Blog Archives
No Ordinary Hero
No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie 2013
The other day I was browsing through Netflix to see what superhero movies were available that I hadn’t covered yet and this was one of the ones that popped up. I thought it looked pretty terrible, but at just over an hour it seemed like the best choice to watch considering it was relatively late at night and I didn’t want to choose something I would have to split into two viewings. What makes this review somewhat difficult to write is that it’s difficult to make fun of this movie because it has such good intentions. It wants to be something important for the deaf community and in certain ways it seems to do that, but it doesn’t do nearly enough to make it a good movie. There are too many cliched storylines and mediocre acting that the message gets a little lost in the shuffle.
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Almost Super: Sleight
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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Underdog
Underdog 2007
I’m starting to get back on the bandwagon of this site by continuing where I had left off when I made a Twitter poll asking what type of films I should watch next and kids films won. I’ve actually owned this one on DVD for quite a while and have seen parts of it more than once as my daughter was a fan of this movie. I wouldn’t quite say that I was a huge fan of the original Underdog cartoon, but I had seen several episodes and from what I remember I enjoyed them well enough. But when this film came out, I could tell that it was just a shlocky kids film trying to cash in on a little bit of nostalgia and somehow wrangled a handful of decent names, or at least names that were on the rise like Peter Dinklage and Amy Adams. Jason Lee was a bit of a mixed bag as this was also the same year that he starred in the live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. But as expected, this is a schlocky kids movie that felt like it was trying too hard to cash in on a random piece of nostalgia while missing the mark as to what made that property great in the first place.
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Superhero Shorts: Bullock the Bruiser
It’s been a while but I’m back with another edition of Superhero Shorts, where I take a look at a superhero or comic book short film or fan film and briefly talk with someone involved with the film. This time around I’m taking a look at an original superhero short film called Bullock the Bruiser that clocks in at about 40 minutes, which is pretty long for a typical short film though it’s just shy of my criteria for a feature length film at 45 minutes. And I was able to ask a few questions of the producer, writer, and director of the film Marcelo Mayen. And while I’m not able to share the short in full, you can watch the trailer for the short just below. And if you would like to follow the short, you can find it on Facebook, Instagram, and IMDB.
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Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom
Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom 2016
I’ve never been a huge HP Lovecraft fan, essentially the only things I know about his writing are that it involves a lot of madness and tentacle creatures and gave some inspiration to the first Hellboy movie and In the Mouth of Madness. It seemed quite unusual that these kinds of stories would translate to a comic book made for kids and that comic would then be turned into an animated movie complete with the voice of Hellboy in a small role even. When I initially saw the box art for the film several months ago, I dismissed it as one of those cheap knock-off movies that tend to mimic a popular movie from a few years earlier like Karate Panda or Dragon Flight School. And to a certain extent, that’s exactly what this is only there’s not really any movie that it’s trying to cash in on, it’s just a lower budget animated film that managed to get a few medium profile actors to lend their voices. It wasn’t a horrible experience by any means, but there also wasn’t much enjoyment to be had outside of a couple brief laughs.
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Filmwhys #84 Nausicaa and 30 Days of Night
Episode 84 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is Non Wels from the Joy Sandwich Podcast who asks me why I hadn’t seen Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, the first feature length film from the mind of Hiyao Miyazaki that basically became the start of Studio Ghibli. And in return, I ask him why he hadn’t seen 30 Days of Night, the vampire movie set in the Northernmost town in Alaska where vampires savage the town for an entire month.
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Power Rangers
Power Rangers 2017
I’m already back to the theaters this week, though I’m not sure if I’ll be able to see the indie film Wilson any time soon, but I took my wife and daughter to see this film based on the trailers and the box office and the few positive reactions I noticed this weekend so far. Last year I revisited both the original Power Rangers Movie as well as the second movie Turbo and while I had watched the first season or two of the show back when it aired, those did not hold up for me at all. This film did a much better job of updating this story and these characters by taking them more seriously, but not so seriously that everything became extremely grim-dark. It does feel a little bit like it’s trying to copy the Marvel formula, but considering how well that has worked for Marvel, it’s not that bad of an idea. And for myself, and my family, it worked.
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FTMN Quickie/Almost Super: P.U.N.K.S.
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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My Life in Film pt 1
Recently a movie meme was hitting the rounds on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve seen it as both My Life in Film or #ThisIsMyFilm. The basics is that you choose your favorite movie from each year starting with the year you were born. Some years are harder than others, and doing the list myself it made me realize how few movies I had seen that were released in certain years in the early 80’s. And since I haven’t been posting much here recently, I thought I would expand my list and also include my favorite superhero or comic book movie from each year, aside from those few years where my favorite was a superhero movie. And FYI, the release dates are according to Letterboxd as that’s what I’m using to browse what films I’ve listed as having seen in each year. Thanks to Le0pard13 for the inspiration to turn this into a blog post. And despite not being as old as him, I’ve still decided to split this up into two blog posts. This one starts off with the year I was born and goes through the year I graduated high school.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 