Category Archives: 20’s movies
DC League of Super-Pets
League of Super-Pets 2022
I was all set to continue my DC catch up by watching Shazam: Fury of the Gods on HBO Max that I had saved on my list for the longest time. And yet, when I went to select the movie, the only option was to watch the trailer and it wasn’t available to watch on there anymore. So I decided to go back a little bit further and watch the only other theatrically released DC movie aside from the latest Superman that I hadn’t seen yet which was this animated League of Super-Pets featuring the Rock and Kevin Hart voicing Krypto and Ace. Krypto has been a thing for quite a while as well as Ace, though neither had been heavily featured in many mainstream Superman or Batman projects until the latest Superman movie. I was expecting a rather mediocre made-for-kids-esque movie and for the most part, that’s what I got. It did get a few laughs out of me, but it was way too formulaic to impress me much.
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Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 2023
I’m back catching up with another DC movie in my much smaller backlog, at least if I don’t count all of the animated movies but that’s a topic for another day. I actually remember practically nothing about the advertising for this movie. The only thing I really remember about it was that it was a hero/villain team up a la Blade 2, Thor 2, and plenty of other sequels that I can’t think of right now. I absolutely did not remember anything about Aquaman’s baby which is basically the entire opening. I also remember the walking back of Amber Heard’s role in the movie after the media fallout from her trial, and that was really felt while watching. There was a whole lot of dumb stuff on display, and I thought that Aquaman himself felt a lot more childish than I remembered from the first movie, but what pulled me through was the chemistry between him and Patrick Wilson as his brother slash archnemesis Orm.
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The Crow
The Crow 2024
I was browsing on Threads and I saw a call out for a podcast guest to come on and talk about the recent Crow remake over on the Stew World Order podcast. I’m a big fan of the original Crow and hadn’t gotten around to seeing the new remake just yet so I agreed to watch it and come on the show to talk about it (we recorded a couple days ago as I’m writing this but the episode won’t air until around August 2026). Now in general, I’m perfectly fine with the concept of remakes. I don’t think it diminishes the original and on a rare occasion it can actually improve upon the original. Or at the very least, be its own separate entity so despite all the negativity I had heard about this movie when it first came out, I thought I’d give it a fair shake and see how it stood on its own terms. It went for a very different tone, this is much more of a serious, grimdark interpretation of the Crow story. I didn’t agree with most of the changes, but by the end I was invested in how the story was going to turn out and I enjoyed myself throughout most of the watch. Now, I do think that this is a deeply flawed movie that has several serious issues that have nothing to do with whether or not it’s a remake, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be.
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Blue Beetle
Blue Beetle 2023
I’m back to my superhero movie catch up and since I finished the MCU, I decided it was time to move onto DC going back to 2023 which was a busy year for DC and I missed all 3 movies that came out that year which were also the last Zack Snyder era of DC movies before transitioning to the James Gunn era. I decided to start with Blue Beetle which is the only of the three which isn’t really connected at all to the rest of the Snyderverse aside from a single name drop about Superman. Instead, this is a full blown origin story that reminds me a lot of a much better version of Max Steel though I’m also aware that even this version of Blue Beetle pre-dates that character, let alone the Ted Kord version. The overall tone of the movie felt like it was taking a page out of the Marvel playbook with a similar mix of action, comedy, and a bit of drama. But there’s a reason why that works and it works just as well here. They also get a lot of mileage out of this being a primarily Hispanic story with Jaime’s family all being Hispanic as well as Ted Kord’s daughter Jenny and even the henchmen of basically the lone white person in the movie Victoria Kord, played by Susan Sarandon.
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The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie 2026
I mentioned this in my review for the first Super Mario Bros Movie just a few days ago but this was my first theater trip since having a date night with my wife to see the Naked Gun back in August. This time around I took my older daughter to this movie as she’s a big Mario and specifically Rosalina fan so we had to go see this one together. We waited a week because it was tracking to be a pretty huge opening weekend and I prefer a less crowded theater so we waited until its second weekend and went to a fairly early Sunday showing where there were only about 3 other families in the theater (although the one with the youngest kids initially sat a few rows in front of us until someone pointed out that they weren’t in their correct assigned seating so they moved a couple rows behind us, but about 4 different times in the next 30 minutes, the dad went back to the row they were sitting at with his phone as a flashlight trying to find something or other on the floor). The movie itself was mostly more of the same, but with much less direction and way more and more varied fanservice than the last movie including much that was completely lost on me as I’ve never played Galaxy or much of any Mario game past the SNES. It was still a fun diversion but not likely something that I could see myself coming back to time and time again. And since this is still a new movie, here is your spoiler warning from here on out.
