Blankman
Blankman 1994
It had felt like it had been a while since I had watched a movie, nobody else in the house was interested in watching a movie. My wife was laying in bed not feeling well and Jena just plain wasn’t interested. So I picked a movie I didn’t think either of them would miss watching, Blankman. I think I made a good call on that one. I thought Catwoman was funnier than this movie and it’s not even technically a comedy. I do have to admit there were a couple times I chuckled at the jokes but they were few and far between. I’m also not going to list which jokes they were, but when I was telling my wife about this movie I looked up the trailer to show to her and every single moment that I thought was funny was crammed into the trailer.
Anyway this movie was released shortly after In Living Color finished its run on television and it starred two of the show’s cast members, Damon Wayans and David Allen Greer. If you’ve seen the show you might think this was an attempt to bring Handi-man to the big screen, but instead of being physically handicapped, Blankman is just socially handicapped. He’s a nerd that lives with his brother and grandmother and makes gadgets out of junk. Unlike most other comedic characters that invent weird gadgets like Data from the Goonies or the guy from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, pretty much all of his gadgets actually work the way he intends them to, they just look like trash. One of the things he creates is bulletproof fabric and he uses it to create a costume so he can become a crimefighter. And then there’s a series of increasingly ridiculous crimefighting scenarios where he’s given a chance to save the day.
My biggest problem with this movie is when it feels like it’s trying to be serious, it’s goofy, and when it’s trying to be funny, it’s just not funny. Like every time Blankman gets kissed he has a total spaz because we’re supposed to believe that he’s never had an erection before and is surprised and confused by it. And the mob boss villain happens to have dozens of explosives all set to go off at the exact same time, twice. The first time it blows up an entire bank, and the second time it’s supposed to blow up an entire skyscraper but it’s contained in a washing machine robot. And the second time the mob boss shows up, he’s wearing satin for some inexplicable reason other than to make a joke about it that’s not even funny.
And I haven’t even mentioned the girl, Kimberly. She’s a star reporter for the local news station while Blankman’s brother Kevin played by Greer has the hots for her. But of course as soon as Blankman starts showing his face stopping crime she has the hots for his badly homemade costume and acts like a total fangirl over him. It’s totally ridiculous and not even in a funny way. She spends the entire movie talking about how great Blankman is because apparently the audience needs someone in the movie to convince them that Blankman is a good superhero because he doesn’t even really do anything. Aside from the finale, the only thing that you see Blankman do to actually stop any crime is use a boot to the head to a convenience store robber. Kevin has some pretty unconvincing Karate moves that easily make whoever he’s fighting fall limply over. I understand that it’s a comedy but the fight scenes should have gone one of two ways. Either they should be surprisingly convincingly real which was used to good effect in Kick-Ass, or they should be so over the top ridiculous that the fight itself is a joke. Blankman appears to make it seem like they are really fighting, but it’s worse than B-movie fight choreography.
It really felt like this could have been a good superhero sendup but they didn’t go far enough. Most characters in a superhero story whether it is a comic book or a movie are already caricatures. From the hero to the villain to the damsel in distress, they are often portrayed as an exaggerated form of reality. It felt like most of the comedy in this movie came from trying to play the characters as caricatures of real people instead of caricatures of caricatures. In other words, most of the characters in this movie felt like just badly written comic book characters rather than funny exaggerations of comic book characters. The only side character that I thought was pretty funny was Jason Alexander as the no nonsense editor-in-chief of the tabloid news show… or paper, I forget which.
Taken as a superhero movie, the fights were awful, the costumes were awful, and the characters were awful. Taken as a comedy, all that awfulness didn’t translate to awfully funny, it was just… how do I say this without sounding repetitive, awful. If you’re a fan of In Living Color… go watch In Living Color. I just don’t really have anything good to say about this movie at all. Even the music seemed out of place, it was kind of nice to hear some old school hip hop music, but a lot of it was made for the movie and wasn’t very good, and besides that it didn’t seem like it was mixed well. I’m not usually one to pay attention to sound design or anything, but when the music started it just seemed to come out of nowhere and tried to take over the scene. Anyway, I’ll be taking a look at The Meteor Man for Tuesday’s review on Valentine’s day which is a lot funnier than this movie. Until next time this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Hancock
Hancock 2008
It’s time for my third movie that fits into February’s theme of Black Superheroes, and it’s probably one of my favorites for this month. I believe I watched it sometime after it had come out on home video and I had the same reaction of many people that I knew or read about online. The first half of the movie was great, but the second half sucked. And watching it again, it’s still pretty much how I feel about the movie although I feel like I’ve softened up to the second half a little bit. I was watching the unrated version this time, I think I watched the regular PG-13 version the first time. There wasn’t a whole lot in it that seemed to warrant the unrated part aside from one kinda sex scene which was played for laughs and possibly a few more swear words.
