Blog Archives
Filmwhys Spotlight: Hulk
The first episode of Filmwhys Spotlight where I showcase an underappreciated superhero film and talk to the fans who enjoy it. Kicking off this series is 2003’s Hulk directed by Ang Lee which is generally unloved when compared to the more recent Marvel Cinematic Universe films, but has some redeemable moments in it.
Joining me in this episode are John Turman, one of the screenwriters of the film, Paul Hawkins from the Blokebusters Podcast, Hermano DeSilva from the First Time Watchers Podcast, and Nick Piers author of the Armadillo Mysteries who can be found at NickPiers.com.
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Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: Civil War 2016
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is back with its latest installment of their ongoing franchise. And even though I watched this movie on opening night, I feel like everyone and their mother has already voiced their adoration upon this film, probably just because it was released in many other countries a week early. As a whole, Marvel films have been pretty high on my radar starting off with Avengers as the first MCU that was released since starting this site and most of the Phase 2 sequels were much better than the originals until they hit a bit of a snag with Age of Ultron that felt like they were too focused on setting up future films to worry about focusing on the current one. On that front, I felt like Civil War was a success, while it greatly helped to have knowledge of past films, Civil War felt much more self-contained than Age of Ultron. It has the fun aspect that permeates all of the Marvel films as well as some incredible action and some thought provoking themes, but it just didn’t quite knock it out of the park for me this time. And fair warning since this has just opened in the US, there may be spoilers ahead.
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Deadpool
Deadpool 2016
The time has finally come, the first theatrical superhero movie of the year and it’s a doozy. As I’m writing this, it’s on the way towards a monster $135 million plus box office holiday weekend, which is around three times greater than what was expected for this R-Rated movie on what could be considered a third tier superhero. In a way, this also seems like what happens when the filmmakers take the essence of what the character is in the comics and translate that as closely as possible to the screen. For many years, liberties have been taken with the origin, the costume, and other aspects of the characters but for fans of Deadpool, this is how they see their character on the page and on the screen and they are ecstatic. Personally, I can’t really call myself a fan of Deadpool in the comics because I’ve never read the comics. Most of my exposure to Deadpool comes from the beginning of X-Men Origins: Wolverine as well as a couple fan films. But this film hit me in all the right places, from the very wrong humor, the pop culture references from the 80’s and 90’s, the meta humor, and the action all wrapped up like a chimichanga of awesome.
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Marvel Superhero Adventures: Frost Fight
Marvel Superhero Adventures: Frost Fight 2015
Just when I thought I had watched every Christmas related superhero movie they had to come out with another one. And in typical Marvel fashion, this one flew under my radar until it was actually released even though they did apparently announce the title at NYCC. It was just released digitally earlier last week and like most of Marvel’s recent home video releases it is very family friendly. But they have also switched animation styles yet again, going away from the anime and the cell-shaded CGI in favor of their TV style animation similar to Avengers Assemble and Guardians of the Galaxy, though with only a few of the same voice actors. It does a nice job of tying Santa Claus into the Marvel universe, but it’s mainly just a very disjointed series of battles and/or gags with a very common holiday story at the end.
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Filmwhys Extra #27 Marvel Ultimate Ranking pt. 3
It’s finally time to get to the top of our 3 part Marvel Ultimate Movie Ranking where I and guest Matt Brown from Tederick.com take a look at every single Marvel movie ever made and rank them from worst to best and this is the top 20! Time to look at the best Marvel movie ever made and it’s unlikely that my number one will be a big surprise, but I do think there are a couple that might be controversial. Make sure to give a listen and tell me what you thought of these episodes!
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Filmwhys Extra #26 Marvel Ultimate Ranking Part 2 of 3
This is the second special episode in a series where I cover the second group of 20 or so of the middling movies to have come out based on a Marvel owned comic book. These aren’t the worst, they aren’t the best, but they’re worth talking about. I am once again joined in this adventure by Matt Brown of several podcasts which can all be found at his personal site Tederick.com. Be sure to listen to part 1 on the worst Marvel films and part 3 will be released in two weeks, I hope you enjoy!
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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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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: The Monster of Frankenstein
The Monster of Frankenstein aka Kyōfu Densetsu Kaiki! Frankenstein 1981
Another day, another obscure Marvel anime released by Toei in the early 80’s. This was produced just one year after their Tomb of Dracula adaptation, this time they adapted yet another Marvel adaptation of a classic horror icon with Frankenstein. There were a couple things that I noticed very early on when comparing the two films, first is that many of the American dub voice actors would later go on to lend their voices to the iconic original dub of Akira. And second, that this was a much better film overall than Dracula. It’s still a long ways away from being a good movie, but it’s not the hilariously bad mess that Dracula was. This was a very serious and somber look at the tale of Frankenstein with a combination of some unique ideas as well as some of the standard ones. For the most part, I did enjoy it even if I knew how it was going to end up.
Graphic Horror: Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned
Yami no teiô kyuketsuki dorakyura aka Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned 1980
It’s October and I’m kicking it off with my first Graphic Horror post for the month. After Marvel had a string of failures in their TV movies in the late 70’s and their one success with the Incredible Hulk, they also sold the rights to some of their other comics including their Frankenstein series and the Tomb of Dracula which introduced Blade to Toei Animation. Toei is probably most well known for being the studio behind Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon, but before either of them came this cheaply animated made-for-TV film. It was later dubbed and released in the US in VHS and Beta but has since gone out of print and isn’t available on DVD, though copies have made their way online. I of course watched the English dub and found it hilariously awful. There is so much going on in this film and very little of it makes any sense that it’s amazing to watch. I found myself laughing uproariously through much of the run time even though I did have to split my viewing across two nights.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 