Blog Archives
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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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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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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Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November
It feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve written a general blog post that wasn’t a review or a list. Most people who know comics or comic book movies, or are in the UK know that the 5th of November is Guy Fawkes Day. Here in the US, it’s not that important of a day outside of the fact that it is very prominent in the movie V for Vendetta. And it seems like more than any other movie, this is one that tends to get reviewed most often on or around the fifth of November. And, unsurprisingly I had also intended to watch and review this movie around this time for the past two years of writing on this site, and yet I have been unable to remember the fifth of November until this very year. Although I won’t be able to post my review tonight, I will be watching the film tonight.
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Saturday Morning Memories
I realized that it feels like it’s been a while since I wrote a more casual blog post here, it’s been all movie reviews, podcasts, and lists. Since it is Saturday morning right now, I thought it would be nostalgic for me to go through some of my Saturday Morning superhero memories of some of the cartoons that I liked to watch when I was younger. And while I am calling this Saturday Morning Memories, I certainly don’t remember the difference between which cartoons actually came on during Saturday morning and which came on during the after school block. I grew up in the 80’s, but I did continue to have a love of cartoons through my teenage years so I will be covering some of those 90’s cartoons as well.
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Top 10 Guilty Pleasure Superhero Movies
It feels like I’ve been running or planning my own blogathons quite a bit around here, I thought it was only fair to finally take part in some other blogathons. One I ran across just today was a fun little blogathon called Guilty Pleasure Movies over at Flick Chicks. And even though I did recently take part in a Guilty Pleasures Lambcast, I didn’t mention too many superhero movies and I knew I could easily come up with a whole top 10 list of Guilty Pleasure Superhero movies. These aren’t some of the best movies out there, and I’m sure I might catch some flak from true superhero fans for liking these, but there’s just something about them that I happen to like.
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100 Essential Superhero Movies
After spending a couple months going through my own choices as well as the polls for some of the outliers I finally have a full list of 100 movies that I think are essential for a true fan of superhero movies. There are many good ones, and some bad ones, but there is something noteworthy among every single one of them either due to the character, the circumstances around the movie, or simply the merits of the movie itself. I’d like to thank everyone for their contributions and support throughout making this list, I really appreciate it. Now without further ado, let’s get on to the list itself.
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100 Essential Superhero Movies – Indie Comics
I decided that I wanted to make a list of 100 superhero movies that I thought were the essentials, the ones that everyone needs to see at one point in time if they want to be a fully fledged superhero movie afficionado, and while I am having guest bloggers this month help me fill out the list, there are many much more obvious choices that were easy to make and I’m here to share some of those with you. I’ve made a few different lists from Marvel and DC comics, but those aren’t the only two companies out there that make superhero comics, and now it’s finally time to take a look at some of the other superhero movies that come from comics outside of the big two.
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100 Essential Superhero Movies – You Decide! Special
Part of finishing off this list of 100 essential superhero movies is bringing in my audience, and so when I got down to the last 15-20 movies, I decided that I would let you decide. And what better than to reach out to other movie critics and reviewers to let them argue the case for a superhero movie that they are a fan of and at the bottom of the post, there is a poll where you can vote whether or not you agree if it should be included in the 100 Essential Superhero Movies list. But I didn’t want them to have all the fun so today I will be defending the case for Special, a low budget flick about a guy who isn’t really a superhero, but enrolls in a drug test study which causes him to believe he has superpowers. And things are winding down on this project, I will have the last You Decide articles by the end of this week, the last group of movies I decided to include, and one final giant poll to round out the rest of this list which will be finalized and posted in its entirety by July 9th.
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100 Essential Superhero Movies – Borrowed Marvel
I decided that I wanted to make a list of 100 superhero movies that I thought were the essentials, the ones that everyone needs to see at one point in time if they want to be a fully fledged superhero movie afficionado, and while I am having guest bloggers this month help me fill out the list, there are many much more obvious choices that were easy to make and I’m here to share some of those with you. Marvel has put out a lot of movies throughout the years and I’ve already taken a look back at the early days of Marvel movies as well as the current state of the Marvel Disney Cinematic Universe, but there is one final category of Marvel movies that I have yet to talk about, and that is what I’m calling the borrowed Marvel movies, the ones that I’m sure Marvel would love to get their hands back on, but they are currently in the hands of either Sony or Fox until the rights finally pass back to Marvel however many years down the line that might be.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 