The movie is about John Hancock played by Will Smith. He’s basically what most people would really become if they were given superpowers. He’s drunk most of the time, anything he needs or wants he just takes, though he limits it to stuff he actually needs to survive plus copious amounts of alcohol and Jiffy Pop, and he plays the hero in his free time. But instead of doing things the smart way, he does it the brute force way. Watching Will Smith act like a jerk with superpowers was hilarious and I spent a lot of the first half of this movie laughing. Especially when he starts interacting with Jason Bateman, I’ve seen the movie twice and still don’t remember his character’s name, mostly because he plays the same character he always plays, but I love it. He’s a PR guy that decided to make over Hancock’s image and it starts with him going to jail for all the destruction he’s caused. My absolute favorite part that had me laughing on the lead up to it because I remembered what was coming was the jail scene… I’ll just leave it at that… no I won’t, there’ll be a picture of it right below this paragraph. I can’t resist.
The second half of the movie is where it goes a little off. The mythology of Hancock and how he came to his powers is that he is one of the last two immortals on Earth. Immortals who have access to their own off switch in the form of their mate, so when they grow tired of the eternity of life, they simply find their mate and they will become mortal, grow old, and die. The only problem is that Hancock’s mate left him 80 years ago and is married to Jason Bateman. That’s ok, but the way they reveal it is that she kisses Hancock, then throws him out of her house literally, meets him to explain their story but ends up fighting him in a big action setpiece instead. It just feels like a cop out excuse to have two superpowered beings fighting in the middle of the city, and why the heck does their fighting cause a storm? I also thought the final battle scene was handled pretty poorly, I wasn’t sure if she was actually supposed to be feeling his pain, or if they were trying to line up what was happening to each of them separately so they connected. Like he happened to get shot at the same time that the doctors used the heart paddles on her. I think it would have made for a better scene if the latter happened.
This movie surprisingly reminded me a lot of Super and Kick-Ass although in a different way. All three movies try to present superheroes in a pretty realistic fashion where the heroes face very real consequences based on their actions. But where the first two feature normal men becoming costumed crimefighters, this movie features a normal guy with a lot of flaws who happens to have superpowers and wants to do good. Kick-Ass and Super both deal with consequences like gunshot wounds and getting beaten up, Hancock deals with consequences like collateral damages, public opinion, and at least in the unrated version what happens when someone with Superman’s power climaxes. The other thing about the three movies is they follow a similar pattern of very comedic first and second acts followed by heavy drama in the third act. Aside from my complaint earlier, I think it works pretty well in Hancock’s favor. Will Smith does a great job conveying both the asshole moments as well as the more human side. Charlize Theron has her moments but for whatever reason, I just didn’t like her character very much, I liked her as Jason Bateman’s wife, but I just didn’t see her as a superhero. For whatever reason it just didn’t fit.
But as I mentioned in the beginning, I really liked this movie and had a blast watching it. The funny parts are really funny, the touching moments are pretty touching, and the action scenes are pretty decent. There’s really only three action scenes in this movie, the first one is great even though it’s pretty subdued where he takes out the robbery as his first act as a real superhero, the second one is kind of annoying with unnecessary special effects, and the third one is overtaken by overblown dying drama. This is another movie like the Incredibles that I would only half love to see a sequel to. I think Hancock is a great character, yet I’m not sure if there’s really a worthy story to make into a sequel. As far as Jena’s part, she didn’t watch this movie but I would have let her, she just wasn’t interested. Coming up next I go back to the downside of Black Superhero movies with Blankman. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Black Superhero Month
I knew it would be easy to guess my theme for this month, but when I needed to decide what movies I should watch for this month, I realized that it was Black History Month and I thought I would see how many black superhero movies there were. I managed to find 9 of them: Catwoman, Spawn, Hancock, Blankman, The Meteor Man, Steel, Blade, Blade II, and Blade Trinity. Some of them are pretty good, a lot of them are really bad. And I’m actually over halfway through watching them. I only have Steel and the Blade Trilogy left to watch. One other thing that snuck up on me was the fact that Ghost Rider and Chronicle came out this month. I managed to watch and review Chronicle already and plan to watch the new Ghost Rider and the old one for good measure. So I’m in for a busy month. In fact I was so busy writing the review for The Meteor Man that I almost forgot to write this blog post for today which is why I’m posting it just before midnight.
