Blog Archives
Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang aka Sine Your Pitty on the Runny Kine! 2001
Something that I started in the first year of this site and revisited just last year was to “celebrate” Black History Month in what little way that I could by reviewing films that featured Black superheroes. I covered most of them during the first year of this site including pretty much all of the good ones. It wasn’t until last year when I decided to revisit this idea with Abar: The First Black Superman as well as a couple episodes of Filmwhys where I could cover some Black cinema outside of the realm of superheroes. This year I found a couple more Black movies to watch and I decided to start with this film which is pretty far from your typical superhero movie. But it does seem to follow the typical origin story pretty closely with a few tweaks here and there. Unfortunately, with the exception of a few moments of completely absurd humor, the jokes didn’t connect with my sense of humor and without that I was left shaking my head more often than shaking my gut.
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Defining Superhero Movies pt. 1: Time Period
Something that I haven’t done on this site in a long while is to break down some element of superhero movies in general. And I think it’s time that I revisit what I consider to be my guidelines for what it means to be a superhero movie. As you may or may not know, I don’t consider superhero movies to be a genre itself. Instead, I think of it more as a category of movies. There are a handful of elements that need to be present in some form for me to consider a movie a “superhero movie”. Not all of them need to be there, and it is a very rough set of guidelines, so there will be many movies that fall right on the line of what may or may not be a superhero movie. And for those movies, I might fall on one side of the line while different people might fall on the other side of the line. But for now, I’ll be taking on these elements one at a time starting with the time period.
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Heavy Metal 2000
Heavy Metal 2000 2000
It’s been a while since I’ve participated in a blogathon that I didn’t host, but when I saw the O Canada Blogathon over at Speakeasy all the way back in October I figured I could come up with something Canadian to join in. Although my first two thoughts were shut down for various reasons, I knew there was a very obscure Canadian independent film called Sidekick, but it’s also so obscure that I’m having trouble getting my hands on it. I also knew about a French/Canadian production called Crying Freeman, but looking into it I realized it was based on a manga rather than a comic and I’m holding off on those for the moment. So last on my list was this one. I had watched the first Heavy Metal last year but hadn’t heard good things about the sequel and since I didn’t care for the original all that much I didn’t have high hopes for this one. And for the most part my fears were right.
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Tamara Drewe
Tamara Drewe 2010
This is one of those movies where I end up drawing a bit of a blurry line as to what I consider a comic book movie and I realize that I don’t think I’ll ever come up with a set of criteria that won’t be too exclusive without also being too inclusive. But similar to Dick Tracy, Tamara Drewe actually started out its life as a weekly serialized comic strip that ran in the UK newspaper the Guardian starting in 2005. Then it was released in a collected form as a graphic novel in 2007 and then just a few years later it was turned into a movie. It’s a loose retelling of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd but that’s not really a story that I’m familiar with so any references and allusions to it would have been lost on me. There were some funny bits, but the more I think about the film, the less it really sticks with me.
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Almost Super: Remo Williams
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins 1985
Lately, I’ve gone back and forth about what movies I include in the comic book and superhero category. Often times in the past, I have preferred to err on the side of inclusion, but lately I’ve started to go against that considering I decided to exclude the “superhero” movie The Adventures of Food Boy that really had nothing to do with superheroes. Remo Williams is one of those that falls closer to the lines of Buckaroo Bonzai, plus the fact that he has some extraordinary abilities learned through the martial art of Sinanju, and he has his identity changed from his previous life as a cop. But I decided that those for whatever reason just aren’t quite enough for me and this film falls a little bit more on the line of a martial arts/spy film rather than a superhero film. There were even comic books made based on this character, but they came out after this film. The film itself was a lot of fun mired behind a lack of focus and pacing, almost a parody of action/spy films while still taking itself mostly seriously.
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FTMN Quickie: Watchmen Director’s Cut
Similar to what I did with the Punisher Extended Cut a few months back, I finally got around to watching the Director’s Cut of Watchmen that I’ve owned on DVD for well over a year now. And similar to the Punisher cut, this version doesn’t have a huge amount of changes, instead there are many small additions to the film that adjust the pacing and shift the tone a little bit here and there. If you want to read my thoughts on the theatrical version of the film, you can find that right here.
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Firebreather
Firebreather 2010
I tend to be a fan of certain directors and writers, especially when it comes to animation. When I was younger, Peter Chung was likely one of the first few animation directors that I knew by name. He was the director behind the unique Aeon Flux and has also done several other projects over the years. His art style tends to be very unique as well, favoring a slight anime influence though his characters often are even more exaggerated with long limbs and skinny bodies. This film follows that style, but takes it into the realm of CGI where it originally aired on Cartoon Network. Coming into it, I knew nothing about it aside from the fact that it was based on a comic book. Walking away from it, I was pleasantly surprised by this tale of a hybrid kid coming of age in a world of high school and Kaiju although the high school half of the film was extremely cliched.
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The Amazing Bulk
The Amazing Bulk 2013
When I look at lists that talk about the “Worst Movies of the Year” or even the “Worst Movies of All Time” and when I read those lists, they include generally well made films that have some plot element or character that the list-maker didn’t like at all. But then I see a movie like the Amazing Bulk and know that it has to be up there quite literally for some of the worst movies of all time. It was filmed 100% on a green screen, but unlike movies like Sin City or 300 where it was combined with top level special effects, make up, and costumes, it was a horrid mess of low level actors and extremely amateurish CGI backgrounds. And yet, even though it was extremely poor, it was absolutely hilarious to watch this train wreck of a film unfold before my eyes.
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300
300 2006
I’ve reached a couple milestones as I write this review. This appropriately marks my 300th review for a comic book or superhero movie, on top of that I’ve also recently passed my fourth year writing on this site and it’s been a lot of fun and I’m finally getting down to the nitty gritty of superhero and comic book movies. Along with the new movies and just a small handful of notable films I’ve yet to cover there will likely be a lot more obscure and foreign films in the future. But as for the film that I’m actually discussing here today is one of the reasons why Zack Snyder went on to make Watchmen, Man of Steel, and is currently in charge of the DC Extended Universe. It’s a film that I’ve seen before, likely when it was in theaters, I used to own, and spawned a second movie that’s a prequel and sequel all at the same time. It’s been years since I’ve seen this film and it has suffered a bit from being parodied to death, but for the most part it still holds up as an enjoyable film with lots and lots of abs.
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Top 8 Superhero & Comic Book Films of 2015
It’s the New Year and that means that it’s time to look back at the previous year that has passed. And along with most movie sites I’ll be taking a look back at the films that came out this year and sharing my top 8 films. That may sound like an odd number, but there have been only eighteen films by my count released here in the US this year that I would classify as a superhero film or was based on a comic book. In the recent boom of superhero and comic book films, this is actually the smallest number of films released since 2009 as the number has been steadily growing since shortly after 2000. And because of that, I was actually able to watch them all before the end of the year! There were some good films this year, some surprises, and several disappointments. But there are eight films that I wanted to share once again with you as my personal favorites.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 