Blog Archives
Filmwhys #82 A Few Good Men and Weird Science
The Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is Jeremy Fogelman, contributor to Hotchka.com and co-host of the podcast Nerd Punches Nerd who asks me why I hadn’t seen A Few Good Men, one of the great classic courtroom movies from the high point of Rob Reiner’s directorial career with one of the greatest lines in cinema history. And in return, I ask him why he hadn’t seen Weird Science, one of the classic 80’s teen comedies from John Hughes which was based on a story from an EC Comic.
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Robocop 2
Robocop 2 1990
It’s true that I don’t always go with the flow the way it was meant to be, though the last time I really remember doing this in terms of this site was way back during the first year when I watched the three Spider-Man films backwards so I could compare the original Spider-Man right against the reboot Amazing Spider-Man. This time is was mostly a case of laziness considering that I already owned Robocop 3 and it was sitting right in front of me even though I hadn’t seen Robocop 2 before. And I was completely right in thinking that it didn’t matter as the three movies have very little to do with each other in terms of continuity, they merely tell three different stories with several of the same characters. The original is important to have seen to set up the characters, but once you’ve got that, you’re gravy. This is also notable to have been directed by Ivan Kirshner who is most well known as the director of the Empire Strikes Back, widely considered to be the best Star Wars movie. The film itself falls somewhere between the ultra-violence and satire of the original and the pandering-to-the-audience comedy and low budget of the third.
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Surrogates
Surrogates 2009
Without any real clear direction that I wanted to take for the rest of this year, I decided that I would work on clearing out the mini backlog of movies that I’ve purchased over the past several months and even years that I keep putting off for one reason or another. I also put four movies up on a Twitter poll and even though there were only a few votes, this film won. Surrogates was barely a blip on the radar for me, it came out against Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and also when my daughter was 2 and we weren’t going out to the theaters any time soon. It was a moderately high-budgeted movie that flopped here in the US, but ultimately made a small profit when including its worldwide gross. It’s got a fascinating concept and does a lot to build this slightly futuristic world, but then it gets bogged down by the action and falls flat on its face with an oversimplified ending.
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Filmwhys #81 In the Mouth of Madness and Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned
The Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is Rilla previously from Soiled Restroom Cinema who asks me why I hadn’t seen In the Mouth of Madness, one of John Carpenter’s lesser known films that combines the cult status of author Stephen King with the imagery from H.P. Lovecraft. And in return, I ask her why she hadn’t seen Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned, a low budget, made-for-TV anime from the 80’s based on a Marvel comic version of Dracula that crams about a dozen story arcs into an hour and a half movie.
Robocop 3
Robocop 3 1993
I’ve been feeling rather indecisive as to what direction I wanted to take next on this site. I still have a small handful of relatively good, or at least mediocre and well known comic book movies that I still need to get around to and a whole lot of dreck. So I decided to make a little Twitter poll with a couple good movies, a bad movie, and an oddity to see what won out. It shouldn’t have come to much surprise that this is the film that won. And despite the fact that I have yet to see Robocop 2, I was certain that it didn’t matter. It also helped that I had the DVD sitting in front of me from a clearance bin I picked up months ago. I am a big fan of the original Robocop, but I’ve never really given much thought to the sequels. I was a little surprised to see that this was rated PG-13, and even more surprised considering it still had a fair amount of blood and swearing, just toned down from the levels seen in the original. It had a scant few impressive moments, and notably more laughably bad moments. It really just lost sight of what made Robocop an interesting property in the first place in return for a failed attempt at marketing towards a younger audience. But one of the more interesting things about this film, especially coming from this site, is that comic book writer Frank Miller co-wrote this film (as well as the second).
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Crimson
Crimson 2013
I’m always on the lookout for superhero and comic book movies, especially some of the more obscure ones. But it still came as a surprise when I was looking through the DVD section of my library in a relatively small suburb of Chicago when I happened to see a DVD that caught my eye for this film. It surprised me even more when I looked it up on IMDB and saw that it only had 13 user ratings which made me wonder how it ended up in this library in the first place. But less surprisingly was that it was an ultra low budget film along the lines of something like Captain Battle or the Amazing Bulk, only with surprisingly lower production values, acting, or much of anything else.
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Filmwhys #80 Children of Men and Mystery Men
The Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is Sean Fallon from Audiences Everywhere and From First to Last who asks me why I hadn’t seen Children of Men, a film set in a post-apocalyptic world where children haven’t been born in almost twenty years from director Alfonso Cuaron. And in return, I ask him why he hadn’t seen Mystery Men, a superhero parody film featuring a great cast including Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, and Geoffrey Rush.
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Antboy 3
Antboy 3 2016
Continuing on in my catching up of the last few 2016 films that have slipped past me is the latest in the Danish superhero Antboy franchise. I thought the first Antboy was ok, the second one was a lot of fun, so I was excited to finally get the chance to watch the third and supposedly final entry in this series. Not to mention that all three are currently available to stream on Netflix in the US. Since they are still marketed as kids movies, they are dubbed in English, but do yourself a favor and if you’re watching it because you’re a fan of superhero movies, do yourself a favor and watch it in the original Danish audio. Typically I tend to watch dubs over subs, but that’s usually due to one of two reasons: either it’s a cheesy film to begin with and the bad-to-mediocre dubs add to the camp factor, or it’s a newer animated feature and the dub is done in a highly professional manner that’s a similar quality to the original performances. This one falls between the two, what little I listened to of the dub is very mediocre in quality so it really detracts from the overall film. That said, I did think that this was a fitting end to the trilogy and quite possibly the best of the bunch.
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Doctor Strange
Doctor Strange 2016
It’s already come to the last theatrical superhero movie of 2016, there’s still a couple others that I have to get around to, but that will come later. This film is sparked by a seemingly small amount of controversy by most people, and yet it’s just as an important topic to talk about. I will be discussing the controversy, but I will also be looking at the film separate from the lateral diversity in the form of whitewashing. It’s also yet another origin story in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and while there are plenty of differences to separate it from the rest of the MCU, there are still several of the same typical Marvel notes that we’ve seen across the last dozen or so movies. This is the third time Doctor Strange has graced this site in a solo movie, and almost all of my knowledge of this character comes from those two previous movies. And as always is the case on this site, there may be spoilers so be warned.
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Graphic Horror: Priest
Priest 2011
Happy Halloween everyone! Just when I thought I had finished my list of horror movies based on comics, I look through my stack of DVDs that I bought for this site and haven’t gotten around to yet and see this bluray that I bought on clearance for $2 a while back. About the only things I knew about it beforehand was that it was some type of vampire movie, and it was pretty terrible. I can very easily see why people don’t like this film. It’s very muddled and copies a lot of inspirations from other, much better films. It also seems to try and push its own religion even though it simultaneously condemns some of its practices. It’s an odd mix of a post-apocalyptic western with Zack Snyder-esque martial arts sequences, and while it is very far from being a good movie, I certainly wasn’t hate-watching it either.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 