Blog Archives
Condorman
Condorman 1981
With a name like Condorman, you’d think it would be a no brainer for a superhero movie, and yet this movie actually turned out much more like a spy movie slash comedy. You may ask why I’m keeping this on my main list and not tagging it with my “almost super” category, at least if you’re someone who follows this site on a regular basis. I decided to let it stay for a few reasons. One is that it has a strong foundation in comic books, the “spy” in question is actually a comic book writer and artist, and second is that his spy persona feels much closer to a comic book superhero than a James Bond or Inspector Clouseau spy. But that’s all really beside the point, it’s another movie that I had never heard of, an 80’s movie that’s been all but forgotten even though it was technically a Disney movie, or at least a Disney production with a little animation thrown in for the opening credits. It’s a fun little attempt at being a Pink Panther movie with a lot more gadgets and costumes thrown in. I had a lot of fun while watching it, even though at times it went a little too far on the goofy side of comedy. And on top of the goofball comedy, there was actually quite a bit of excitement with some fun car chases, boat chases, and explosions.
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Scooby-Doo Mask of the Blue Falcon
I will easily admit to being a Scooby-Doo fan when I was younger. I watched many episodes of the Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo as well as A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, alongside the older episodes. They were goofy, silly, campy, and fun, but I enjoyed them. I also watched plenty of other Hanna Barbera properties back when Cartoon Network was new and filled most of its programming slots with classic cartoons and only a handful of fresh ones. Among them was of course Blue Falcon and Dynomutt either in their own show or one of the many Hanna-Barbera mashups like the Laff-a-Lympics. Scooby-Doo has never really seemed to completely go away, there’s always some new TV show or an endless stream of straight-to-home-video movies like this one. But many of the newest episodes and movies have had a lot sharper sense of humor while still retaining some of the goofiness and campiness the classic fans love. This one is no exception, there’s a lot of smart humor alongside the typical slapstick antics of Mystery Inc. It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve seen an episode or movie about Scooby-Doo, probably not since the live action movie, but I really enjoyed this movie, especially because of all the little background references and such.
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What ifs! You could make a sequel to any movie?
What if you had the power to greenlight and fun any sequel to any movie in the world, what would it be? Of course, since this site focuses on superhero related movie I’d love to also hear the answer to which Superhero movie you’d like to see a sequel of. There seems to be a lot of talk lately about the possibility of a Dredd sequel. Even though it received quite a bit of acclaim from fans, it got mixed reviews from critics and only had a less than stellar box office performance. Now there’s a few different possibilities on why a movie might need a sequel. If it’s based on other ongoing work, like most superhero movies are based on comics, then since the comic has continued on then there is still plenty more material to draw from. Even if it’s a stand alone movie, if it’s a good one, then people often wonder what would happen if those characters were revisited. Even in the case of a less than perfect movie, if there’s some element that worked in the original that could be expanded upon at the same time as the weaknesses could be removed. And such is the case for my personal choice for a movie that I would love to see a sequel to. I’ve always had a soft spot for the 2004 Punisher movie with Thomas Jane. Even though I’ve rewatched it last year and it didn’t quite hold up for me in the long run, it was mainly the silliness with the neighbors and the forced love interest that threw me off. I still enjoyed John Travolta as the over the top Howard Saint, and Thomas Jane was a fantastic Punisher, even moreso when he made his own short last year. So let’s hear it, what sequels would you love to see get made?
Iron Man 3
Iron Man 3 2013
This is the latest in the juggernaut that is Marvel Studios releases, and especially movies with Robert Downey Jr. in a metal suit. The early reviews were mostly blown away by the new sequel and as I had to wait an extra week for it to come out here in the States, I was starting to chomp at the bit to watch the movie. Of course, once it hit theaters around my neck of the woods, there started to be a few more rumblings of failure and a lot more opinion that this actually wasn’t the best of the trilogy. There were plot holes, and weak moments and ill-fated twists, and when I got the chance to watch the movie… I wasn’t quite sure what I really thought about it. It had it’s action moments, and Robert Downey Jr. doing what he does best as he has done in the past three movies including the Avengers, but there were also those plot holes and other things tugging away at the sides of my brain. I decided I couldn’t quite give the movie justice until I gave it a few days thought and watched the movie for a second time. 2D every time all the time for me FYI. I had an article previously where I talked about the Curse of Three, and while the impact has dwindled a bit with the release of The Dark Knight Rises, it hasn’t completely gone away and I still think there are weak elements in this movie that can definitely hinder the watching experience for some and completely ruin it for others. And fair warning, there may be spoilers in this review, I will try to be non-specific where I can, but I’m not going to dance around them if I need to call them out.
