Category Archives: 10’s movies
JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time
JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time 2014
This is a movie you might not have heard about until recently even if you follow DC Animation, it’s a bit of a stealth release, only popping up on people’s radars when it was included in Target’s mailer last week as it is a Target DVD exclusive. One thing I immediately found out about it was that it is something much lighter in tone than many of the recent DC Animated movies. It’s much more in line with an updated version of Super Friends so I was excited because it was something that I could watch with my daughter Jena without worrying if there was too much blood in it. I’m always a fan of a time travel story and this has some very fun moments without bogging itself down with the nitty gritty details of it. The movie mainly follows a couple soon-to-be-members of the Legion of Super-heroes 1,000 years in the future: Dawnstar and Karate Kid. But back in the present, there’s also plenty of the Justice League and the Legion of Doom with many of their classic Super Friends roster with the addition of Cyborg who was only in the tail end of the Super Friends. I had a lot of fun with this movie and so did Jena.
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Justice League: War
Justice League: War 2014
Taking a quick break from the non-superhero comic book adaptations I watched a couple brand new DC Animation releases: Justice League: War and JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time. My review of Trapped in Time will be up in a couple days, but first I’m going to talk a bit about Justice League: War which is the first Animated offering from DC’s New 52 timeline offering up yet another Justice League origin story, though I haven’t read any of the New 52. Fortunately, even though a lot of it is the same thing we’ve seen more than a couple times, it’s still a fun ride. After the very dark turn in DC Animation with Dark Knight Returns and The Flashpoint Paradox, War lightens things up quite a bit while not going all the way around to being too shallow. There’s still plenty of action to be had here and they sneak in a single swear word, but the blood is kept to a minimum. It was also a nice change of pace to add Shazam into the mix, as he’s not usually one of the regulars in these movies.
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Hentai Kamen
Hentai Kamen: Forbidden Superhero 2013
What better way to bring in the Christmas spirit than to talk about an asian movie about a superhero who wears a pair of panties as his superhero mask and dresses like Borat was way too modest. Really though, this is a superhero spoof movie that’s much better than the awful Superhero Movie while going through a lot of the same types of conflicts and story beats, except in every case it turns it into something so ridiculously sex-related that it becomes absolutely hilarious. I’m sure some people won’t get the joke, but I thought that the level of seriousness this movie treated a superhero with a pair of women’s panties on his face was just the right amount of absurdity and obscenity to make me laugh hysterically through most of this movie.
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Captain Battle: Legacy War
Captain Battle: Legacy War 2013
Continuing on in my quest to watch all of the 2013 releases I can get my hands on, and I’m pretty sure I’ve come to what I would easily call the worst superhero film of 2013, and I’m not talking about Iron Man or Man of Steel like some people might claim. No, I’m talking about an actually bad movie. This movie looks worse than most fan films I’ve covered on this site. The special effects look like they were done on a trial version of After Effects, with page wipes straight out of Windows Movie Maker, and make up that looks like it was done with magic markers. The movie attempts a story that’s much too big for the special effects or acting abilities of those involved. And on top of that, while it is based on an actual comic book, the timing of it is a cheap rip-off of Captain America, complete with a Red Skull analogue with the aforementioned red magic marker special effects makeup. It has plenty of moments of enjoyably bad moviemaking, and a handful of T&A, but for the most part it was simply a boring mess of a movie.
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Legends of the Knight
Legends of the Knight 2014
It’s not so rare these days to find interesting projects looking for funding on Kickstarter, it is a bit more rare to find projects that actually catch my own personal interest. But when I heard about this project, I was happy to make it my first Kickstarter donation, giving $10 so I could get a digital download when it became available. This is a project by Brett Culp which takes a different look at Batman. It doesn’t look at the character himself, but instead takes a look at the impact that character has had on the world itself through a handful of people and their inspiring stories of how they take one part or another of Batman’s philosophy or his story as a whole and use it to improve their own lives and the lives of others. It is a documentary which takes a look at about a dozen people across the country who all have a strong connection to Batman in one way or another. Through a series of interviews and plenty of Batman artwork and children dressed up as Batman, we get to see a slice of these people’s lives and how Batman has made their lives better. You can view the trailer and find out more information at their official website.
