Category Archives: 20’s movies
Flora & Ulysses
Flora & Ulysses 2021
I’ve been keeping my streaming subscriptions down by only subscribing to two of them and rotating them every few months. It’s been a while since we’ve had Disney+, I let it lapse right before the Mandalorian season 2 finale. So now with three whole MCU series to catch up with, I figured it was a good time to get it back and catch up with everything. And meanwhile, they also released two different kid-friendly superhero movies on there. Look for my review of the Secret Society of Second Born Royals within the next couple weeks. But I thought this one sounded a little more tolerable so I gave it a shot. I knew going into it that it was mostly a movie about a family coming together and just a little bit about a superhero squirrel. It actually made me laugh pretty hard several times, but at the same time it was full of family movie cliches that felt pretty tired. Once again, since this is a relatively current movie, there are spoilers ahead, though as I mentioned, most of them are pretty obvious.
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Black Widow
Black Widow 2021
First off I just have to start out with holy crap it’s good to be back in a movie theater. Granted things are very different than they were when I saw Birds of Prey which I’m pretty sure was the last movie that I saw in theaters. We just survived a pandemic, at least everyone who has decided to get vaccinated has survived a pandemic but I won’t go further down that discussion right now. I’m living in the Atlanta suburbs after spending the previous six years in the Chicago suburbs, and this is the first Marvel movie to come out since Spider-Man: Far From Home back in the summer of 2019. So yeah, things are quite a bit different. But kicking off the theater going with the latest MCU movie felt like falling back into old patterns. It was definitely enjoyable with great action beats and enjoyable humor, but the climax felt rather uninspired and I just wish they could have done something a little bit different than falling right back into the MCU formula that I often like to think doesn’t really exist. And as this is the latest MCU movie, if you haven’t seen it yet from here on out there may be spoilers so be warned.
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The Old Guard
The Old Guard 2020
This has been on my “to watch next” list for a very long time even though it did completely pass me by when it came out last year. While I did read that this was a popular movie when it was released on Netflix, I never really got a feel for how well people enjoyed it and it never really hit my radar. But when I did finally watch the trailer, I was very interested. I have generally enjoyed everything that Charlize Theron has done even when she’s been in some not great movies. Despite Aeon Flux being awful and Snow White and the Huntsman not being that great, Theron was great in them and Atomic Blonde was one of my favorite comic book movies of the year it came out. There are definitely a few flaws throughout this movie, but overall I quite enjoyed it and I’m glad that a sequel is in the works to start filming early next year. And while this movie is over a year old, it’s still relatively new so here’s your spoiler warning.
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Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Zack Snyder’s Justice League 2021
I’m back with another superhero movie review and even though this movie is only a couple months old, I feel like I’ve been waiting for this one for ages. With some movies that have regular and director’s cuts I will do a “quickie” review that mostly covers the differences between the two versions that are often 80 to 90% the same movie so I just cover the differences. This is a different case and one much closer to the Donner Cut of Superman II where much of the story beats are different and the overall tone is way different. In fact, this is probably the instance where the vast majority of the film is different between the two versions. My guess is that there is only about 5-10% of the footage used in both films, and that’s 5% of the theatrical version which is half as long. For my part, I liked the theatrical cut well enough but there were plenty of glaring issues with it. This version almost feels more like a miniseries which it almost was and could still be watched that way, but that actually solves one of the issues where this team film came too quickly without introducing the rest of the team beforehand. Having this amount of length really helps to build each individual character before bringing them together as a team. And as this is still a new release, there will be spoilers in the review so be warned.
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Thunder Force
Thunder Force 2021
The year is almost halfway through and while most of the 2021 films keep getting pushed back there have been a small handful that have released on streaming services. This one came out just a few weeks ago on Netflix and while it has gotten some pretty poor reviews, it managed to tickle me quite a bit while I was watching it. Unfortunately, those moments of hearty laughs were interspersed with heavy moments of eye rolling so it’s ultimately a mixed bag. There aren’t very many instances of good superhero comedies, there are plenty of good superhero movies with a lot of comedy, but not the other way around. When the superhero element isn’t taken seriously, the entire movie generally suffers. Everyone in the cast plays their parts well, but the action is dull and the comedy is very hit and miss. And since this is still technically a recent release, here is my obligatory spoiler warning as I will be discussing potential plot twists as I see fit.