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The Rocketeer
The Rocketeer 1991
I know I watched this movie ages ago when I was younger, but rewatching it today I realized that the only thing I remembered from my first watch of this movie was that the guy had a rocketpack and it took place in the 30’s. When watching it again, I was really impressed with the style and the feeling of the movie. I also recognized so many different actors in this movie that I didn’t realize were in here. Mainly it was Alan Alda who I’ve been seeing in a lot of great roles recently. I did think there were some overly ridiculous plot points towards the end of the movie, but overall I quite enjoyed it. It’s been something pretty different than a lot of the movies that I’ve been watching lately for this site. It does slightly make me want to re-watch Captain America which was done by the same director, Joe Johnston. I don’t think it quite lives up to the quality of Captain America, but it still has quite a few charms to it.
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Superhero Shorts: Wonder Woman trailer
Welcome to another edition of Superhero Shorts, where I feature a superhero themed short film and ask a few questions of its creator. This time I’m talking with Jesse V. Johnson and his Wonder Woman concept trailer. It’s been a long time since Wonder Woman has really made a good live action presence, and he made it look like it could work in a high action concept with actress/singer Nina Bergman. You can watch it below as usual, or you can check out the short at Jesse V. Johnson’s Vimeo page, Nina Bergman’s official website or YouTube channel.
Filmwhys Podcast: Jaws & Superman II the Donner Cut
I am back into the podcasting game! I’ve been flirting with podcasts for a while, helped start one that ended up not being a good fit for me for various reasons, and I finally found a concept that I think works perfectly for me and for this site. Welcome to the first episode of Filmwhys, also known as the “Why haven’t you seen this film podcast?” Ever since joining the film blogging community and the Lamb, I see a lot of discussion about various popular films that I have never seen, and people who are amazed at how many important and popular movies that I’ve missed out on. So this podcast is my attempt to fill those gaps in my movie watching and catch up on some classic and modern classic movies. For my firsts episode, I’m pleased to have Fogs from Fogs’ Movie Reviews as my guest and we talk about the 1975 Speilberg classic Jaws. Yes, it’s true that I’ve never seen this movie before watching it for this episode. But, since this is a website about superhero movies, I thought it was only fair to ask Fogs to watch a superhero movie that he’s never seen before in Superman II: The Donner Cut, which is significantly different from the theatrical Richard Lester cut which he had seen.
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Lego Batman the Movie: DC Heroes Unite
Lego Batman the Movie: DC Heroes Unite
This is a home video release by DC Premier and Traveller’s Tales releasing on Bluray and DVD May 21st, and it’s actually rather interesting because most of this movie is drawn from the Lego Batman 2 video game. Many of the scenes may have been reanimated to improve the quality and make minor corrections, and there has also been some new material created for the connective scenes, but aside from that it’s directly taken from the video game. While there have been many movies based on video games, I believe this is the first video game turned directly into a movie. I’ve been a fan of the Lego series of video games ever since the first Lego Star Wars games were released on the Playstation 2, they have a very irreverent sense of humor and a lot of meta jokes based around the fact that they are in a Lego world and Batman is no different.
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Do You Enjoy Watching Bad Movies?
I think I may have asked this question a long while back, but since I’ve been watching several bad movies lately I thought it was prudent to ask the question again. There are a lot of bad movies out there, and there are a lot of articles out there lambasting those same movies. Many of them appear to obviously have been a bad movie before the writer ever decided to watch the movie, so the question becomes “Why did you watch the movie if you knew it was going to be bad?” I can’t answer that question for everybody else, but for myself, it’s because I still enjoy watching them. Even a movie that I wasn’t really looking forward to going into, the Host, I still greatly enjoyed watching it because when those awful moments in the movie showed up, it made me laugh harder than some of the best comedies around. Besides superheroes and sci-fi, there are also plenty of horror movies out there that are atrocious and plenty of sites that are devoted to watching these low budget, occasionally good, but often just plain bad movies.
The Pumaman
The Pumaman 1980
I had never heard of this movie before starting this site and accumulating my big list of superhero movies to watch. And on top of that, I only recently found out that it was also an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which I did end up watching shortly after watching this movie proper. It’s a low budget movie produced in Italy about a hero with the blood of the Aztec gods running through his veins. But what it really amounts to is that this giant Aztec man gives him an ugly belt which gives him an ugly costume and the abilities of the Pumaman. This allows him to shred metal with his mighty claws like a puma, see in the dark like a puma, slow his heartbeat to feign death like a puma, fly like a puma, even teleport… like a puma. And there has to be a big bad villain to this whole story, which ends up being this weird bald guy who dresses like he’s in a bad sci-fi movie using an Aztec mask to put people under mind control.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 