Category Archives: 10’s movies
Gantz
Gantz 2010
I enjoy watching a lot of anime, or at least I used to. I just realized I haven’t watched a good anime in a long time, but that’s beside the point. One of my favorite types of anime are the ones that are so out there and weird, they are hard to describe. Gantz is one of those anime. And a couple years ago I saw that it had been made into a live action movie, and when I saw the trailer for it, it looked like they did a good job matching the look and style of the anime so I had to watch it, and I wasn’t disappointed. I will do my best to describe the general concept. There is a giant black ball in the middle of a room, it transports people who have died to the room every few nights with little explanations except for a picture of an alien, briefcases with black leather suits and weird high-tech guns. They are given a time limit to kill this alien in reward for points, if they get 100 points they can have their memory erased and put back into the real world, or they can resurrect a fallen teammate. There’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s the gist of it.
All Superheroes Must Die
All Superheroes Must Die 2013
aka Vs
This movie is something that was completely off of my radar aside from the fact that it was on my full list of superhero movies under the title “Vs”, and then a couple weeks ago I saw a review of this movie on Today I Watched a Movie, so when I saw it available at Redbox I picked it up. (And because Redbox asked so nicely, you can also look to see if you can find All Superheroes Must Die at Redbox) It’s an interesting premise: Four superheroes get captured by their archnemesis and placed in a town littered with explosives and hostages where they must play an almost Saw-like game to escape with their lives. It is low budget and it shows, though they do have a clever excuse that the villain suppressed their powers with a serum so they never get a chance to showcase any of their powers, and as a result the movie feels more like a psychological thriller than an actual superhero movie. I think there’s still a lot to like in this movie and was invested from start to finish.
Almost Super: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
Almost Super: Hansel & Gretel
I was somewhat caught off guard when I saw the trailer just a couple weeks ago. While the Avengers was my favorite superhero movie of all time, Hawkeye was the weakest part of the movie, and I hadn’t heard much good about The Bourne Supremacy, the trailer looked like a lot of fun. In the end, my expectations were mediocre at best. But while there were a few parts of the movie that went a little too far into ridiculous territory, it was generally a lot of mindless fun.
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The Dark Knight Returns part 2
The Dark Knight Returns part 2 2013
It’s early into the year, and already time for the first superhero movie of the year, and it’s a doozy. I’ve mentioned time and time again how much I enjoy DC’s animated features, and the part 1 was quite good. Part 2 surpasses it in every way and easily overtook Under the Red Hood as my favorite of the bunch, and may even go up a couple notches on my overall top 10. Even though it’s an adaptation of a known comic book story, it’s one I hadn’t read and I was glad I hadn’t because it went to so many places I would have never expected for a Batman story. It’s the bloodiest DC movie I’ve seen aside from Watchmen, but it’s used in all the right ways. If you’re a fan of Batman at all, you must check this movie out, and while part 1 sets things up for what happens in this part, it can easily be watched as a stand alone piece with little confusion.
Elf-man
Elf-Man 2012
I have to start off by saying that I’m not very big on the holidays, especially Christmas. I’m not a Grinch or Scrooge by any means, but it just doesn’t get me very excited. I dislike most of the Christmas music I have to hear at work or on the radio, and I’m not a big fan of very many Christmas movies. This year, I watched four. I watched A Christmas Story last week, which is my favorite Christmas movie. And then on Christmas day I watched A Christmas Story 2 which I had to watch just to see if it was as bad as I thought it would be. It wasn’t. Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near the quality of the original, but it was just fairly mediocre. I ended Christmas day with Christmas Vacation which I hadn’t seen in years and loved every minute of. And somewhere in the middle I fit in Elf-Man. It turns out that superheroes and Christmas don’t intersect very often. As far as I can tell there’s only this movie and Batman Returns which takes place during Christmas. If there’s any others, I’m not aware of them. This movie came out just this year and I figured Christmas day was as good a time as any to get it out of the way. Similar to Christmas Story 2, it wasn’t quite bad enough to enjoy it on a whole different level, but it’s also not the next Christmas classic either. For Jena’s part, who I realized I haven’t mentioned much in a long while, she enjoyed it quite a bit and has already mentioned wanting to watch it again.
