Blog Archives
Men in Black II
Men in Black II 2002
The way it tends to go with superhero movie sequels is that the first movie is good, the second movie is better, and the third movie is where it all goes to hell. Men in Black surprisingly bucks that trend and instead goes to crap in the first sequel only to redeem itself in the third. It doesn’t help that there is quite a bit of time between the three films. Five years have passed since the first Men in Black and they wrote out what made the original so great: the chemistry between Will Smith’s and Tommy Lee Jones’ Agents J and K. In a lot of ways, this sequel felt like the writers just wanted to recapture what made the first one so great and thought that the best way to do that was to just recreate all the elements of the first film that worked instead of expanding on them. And except for a brief moment here and there, it does not work for me at all. And somewhat surprisingly, even though I did watch all three films in order, it was just so much easier to pick out all of the flaws in this movie rather than try to determine what exactly it is about the first movie that makes it so great.
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Filmwhys #42 Rashomon and The Guyver
Episode 42 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast wherein lies the answer to the life, the universe, and everything. And I welcome my guest Will Kouf from Silver Emulsion who asks me why I haven’t seen Rashomon, one of Akira Kurosawa’s most well known film next to Seven Samurai and a film that handled a storytelling device so well that the term for showing the same event through different viewpoints is referred to as Rashomon. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen the Guyver, a very campy sci-fi superhero comedy based on a Manga of the same name and starring Mark Hamill post-Star Wars alongside Jimmy Walker of all people.
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Birdman
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) 2014
It’s a rare occasion that I get the chance to watch a movie that has Oscar buzz surrounding it. I missed out on my chance last year with Blue is the Warmest Color which lost it’s chance due to the release schedule making it ineligible to be France’s choice as a Best Foreign Film nominee. But when you look at movies that specifically take a look at superheroes, really the only other time that was in consideration was back in 2008 with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. And many people claim that film as being the reason why the Oscars changed their rules to allow up to ten films in the Best Picture category was strongly due to the fact that The Dark Knight didn’t make the cut, but probably would have if more films were allowed. I haven’t seen nearly enough potential Oscar nominees this year, and the only ones that even have a small chance at entering into the big categories are this one and possibly Snowpiercer which also has a similar struggle because of its release date. But as for Birdman itself, it has some strong performances from everyone in the cast, and there are some impressive storytelling decisions in the direction of this film. It’s one of those films that I can tell has a lot to dig into that a single viewing can only scratch the surface, but it’s one that I greatly enjoyed and can’t wait to watch again in the near future.
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Guyver: Dark Hero
Guyver: Dark Hero 1994
After watching the first Guyver movie and seeing how campy it was, I was very curious to see how the follow up would be considering that it is one of the very rare cases where it goes from PG-13 to R instead of vice-versa and completely loses the comedy angle. Unfortunately, when you take out the comedy angle of the Guyver, what’s left is the same amount of poor acting but without nearly as much camp to make it as enjoyable as it was. There is still some laughs to be had at the cheesiness of it all, but it ends up being a lot more boring than the first one and the small handful of really interesting practical special effects have been replaced with really crappy looking first generation digital effects. It aims at being a more serious story, and yet it also tosses in a large number of cliched and soap opera-ish plotlines that don’t make it any more interesting. Which is disappointing, because there is the seed of a good story that could be told within all of this greater mythology, it’s just being presented in one of the poorest ways possible.
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Filmwhys Extra #19 Tales From the Crypt
I know Halloween is a few weeks passed, but I had a lot of fun re-watching the first four seasons of Tales From the Crypt and just had to discuss it with someone. So, episode 19 of Filmwhys Extra, my guest is Kristen Lopez from Journeys in Classic Film and we discuss the HBO series Tales From the Crypt. From our first experiences with the show to some of our favorites and some of our less favorites and even touch on the spin-off movies briefly.
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The Guyver
The Guyver 1991
I was always a relatively big fan of anime. I watched a lot of the anime films shown on cable in the 90’s as well as the cartoons and shows inspired by anime and Japanese shows. This movie reminded me a lot of those types of kids shows with a mix of Ultraman, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, and whatever else got in the mix. It also has a couple icons of TV and cinema, albeit for completely different reasons, as well as a small stable of horror regulars from both behind the camera and in front. The one thing this movie does well is a large number of creature effects including a small handful of amazing transformation. On the other hand, even though there are a few noted actors, there are plenty of amateurs and it definitely shows. There’s not a Troll 2 or the Room level of bad acting, but no one is winning any awards for their delivery here. There’s an overly complicated setup that makes very little sense when you get right down to it, and yet the whole thing is more or less supposed to be a comedy. While it did make me laugh out loud a small handful of times, it was often for the wrong reasons.
