Category Archives: Other Comics
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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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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I Kill Giants
I Kill Giants 2018
It’s been a long while since I’ve sat down and written a movie review. This past year I’ve tried and gotten through the opening paragraph twice, but haven’t been able to finish one out just yet. But I’m trying to revitalize my interest in this site. Or let me rephrase that, my interest has not gone away for this site, just the ability to give it the time that I want to. But things are starting to change and as I’ve started to prepare for the new year, I’ve been getting a jump start by trying to catch up on what I’ve missed. The first one that I decided to grab was something that I always enjoy doing for this site, a lesser known comic book movie that’s not really about superheroes at all. This is a family fantasy drama adapted from the Image comic by Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura released in 2008 about a young girl who appropriately kills giants. It comes close to being a cliched version of the outcast/weird girl living in her own fantasy world to escape reality, but there’s enough different about this to make it stand out.
Graphic Horror: Virus
Virus 1999
Moving my way down in quality for this year’s Graphic Horror before hitting the planned high point at the end comes this lovely gem that came out the same year as the Matrix but with a wholly different interpretation of special effects. It actually started its life as a movie script, but was considered to be too special effects intensive at the time and so it was first made into a comic book from Dark Horse. John Bruno was cutting his teeth working on special effects under James Cameron before getting this film as a director, and unfortunately it really shows that he was more of a special effects guy than a full director. There are many issues with this film, but the special effects work really is not one of them. While there are a couple name actors with Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Sutherland, they are definitely not bringing their A games. It’s a horror film with a small cast that doesn’t know whether it wants to be a slow burn thriller, a gore fest, or a survival action film, and the blending of these genres do not work very well at all. It has some fun moments here and there, but for the most part, it’s a rather boring slog-fest.
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The Crow: Wicked Prayer
The Crow: Wicked Prayer 2005
I’ve been meaning to watch this movie for quite a while after re-watching the original Crow and watching the first sequel, City of Angels. But considering how bad the first sequel was and I imagined it went downhill from there I just kept putting it off. But when I was scheduling an upcoming Filmwhys guest, I found out that he had never seen the first Crow, and while I had already covered that movie I finally decided it was time to take on another one of the sequels. I went with Wicked Prayer mainly because for whatever reason, that was the one that was paired with City of Angels on the bargain bin double sided DVD I picked up for this site even though it completely skips the third movie. But as with most of the Crow movies, there is no connection between them aside from the fact that someone is killed in a major dick move and they come back for vengeance, or as the “legend” puts it: “make the wrong things right”. This movie also has some star power backing it up more or less with the likes of David Boreanaz, Tara Reid, Edward Furlong, and Dennis Hopper. After watching the first sequel, it felt like a pale imitation of the original and this fourth one is much more like a hollow mockery of it.
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Snowpiercer
Snowpiercer 2014
It’s always weird to me the way that some movies are released. This is a Korean film filled with mostly American and British actors and filmed in English with the exception of a couple characters, and it’s based off of a French graphic novel. It’s a sci-fi movie set in a dystopian future. It was completed and released in Korea last year. And yet it still hasn’t gotten a US release date until June, of course this was partly due to the conflict between the director Bong Joon-ho and the distributer Harvey Weinstein who wanted to cut about 30 minutes from the movie to make it a more action-heavy movie, cutting out much of the character development. In a time when it feels like two hours is the standard movie runtime and many movies run two and a half to almost three hours, this does not seem like an over-long movie at all. On top of that, I really loved this movie; the action, the characters, and especially the sci-fi concepts behind it. It’s the best sci-fi movie that I have seen in quite a while even though it’s grounded in mostly current technology.
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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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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The Mask
The Mask 1994
For a while, I was trying to figure out what I should watch next. I was thinking about watching some superhero movies with some relation to the holidays, but the only ones I could think of were Batman Returns which I already watched, and Elf Man which looks horrible. So, I just picked a random movie from my collection I hadn’t gotten around to yet: The Mask. I was never a huge fan of Jim Carrey’s old comedies even though I did watch them, and the catch phrases made their rounds at my school. This movie also has the distinction of being the debut of Cameron Diaz. It’s based on a Dark Horse comic, and it’s typically thought of as more of a zany comedy rather than a superhero movie, but it works for me.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 