It’s really a sad state of affairs that when someone mentions a black superhero movie, they either think of Blade, or they think of a really bad movie like Steel or Catwoman. And honestly a lot of movie fans aren’t that fond of the Blade movies, especially when you get around to the third one with Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds. And a couple things that come up when talking about black superheroes is why has no one made a Black Panther movie yet? And of course there’s also talk I’ve heard going around of Michael Jai White wanting to make a superhero movie that I can’t think of at the moment and when I tried to search for it it seems to have been overtaken by talks from July about rebooting the Spawn franchise as a hard “R” rated movie. Which I think would be great. Spawn had a lot of potential but it was hurt by the PG-13, script issues, CGI issues, and acting issues. Michael Jai White has grown a lot as an actor and CGI has improved and gotten less expensive, I think it would be great to see a Spawn reboot. Forget that, I’d rather see a Spawn sequel, forget the reboots, there’s enough Superhero origin stories, just make it a sequel, skip retelling the origin, and get straight to the action. And if anyone wants to remind me of that other Superhero White was trying to get made into a movie, leave a comment.
I also wanted to mention that while I didn’t watch the Superbowl, I did manage to catch the new trailers for both the Avengers and The Amazing Spiderman. I’m really excited to see both of them. I didn’t realize that Denis Leary was going to be in the new Spiderman movie and I’m really interested to see what he brings to the movie. I also like the actor, Garfield or whatever his name is. I’m kind of torn over the mechanical webslingers for some reason though. I actually liked the decision that the first series of movies made to make the webbing be a part of his transformation rather than something he made on his own. I understand that a lot of fans thought that the chemical webbing showed a part of Peter Parker’s scientific side, my thoughts are “what’s the first thing you think of when asked what abilities does a spider have?” I’m pretty sure it’s not amazing strength or precognitive ability. It’s the ability to create webs. But whatever, it’s really a minor thing but what I’m most annoyed about that I’m sure will happen at least once during the movie is there will be a critical moment where Spiderman’s web fluid will run out at the worst possible time. On another more random note, I realized that when the movie comes out I will be watching the Tobey Maguire Spiderman movies, but I will be watching them in reverse order. Starting with the worst of them all, Spiderman 3, moving to what some consider the best of them all Spiderman 2, and finishing off with Tobey’s origin story before watching… this guy’s origin story. Anyway check out my review of Hancock coming up on Thursday, until next time this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Chronicle
Chronicle 2012
It’s the first new superhero movie of the year to be released in theaters and I was able to watch it… kinda. I’ll just leave it at that. I’ve actually done something I almost never do before watching a movie, I read a bunch of reviews for it. Which is kind of funny coming from someone who is now spending their free time writing reviews for movies. Not any real critics, mostly just other blogs, and Roger Ebert. The one person that really seems to come out on top the most out of all those reviews is Max Landis who turns out to be John Landis’s son, and creator/narrator of this funny and weird recreation of the Death and Return of Superman comic series. He’s the writer of this movie and is credited with making the dialog of the teenagers fresh, natural, and overall believable.
Anyway as you probably know, this is another in the realm of the “found footage” movement that is being loved and hated across America right now. It’s getting pretty tired on the horror side so it’s being expanded into other genres of movies, and this movie uses it to create a superhero movie. Kinda. In a way it reminds me of Unbreakable as it feels like the first act of a typical origin story of a superhero. It goes from the discovery of their superpowers, or in this case the creation of their superpowers, to the testing of those powers, to their first heroic act taking out their villain. And in both movies the villain is closer than you think. Just from the trailer, it’s pretty obvious that Andrew becomes the villain of the piece, but it’s not quite as clear who becomes the hero of the piece so I won’t spoil that bit of information for you if you haven’t seen it yet.
As far as the actual style of the handheld cameras throughout the movie, it’s occasionally distracting but they use enough explained cheats and other excuses for different video sources that it comes off pretty well overall. I found that the movie was a little slow to get moving along but once it got going it flowed through to the ending very enjoyably. I found that with this specific movie, it’s a great excuse to get the teenagers talking to the camera and there’s thankfully little to no overly shaky, motion sickness inducing camerawork that literally made me sick the first time I watched Blair Witch in theaters.
The other thing that’s talked about almost universally when I was reading about this movie is the flying. Yes the teens soon learn how to fly and they do it with a believable amount of trial, error, and lack of finesse. It’s not like the first time Neo figures out he can fly and suddenly becomes a Superman bullet rocketing through the sky. It’s a lot more like a baby bird first learning to fly without the advantage of instincts to help them out. They’re clumsy at first, yet completely ecstatic, and the method used to pull this off on camera is excellent. We’ve come a long way from Catwoman’s shiny videogamesque CGI actor replacement. The flying scenes are very realistic and believable.
I think my biggest problem with the movie is that while it seems like it’s the first act of a superhero movie, it’s much more focused on the villain of the piece. Yes, it is Andrew’s camera that’s filming most of the movie, and yes he’s the one that takes the dark path as foreshadowed by his shaky home life. And then at the end the hero becomes a hero by doing what has to be done and goes away. It would have been great to see more of his journey and what happened to make him choose the right path and make the right decisions. But at the same time it’s a morbid fascination that makes it almost more interesting to see how Andrew makes the decisions that take him further and further down the path of destruction, and most of them almost seem like they’re the right decisions, or at least the only decisions he has based on what he’s been through. I can’t put my finger on it, but I think somewhere it strays a little too far or too quickly for the audience to root for him throughout the last half of the movie even though he’s a very sympathetic character.
