Blog Archives
Snowpiercer
Snowpiercer 2014
It’s always weird to me the way that some movies are released. This is a Korean film filled with mostly American and British actors and filmed in English with the exception of a couple characters, and it’s based off of a French graphic novel. It’s a sci-fi movie set in a dystopian future. It was completed and released in Korea last year. And yet it still hasn’t gotten a US release date until June, of course this was partly due to the conflict between the director Bong Joon-ho and the distributer Harvey Weinstein who wanted to cut about 30 minutes from the movie to make it a more action-heavy movie, cutting out much of the character development. In a time when it feels like two hours is the standard movie runtime and many movies run two and a half to almost three hours, this does not seem like an over-long movie at all. On top of that, I really loved this movie; the action, the characters, and especially the sci-fi concepts behind it. It’s the best sci-fi movie that I have seen in quite a while even though it’s grounded in mostly current technology.
Moving!
No, the site’s not moving anywhere, just this guy who writes the things that go on the site. But I thought I would put this out there just as a bit of explanation in case I don’t keep up with my posts quite as much as I have been for a little while. It’s been a really stressful month and I’ll be honest, watching these movies and writing about them here for you has been a huge help in keeping the stress in check. One thing that has gotten lost in the shuffle is my Filmwhys podcast, as I haven’t had as much time tracking down and keeping guests on the schedule or e-mailing new potential guests so the podcast is definitely continuing on its brief hiatus, though I might use this downtime to spotlight some of the other podcasts that I listen to. I also still plan to support my 100 Essential Superhero Movies and would love to see more people join in! Also, if you’ve agreed to join in be sure and send in your article as soon as possible so I can get things set up for it. To finish things off here today, I’d like to say thanks to a couple people that nominated me for a Liebster Award, which I always appreciate getting though I don’t fully follow through with it anymore. I know it’s basically a chain letter but it’s not just “send this letter to 11 random people”, it’s “give this award to 11 sites that you really like”, so I’m still happy that another writer likes this site. So read over on my Facebook page to read my answers from the Taestful Reviews, and check out below for my answers for this brand new one.
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Son of Batman
Son of Batman 2014
It’s time for yet another entry from DC Animation which almost always produce some of my favorite animated superheroes. This time around it’s a story that I wasn’t familiar with at all, which as the title suggests is about the son of Batman. If you’ve seen Dark Knight Rises, or are familiar with what’s happened in the comic books it’s not a big surprise that Batman hooks up with Talia Al Ghul who isn’t always as cutthroat as her father from what I understand. There’s also apparently some deal with how the kid is born in the first place in the comics but it’s mostly glossed over in this movie. Anyway, the League of Shadows is in trouble so Talia takes her son Damian to meet his heretofore unknown father who just so happens to be Batman for a little father and son bonding time. Of course, being raised within the League of Shadows isn’t without its downfalls and there’s also the matter at hand where Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke has killed Ra’s Al Ghul and Damian is looking for revenge and is not above killing, which obviously doesn’t sit well with Batman. Anyway it’s a fun movie and continues a similar look from Justice League: War and also a similar mix of blood and occasional humor which I enjoyed as usual.
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The Return of Swamp Thing
The Return of Swamp Thing 1989
I knew very little about the first Swamp Thing movie, and I knew even less about the sequel which came out 7 years later and the only connection between the two movies are the actor that plays Swamp Thing in the suit and the villain Arcane who supposedly died in the first movie. I would have thought that they would have used the Dick Durock’s voice once again for the Swamp Thing, but for some reason* they chose to hire a voice actor do ADR all of his lines. The tone of this movie is also much more light and comedic. Unfortunately this makes the campy comedy feel much more forced than in the first movie where everyone was taking things seriously. There’s still some cheesy fun to be had, but it’s not nearly as good of a movie overall than the first one.
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Swamp Thing
Swamp Thing 1982
It’s been a while since I watched the Swamp Thing mirror from Marvel Man-Thing, and while they came out in comic book form near the same time, in the movie world Swamp Thing beat it by quite a wide margin. Not only that, but it was directed by horror master Wes Craven best known for the Nightmare on Elm Street series, and yet this is a far cry from a horror movie aside from the creature makeup. It’s rated PG for one thing though it does get away with the brief boob shot that happened once in a while back in the 80’s days of the PG rating. It’s a bit of a monster movie where the creature is a sympathetic/tragic hero, but there’s also a strong villain that he’s pitted against all the while he spends his time trying to protect an instant love-interest. Filled with a bit of cheese, but still a fun movie.
