Blog Archives
Superhero Shorts: Punisher No Mercy
Superhero Shorts: Punisher No Mercy
Welcome to another edition of Superhero Shorts where I feature a superhero themed short film and ask a few questions from the filmmakers. This time around I’m talking with director Jason Ambrus and producer/writer/actor Shawn Baichoo and their Punisher short where he takes on a small group of mob bosses and also faces off against Elektra. As usual, you can watch it below or you can view it on their YouTube channel and you can also visit their Facebook page.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2003
I had heard a lot of the behind the scenes stories about this movie, it’s Sean Connery’s last on-screen role before going into retirement, and there were a lot of struggles between him and the director. It got a lot of negative press after it came out because the source material is very literate while the movie is much more of a dumbed down action movie that spells out any references it makes so that more people will catch the reference, like when they make the Around the World in 80 Days reference, and then points out exactly where it came from. But I did enjoy the movie then, and I still mostly enjoyed it now even though I recognize a lot more of the flaws in it this time around. I think it helps that I’m not actually familiar with the source material comic. It’s not an incredibly deep movie by any means, but it does have some fun bits inbetween the ridiculous moments.
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Thor: The Dark World
Thor: The Dark World 2013
Choosing a specific genre for this site brought about some factors that I had’t considered when I first started it almost two years ago now. One is that “superhero” isn’t really a genre, I had briefly considered going for Fantasy as my genre of choice, but there are so few sword and sorcery fantasy movies out there, and even fewer good ones barring the Lord of the Rings. And another is the fact that because I don’t review everything, that means that the new releases that I review are very much dependent on the release schedule, and the superhero “genre” if it may be called that is something of an oddity. It tends to be very summer heavy, with over two-thirds of the big theatrical releases happening in that one three month period, and once the summer’s over there’s a giant dead zone until the next summer rolls around so it’s been almost 3 months since the release of Kick-Ass 2 which was the last superhero movie of the season. Not only that, but this Thor movie itself is a bit of an odd beast when you look at it compared to other superhero movies. It’s very different from the first Thor, where a large part of the film took place on Earth where Thor was the superhero alien god come down to Earth. This movie is much more of a fantasy movie with sci-fi elements where Norse gods and dark elves are fighting each other along with the occasional sci-fi gun and Earth only shows up once in a while. That said, it really played to my love of fantasy movies and I enjoyed every minute of it, from the fantasy battles, the Marvel humor, to the sci-fi monkey wrenches that made it that much more fun. As a note, I tend to avoid tiptoeing around spoilers, and there are a couple surprises in this movie that I will be talking about, you have been warned.
Filmwhys #17 The Manchurian Candidate and Dredd
Sorry for the late episode, but I’m back once again with another episode of Filmwhys, aka the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast. This week my guest is Ryan C of Trash Film Guru among other sites who asks me the question why haven’t I seen The Manchurian Candidate, the original one with Frank Sinatra, one of the classic thrillers of the time. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen Dredd, a great adaptation of the sci-fi comic that got somewhat overlooked last year but has found a home since it hit home video.
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Electric Man
Electric Man 2012
This movie marks the first time that a filmmaker has come to me and offered a screener for a movie that actually fits the context of my site. Even though it’s not really about the exploits of a superhero, instead it’s about the exploits of a comic book shop and a group of people who are focused on getting this important and rare comic book, issue #1 of Electric Man. The comic is a fictional precursor to Superman, and in mint condition goes for around $100,000. It takes place in Edinburg, Scotland and has a very English mentality to it. One of the ways that it was described to me was “Clerks meets the Maltese Falcon”, and while that’s not too far off the mark, it doesn’t meet either the comedy of the first, nor the mystery of the second. It has plenty of fun moments, and some interesting characters, but it doesn’t knock it out of the park.
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The Crow
The Crow 1994
I missed out on a few things that I wanted to do as far as scheduling goes, I wanted to watch all of the sequels before watching the original and have the review of this one up on Devil’s Night, right before Halloween. Instead, I only watched the first sequel and then watched this one on Halloween. But I’m sure none of this is very interesting to anyone reading this so I’ll just get straight to it. I loved the Crow when I first saw it, I probably did not watch this in theaters as I would have been 14 at the time and I was not the type of teenager who saw a lot of R rated movies in theaters. But when I did watch it, I fell in love with it, and I was also very intrigued with the whole behind the scenes story about Brandon Lee’s tragic death during filming and the early computer and optical graphics to complete the movie without him. But the style, the writing, and the feel of it still holds up, it’s extremely quotable and filled with memorable characters and an amazing soundtrack. I’m honestly a little disappointed that it’s taken me this long to rewatch it.
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The Crow: City of Angels
The Crow: City of Angels 1996
I’ve been wanting to get to these movies for a while now, even though out of the four of them, there’s only one that I’ve seen and that same one is the only one that’s considered good. For that reason, I wanted to save it until the end, but I also wanted to be able to publish it on Devil’s Night, since the movie takes place around that day. After watching this movie, it really makes me want to skip straight to the original. This is a pale copy that pretends to be a sequel while at the same time apes nearly everything that made the original good, with only a handful of switcheroos here and there. Everything from the effects, to the stunts, even the soundtrack is not nearly as well done or entertaining. And since it’s been so long since I’ve watched the original, I spent most of the time being reminded of moments from the Brandon Lee version that were done immensely better. It has a few interesting moments here and there, but for the most part it tries to be like the original, but really misses the mark.
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Dredd
Dredd 2012
I’m not entirely sure how I ended up missing this movie last year, along with pretty much everyone else that missed this movie during it’s fairly poor theatrical run. I did actually watch it earlier this year before watching the Stallone Judge Dredd but I decided not to review it mainly because I watched it on my small laptop and the visuals, especially the slomo visuals were something that the little screen couldn’t appropriately capture. So instead I waited until I got around to watching it on my bigger screen TV so I could more appropriately judge the movie on the ever-important visuals and I was happily willing to watch it due to the interesting plot and characters. It is a far cry from the Stallone feature, both in quality of special effects, as well as the overall tone and level of violence. It is a very violent and bloody movie along the lines of what could be a Punisher movie, but it’s generally never excessive or reveling in the gore. And more to the point, especially for fans of the original character Dredd: he never takes off his helmet.
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Persepolis
Persepolis 2007
While I still have plenty of straight up superhero movies to go, I thought it was a good idea to branch out into non-superhero movies based on graphic novels. And of course, this black and white, animated tale of the life of an Iranian woman living through a revolution and a war, dealing with prejudice at home and in France, was originally a graphic novel by the same name. Even though it’s in black and white, the animation is visually striking, not only that, but the story itself is very engaging. Not only does Marjan suffer through a lot of strife, but she also has plenty of moments of joy and is always surrounded by people who care about her. It’s a really great movie and well worth your time to watch.
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Bounty Killer
Bounty Killer 2013
I was actually first made aware of this movie through a company that offered to allow my site to host a giveaway for the movie. I thought it looked like a lot of fun, had a couple recognizable names in it, and it was based on a graphic novel, so I decided I would give it a shot and I was not disappointed. It’s got great action, a great visual feel to it, and even a bit of T&A. There’s even some interesting twists and turns along the way to keep things interesting. The acting’s not going to win any awards, but that’s not surprising for this type of movie, it has a great grindhouse feel to it, but it’s much more stylish and sleek with either a decent sized budget, or someone who knows the right way to stretch a small budget. It looks great, sounds great, and I had a great time watching it.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 