I’m glad I caught wind of this movie, it really came out of the blue for me and I enjoyed watching it pretty well. If I wasn’t doing this movie blog I might have let it fall by the wayside and I would have missed it altogether. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but it’s still a pretty great movie. I definitely recommend checking this out if you have the chance. Thursday I’m back to my regularly scheduled theme for the month with Hancock. Until next time this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Spawn
Spawn 1997
It’s Monday night and my latest batch of movies are due back the next day with Spawn still left to watch, it’s the second movie fitting my theme for February. Even though this movie is rated PG-13 just like Catwoman and Captain America, I figured it was a bit too far out there for my daughter so Jena sat this one out. I’d seen this movie before a long time ago, I don’t remember exactly where, probably on TV or home video. The one thing I do remember about the campaign around this movie is an interview with John Leguizamo talking about playing the clown who seemed pretty passionate about the comic and the fact that even though he was pretty short, he was still five foot something, where the clown was supposed to be around three foot something, so he played it hunched down as much as he could to make it closer to the comic. I remember thinking it was pretty impressive that he showed that much enthusiasm for the comic book.
Spawn comes from Image comics and creator Todd McFarlane, whose name I recognize as one of the few writer/artists in the comic book world that I know for the simple fact that he has gone to great lengths to make his name known. Next to Stan Lee, I would guess that Todd McFarlane’s name is one of the best known names in comics to non-comic fans or casual comic fans. I had never read, and have still never read a Spawn comic book but I am familiar with his image. He has a great look, and I don’t feel that it copied over to the screen very well. My impression based on comic book covers is that Spawn’s costume is sleek and smooth, but in the movie it’s very heavily texture and it ends up looking like molded rubber which is probably what it is. The only part that the movie got right was the cape, and even though it’s used infrequenly, I thought it looked fantastic as did all the moving parts of the costume like the chains, the spikes, and whatnot, but when he’s just walking around it looks like he’s in a rubber suit.
Anyway, this movie tells the origin of Spawn and has a ton of boring exposition especially at the beginning with what felt like the longest credit sequence ever. Something about hell’s armies, chosen one, blah blah blah, I kind of tuned out during that part. They introduce the man who would be Spawn as a government looking non-government military agent who specializes in assassinations. He’s killed by his boss played by Martin Sheen because he wanted out, and I think the clown told Martin Sheen to do it also, but you find that out later. They also exploded a chemical plant that somehow created an ultravirus that he was then able to weaponize and create a cure for himself and his would-be allies. Cut to Spawn waking up in a bum city slash alleyway with his face scarred from burns and occasionally glowing green, met by an out of time looking guy who also glowed green earlier who tries to reason with Spawn, help him, and teach him. Basically this movie’s attempt at an Obi-Wan type character.
You find out that Spawn agreed to lead the army of the worst looking CGI Satan beast I’ve ever seen because… you know, they never really explained why CGI Satan needed to have him specifically lead his army in the first place. And the battle begins between Cogli…whatever, the old guy and the Clown battling over Spawn’s conscience. The Clown is doing his best to get him to kill Martin Sheen and release the virus all over the world, while the old guy is trying to reach Spawn’s humanity and have him fight for good. Of course, being sent back from Hell comes with benefits in the form of necroplasm. At least I think that’s what they called it. It pretty much does whatever you want it to, like an evil Green Lantern ring, though it tends to be used for a lot cooler things than a giant fist or a giant flyswatter. At the same time I guess it’s also used for some weird lame things like suction cup hands and making him look like a wall for a few seconds only to be seen as soon as he stops hiding. There’s also a couple mentions of how you can die as a Hellspawn, you either have your head cut off or you use up all your necroplasm power.
There’s also the requisite loves story where Spawn loved Wanda, but since Spawn was left in Hell for five years, she has since married Spawn’s old partner and has what looks like a six year old kid. Was this written by the same person that wrote Superman Returns? It seemed like they used the same math. They also never explicitly said whether or not the kid is Spawn’s kid or Spawn’s partner’s kid, though it seems like she was Spawn’s kid. Of course good wins out at the end with Spawn escaping Hell and taking over for the old guy in the fight for good or whatever.
I wanted to like this movie. I remembered liking it when I saw it the first time, but it wasn’t all that great at all. There’s so much of it that just doesn’t make sense. Why was Spawn chosen? Why is he needed specifically to lead Satan’s army? Why do they need him specifically to kill Martin Sheen, why not just have the Clown do it? Why send him back to Earth in an old alleyway right next to the guy that escaped Hell 500 years ago and has been fighting them ever since? Why does Spawn have an entire body of necroplasm for him to use while the old guy just has the one arm? And what the heck did Spawn do to all those other Spawn-looking demons when he was back in Hell the second time? Was he stealing their necroplasm? Just shooting out weird green electricity? And most of the CGI in this movie is horribly dated. The only good parts were Spawn’s cape, some of his armor powers, and some of the scenes with the Violator. Although I get the feeling that the better scenes of the Violator were done with models or animatronics rather than CGI. Either that or just better CGI.
