Men in Black 3
Men in Black 3 2012
And now it’s time to finish up this alien crime-fighting trilogy with the third installment. Though of course in this day and age it’s doubtful that this franchise will settle with a mere three films though there’s no telling if the next one will end up being a sequel or a reboot. Of course, with the way the film universe is situated, it would be easy to create a sequel with all new characters, but still within the same continuity but I’m getting way off track here. While I did watch this film back when it came out in 2012, that was during my first year of writing for this site and I had a bit more narrow definition of what I was going to be covering. But even if I didn’t think of these films as being superhero films, they are still based off of comics as inspiration if not directly source material. While the first two films had five years in between them, the next two had a ten year gap. And yet, with a larger gap came a fresher outlook on the characters and the setting. Instead of rehashing the plot of the first two films, it went in a different direction and brought up a tried and true sci-fi concept with time travel, brought in Josh Brolin doing a spot on young Tommy Lee Jones impression, and Jermaine Clement doing a spot on young Tim Curry impression. It was just as much fun as the original, and brought in some nice callbacks without feeling rehashed.
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The 10 Best Superhero Movies of All Time Relay Results
When I started this relay I wasn’t entirely sure how it would end up. I’ve seen these Relay blogathons come and go and I thought it was an interesting idea, but it felt too much like just a rotating top 10. Some names would stick around for a while, others would quickly get replaced with little rhyme or reason outside of the individual blogger’s taste. So when I came up with the idea to do my own relay, I wanted to create some additional rules that would give a definite end to the relay. Some found the rules to be a little bit too confusing, while others understood it a bit more clearly. I think it ended up somewhere in the middle. If I did this again, I would make things a little bit more simple, but I would still keep enough of it so that it did have a definite finish line. But it has reached that finish line and so I’d like to share the final top 10 Best Superhero Movies of All Time as decided by a group of 18 different bloggers who have taken their own turn in the relay.
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Men in Black
Men in Black 1997
I’m down to the last few films left on my 100 Essential Superhero Movies list and the perfect excuse came for me to revisit the Men in Black trilogy when I was offered to guest on the As You Watch Podcast. Or you could say, offered to make my triumphant return considering that I am one of the founding members of the podcast. But as for the movie, I initially questioned whether or not to even classify Men in Black as a superhero movie vs. a comic book movie, considering the fact that it is based on an indie comic book that was later published under the Marvel label before the movie was made. It does follow enough of my own qualifications for me to include it: It’s set in the modern day, the heroes have superhuman abilities via the alien technology, they also have a costume of sorts, they also have a secret identity of sorts considering that they lose their normal identity when joining, and they are fighting something that is superhuman. I’m certain that I had seen this in theaters back when it was released and the song is ubiquitous with the movie as well. It was a lot of fun revisiting this film even though there were a few moments that definitely felt a bit dated this time around.
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This Week in Superhero TV 11/30 – 12/5
Welcome back to another week of super-heroics and a little bit of news for you. I don’t generally talk about news much, but I am a big fan of the underrated show Don’t Trust the B– in Apartment 23 with Krysten Ritter as the lead so I wanted to talk a little bit about a recent announcement. There hasn’t been a whole lot of news that I’ve noticed that concerns the Netflix Marvel shows that aren’t Daredevil. But they recently announced the leads for the upcoming shows Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. I personally don’t have any exposure at all to Luke Cage or Jessica Jones other than the fact that all of the Netflix series are supposedly more down to Earth and less superpowered. I also don’t know much about Mike Colter who was cast as Luke Cage, but I’m completely on board with Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones. Things are starting to ramp up before slowing down as the current shows start getting into their midseason finales, with Gotham last week, The Walking Dead this week, and the Flash next week. While Agent Carter starts a month from now and iZombie somewhere around there as well. And as always, I’d like to thank Rachel Thuro for tackling the Walking Dead. And I just realized that I forgot to watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this week, I’ll either add it in tomorrow, or add it to next week’s post.
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The Worst Movies of 2014
It’s getting close to that time of year once again. The time of year when the bulk of the “best of” and “favorites” of the year come out, but it’s also often time for film writers to take a look at the other side of cinema, the “Worst of” the year. And if you clicked on this link looking for the films that I thought were the worst of the year, then go ahead and click somewhere else because I’m not here today to spend any more of my time talking about film that I didn’t like. Instead, I much prefer to celebrate the films that I did enjoy for one reason or another. I have indulged in calling out some of the worst superhero films, but I’ve also talked about the “best worst” superhero films, the ones that are bad but I still enjoy watching them. Instead, what I’d like to do is to reach out to the other film writers that read this site and encourage them to drop the “worst” lists this year, and instead only celebrate what’s enjoyable to watch.
