Filmwhys #45 The Terminator and Timecop
Episode 45 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is David Brook from Blueprint: Review who asks me why I haven’t seen the Terminator, the iconic film that really showed the world that Schwarzenegger could do more than just be a giant barbarian and that James Cameron could do amazing things with a small budget. And in return, I ask him why he hadn’t seen Timecop, the not quite iconic film that showed the world that Jean Claude Van Damme could still do the jumping splits and not a whole lot else, but the movie still captures the essence of 90’s sci-fi.
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We Are the Best
We Are the Best 2014
I can see the finish line I’ve set for myself to finish all of the 2014 releases that I’ve found to cover for my site. After this there’s just one more film left to watch and then shortly afterwards I will post my top 10 for the year. This movie is a Swedish film that I didn’t hear about until sometime around October or November, it’s another one of those questionable release dates as it did come out in festivals and in Sweden in 2013, but had a limited US theatrical run in May of this year and recently came out online. It’s a relatively simple story about a young girl growing up in Stockholm in the 80’s. She’s in the middle of a full-on awkward stage and is coping with it through her and her friends immersion in punk rock culture. There’s little to no conflict here, no big revelations, no character arcs, instead what is there is a lot of simplicity of story, characters that feel real, and very funny situations. I’m glad I got the chance to watch this before making my top 10 list, because there’s a pretty good chance that this will crack its way on there.
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Tiger and Bunny: The Rising
Tiger and Bunny: The Rising 2014
Once again finishing up my quest to have watched every single 2014 comic book and superhero movie with this anime film that came out during the early part of this year. It’s a spin-off of the Tiger and Bunny anime TV series which I have yet to watch, though I did watch the first movie, Tiger and Bunny: The Beginning. It came out after the show, but encapsulated the beginning of what happened in the show, as mentioned in the title. This movie takes place after all of the events of the show, but there weren’t too many things that I wasn’t able to follow having not seen anything other than the first film. I would recommend at least watching either “The Beginning” or the first couple episodes of the show to get a better introduction to all of the characters. That said, I really enjoyed getting back into the world of this film where superheroes are both TV stars and methods of advertising, where each hero has their own sponsorship, and usually several. It adds a unique element to the story where we get to see not just the heroes and villains, but the challenge of filming the fights and the people who are watching the events at home. The overall story of the film wasn’t anything special, but it was great to get back to these characters I’m familiar with within this fascinating world. And I did end up watching this in the original Japanese with subtitles.
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Why I Don’t Rate Movies
First off, the title of this post is a little bit of a lie. I am on Letterboxd where I keep track of all the movies that I watch, both superhero and non-superhero, and on that site I do rate them on their scale of 5 stars, including half stars. But for the reviews that I write for this site, I don’t include any ratings on any sort of scale. It’s up to the reader to determine what I thought about the movie based on the words rather than a bite-sized bit of info at the beginning or the end of the review. There are quite a few reasons why I do this actually, and it’s not just to try and force people to actually read the review rather than just looking at the rating to see what I thought of a particular film.
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I, Frankenstein
I, Frankenstein 2014
I have decided that I am close enough to the end that I will finish seeing all of the 2014 films on my list before doing my full, written year-in-review including a top 10 list as I have only 3 movies left to watch and hope to knock at least 2 of them out this weekend. But this film I have been almost dreading ever since it came out back in January. I believe it has missed hitting many worst-of-the-year lists (which I haven’t been reading) merely because it has been forgotten about in favor of more recent and/or more high profile disasters and cannon fodder. But I am a fan of Underworld and I liked many of the actors that signed up for this film including Bill Nighy, Aaron Eckhart, and Miranda Otto. Unfortunately, the biggest mistake this film makes is that it is essentially a mid budget B-movie that thinks it’s a big budget serious action movie. I can’t say that this was a very good movie at all, the action was mediocre, there was too much exposition, the effects were overly flashy and not very good, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t have a lot of fun watching this film. Admittedly most of that fun was through making jokes at the film’s expense on Twitter, but fun was had nonetheless.
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WordPress Fireworks: 2014 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here's an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 200,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 9 days for that many people to see it.
Filmwhys #44 All About Eve and Batman Returns
Episode 44 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is Max Covill from Impassioned Cinema who asks me why I haven’t seen the classic Best Picture Winner All About Eve which also had the most Oscar Nominations ever until Titanic tied it and the most nominations for actresses. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen the sequel to Tim Burton’s Batman which focused more on the villains and was set at Christmas, Batman Returns.
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Hercules
Hercules 2014
I was initially unsure of whether to include this film as Hercules comes from classic Greek mythology and I was unfamiliar with the actual comic that inspired it. But after seeing the film, it really is quite obvious that it’s not directly inspired by the original myths and legends of the hero, but instead is one step removed and is adapted from a comic book from Radical Publishing called Hercules: The Thracian Wars which takes the air out of Hercules’s legend and places him as a mercenary with a storyteller trumping up his exploits. When this film came out, I generally heard negative reviews about it which made me less likely to see it, though many noted the film’s mis-marketing as a factor which sold the film with Hercules being the legend that he is known for. In fact, nearly all of the opening few minutes of the movie which detail his fantastic exploits showed up in the trailer. But, as I wasn’t deluded by the trailers and knew what I was going in for, I appreciated the film’s exploration of the difference between myth and reality. What I didn’t fully buy into was when the film started buying into its own sense of mythical reality towards the end.
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What I’ve Learned Watching Superhero Movies for 3 Years
This marks the third anniversary of when I started Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights and in that time I’ve seen a whole lot of superhero movies and comic book movies. You can learn a lot about a particular niche of film when you start delving deeply enough into it. While I was aware even when I started this site that superhero movies were currently on the rise, even back at the tail end of 2011 I had no idea that they were going to reach the heights that they are at now, and there shows no signs that they are slowing down. All of the major players have their own superhero cut of the market that they can claim as their own with the only exception being Paramount Pictures which has had their hands in Marvel properties, but the closest thing they can claim are the Transformers and G.I. Joe properties which are based on toys and cartoons that have had comics as well. But that’s beside the point, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some of the things that I’ve learned over the past three years.
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Filmwhys Extra #20 2014 in review
Welcome back to another episode of Filmwhys Extra. Episode 20 in fact, where my guest is Andrew Robinson from gman Reviews. We wrap up 2014 by discussing the past year’s worth of superhero and comic book films, including the direct to home video animated releases from Marvel and DC, some smaller indie releases, and Andrew stretches the definition of “superhero” for his top 10 of the year. We also manage to go on quite a few tangents before we even get to any of this year’s releases but it’s a fun conversation and I hope you enjoy listening as much as much as I enjoyed chatting.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 