Blog Archives
Antboy: Revenge of the Red Fury
Antboy: Revenge of the Red Fury 2014
I’m still moving through my Netflix queue of superhero movies I haven’t reviewed yet and I was a little surprised to see this film on the list, especially since it did actually include the original Danish language track on it. I remember the first time I watched the first Antboy, English was the only available option that I could find. I still watched most of it in dubbed English, though I was able to switch partway through when my daughter and wife weren’t interested in watching the film along with me. This sequel picks up more or less where the first film left off, it brings back almost all of the major characters except for Ida’s sister. It also completely eschews adults in favor of the young characters. In fact, the only real adult in this film is the villain the Flea, not even Antboy’s parents get a moment of acknowledgement.
Superheroes
Superheroes 2011
It’s been a while since I watched a superhero related documentary, but this one has always been popping up when I looked around for them here and there. It was originally aired on HBO after a premier at the Slamdance Film Festival. It’s a very rudimentary look at the Real Life Superhero Movement (RLSH) as it existed in 2010 as it has in depth interviews with several members of the RLSH as well as a few members of police that they encountered during their time together. It generally lets the superheroes speak for themselves, though it does give an overall impression of looking down upon the movement as a whole where most of the heroes focused on are kooks or have other issues and there’s only a small portion near the end that really sheds a positive light on the whole concept.
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Not Everything with a Tenuous Link to Superheroes is a Superhero Movie
AKA The Adventures of Food Boy is Not a Superhero Movie
It’s been a long while since I’ve written one of these blog posts looking at what does or doesn’t make a superhero movie as a whole. I usually err on the side of acceptance, including movies like the Spongebob Movie that only has the characters turn into superheroes for the last fifteen to twenty minutes at the end, or Birdman where the main character is an actor who used to play a superhero and is having hallucinations of that same hero, or even Electric Man where it’s mainly about comic books and one of the characters merely cosplays as the fictional comic book hero. But I finally found a movie that made me draw the line even though the poster for the film has the titular Food Boy opening his shirt in a clear homage to Superman and one of the alternate titles of the film is High School Super Hero.
The Crow: Salvation
The Crow: Salvation 2000
I’ve had my share of ups and downs with the Crow series, the first one is one of my all time favorite films and I never bothered with any of the sequels until starting this site. Not only that, but it’s taken four years before I finally got to the final entry in the franchise. Well final for me since it’s technically the third one released, it’s not like they’re interconnected at all, and there’s the ever present possibility of another film in the near future even if it’s been in development hell for years now. But back to the film itself, it was a bit of a pleasant surprise. For what it’s worth, this is definitely the second best film in the Crow franchise, unfortunately there’s still a pretty wide gap between this film and the first one.
Filmwhys Extra #25 Ultimate Marvel Movie Rankings pt 1 of 3
This is a special episode where I cover the first 20 or so of the worst movies to have come out based on a Marvel owned comic book before getting to the better ones in part 2 and the best ones in part 3. I am joined in this adventure by Matt Brown of several podcasts which can all be found at his personal site Tederick.com. Parts 2 and 3 will be released every two weeks and I hope you enjoy!
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Alter Egos
Alter Egos 2012
It’s been a while since I’ve gotten around to watching a proper superhero movie to review here, I’ve been busy with Channel: Superhero as usual as well as work stuff. But I finally caught up with this film that I had heard of back when it got picked up by Kevin Smith for his new SModcast pictures presents which was quickly renamed to the Kevin Smith movie club where it ran for three years until 2013. I had no idea what the movie was actually about aside from the catch phrase “Alter Egos” and honestly thought it had more to do with the real life superheroes that these lower budget indie superhero flicks tend to move towards. But instead, it has built a world all its own and it only focuses on a small portion of that world. It has a fair amount of humor, and uses the minimal special effects to the film’s advantage to craft an all around entertaining movie. I really enjoyed this look at the struggles of a superhero’s persona with the hints of the larger world revolving around it.
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Filmwhys #61 Anchorman and Catwoman
The Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast with guest Dave from Superhero Speak who asks me why I hadn’t seen the film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, one of Will Farrell’s greatest comedies taking the air out of seventies network news. And in return, I ask him why he hadn’t seen Catwoman, which is the only superhero movie with a Black female as the lead hero… and also one of the worst superhero movies of all time with zero ties to Batman or any connection to the Catwoman from the comics.
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Graphic Horror: Tales of Halloween interview with Andrew Kasch
I haven’t had much time for movie watching lately, but one film that I did watch at home on VOD was a brand new anthology film called Tales of Halloween. One of the reasons that I watched it was because I was contacted with an interview opportunity for the film, it was inspired by other anthologies including Tales From the Crypt which I am a huge fan of, and was based on a horror comic. And also one of the opportunities was Andrew Kasch who happens to also work on two current/upcoming superhero TV shows the Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. He was a great guy to talk to and I had forgotten how time consuming transcribing interviews was. We talked a little about his career, his work on television, and of course his new film Tales of Halloween which he was a co-director of one of the ten segments in the film.
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FTMN Quickie: Punisher Extended Cut
Punisher: Extended Cut 2004
Often there aren’t very many differences between an extended cut of a film and the theatrical edition. Often it’s just a scene or two, or a couple extra shots before or after certain scenes. And once in a while there’s a film that has some drastic differences between the theatrical cut and the director’s or extended cut like with Superman II or Daredevil. This falls somewhere inbetween those two. There is enough of a difference that I felt like I should comment on it, but there’s not enough of a difference to write a completely new review for the whole film, so instead I decided to just do a little quickie review of the Extended edition of the Thomas Jane Punisher film from 2004. If you would like to read my full thoughts on the theatrical version of the film, read here.
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Graphic Horror: From Hell
From Hell 2001
Next up on the chopping block is the first of many Alan Moore adaptations, though I have covered most of the later ones already here. This is a fictionalized account of the Jack the Ripper murders in the late 1800’s in London’s East End. I will say that one thing this film did do for me is renew my interest in the actual Jack the Ripper case, at least for a few hours of Wikipedia and Google video searching. I find it interesting that last year or so there was someone who claimed to have used DNA evidence to “solve” the murder, and yet none of that was enough to make it into the Wikipedia pages a year later. The film is more of a thriller mystery with Johnny Depp put center stage with his slightly eccentric character, though much more dialed back than most of his characters in recent years post Jack Sparrow. I had heard mixed things about this adaptation, and I fall on the line that I thought it was greatly dumbed down for audiences even though I have no experience with the comic, but I was intrigued by the mystery slightly. And since this is a mystery film I will give warning that I will be discussing the killer as presented in this film in case you would rather watch the film and be surprised.
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