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Elektra
Elektra 2005
After the moderate success of Daredevil, Fox decided that instead of going ahead with a sequel they would instead make a spin-off movie based on what they thought was the most successful part of Daredevil, Jennifer Garner’s Elektra. Here, she is a full-on assassin who ends up caring about her next targets and decides to save them from the evil clan of ninjas called the Hand, she eventually battles against a group of supernaturally powered ninjas while protecting the treasure, which is similar in nature to the key from Buffy. And while Daredevil is considered a bad to ok movie with an ok to good director’s cut, Elektra is pretty much considered on of the many bad movies with a female superhero as the lead and performed dismally at the box office. I vaguely remember watching this in theaters when it came out because I was (and still am) a fan of the Daredevil movie and enjoyed it at the time. However there is probably a reason why I waited so long to revisit this movie as it did not hold up to my memory at all. I am now in agreement that this is a pretty awful movie with a small handful of redeeming qualities to it. I’m also not sure if an R-rated director’s cut could help redeem it in the same way that Daredevil’s did, nor do I think anyone is really clamoring for one.
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Big Hero 6
Big Hero 6 2014
Even though this was the last big superhero movie of 2014 that I had been looking forward to, the biggest reason why I wanted to see this movie in theaters is because of my daughter Jena and her 8th birthday this Saturday, November 8th. So that was the mindset I was in when I made it to the theaters to watch this latest Disney animated movie. In fact, I realized that even though I’ve had a pretty poor theatrical track record for the past several years, I had seen every Disney Animated movie in theaters since Wreck-it Ralph a couple years ago. There has become a finer line between the Disney animation studios, as the quality and subject matter between Disney Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and to a lesser extent the DisneyToon Studios with the likes of Wreck-it Ralph and Frozen being as good or better than Monsters University or Brave. So I was hopeful that the trend would continue with the first animated collaboration between Marvel and Disney. I have seen most of Marvel’s previous animated works and they were nothing special, and even though this movie doesn’t have any connection with the live action Marvel Cinematic Universe, I was still very excited to see it based on the trailers. I was hoping for a lot of laughs, a lot of action, and I had already heard that it had a lot of heart, and that’s exactly what I got from it. It’s true that it was fairly predictable even when it was trying to throw some twists out there, but it was still done well enough that I didn’t much care and just enjoyed the ride. Not only that, but Jena was there and completely on board for the whole ride as well. And as always here, I will be discussing the movie as a whole including any plot twists and reveals, so spoilers have been warned.
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Filmwhys Extra #18 The Scribbler Interview with John Suits
Filmwhys Extra episode 18 where I got the chance to talk to John Suits, the director of the recent comic book adaptation of the psychological thriller/mystery/superhero movie the Scribbler. We discuss the origins of the movie, some of the visual style, and plenty of other things so be sure to check out the movie on VOD now.
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V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta 2005
Remember, remember
the fifth of November
the gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
why the gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot
It’s rare that either a superhero movie or a comic book movie would be the most well remembered for a line of poetry commemorating a holiday that’s not even celebrated in the US. And even though fans of this movie still probably don’t know exactly what it means to celebrate Guy Fawkes day, they still know the opening lines of that poem and likely no more of it other than vague references to Guy Fawkes and blowing up Parliament. There certainly isn’t mention of lines further down in the poem “A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope, A penn’orth of cheese to choke him, A pint of beer to wash it down, And a jolly good fire to burn him.” Although the pope is never hung nor burned, there is a priest who is killed. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this movie, but it’s always stuck with me as being one of my favorites. This was the first work from the Wachowskis after the Matrix trilogy though they only wrote the movie and directed the climactic fight sequence. Even without their direction, it has a lot of visual style to it, so much so that I considered forgoing a written review altogether and just share a collection of the dozen or so screenshots that I took while watching the movie over the past couple nights.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 