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The Photon Effect
The Photon Effect 2010
With only a couple weeks left to go, I finally reached my goal to watch and review 100 superhero movies in 2012. Not only that, but this is what I feel as the perfect movie to be number 100. When I started this site, I had planned to only write reviews. But as the site evolved and grew I added other elements, blog posts, polls, blogger interviews, and most importantly short film reviews and interviews. I remember when I first decided to add Superhero Shorts to this site, I was listening to one of Kevin Smith’s podcasts and heard about a guy who made a fan film based on the fictional origin of that podcast. I thought it was a fun little short, and since he’s just a regular guy I figured he would be easy to get a hold of, so I asked him for an interview. He agreed, and Babble-On Begins became the first edition of Superhero Shorts. Since then, I’ve talked to many fan filmmakers as well as a few who have made a name for themselves. One of the earlier fan filmmakers I contacted was Dan Poole who made a short film called The Green Goblin’s Last Stand. Several months later, I got a reply saying that he didn’t even realize that he had made the e-mail account I had sent my inquiry to, and that most of his time was spent working on the Photon Effect. So I checked out the site, thought the trailer was pretty sweet and said that I’d still be interested in interviewing him, but would like to also watch the Photon Effect so I could talk about that experience as well. So be on the look out for my next edition of Superhero Shorts in the near future.
Almost Super: Wreck-it Ralph
Wreck-It Ralph 2012
So once again this year I made the trek to my local movie theater. More than superheroes, I’ve always been a big fan of animation, and on top of that, I’ve grown up with video games. Starting with a trusty Commodore 64 playing Jumpman, Circus, Snoopy, and other games before moving up to a Coleco Vision. I eventually moved up through the Sega Master System, NES, SNES, Playstation, PS2, and DS before moving onto the PC MMO City of Heroes, heck I even work in an arcade. I recognized many of the video games referenced, especially some of the classic arcade cabinets, as well as the games that inspired the original games featured in this movie. While Fix it Felix Jr. is an original game, it has its roots in Donkey Kong, Crazy Climber, and a touch of Rampage. Sugar Rush which is a candy version of Mario Kart/Nicktoons Racing, and Hero’s Duty is essentially every modern rail shooter ever. This movie was pretty much made for me to like it and I was in from the very opening.
The Dark Knight Returns Pt. 1
The Dark Knight Returns Pt. 1 2012
No, this isn’t a typo of some shortened cut of the Dark Knight Rises, instead it’s a brand new DC animation. There are a few similarities, but in this version Batman retired for 10 years, not 8. He was in his sixties, not his forties. He’s fighting the Mutant leader and the Mutants, not Bane and the League of Shadows. I believe this also in some way follows Under the Red Hood, as they refer to Jason’s death, who was the second Robin. I’ve been a fan of DC animation for a while now, and they haven’t personally let me down yet. I know there are some people who have issues with the way they don’t entirely follow the comics in some of the features, but since I don’t follow the comics, they’re all fresh to me and just plain amazing storytelling. The movies just keep getting better and better and this one is no exception. I especially like the fact that while this movie is labelled with the sometimes accursed “part 1”, it doesn’t feel like only half of the story. There is a full fledged story told entirely within this one movie, but it also does a great job at laying the groundwork to make you excited for the upcoming part 2 next year.
Megamind
Megamind 2010
After going through a few documentaries, I figured it was time to get back to some more lighthearted fare. And it also helped that the newest announced acting school over at the LAMB is for Brad Pitt, who conveniently voices Metro Man in this movie. This movie is a real mash-up of different superhero tropes looked at through different angles, and there are quite a few surprise twists along with several unsurprising twists, which I will be mentioning farther down in this review in case you haven’t seen this movie yet. I don’t think knowing any of the twists beforehand really affect the outcome of the movie, but this is your spoiler warning anyway. There are also a few nice touching moments, and throughout the whole thing is a lot of laughs.
Superhero Me
Superhero Me 2010
I’m finishing up this week of documentaries with Superhero Me, which I found by randomly searching “superhero” over at Hulu and this was the first movie that popped up. It’s an odd mix of comedy and interviews based around the recent real life superhero movement combined with the filmmaker, Steve Sale’s quest to become a real life superhero himself called SOS. The humor comes from the affable nature as well as the general absurdity of the whole process. There is a large amount of charm in this movie, and it was made completely on the cheap, with practically no budget, which is really the biggest downside to the movie.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 