Category Archives: 10’s movies
Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors
Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors
This is the most recent animated project from Marvel which have been very hit or miss and mainly focused on TV series lately. This almost seems like a response to DC’s Super Hero Girls only instead of making a team of super hero girls and market it directly to girls, this seems like just a generally diverse group of heroes that happen to be made up of more than half women. And while I haven’t seen much of the marketing for it, I get the impression that it is geared slightly more towards girls, but also generally gender neutral. This is my first experience with the majority of the heroes presented in here, though I have heard about several of them in passing and I was familiar with Chloe Bennet’s Quake from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. though I stopped watching shortly after she first got her powers. It also is an odd release strategy as this is basically the pilot movie that aired on TV and is now available on Marvel’s YouTube channel Marvel HQ. But the next two releases are 30 minutes followed by 44 minutes and are considered “TV specials”. It’s not a series, it’s not movies, the lengths are all over the place so far, but I’m curious where it’s going to go.
Venom
Venom 2018
This is still just the second to last theatrical release I have to catch up on from last year. After this, there’s just Aquaman left for me which is currently out on digital so I hope to get around to it soon. When this came out, I heard a lot of mixed things about it, even those who didn’t enjoy it gave at least some credit to Tom Hardy for his performance. I generally like Venom as a concept, but I haven’t really gotten much of a feel for him past Spider-Man 3. This movie tried to take that concept and mix in a few too many genres. It feels like they wanted to go much more of a horror route, but the horror elements were very minor overall, there’s honestly more of a character drama with a really weird buddy cop comedy mixed in only it’s very much on the dark side of things where the humor is concerned. Overall, I did enjoy it, but I thought they could have taken it a bit further and made it great. Instead, it was just ok.
Pixies
Pixies 2015
I was browsing through Vudu’s library of movies instead of choosing one of the movies from my curated lists on Hulu and Netflix and came across this movie. This will actually be the fifth animated movie that I’ve watched from Arcana Studio and they’ve had some mixed results. The Howard Lovecraft trilogy was ok, but I wasn’t a fan of the Steam Engines of Oz so I didn’t have a lot of hope for this movie. At only 73 minutes, I still figured that I’d give it a shot and even if I didn’t care for it, I hadn’t lost much time on it. Spoiler alert, I was right and this was a pretty poor movie that had shallow characters, poor humor, poor animation, and a weak plot.
Captain Underpants
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie 2017
This was a movie that I never planned on watching in theaters and somehow kept forgetting to add to my big list of superhero movies. But I never forgot about it and had actually heard quite good things about it, at least in the very general sense without revealing anything of the plot. When I finally watched it, I was quite surprised at the direction this movie went as it was equal parts Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, Deadpool, all mixed with a kid’s imagination on a PG level. It was fun, it was silly, it was absurd, it made me laugh quite a bit and was really a joy to behold despite not really having any deep down morale or message.
Birdboy: The Forgotten Children
Birdboy: The Forgotten Children 2018
I’ve always been a fan of animated movies whether they’re what most American audiences think of like the standard Disney animated fare marketed towards children or the independent or foreign animation that’s targeted towards adults. This is definitely the latter of those two. It’s a Spanish animated feature based on a graphic novel called Psiconautas that takes place in a dystopian island populated with anthropomorphic animals alongside a handful of regular animals that still have the ability to communicate and some inanimate objects who can also speak. The film is filled with dark imagery of nuclear style explosions, death, drugs, violence, addiction, abuse, and plenty of others. It’s densely packed with intense imagery and themes and it unfolds in a way that’s somewhat difficult to unpack in a single viewing, but it is intensely fascinating and hauntingly beautiful in places.
Batman & Bill
Batman & Bill 2017
Everyone knows who Batman is, Bruce Wayne, billionaire, crimefighter. Not everyone knows who’s listed as the creator of Batman unless they’re a comics fan, and very few people unless they’re die-hard comics fans know who really created Batman. This documentary follows the research of novelist Marc Tyler Nobleman as he not only uncovers the seldom told story of Bill Finger but also manages to get him officially credited as the rightful co-creator of Batman right alongside Bob Kane. The documentary itself is a fascinating story that has a few surprises going for it as it tells its quest for recognition that was long overdue. The interviews are bolstered by comics inspired simple animations. It’s a story that I didn’t know but I’m glad I know it now.
Captain Marvel
Captain Marvel 2019
So here we are with the first MCU release of the year to kick things off into spring even though it’s still pretty damn cold here in the Midwest. Also, after 11 years and 18 movies, Marvel finally gives a woman center stage and on International Women’s Day no less. Captain Marvel is someone that I know very little about, I’m not overly familiar with the Kree or the Skrulls, so I was coming into this movie pretty fresh. And for the first time in my life, I actually went to see this movie on opening Thursday as the Friday release date keeps getting pushed back further and further. All things considered, this ended up being a fairly standard MCU movie that hits all the same beats along with some fun twists and a female empowerment message. Of course, fairly standard MCU is still an above average superhero movie it just doesn’t do anything to break new ground with the gold standard. And as I always do in my reviews, I will be discussing the movie in full so here’s your spoiler warning.
LEGO DC Superheroes: The Flash
LEGO DC Superheroes: The Flash 2018
Even though I still have a handful of movies on my List on Netflix, I decided to start my rotation of a few different streaming services to continue my catch up of superhero movies from the past couple years. For no particular reason I decided to start with Hulu and the first movie that I found on there was this one. I’ve generally been favorable towards the LEGO DC animated movies, they’re not nearly as good as either the theatrical LEGO movies nor the more adult skewed DC Animated Universe. But they’re still head and shoulders above most straight-to-video material marketed specifically towards kids so it’s not exactly a pain to watch. It has many of the DC voice actors including the perennial comedic Cyborg, and it has elements of the LEGO humor that’s used in all of their movies and video games. Plus, it has a time loop in it and that’s something I always enjoy.
Ant-Man and the Wasp
Ant-Man and the Wasp 2018
It’s taken me a little while, but with the next MCU movie coming out next week I thought I’d finally catch up with the only Disney Marvel movie that I missed last year. I actually quite enjoyed the first Ant-Man and I was looking forward to this one but for whatever reason I just never got around to it until now. It followed up with the fun of the first movie without going quite as far into the comedy realm as Thor: Ragnarok though it is a little heavier on the comedy than most MCU movies. But what this film really has going for it is the positivity between the characters. There are villains including one who’s the prototypical bad businessman jerk like Justin Hammer in Iron Man 2 or even Darren Cross from the first movie, but there’s no unnecessary negativity outside of the antagonist/protagonist conflict which is actually refreshing. Especially with Scott Lang’s family issues with being a divorced father. It’s a fun movie that expands what is possible with the Ant-Man tech and it’s always nice to have a mostly stand-alone story with only post-credits connections to the other movies.
Deadpool 2
Deadpool 2 2018
Generally, the two most difficult types of reviews to write for this site are comedies and films that I enjoy. To put it mildly, Deadpool 2 is both of these things. When the first movie came out, it was a surprise hit and quite possibly rejuvenated the R rated superhero movie despite Watchmen’s mild success back in 2008. Deadpool’s comedy was something that hit in just the right way for audiences that were nostalgic for 80’s music but also current internet memes and Ryan Reynolds has the right kind of passion to get the film into the right people’s hands to make it something that does justice to the character that it previously lacked. The sequel ups the ante with a better story, better characters, a bigger budget, and keeps the humor intact for a ride that’s more enjoyable than the first movie as long as the humor hits you in the right way.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 