Blog Archives
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger 2013
Today I get the chance to both catch up on a movie that I missed this past year, and also cover a movie that was based on a comic book property that’s not exactly a superhero movie, even though it comes pretty close to one. It was the biggest box office bomb of the year, and was critically panned with only a handful of exceptions along with a handful more that thought the movie as a whole was bad, but the climactic sequence at the end was a blast. There seemed to be a lot of controversy surrounding this movie and not all of it had to do with the movie itself. I wanted to be able to look past the backlash and enjoy what could have been Pirates of the Old West, and in a way it kind of was. But it felt much more like it was Pirates of the Old West 5, only they also had to fit in an origin story, and a wraparound story, and flashbacks, and even a brief dream sequence. When it comes down to it, I enjoyed bits and pieces of the movie, loved the ending, but overall it was a bit of a mess.
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Filmwhys Raw #2
Welcome back to my second episode of Filmwhys Raw, where instead of discussing two movies I talk with a guest or two about a random movie-related topic. This time around my guests are Jason Soto from Your Face! and Clint Worthington of Alcohollywood and we talk a little bit about theaters and film festivals in and around Chicago and also get into some B-movie talk. Click here to listen or you can subscribe to the show on iTunes or Stitcher and as always, I appreciate it if you can give me a rate or review on whatever platform you listen on. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
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JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time
JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time 2014
This is a movie you might not have heard about until recently even if you follow DC Animation, it’s a bit of a stealth release, only popping up on people’s radars when it was included in Target’s mailer last week as it is a Target DVD exclusive. One thing I immediately found out about it was that it is something much lighter in tone than many of the recent DC Animated movies. It’s much more in line with an updated version of Super Friends so I was excited because it was something that I could watch with my daughter Jena without worrying if there was too much blood in it. I’m always a fan of a time travel story and this has some very fun moments without bogging itself down with the nitty gritty details of it. The movie mainly follows a couple soon-to-be-members of the Legion of Super-heroes 1,000 years in the future: Dawnstar and Karate Kid. But back in the present, there’s also plenty of the Justice League and the Legion of Doom with many of their classic Super Friends roster with the addition of Cyborg who was only in the tail end of the Super Friends. I had a lot of fun with this movie and so did Jena.
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Justice League: War
Justice League: War 2014
Taking a quick break from the non-superhero comic book adaptations I watched a couple brand new DC Animation releases: Justice League: War and JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time. My review of Trapped in Time will be up in a couple days, but first I’m going to talk a bit about Justice League: War which is the first Animated offering from DC’s New 52 timeline offering up yet another Justice League origin story, though I haven’t read any of the New 52. Fortunately, even though a lot of it is the same thing we’ve seen more than a couple times, it’s still a fun ride. After the very dark turn in DC Animation with Dark Knight Returns and The Flashpoint Paradox, War lightens things up quite a bit while not going all the way around to being too shallow. There’s still plenty of action to be had here and they sneak in a single swear word, but the blood is kept to a minimum. It was also a nice change of pace to add Shazam into the mix, as he’s not usually one of the regulars in these movies.
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A History of Violence
A History of Violence 2005
Slowly but surely I’m progressing through some non-superhero comic book adaptations this month. This is one area of movies that I cover for this site where I’m extremely unfamiliar with the movies. Before I started reviewing movies for this site, I had already seen dozens of superhero movies which I’ve been re-watching to review, but movies in this category are much fewer and further between. So when I picked A History of Violence to watch the other night, it was honestly based solely on the runtime, being about half an hour shorter than the other options I was considering. I knew absolutely nothing about this movie other than the title, the fact that it starred Viggo Mortenson, and it was based on a graphic novel. What I ended up watching was a very compelling story about a man trying to live a simple life only to have his dark past come back to haunt him, causing him to find a way to free himself of that past once and for all. This movie really surprised me in a lot of great ways, and I was never entirely sure of what direction it was going to take until the credits finally rolled. Movies like this are why I so greatly enjoy writing for this site.
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Superhero Shorts: Casey Jones the Movie
Welcome back my friends to another edition of Superhero Shorts, where I feature a superhero themed short film and ask a few questions to the creator. This time around I’m talking with Polaris Banks, who spent a few years creating a fan film centered around Casey Jones from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, only not quite the version from the children’s cartoons, but the version more true to the original comic books. As usual, you can watch the movie below, or you can visit the official website.
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Filmwhys #22 Before Sunrise and The Incredibles
It’s time once again for another episode of Filmwhys. This time around I’m joined by guest JD Duran from Insession Film as well as their podcast. He asks me why I haven’t seen Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater’s film that started a trilogy about a simple couple played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy who spend the night walking around Vienna and mainly just talking to each other about anything and everything. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen The Incredibles, Pixar’s love letter to superheroes combined with a smart script from also-director Brad Bird touching on much more common family issues like fitting in, a midlife crisis, and possible infidelity.
Filmwhys Raw #1
Welcome to a new format for Filmwhys that will hopefully make this podcast weekly once again. I will be alternating between the standard format of Filmwhys where I take a look at two movies with a single guest, and these Filmwhys Raw which might have two or three guests and it’s more of a free-flowing conversation with some movie-related topic to get us started. For this premier episode I’ve brought back the Vern from The Vern’s Video Vangaurd among other sites and we talk about “Making Time for Movies” while going off on a few other tangents including the origin of both of our online names. Click here to listen and as always, I appreciate any ratings or reviews you can give me and if you’re interested in being a guest on Filmwhys Raw, just let me know on Twitter. With generally less editing involved, these episodes will be going up shortly after recording, as this episode was recorded just a few hours ago before the Golden Globes. Now I just need to come up with a graphic for these episodes. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Timecop: The Berlin Decision
Timecop: The Berlin Decision 2003
I don’t think I even knew that there was a sequel to Timecop until I started looking up information about the Jean Claude Van Damme version. It’s not surprising because it came out several years later, direct to video, with none of the same stars. Instead of Van Damme, we’re given Jason Scott Lee as yet another foreign lead and Timecop. And the villain this time around is also a member of a group trying to eliminate the Timecop program as a member of the Society for Historical Accuracy, or something like that. There is a bit of a problem with plot clarity, but there is quite a bit more questioning of the possibilities of time travel, including the beginning and titular scene where Brandon Miller seeks to kill Hitler while timecop Ryan Chan stops him in order to preserve the timeline in spite of any possibly positive repurcussions. I also noticed a surprisingly improved fight choreography, as Van Damme is a noted martial artist himself, though there are a few fight scenes that were better than anything from the first one.
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Graphic (Novel) Horror Blogathon
Graphic (Novel) Horror Blogathon
March is upon us and the Graphic Horror blogathon is on! I’m happy with the amount of participation in my last blogathon, the Comic Strip Double Dip, but this time around I wanted to do something a little less strictly associated with superheroes. Instead, I was thinking about how so many blogs out there spend October looking at horror movies and largely ignore horror for the other 11 months. So I wanted to do my part to promote horror movies on the other side of the calendar as Halloween, like in March. But of course, my site being my site and all I still have to have some sort of superhero or comic book connection when I started thinking about all the horror comics out there, like the classic Tales From the Crypt and various other EC Comics, 30 Days of Night, and the Walking Dead. There’s a few others, but I also started thinking about horror movies and thriller movies that would make great graphic novels, like the Cell, or Nightmare on Elm Street (which actually did become a comic book). So I’d like to hear from you and what horror movie you think is well suited to be a graphic novel, or even vice versa.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 