Almost Super: Franklyn 2008

This post is a part of my Patreon rewards program. Each month, Patreon members can vote on one of the movies that I review each month. If you would like to participate join today for just $1 a month. I don’t remember where I first heard about this film, but it had vigilante in the description and a guy in a mask on the cover. After watching it, while the movie does have a hint of vigilantism and evokes similarities to Watchmen, but it’s a far cry from a superhero movie. It does share some similarities to other movies that I’ve covered on this site where there is a superhero but it’s partly a hallucination of the main character. This involves four different characters and two of them have hallucinations, but only one of them involves anything close to a superhero. It’s still an interesting film in its own right, but much of the interest is left open to interpretation.

Almost Super: Fast Color 2019

This is another instance that reminds me a little bit of Sleight and Darkest Minds, three movies that have a Black protagonist and super powers (of sorts), but only one of them did I actually decide to put it on my list of superhero movies. While this movie does have super powers, the big thing that it lacks is heroism. That’s not to say it’s not a good movie. I actually enjoyed the hell out of it. And similar to Sleight, there is enough set up here that it the world of the movie continues either in sequels or a TV series and amps up the heroic aspect of the characters I would rethink my decision. But as it stands with this single movie, it falls just over the line as a sci-fi movie with super powers rather than a full fledged superhero movie. Though there’s enough here that I wouldn’t argue against anyone else who would consider it the other way.

Almost Super: Lucy 2014

This post is part of my Patreon rewards where each month I allow my patrons to vote on a movie that I will cover. This month’s mini theme was Almost Super and I picked four different films that had some superhero elements to them but I felt like I needed to fully watch them to make the final decision. This is the film that won and as you can tell by the header that I did not think that Lucy counts as a superhero movie. Even though the main character gets super powers of a sort, the majority of the film is more about the explanation of those powers rather than using those powers to become some sort of hero. If you would like to vote in these polls as well as access other rewards, all I ask is for a single dollar a month which would help me out greatly. Simply sign up at my Patreon. As for this movie, I had heard that it was a little on the weird side, but I didn’t realize quite how weird. Though once it finally took a turn towards the action side, it kept on through until the end.

Almost Super: Sexina: Pop Star P.I. 2007

A little while ago I was cultivating some lists of movies that I still need to review that are on various streaming services. One of those services is Hoopla which is free through most local libraries. I did a basic search for “Superhero” and this was one of the movies that came up. I ran a poll on Twitter, and this is the movie that won. I knew I was in for a bad movie from the start just based on the description and cover art, but I was in the mood for a bad movie and this scratched that itch perfectly. The only problem was that I didn’t quite read the description carefully enough because I quickly realized that this wasn’t really a superhero movie at all, but a private eye detective style movie. Not only that, but it was also a parody film though the line between the movie trying to parody its subject and the movie just being funny because it’s so bad is a very thin line. Honestly, the film did eventually get some genuine laughs out of me but it was also halfway between laughing with it and laughing at it.

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Almost Super: Koi… Mil Gaya 2003

This was one of the first foreign titles that I had heard of to add to my big superhero movie list as it is the first movie in the Bollywood Krrish trilogy where Krrish and Krrish 3 are both clearly superhero movies, but even early on I had heard that this had very little to do with superheroes at all. But over at Cinefessions they are holding an annual Summer Screams Challenge that I decided to join in this year, and as part of that challenge there are weekly themes. The theme this week happens to be foreign sci-fi & horror films with a bonus if you watch an entire trilogy. So I thought this would be the perfect time to finally watch and review this Krrish trilogy. I’m not entirely well versed in Bollywood films, but I have seen a couple so I knew roughly what to expect: long run times and random musical interludes. I wasn’t entirely expecting the whole Flowers for Algernon subplot that took up the entire first third of an almost three hour movie. But even with that in mind, this was still a generally enjoyable film that fell into a few cliched traps along the way.
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Sleight 2017

Just a couple days ago I just happened to notice a promoted tweet about a smaller film opening this weekend called Sleight. There were a couple things that caught my interest about the tweet, one was that they used a pull quote that mentioned twisting the superhero genre. And the other was that it had a Black lead. When I looked at their Twitter feed, I also saw a pull quote that called it “Chronicle meets Iron Man” and when I watched the trailer I was interested so I decided to give it a shot. While I did enjoy the film, I thought that it didn’t come anywhere near the hype of the pull quote as it only touches on a few similarities to a typical origin story. It tosses in a few urban coming of age tropes, but the characters and the magician angle were enough to pull me in for most of the movie.
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Almost Super: P.U.N.K.S. 1999

I have gone back and forth on whether or not to write something about this film here on this site, but since I had gone almost two weeks without writing anything here, I figured I might as well get something out of the time I spent watching this movie. Since this is a niche movie site, I have certain criteria on what films I review for this site, but the definition of “superhero movie” is nebulous at best so sometimes a short description of a movie sounds like it could fit this site, but when I watch it, it actually doesn’t. I was trying to start watching some kids movies based on a Twitter poll I posted a week or so ago gauging what I should watch next for this site, and P.U.N.K.S. is on YouTube so that’s what I went for. Needless to say, it’s a pretty bad film even if it does have the likes of Randy Quaid, Henry Winkler, and a young Jessica Alba.
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Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins 1985

Lately, I’ve gone back and forth about what movies I include in the comic book and superhero category. Often times in the past, I have preferred to err on the side of inclusion, but lately I’ve started to go against that considering I decided to exclude the “superhero” movie The Adventures of Food Boy that really had nothing to do with superheroes. Remo Williams is one of those that falls closer to the lines of Buckaroo Bonzai, plus the fact that he has some extraordinary abilities learned through the martial art of Sinanju, and he has his identity changed from his previous life as a cop. But I decided that those for whatever reason just aren’t quite enough for me and this film falls a little bit more on the line of a martial arts/spy film rather than a superhero film. There were even comic books made based on this character, but they came out after this film. The film itself was a lot of fun mired behind a lack of focus and pacing, almost a parody of action/spy films while still taking itself mostly seriously.
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