Blog Archives
Legends of the Superheroes
Legends of the Superheroes 1979
Batman’s 80th anniversary just passed yesterday and in celebration I finally gave in and signed up for DC Universe’s new streaming app with their 80 cents for the first month sale. The main reason why I wanted to get the app was to watch this DC oddity that I had heard about but never got around to watching until now. It’s not quite a movie, not quite a miniseries, but it’s a two-part TV special that honestly feels like DC’s answer to the Star Wars Holiday Special. It’s ultra-low budget, it feels like a sketch comedy show with superheroes, and it’s difficult to tell what they really wanted to do with this property. It’s one of the very few Hanna Barbera live action properties and was tied into the Superfriends cartoon, but they couldn’t use Superman or Wonder Woman due to their rights being tied up in other places at the time. It’s pretty much one of those so-bad-it’s-good, but it did catch a couple genuine laughs out of me.
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Inspector Gadget 2
Inspector Gadget 2 2003
This is one of those movies that’s been sitting in my Netflix queue for well over a year and I’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on it because I knew it was going to be pretty bad. But me being me, I was in the mood for a bad movie so I finally watched this one. Now, I was a big fan of the cartoon series when it was on Nickelodeon, but I never watched the first live action movie because I also suspected that it was kids movie trash. And while I did initially have some slight reservations on whether to actually consider this a superhero movie, I figured that there is a direct line from Cyborg to Robocop to Inspector Gadget. The best argument I heard against is that he is typically more of a spy than a superhero crimefighter, but at least in this movie, he’s a straight up cop. With super powers. So I think he’s just barely over the line. As for the actual quality of the movie? It’s straight to DVD Disney sequel trash that never got a laugh out of me and barely resembled the cartoon it was based on.
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SuperLopez
SuperLopez 2018
In topics few people reading this site really care about, I decided to switch from Netflix to Hulu as my streaming site of choice for a while. And as I have just under a month left of Netflix before my membership runs out, I decided it was time to try and watch some of the movies that have been sitting in my queue for months. But instead of that, I watched this film which I had just heard about coming onto Netflix a few days ago. It’s a Spanish superhero parody movie, but it’s actually quite similar to Mystery Men as it’s not just a movie parody of Superman, but the original comic was a comic strip parody of Superman and this is an adaptation of that comic. As for the actual movie itself, it was pretty slow, but it did have a few good laughs mixed in between a lot of nothing.
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Constantine: City of Demons: The Movie
Constantine: City of Demons: The Movie 2018
I’m still playing catch up with the past couple years of superhero movies and this is the third webseries turned movie that debuted on CW Seed after Vixen and Freedom Fighters: The Ray, the latter of which I still have yet to watch. I liked the Keanu Reeves version of Constantine but I really loved the Matt Ryan version despite the fact that it only lasted a single season and I’m glad that he’s been able to continue the role in the animated movies and Legends of Tomorrow. And while this doesn’t completely fall in line with the live action series, it still has the same feeling to it. The movie falls right in line with the spirit of the TV series version but it dials up the gore several notches to some pretty extreme levels. And what this really does is make the importance of the decisions that Constantine has to make that much more impactful.
Shazam!
Shazam! 2019
It’s previously been very rare for me to see any movies on opening weekend, let alone going to see a movie during an early screening. And while this wasn’t an extraordinarily exclusive early screening, it’s one of the first times I’ve ever gotten to see a movie early. As far as the character goes, I’m not overly familiar with DC’s Captain Marvel aside from a vague history of how he got his name before Marvel existed, then had to change it to Shazam to avoid confusion. It’s also an odd coincidence that Marvel’s Captain Marvel and DC’s Captain Marvel were released within weeks of each other. Not only that, but they both feature Djimon Hounsou in a minor role. And after the negativity surrounding the early extra grim-dark entries in the DC Universe, they’ve gone much closer to the successful Marvel route to lighten things up quite a bit. And while it might be a little closer to standard, it still works and makes this one of the most fun DC films in a long time. And as I do with every new release, there will be spoilers so here’s your warning.
Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors
Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors
This is the most recent animated project from Marvel which have been very hit or miss and mainly focused on TV series lately. This almost seems like a response to DC’s Super Hero Girls only instead of making a team of super hero girls and market it directly to girls, this seems like just a generally diverse group of heroes that happen to be made up of more than half women. And while I haven’t seen much of the marketing for it, I get the impression that it is geared slightly more towards girls, but also generally gender neutral. This is my first experience with the majority of the heroes presented in here, though I have heard about several of them in passing and I was familiar with Chloe Bennet’s Quake from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. though I stopped watching shortly after she first got her powers. It also is an odd release strategy as this is basically the pilot movie that aired on TV and is now available on Marvel’s YouTube channel Marvel HQ. But the next two releases are 30 minutes followed by 44 minutes and are considered “TV specials”. It’s not a series, it’s not movies, the lengths are all over the place so far, but I’m curious where it’s going to go.
Venom
Venom 2018
This is still just the second to last theatrical release I have to catch up on from last year. After this, there’s just Aquaman left for me which is currently out on digital so I hope to get around to it soon. When this came out, I heard a lot of mixed things about it, even those who didn’t enjoy it gave at least some credit to Tom Hardy for his performance. I generally like Venom as a concept, but I haven’t really gotten much of a feel for him past Spider-Man 3. This movie tried to take that concept and mix in a few too many genres. It feels like they wanted to go much more of a horror route, but the horror elements were very minor overall, there’s honestly more of a character drama with a really weird buddy cop comedy mixed in only it’s very much on the dark side of things where the humor is concerned. Overall, I did enjoy it, but I thought they could have taken it a bit further and made it great. Instead, it was just ok.
Pixies
Pixies 2015
I was browsing through Vudu’s library of movies instead of choosing one of the movies from my curated lists on Hulu and Netflix and came across this movie. This will actually be the fifth animated movie that I’ve watched from Arcana Studio and they’ve had some mixed results. The Howard Lovecraft trilogy was ok, but I wasn’t a fan of the Steam Engines of Oz so I didn’t have a lot of hope for this movie. At only 73 minutes, I still figured that I’d give it a shot and even if I didn’t care for it, I hadn’t lost much time on it. Spoiler alert, I was right and this was a pretty poor movie that had shallow characters, poor humor, poor animation, and a weak plot.
BlokeBusting The Essentials #48: Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
#48: Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
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We’re Waiting For The Hammer To Fall!
Yes folks, you read that right. We’re covering a “film”in the loosest sense of the term. But hey, I’m always up for a re-watch of this one! So, why not push all arguments about whether this should be here until the end and simply enjoy the content for a while.
First Impressions
This was something that I heard about randomly. I honestly can’t recall where I read about it, but it launched just as I was finishing my time at University in the UK, so let’s assume that I ended up finding out about it through my friends there. As can be easily figured out, I am a big fan of meta-humour done right. And this does it really well. The tired tropes, the larger-than-life characters and the decision to follow the “villain” on his path to ultimate victory were all very much appreciated and enjoyed. I’m also a big fan of all three of the main cast members in this, so that really helps. (Interesting side-note; It’s really fun to re-watch this after having finished A Series Of Unfortunate Events on Netflix. Man NPH is just awesome at this stuff!) But how does it hold up? Is it just as good as I remembered? Let’s dive in and find out.
Captain Underpants
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie 2017
This was a movie that I never planned on watching in theaters and somehow kept forgetting to add to my big list of superhero movies. But I never forgot about it and had actually heard quite good things about it, at least in the very general sense without revealing anything of the plot. When I finally watched it, I was quite surprised at the direction this movie went as it was equal parts Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, Deadpool, all mixed with a kid’s imagination on a PG level. It was fun, it was silly, it was absurd, it made me laugh quite a bit and was really a joy to behold despite not really having any deep down morale or message.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 