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The Super Mario Bros. Movie
The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2023
I actually saw this movie in theaters when it came out three years ago, mainly because my family are all big Mario fans, but also with the intention of reviewing it here on this site. But after watching it, procrastination got the better of me and the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months, and by then my memory isn’t good enough to try to write a review for the movie so I wrote it off. And now with the sequel in theaters now, I thought it was a good time to revisit the movie before going to theaters with my oldest daughter to watch the new movie. And while I think it felt a little bit like a stretch to call the original live action movie a superhero movie (despite super being right there in the title), I don’t think there’s nearly as much argument that this isn’t a superhero movie. It follows the origin story format quite a bit closer and the super powers are much more overt with the Mushroom Kingdom power ups. The movie itself follows a more or less straightforward path with a couple curveballs thrown in for comedy sake, but where it really shines is how packed it is with classic video game and Mario Easter eggs. It’s practically fanservice: the movie, but it’s also a lot of fun besides.
Read the rest of this entryThunderbolts*
Thunderbolts* 2025
I have finally finished my MCU catch up by watching Thunderbolts* aka the New Avengers (which is an odd choice they made with their marketing when they do this whole switch up after the movie’s been out a few days and they change the title based on what happens at the very end of the movie, but whatever)(also, it was an odd choice to use the Thunderbolts name that was initially connected to Thunderbolt Ross, AND this movie came right after Brave New World featuring Ross, yet the Thunderbolt name within the movie had zero connection to him, but again whatever). Right off the bat, I feel like this has been one of my favorites from this entire catch up, on par with Guardians volume 3. This is a film that on the surface is about a group of anti-heroes trying to not get permanently shelved, but it’s actually about finding hope through depression and hopelessness mainly through the eyes of Yelena Belova and Bob. The action and humor is also quite fun throughout especially with the overwhelming enthusiasm of the Red Guardian and the general haplessness of Bob throughout most of the movie.
Read the rest of this entryCaptain America: Brave New World
Captain America: Brave New World 2025
After a brief break and a catch up of Falcon and the Winter Soldier I’m ready to get back to my MCU catch-up with the new Captain America. I know I didn’t hear a whole lot of positivity about this movie when it first came out, mainly negative to middling reviews but I thought it was a fun movie that struggled a bit with identity issues. And yet, that in and of itself fits right into the character development of Sam’s Cap. I will also say that it was absolutely the right move for me to watch Falcon and the Winter Soldier before watching this movie. I’m not sure if I would have been a little lost, but the context of that show goes a long way towards understanding where this movie fits into the timeline which still feels a like a weird concept to a certain extent to have a movie be a sequel to a TV series. The show introduces two important characters: Joaquin and Isaiah Bradley and I’m not sure how well they were introduced in this film to someone who hadn’t watched that show. The other interesting connection is how it goes all the way back to the Incredible Hulk movie, bringing back three characters and plot points from that movie.
Read the rest of this entryWakanda Forever
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2022
I’m honestly a little bit surprised that I have continued my return to writing for this site after having written only 5 reviews in 3 years and now this is my fifth review in just over 1 month. I’m actually quite happy getting back into the rhythm and hope to continue where my aim is to not go more than 2 weeks without a review. Though that may be questionable once I catch up with all the heavy hitters from Marvel and DC. I still have 2 more MCU films to catch up with, a few Sony Marvel films, and many DC films though I imagine I’ll mix in an ultra low budget film here and there though the next 2 will definitely be Brave New World and Thunderbolts*. But getting back to the topic at hand, I’ve finally managed to catch up with Wakanda Forever from back in 2022. At the time I chose to watch and review Black Adam and the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special instead which in hindsight, was likely a mistake. I did enjoy Black Adam more than most, but Wakanda Forever is a much better film overall, with a touching tribute to Chadwick Boseman both at the beginning and the end of the film. It’s also a celebration of culture with almost zero time spent with white American characters, and besides the African culture represented through the Wakandan lens, there’s also the South American Mayan culture influenced in the Talokan underwater race along with a little bit of time spent in Haiti.
Read the rest of this entryGuardians of the Galaxy vol 3
Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3 2023
I’m honestly pretty happy with the way this blog is going again this year. Less than a month into the year and I’m already 4 movies back in the game with 2 more MCU films to go to finish catching up, plus plenty of DC and other movies that have been released along the way. But since I’ve been sticking to my MCU catch up, I figured I’d go with the one that didn’t require any further homework as I’ve seen all the preceding movies that the Guardians have been in, but have not watched Falcon and the Winter Soldier which feels like it should be required viewing to help fill out the gaps for both Brave New World and Thunderbolts*. Whether or not I actually do the homework is yet to be decided. But anyway, I was excited to finally get around to finishing this Guardians trilogy, and with James Gunn having left to head DC, it’s likely the final end for the Guardians as a whole though at least some of the characters may still return. I feel like I saw nothing but warnings about this film if you happen to be an animal lover so I assumed it involved the fate of Rocket’s friends in his flashback scenes, it was still a sad moment but it helped that I was prepared. It did a lot of work to give a sense of finality to these characters and it worked well to flesh out Rocket’s overall journey.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 