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The Wolverine
The Wolverine 2013
I’m one step closer to watching all of the 2013 superhero and comic book movies of 2013 and this is one that I’m really disappointed that I missed out on in theaters since I’m a big X-Men and Wolverine fan though I’m not about to do any sort of X-Men marathon again any time soon. This is Hugh Jackman’s sixth turn at playing Wolverine, at least if you count his brief cameo in First Class and at least three more on the way with Days of Future Past coming out next year, Apocalypse announced for 2016, and another solo Wolverine movie very likely it seems that Hugh Jackman will be playing Wolverine until he is too old to pull off the mostly ageless mutant. This time around he’s put in Japan which is part of his origin story though this movie has it take place after the events of The Last Stand. He is brought there so a business tycoon named Yashida who used to be a soldier and was saved by Logan at Nagasaki during the atomic bombing. He is now dying and offers Logan an opportunity to relinquish his healing abilities and die a natural death. Things expectedly go sideways and Logan is left to protect Yashida’s granddaughter named Mariko while his healing abilities have been taken from him. Reminding me a bit of 2 Guns, there’s some good character interactions but it’s mixed with a heavily convoluted plotline. And I’d also like to note that I did watch the unrated extended edition for this review.
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2 Guns
2 Guns 2013
I’m continuing on my quest to watch the rest of 2013’s superhero and comic book movie releases before year’s end which brought me to this pseudo-buddy cop movie that may surprise you to find out that it was actually based on a comic book series from Boom studios. There’s nothing really special or extraordinary about this movie when comparing it to other, what I like to refer to as caper movies. The high point is definitely the friendly bickering chemistry between Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, but it’s a bit weighed down by the overly complex plot filled with double and triple crosses and you’re never really sure where anyone’s true allegiance lies. Violent fun at best, confusing at worst it was better than what I expected it to be, but I’m not surprised by those who didn’t click with this film.
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Iron Man and Hulk: Heroes United
Iron Man and Hulk: Heroes United 2013
It’s the start of December, nearing the end of 2013 and this is the last superhero movie release of the year. It’s also the first straight-to-video release from Marvel using CGI animation rather than the mix of traditional and CG that they’ve used for their past releases. It ends up looking much better than many of the cheap and/or old CGI cartoons of past home video releases and TV shows, but it’s still quite obviously far from the level of a theatrical release and the cheapness of the animation does show. It also felt like it’s aimed at a younger audience with a lot of humor that tends to focus more on slapstick and childish attitudes. Even the voice work has an air of cheapness that doesn’t quite capture the essence of either of the characters. There are some fun moments in the movie enough that I don’t regret watching it, but it really felt a lot more mediocre than I was expecting in more ways than one.
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Electric Man
Electric Man 2012
This movie marks the first time that a filmmaker has come to me and offered a screener for a movie that actually fits the context of my site. Even though it’s not really about the exploits of a superhero, instead it’s about the exploits of a comic book shop and a group of people who are focused on getting this important and rare comic book, issue #1 of Electric Man. The comic is a fictional precursor to Superman, and in mint condition goes for around $100,000. It takes place in Edinburg, Scotland and has a very English mentality to it. One of the ways that it was described to me was “Clerks meets the Maltese Falcon”, and while that’s not too far off the mark, it doesn’t meet either the comedy of the first, nor the mystery of the second. It has plenty of fun moments, and some interesting characters, but it doesn’t knock it out of the park.
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Dredd
Dredd 2012
I’m not entirely sure how I ended up missing this movie last year, along with pretty much everyone else that missed this movie during it’s fairly poor theatrical run. I did actually watch it earlier this year before watching the Stallone Judge Dredd but I decided not to review it mainly because I watched it on my small laptop and the visuals, especially the slomo visuals were something that the little screen couldn’t appropriately capture. So instead I waited until I got around to watching it on my bigger screen TV so I could more appropriately judge the movie on the ever-important visuals and I was happily willing to watch it due to the interesting plot and characters. It is a far cry from the Stallone feature, both in quality of special effects, as well as the overall tone and level of violence. It is a very violent and bloody movie along the lines of what could be a Punisher movie, but it’s generally never excessive or reveling in the gore. And more to the point, especially for fans of the original character Dredd: he never takes off his helmet.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 