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Bloodshot
Bloodshot 2020
It’s been quite a year, right? But I’m not here to talk about that, instead let’s try to get right back into catching up with the handful of releases that actually made it out into the wild. This was actually the last theatrical release before things went to hell but I didn’t quite get around to seeing it back then. And based on the reviews it got, I wasn’t that enthusiastic to catch up with it. Even borrowed it from the library a couple times. But I finally checked it out once again, watched it, and you know what? I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the best example of a comic book/super powered character movie. It suffers quite a bit from a first time director who came from a visual effects background, an early-but-significant twist that was spoiled in the trailers, and extremely forgettable dialogue coming from one-dimensional characters. Despite all of this, I’m a sucker for an interesting concept and that’s the best thing this movie has going for it. It won’t be enough for a lot of people, but it was just enough for me.
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Captain Underpants: Mega Blissmas
FTMN Quickie: Captain Underpants: Mega Blissmas 2020
Merry Christmas Everyone! I thought I’d take a little time out of my day to write about the latest superhero Christmas special that’s come out this year on Netflix. It’s not quite a TV episode but it’s not exactly a full movie. It clocks in at just under an hour but it feels more like a double episode of the Captain Underpants cartoon that’s also on Netflix. So much so that I’m not going to add this to my big list of Superhero movies, but I watched it, and I haven’t been that active here lately so I figured I’d still write about it. I watched the Captain Underpants movie a little while back but I never watched any of the TV series. This definitely has the same type of humor that mixes a typical 9 year old’s imagination with some meta humor, but it rehashes a very similar Christmas theme about how getting exactly what you want isn’t always the best thing.
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Justice League Dark: Apokolips War
It seems like we’ve been in the era of this interconnected for a good long while. It was kicked off with the events in the Flashpoint Paradox back in 2013 but really started with Justice League War in 2014 with the biggest connective tissues being Jason O’Mara as the voice of Batman and a similar visual style in the animation. The DC Animated Movies have also crossed the line from PG-13 to R several times and this is one of the bleakest and most violent animated movies in quite a while yet there’s still enough humor to keep things entertaining without completely going off the rails. It also brings together several of the spin-off-yet-still-connected movies like the Teen Titans, Suicide Squad, and Constantine that feels like it’s following a loose parallel to Avengers: Endgame without feeling derivative. Like always, this was fun and it really builds on everything that came before it to make a fitting end to this little corner of the DC Animated Universe. And as this is a recent release, I won’t be shying away from story details so this is your spoiler warning.
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Red Son
Superman: Red Son 2020
It’s still been difficult to try and get back into any sort of normal rhythm for this site, but I haven’t yet abandoned it. In fact, the site reached a major milestone the other day. We’ve reached 1 million total views! Thanks everyone for the continued support and visits. As for new movies, it seems like it’s mostly streaming and home video, including the DC Animated movies. I’ve always been a fan of alternate realities/Elseworlds stories, especially when it comes to superheroes. These characters have been around long enough that their origin stories are going to be multiple choice anyway. Why not allow writers to take things into more extreme directions if it’s going to tell an interesting story rather than just a slightly different shade of the same thing over and over. This takes the Superman origin story and turns it on its head. It’s similar and yet very different from the Batman Elseworlds story Gotham by Gaslight, turning Superman into a very different character rather than just injecting him into a different setting.
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Project Power
Project Power 2020
It’s already August and I’ve only just been able to watch the second 2020 superhero movie of this year. Of course it’s from a combination of things, both from lack of actual movie watching as well as lack of actual movies. This brand new movie was released straight to Netflix this past Friday and it’s a different take on superheroes and super powers, taking a more visceral approach with drugs and crime in a backdrop of New Orleans. For its part, it takes an interesting approach to the material and while it was lacking in a lot of areas, it handles things well enough to be an entertaining distraction in this absence of entertainment.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 