The best part of the movie surprisingly is the Clown. Funnily enough I remembered not liking the Clown very much when I first saw the movie. But somehow his constant string of bad jokes, farts, and just plain being disgusting was pretty funny when paired with the ultraseriousness of Spawn’s origin. But what made this even more enjoyable to me was how much my wife reacted to his disgustingness. She has a very weak stomach for things like nasty food, farts, and especially the stained underwear scene, and the more uncomfortable she became, the funnier the scene became. That probably makes me a horrible person. For the Clown and the cape alone, I thought this movie was worth seeing. But for anyone else, it just doesn’t hold up that well anymore. I’m hoping to watch and review Chronicle before Tuesday’s post, but if not then Hancock will be up Tuesday instead of Thursday. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Catwoman
Catwoman 2004
I’m ready for the first movie of February. I do have a theme for this month and I’ve got 9 movies picked out ready to go for it. Plus three extras movies because they’re new. So to start things off I’m watching the movie which may or may not be the worst movie of the month, you’ll just have to wait to find that part out for sure. It’s the 2004 comedy Catwoman. I’m sorry it’s not technically labelled as a comedy but there were a lot more laugh out loud moments in this movie than there were in Super or Kick-Ass. The only problem is that the moments in this movie were meant to be taken seriously.
I vaguely remember the advertising and buzz for this movie when it was first coming out. I believe they were building on the buzz of Halle Berry’s role as Jinx in the Pierce Brosnan Bond movie which to this day is still the only Bond movie that I’ve ever seen. Not sure what that says about my movie preferences. Instead of doing a spinoff movie of the Jinx character the powers that be in Hollywood decided to create this movie which was supposed to create a new franchise. Apologies if this entire paragraph is a load of crap, it’s all stemming from my flawed memories instead of doing a little bit of typing and actually looking it up. I find it to make things more interesting that way.
Anyway, this movie was a chance for Halle Berry to have a starring role and to spin off Catwoman into her own movie franchise if it was successful. Long story short, it was not successful. They reworked the origin, outfit, and pretty much everything that made Catwoman Catwoman. Instead of being a slightly more criminal foil to Batman, in this movie she was chosen to be another in a long line of Catwomen by an Egyptian cat that tests her by seeing if she’ll climb out onto a ledge from a high rise apartment building to “rescue” the cat. And of course during that she is saved by a conveniently passing cop who thinks she is a jumper and of course they immediately like each other. She also conveniently overhears a diabolical secret of the cosmetics company that the new line of beauty cream they are getting ready to launch makes people sick, addicted, and ruins their face if they stop using it. She is then killed and conveniently resurrected by the same Egyptian cat and all of his cat friends. This gives her cat powers like being able to see and hear better, and she gets all the catlike traits of batting at quick moving objects, sleeping on high ledges, loving catnip, hissing at dogs, the list goes on and on. Pretty much every cat trait you can think of, Halle Berry does at some point during this movie. And it’s funny less than half of the time.
What’s more funny is the even worse cliched one-liners that she spouts during any of the so called action sequences. They usually amount to her running around the walls like a cat using the early CGI actor replacement which turns her into a shiny videogame-esque character that they try to hide with fast moving cameras and quick cuts. There’s even the bad bait and switch plot which is ruined because they show Sharon Stone talking about the harmful effects of the cream at the beginning, then set up the whole fact that she is playing Catwoman into her own plans which feels like it’s supposed to be a surprise for the audience, but the audience already knows that Sharon Stone is in on it the entire time. And because Catwoman wouldn’t be a real hero unless she was facing off against someone else who is superhuman in some way, they throw in the fact that Sharon Stone has been using the cream so much that her skin is as strong as marble and she feels no pain anymore… yes really. So it’s a magic cream that gets rid of wrinkles, gives people headaches, makes them addicted, destroys their skin if they stop using it, but makes their skin rock hard yet still beautiful if used over the course of years. Riiiiight.
There’s also the whole split personality that is explained as a side effect of the whole Catwoman origin process. Instead of being a shy, mousy, frumpy woman, she becomes a confident, independent, sexy woman. In the early part of the movie she seems not in control of this, mouthing off to her boss then immediately wanting to take back what she said. And later she seems to be more in control of it by embracing it fully while she’s wearing her Catwoman outfit yet still using it sparingly during the rest of her life. The costume is equal parts ridiculous as well, with a cat-eared mask that makes it look like she has a giant head, to the S&M inspired leather bra, shredded pants, and a whip. They even use an early moment to “explain” the whip where she rips off a beer tap and uses it for a whip then has the “aha” moment. You can almost see the lightbulb going off above her head during this scene. I skipped over this, but there’s plenty of these lightbulb moments early on like when she discovers her newfound agility by… being good at basketball.