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Men in Black II
Men in Black II 2002
The way it tends to go with superhero movie sequels is that the first movie is good, the second movie is better, and the third movie is where it all goes to hell. Men in Black surprisingly bucks that trend and instead goes to crap in the first sequel only to redeem itself in the third. It doesn’t help that there is quite a bit of time between the three films. Five years have passed since the first Men in Black and they wrote out what made the original so great: the chemistry between Will Smith’s and Tommy Lee Jones’ Agents J and K. In a lot of ways, this sequel felt like the writers just wanted to recapture what made the first one so great and thought that the best way to do that was to just recreate all the elements of the first film that worked instead of expanding on them. And except for a brief moment here and there, it does not work for me at all. And somewhat surprisingly, even though I did watch all three films in order, it was just so much easier to pick out all of the flaws in this movie rather than try to determine what exactly it is about the first movie that makes it so great.
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Filmwhys #42 Rashomon and The Guyver
Episode 42 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast wherein lies the answer to the life, the universe, and everything. And I welcome my guest Will Kouf from Silver Emulsion who asks me why I haven’t seen Rashomon, one of Akira Kurosawa’s most well known film next to Seven Samurai and a film that handled a storytelling device so well that the term for showing the same event through different viewpoints is referred to as Rashomon. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen the Guyver, a very campy sci-fi superhero comedy based on a Manga of the same name and starring Mark Hamill post-Star Wars alongside Jimmy Walker of all people.
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This Week in Superhero TV 11/23 – 11/28
It’s been a busy week. I’ve gotten the chance to take the week off of work, stay home, relax, watch a bunch of movies and it’s been good. There’s also been a bit of news in the realm of superhero TV though I won’t cover all of it here. The thing that impacts this site the most is that Constantine now has the sword of Damocles hanging over its head. It’s currently the lowest rated comic book related show out there and hasn’t held on to Grimm’s ratings very well. It had a nice bump last week, but before those numbers came out the order was given that NBC will not give it a full season run. Instead Constantine will only get 13 episodes which makes getting a second season much more unlikely. Which is disappointing, even though it’s still early in its run, I have liked it better than Gotham. But it hasn’t done a whole lot to wow me aside from the Feast of Souls episode. Also, if you haven’t heard yet, I am planning on expanding this feature into a full fledged site and am looking for contributors so please check it out! And as always, I would like to thank Rachel Thuro for tackling this week’s The Walking Dead.
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Birdman
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) 2014
It’s a rare occasion that I get the chance to watch a movie that has Oscar buzz surrounding it. I missed out on my chance last year with Blue is the Warmest Color which lost it’s chance due to the release schedule making it ineligible to be France’s choice as a Best Foreign Film nominee. But when you look at movies that specifically take a look at superheroes, really the only other time that was in consideration was back in 2008 with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. And many people claim that film as being the reason why the Oscars changed their rules to allow up to ten films in the Best Picture category was strongly due to the fact that The Dark Knight didn’t make the cut, but probably would have if more films were allowed. I haven’t seen nearly enough potential Oscar nominees this year, and the only ones that even have a small chance at entering into the big categories are this one and possibly Snowpiercer which also has a similar struggle because of its release date. But as for Birdman itself, it has some strong performances from everyone in the cast, and there are some impressive storytelling decisions in the direction of this film. It’s one of those films that I can tell has a lot to dig into that a single viewing can only scratch the surface, but it’s one that I greatly enjoyed and can’t wait to watch again in the near future.
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Superhero TV Site Project
As most of you reading this may know, I’m a big fan of superheroes and movies which was one reason why I created this site. It’s been a lot of fun and it’s not going anywhere. But I also have a love of television and while this year has really grown from zero to one prime time superhero and comic book television shows to 6: Walking Dead, Gotham, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, The Flash, Arrow, and Constantine, with Daredevil, Supergirl, Teen Titans, the other Netflix shows, and more in development. It’s a crazy time to be a fan of superheroes on TV. And of course, there’s still plenty of kid-friendly animated shows from both DC and Marvel including an upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy cartoon. So what I would like to do is to create a spin-off site that covers all of these television shows as well as retro looks at past TV shows. But there is just too much out there and if I tried to do this alone, both sites would suffer. So I need your help! Check out below to see what I’m looking for and how you can help.
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