentially followed the plot of video game Lego Batman 2. There was another one that came out earlier this year which had the Justice League fighting Bizarro characters and Darkseid, and this continues that story where Darkseid is using Lex Luthor for revenge while Cyborg is the new member of the team. It’s a little bit funny that two animated films released within a week or so of each other both feature Cyborg as the new member of the team, with this film and Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem which I watched and reviewed a few days ago. Doing a brief comparison of the two, even though they are both essentially used to help sell toys, this Lego movie uses humor much better and doesn’t feel quite so shameless or formulaic. Instead, it brings the humor that the brand has become known for and is generally hilarious from start to finish.
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Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem
Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem 2015
It was only a few months ago that the first Batman Unlimited movie came out to home video and it’s already time for the sequel. It’s a little tough to get behind this kind of movie that is inherently designed to market their toy line, and watching it with that in mind, it does exactly that in spades. With just two films, they introduce a large number of heroes, villains, and accessories. The first film introduced all the animal themed villains, while this one introduces all of the monstrous themed villains. Though the problem that I had with the first film carries over just as much with this film. I.E. there are no women outside of a single villainess Silver Banshee who I was never familiar with before seeing this film. Like Animal Instincts and last year’s JLA Adventures, this is very kid friendly and lighthearted as opposed to the typical hard PG-13 DC animation with their other Batman and Justice League animated films. Taken at face value, it’s harmless and entertaining enough, it’s just the whole concept surrounding it that rubs me the wrong way in more ways than one.
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The Death of “Superman Lives”; What Happened?
The Death of “Superman Lives”; What Happened? 2015
It seems that I’m finally getting around to some of the backlogged non-theatrical releases that have come out this year. This film was originally launched as a kickstarter by John Schnepp a couple years ago to chronicle his quest to find out what happened to this multi-year project that ended up never getting made. He gets interviews with many of the major players including all three script writers, producer Jon Peters, director Tim Burton, and plenty of concept artists. Enhancing the interviews are snippets of the film recreated in animation or in a couple cases live action as well as plenty of concept art and behind the scenes archival footage. It’s not really an investigation of how this film got cancelled, instead it’s more like a look back on the making of the film that ends just before they would have started filming. As someone who has heard a little bit about this project, and probably from the source that most people would have heard it from: Kevin Smith, I thought it was generally fascinating, though it did run a bit too long for my taste and especially for my wife’s taste.
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Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four 2015
This is the fourth Fantastic Four movie that I’ve watched and reviewed for this site, it seems like the franchise gets rebooted every ten years or so. This one has been plagued for well over a year with reports of reshoots, studio interference, the director Josh Trank acting odd on the set, large sections of his film being pulled out at the last moment in the editing room, and now that it’s come out it’s getting largely negative reviews and the box office is over 30% less than early projections. There’s quite a bit of backlash against this film for quite a few reasons: it hasn’t been done well in the past, fans seem to think it would fare better with Disney Marvel behind it, and the early reports had the film changing seemingly everything that people supposedly knew and loved about the Fantastic Four. I will say that I don’t believe that it deserves the 9% it has at the moment on Rotten Tomatoes, I can imagine that it’s a high amount of mildly negative reviews which isn’t entirely fair to the film. What is a bit more obvious is that whatever the reason, this film became a victim of studio interference rather than a single creative vision. Ten years from now, the story surrounding the film will be much more prominent than the film itself as it will likely fade into obscurity unless someone has the guts to finish an alternate cut of the film to bring back the original intent. For my part, I could see where the film was going initially and I was interested, but it made a reshot nosedive towards the end and I could feel that a lot of the characters were missing from the final product.
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Justice League: Gods and Monsters
Justice League: Gods and Monsters 2015
It’s time for me to catch up on some more slightly under the radar new releases that have slipped past me in the past couple months or so. The first one that I checked out is the latest in the neverending releases from DC Animation, this brings about the return of Bruce Timm as writer who was the head of animation during the days of Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and is more or less credited with making DC Animation the respected studio that it has become today. He has overseen much of the DC Animated universe as executive producer, but the last movie that was written by him goes all the way back to the first with Superman/Doomsday. Gods and Monsters takes an alternate universe look at what the Justice League could have been if things had turned out very differently for a lot of people. Here, the Justice League is a small group of superhumans who are respected to a certain extent, but mostly feared by the general public as a potential menace who destroys any enemies they come across. I’ve always enjoyed alternate universe stories, and while this one was fascinating, I often felt like I was missing something with my limited knowledge of the extended DC Universe.
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Ant-Man
Ant-Man 2015
It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve gotten the chance to see a new release in theaters, and there have been a small handful of new releases that have come out on digital and home video in the past few weeks that I plan on visiting very soon. But Ant-Man initially felt like Marvel’s first risky venture. Arguably last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy was also considered a risk, but the hype leading up to the release along with all the trailers were exceedingly positive the entire way through. Here, the fan reaction has been hit or miss with all the promotional materials leading up to the release, not to mention the backlash when Edgar Wright dropped out as director shortly before filming. Considering that Marvel has essentially become its own machine, with a similar tone in all of its movies with variations falling more on the drama half of the equation, I went in with moderate expectations and I really enjoyed myself. It was almost as funny as Guardians of the Galaxy, though it did have a slightly different style of humor, and the action was also quite impressive considering it generally involves the hero becoming really small and back again.
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Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts
Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts 2015
While I had initially only planned to do animation through April, May is almost over and I’m still sticking to the animated fare. And while I’ve just gone though catching up on a few Marvel animated films I hadn’t gotten around to yet, DC is still cranking them out on a regular basis. I hadn’t heard much lead up to this title so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect at all. I’m not familiar with any sort of Batman Unlimited universe whether in the comics or on TV. From what I can tell from this film it’s set in the future, kind of like Batman Beyond, but instead of it being a future generation, it’s just Batman and several of the less extraterrestrial Justice League set in the future. It also reminded me a little bit of last year’s JLA Adventures where this was a very kid friendly adventure as opposed to the increasingly darker PG-13 stories typical of recent DC Animated films. It’s also worth noting that this film is intended to help launch a new toy line of DC Unlimited characters which will also continue in shorts and future home video films which actually makes me think of the Monster High style of marketing. As an actual film it was a fun little adventure without too much real depth to it, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
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Avengers: Age of Ultron
Avengers: Age of Ultron 2015
It was alright. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 