There’s just not enough words to go through how many places this movie just fails to hit the mark. It’s cliche after cliche, from the bad costume to the bad villain, to the bad love story, to the bad dialog, to the bad funny sidekick in Alex Borstein. I enjoyed watching this movie only because I found it hilariously bad. Pretty much any time Halle Berry opened her mouth during a fight scene, it made me laugh. And I knew it was going to happen from the beginning, but Jena loved this movie. She loved all the cats in the movie and constantly asked if Halle Berry was turning into a cat. Although I suspect that on some level she liked the movie’s awfulness the same way we did. There were several moments when she started laughing at scenes that were just bad instead of funny . Stay tuned for Sunday when I watch Spawn as my second movie for the easiest “can you guess the theme” for February. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Here comes February!
It’s the last day of January already, I’m not going to make a big deal about how far along I am, I did that a couple weeks ago already. This is just more of a general update. Thanks for everyone who made suggestions early on, it helped me pick out several movies for January and I got to all of them except for X-Men First class. Sorry Josh, I’ll get to that one eventually. I’ve got all my movies picked out for February but I don’t have a strict schedule. Nine of the movies fit a special “guess the theme” for the month, and I also hope to watch and review Chronicle and Ghost Rider which come out this month as well as the first Ghost Rider to get ready for the new one. If you’re counting along, that’s 12 movies in 4 weeks, so every Tuesday this month will have a bonus review until I start falling behind or if I can’t get to the new movies. I hope to also continue these impromptu blog posts every Tuesday for updates and whatever else is on my mind at the time.
I’ll say right now that the “guess the theme” for next month should be pretty easy to guess and there is a fabulous no-prize to go along with it. Also if you’ve been following me on twitter I believe I already said what the theme is a couple weeks ago. But it’s been interesting so far, the most recent movie I watched was Hancock a couple days ago. I had forgotten how good the first half of that movie was, and the last half wasn’t quite as bad as I used to think it was. I’m not sure if I’m going to start on the Blade Trilogy or watch something more family friendly next.
There was one other thing that I was thinking about in the back of my mind, even though I’ve got plenty to watch for this year I bought the 5th and 6th seasons of Tales From the Crypt a few days ago. I realized that it fits with the overarching theme of this blog: video entertainment based on comics. It’s pretty far off from what I’ve narrowed down to focus on for this first year but I have high hopes that I will continue this blog after the first year, expanding into DVDs like all the animated Marvel and DC movies, and probably television shows. But then I wondered, what is the best way to go about doing a retro review for a television show? If I did an episode at a time, that would be way too many posts, especially for a long running series like Smallville. If I did one season at a time, that would be way too many episodes to watch for each post to keep it at two posts a week. Maybe I could just focus on however many episodes I’m able to watch in a week, plus a movie for the other post. But then again, I suppose I’m getting way ahead of myself. Right now I just need to focus on the 9 more movies I have to watch for this month. But if you have any thoughts on the matter, or if you want to guess next month’s theme, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. Stay tuned for Thursday’s review of Catwoman to launch February’s theme. Until next time this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Kick-Ass
Kick-Ass 2010
I’m ready to watch my last movie of January, I picked Kick-Ass up with one of my Christmas giftcards to finish out the card after getting the Simpsons fourteenth season, both on Bluray. It was my second sight unseen purchase for this blog after Super. I was about to get the DVD for $5, but saw that the bluray + DVD was only $10 so I just couldn’t pass it up. In all the reviews of Super that I read after watching the movie, it was compared to Kick-Ass, and there is definitely a very strong connection to the two movies.
Even though the movie is called Kick-Ass, it should almost be called Big Daddy and Hit Girl, as they are the actual Batman-like heroes of the movie. In fact, Big Daddy’s costume looks like a simplified version of Batman’s costume. A funny sidenote, I read a funny blog somewhere that talked about the eyeliner used wearing the batman mask that mysteriously disappears when the mask comes off. This movie actually has a brief scene where you see Big Daddy put the black paint around his eyes that shadow the area not covered by the mask. They are both martial arts and gunplay masters even though Hit Girl is only around 12 years old. They also have the money and the arsenal to back themselves up, since they fund themselves from the coffers of the drug dealers they take out. Kick-Ass is just a high school kid that has dreams of being a superhero and the guts to actually get a costume and a couple batons and make it happen, with varying degrees of success.