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Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 1998
This is one of those movies that I’ve heard about since the start of this site, and not in a good way. This was a TV movie made for the Fox network starring Baywatch’s David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury and written by prolific superhero screenwriter David Goyer with as many hits to his name as misses. It has a very 90’s generic action feel to it with a ratio of pithy one-liners to actual action scenes at around 20:1. Everyone on screen really hams it up from the Hoff himself pretending to be the hardest hardass that ever lived, his ex-girlfriend Val who’s just as tough as he is, the over-confident fledgling British recruit, to the always-angry executive who thinks Nick Fury is the biggest mistake that S.H.I.E.L.D. Has ever made. And I haven’t even gotten to the villains yet! The special effects look 90’s TV cheap, the fights look like they were done by actors who have never taken a martial arts lesson in their lives, there is more talk about the threats than there is actual action against any threats, but as usual with these kinds of movies, there is plenty of laughable cheesiness to get some enjoyment out of watching this movie.
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Sparks
Sparks 2014
This is a movie that completely escaped my attention as it made the festival rounds last year and it even played near me in Chicago last April, but I did notice it when it came out on DVD as it appeared at my local Wal-Mart. Since it was a lower budget indie movie I had to look farther into it and contacted the writer/director and got to interview William Katt who is the executive producer and plays the main villain in the movie Matanza which you can view here. But aside from that, it is another different take on the superhero movie. It’s a film noir thriller set in the 20’s & 40’s following the story of Ian Sparks and his descent into the underbelly of the superhero culture. There’s plenty of twists and turns and things don’t turn out quite the way one might expect. It has a bit of a slow start, but once the action starts happening it goes on right through the end.
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Filmwhys Extra #7 Sparks
Filmwhys Extra #7 Sparks
Welcome back to another episode of Filmwhys Raw, I mean Filmwhys Extra. I do plan on bringing back a regular episode soon, but in the meantime I was privileged to have the chance to talk with William Katt who is probably best known as the lead in the 80’s superhero TV show The Greatest American Hero and is now working with writer/director Christopher Folino on his recent film Sparks: The Origin of Ian Sparks which is currently out on DVD, and my review of the movie will be posted soon.
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The 100 Essential Superhero Movies project needs you!
Just after finishing up my last blogathon this past March, I stumbled upon an idea that I really wanted to do for yet another blogathon here at Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights. When I first started this site I had a list of 100 theatrically released superhero movies that I wanted to cover in that first year, and while I did reach my goal of watching and reviewing 100 movies, I didn’t stick to that list because there were some other direct-to-DVD releases that I wanted to watch and in many cases they are just as good and often better than the theatrically released ones. So what I wanted to do was to come up with a list of 100 superhero movies that are essential viewing for a superhero fan up through the end of 2013. This isn’t just a list of the 100 best superhero movies because that might be an easier list to come up with, but these are 100 movies that are important to the category of superhero movies as a whole. Some of the choices are quite easy to make, but I’m down to the last 20 movies and this is where I need your help.
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Graphic Horror: Afflicted
Graphic Horror: Afflicted 2014
Even though my blogathon is over, I like the tag “Graphic Horror” enough that I’ll be keeping it and using it right alongside “Almost Super” for horror movies that aren’t quite superhero movies, even if they are based on graphic novels and therefore included in my big list of superhero and comic book movies. When I saw the trailer and early promotional tweets about this movie I was very interested. It was a found footage movie very similar in style to Chronicle only with a horror twist to it, where these two friends go on a world trip and one of them catches something that starts to make him sick, but then gives him superpowers before taking a much darker turn. There was another element to the story that the PR wanted to keep a secret, but I didn’t go digging into what it was until they decided it wasn’t that big of a secret to keep once it hit its wide release and I found out that the superpowers were brought on because he is becoming a vampire. This actually made me a little bit more interested in the movie because I’m always a fan of vampire movies and I thought this would do for vampire movies that Chronicle did for superhero movies and I think I was right.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 