There feels like quite a bit of realism to the scenes with Kick-Ass. He gets hurt pretty bad during his first real encounter with a couple small time thugs and acts pretty scared during his early brushes with real criminals. But whenever you get to the fight scenes with Hit Girl and Big Daddy and the final fight scene, things get pretty fantastic and John Woo-esque. And even though this is technically an independent film, this looks a lot less like an independent film than Super does. Where Super uses a lot of muted colors outside of the costumes of The Crimson Bolt and Boltie, Kick-Ass has vibrant colors everywhere, from all of the costumed heroes, and even in the backgrounds of the mob boss’s family moments. Kick-Ass also uses a lot more fantasy martial arts choreography and fancy camera moves while Super tends to have a lot more straightforward action scenes.
The other thing that this movie and Super have in common is the death of one of the main characters. I won’t say which one, but in this movie it feels like the death was more earned. It felt a lot less like it was done for mere shock value and somehow felt like it was the natural progression of what had to happen for the characters to grow. I can’t put my finger on what the difference is, but I didn’t feel as cheated by the death as I did in Super.
I also find it interesting that this is often labelled as a comedy movie. Yes there are some comic relief moments, and a lot of the situations are so bizarre that they end up being comical by nature, but this really feels like a great superhero action movie. It doesn’t feel like the comedy moments are played to the detriment of the action scenes. All of the fights are well paced, visually intense, and straight up balls to the wall. The violence is bloody and it typically feels action movie real rather than comedy real. There were plenty of moments that made me laugh out loud, but that happened in Superman the Movie as well, yet that’s not considered a comedy. There were just as many moments in this movie that had me on the edge of my seat watching the scene play out.
The only bit of a downside was the relationship between Dave and Katie. It was played up a little too much in several scenes when she thought he was gay, and when he came out to her she seemed to come over to his side a little too quickly. I don’t disagree with the fact that they got together, I just didn’t quite agree with the way the actually got there. Overall I find I don’t have a whole lot to say about this movie just like most of the other good movies because there’s not much to pick at. I enjoyed the comedy, especially the parts with his two high school friends and pretty much anything Hit Girl, I enjoyed the action, even with the violence it was very comic book stylized violence with action movie choreography and editing, and I enjoyed the characters. My only other problem with the movie is a problem with how quickly things on the internet can change. Even though this was probably filmed only two years ago, all the references to MySpace instead of Facebook make it feel a little dated already.
And with this movie comes the end of my first full month of this project. I’m already well into the movies for February so look out for my review of Catwoman on Thursday and several Tuesday bonus reviews as I have 9 movies planned to watch for next month which has an easy “can you guess the theme” plus two extra movies after I realized that the new Ghost Rider movie comes out in February. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Super
Super 2010
This was actually the first movie that I bought sight unseen specifically for the purposes of this blog. It helped a lot that it was only three dollars at the rental store, technically two for six along with our other choice, Black Swan. I grabbed it at the same time as I rented the first four Superman movies and I held off on watching it until I found a good place to schedule it into this blog. It’s labelled a comedy, but it’s really a pitch black comedy with a lot of violence, gore, and drama. It’s also one of a recent trend in mimicking the real life superhero movement that’s been happening in a few places around the country. At the same time, it’s kind of a deconstruction of the typical superhero movie, there’s several places where a typical hero would make one choice, yet this movie makes a completely different choice, sometimes for comedic effect, other times for a more serious tone. There’s also a subtle difference that I only just realized after watching Kick-Ass, in most movies you root for the superhero, but often in this movie you worry about the superhero. Not always just for his safety, but often for his mental well-being.
The first act is by far the funniest, it starts off with oddball nice guy Frank played by Rainn Wilson who’s married to recovering (and lapsing) drug and alcohol addict Sarah played by Liv Tyler. She leaves him for a cool drug dealer Jacques played wonderfully by Kevin Bacon. After getting his ass kicked trying to convince Sarah to come back to him, Frank has a vision of God which was obviously an amalgam of the random TV shows he was watching, including a tentacle Hentai and a cheesy Christian channel superhero sendup of Bibleman called the Holy Avenger played by Nathan Fillion. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was also watching a little bit of Hannibal in there too. Although what the heck kind of cable or satellite service does he have that has tentacle porn only a few channels away from a cable access Christian station? The Holy Avenger bits were some of the funniest, especially the devil character that constantly flicked his tongue. Anyway, in his vision he sees a drawing of a mask with a starburst behind it. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that he should become a superhero.
The comedy continues into the second act as Frank becomes the Crimson Bolt, weilding a pipe wrench and accosting crime wherever he sees it, including drug dealers, pedophiles, and the worst of them all, line butters. While they do play up the blood in these scenes for comedy, especially in the line butting scene, I think a pipe wrench to the head would have killed most of those people rather than just seriously injuring them. I mean, it worked for Colonel Mustard, right? In these scenes there’s often a lot of blood, but usually along with comedic overreactions. He eventually ends up staying with comic book shopgirl Libby played by Ellen Page after he gets shot in his first attempt to retrieve his wife Sarah from Kevin Bacon’s drug mansion. She’s a great character who’s hyper, loves comics, loves the idea of being a hero, and loves the idea of Frank being a hero.
The third act is where things started getting real and uncomfortable. Libby’s infatuation with Frank’s Crimson Bolt caused her to become his kid sidekick Boltie who is way too much in love with the violent aspect of the job. Her first initiative was to go after a guy who she thinks maybe probably keyed her friend’s car. She broke a glass vase over his head which embedded shards of glass into his face and she almost smashed his head in with a large sculpture. When seeing a couple of Kevin Bacon’s thugs at a gas station, Frank gets chased down the street only to be saved by Boltie running Frank’s car into one of the thugs and Frank uses one thug’s gun to shoot the other thug. Both of them were left to most likely die while the crowd of onlookers around them actually cheer for the victory, before this point the news was reporting him as a violent pscyopath. The two heroes then go to the discount gun store to buy an arsenal of weapons to storm the drug lord’s palace and rescue Sarah once and for all. Boltie’s infatuation finally comes to a head when she comes into the living room and tries to seduce The Crimson Bolt while she is wearing her costume. Even though he shuns her advances, she forces herself on him in a very uncomfortable scene. Frank then goes to throw up and sees a vision of Sarah in the toilet which leads them to the final bloody confrontation at the mansion. And when I say bloody, I mean pipe bomb, limbs missing, smashing a guy’s head on a sharp tile bloody, as Frank essentially descends into madness, but succeeds in rescuing Sarah. Who leaves him again after a few months, but finds a great guy and starts a large family. But Frank’s ok with it because the guy is good for her and he’s still in the picture as their friend. And instead of helping people as The Crimson Bolt, you see that he spends his time helping people as Frank by doing little things like holding the door or saying “thank you”.
I’m not sure what to really say about this movie, I loved parts of it, I was shocked by parts of it, and parts of it were genuinely touching. I laughed out loud many times during this movie, like the line butting scene I mentioned earlier where he goes across the street to change into his costume in his parked car, where everyone can still clearly see him changing, comes back and smacks the guy in the head who starts profusely bleeding and writhing on the ground in agony, then also smacks the girl he was with for good measure, then runs off yelling “Don’t butt!” Rainn Wilson does a great job of making you really care about Frank even when he gets pushed off the deep end. He does what superheroes aren’t supposed to do aside from maybe the Punisher, but at the end of the movie, you still like him. And it bothered me a little bit that at the end of it all, there’s absolutely no consequences of his little killing spree.
The changes in pacing and tone throughout the movie might be a little jarring and there’s definitely a few places where the movie might shock you. There’s one spoilerific scene near the end of the movie. While I was watching it I guessed what had happened a few moments before the reveal, but it was still a pretty stunning moment. This movie is absolutely not for everyone, and it bears a lot of similarities to Kick-Ass, but in Kick-Ass things turn out more or less the way a Superhero comic should. In this movie, the results are more or less the same, but it just takes a different route to get there. So if you liked that movie it might be worth a watch. And my full thoughts on Kick-Ass will be up on Sunday. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Should I watch Chronicle?
Even with having a Tuesday bonus review, I thought I’d still write up a short blog post like I’ve been doing every Tuesday. As far as a quick movie update/preview goes, I just got done with watching my rental haul, and I bought a bunch of movies for this month and later this year. I think I’ve spent a total of about $60 for the purposes of this blog. Aside from rental fees though, these are all movies that I bought because I enjoyed them in the first place, or a couple that were cheap and I was pretty sure I would like them. Coming up in the next couple weeks is my reviews of Super, Kick-Ass, Catwoman, and Spawn. And I picked up the Blade Trilogy, Hancock, Ghost Rider, and the Incredible Hulk to watch soon.
But the question of the blog is Chronicle. I only just recently learned about this movie from the City of Heroes message board. It looks pretty interesting, but the question I have is should I include it in a movie review blog about superheroes? Just going from what I see in the trailer, and a couple minor things I’ve heard online about it, here’s what I’ve got: It’s set pretty much in the real world using the “found footage” style like Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch Project. It involves three teenagers who gain superpowers in the traditional superhero sense of the word. They get telekinesis, invulnerability, flight, and possibly other similar minor powers. They don’t become superheroes with this ability, in fact at least one if not more of them become more or less a villain. There is the chance that one or two of the other kids step up to become a hero and stop him, but there are no costumes or secret identities.
So what do you think? I believe it comes out February 3rd. I already have more than enough movies that I plan to get to in the entire month of February. It does look like an interesting movie that I wouldn’t mind watching regardless of this blog. But that’s the question of the day. Do you think I should review Chronicle in this blog? Or do you think it looks too sci-fi, too unheroic, too anything to fall into the realm of superheroes? Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Until Next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 