Blog Archives
Graphic Horror: The Chair
The Chair 2016
This is one of the few movie fundraisers that I actually contributed money to. At the time (and now, and always but that’s not important) I didn’t have enough spare cash to contribute more than the minimum $1, but dammit I helped! But since this is an independent feature and I am an independent movie reviewer, I managed to get a hold of the screener of this film to watch it early so I can review it here for you ahead of its release here in a couple weeks and you can search for a theatrical release at tugg.com or host one of your own. The film itself is based on an indie comic from the founder of an indie comics label called Alterna comics and from the beginning it owes much of its visual style to what you might think of when it comes to a horror comic. It’s a film that doesn’t make you feel comfortable during its brief run time, and I honestly believe that’s entirely intended. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, you can see the seams of its budget show through here and there, but for the most part, it’s an intense and riveting psychological and visceral horror.
Spaghettiman
Spaghettiman 2016
You’d think that when I told you that there’s a movie about a guy who develops incredibly weird super powers and is a bit of a schlubby roommate with his overweight friend that it’s also a movie unlike anything else I’ve seen. But when it comes to this site and the amount of indie movies I’ve seen, there are actually quite a few bizarre similarities. This is not the only movie I’ve seen where the hero as a main character has the power to shoot food out of his hands. This also isn’t the only low budget movie involving superheroes where two friends and roommates have a friendly-yet-contentious relationship with each other. This isn’t even the only movie I’ve seen that seems to have chosen a random word out of the dictionary and added “man” to the end. The point is, I’ve seen quite a few of these movies, and I’m not trying to say that any of them are copying off each other, I highly doubt that any two projects had ever even heard of each other. But I have, and when looking at them comparatively, this ends up falling somewhere in the middle of these quirky, low budget, superhero movie concepts.
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FTMN Quickie: X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut
X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut 2015
While I haven’t made the time to watch the extended version of Batman vs Superman, I did manage to snag a copy of the Rogue Cut of Days of Future Past that I’ve been curious about ever since it was announced almost two years ago. Rogue has always been one of my favorite characters and I really enjoyed Days of Future Past so I was curious how much of an impact this change would have to the movie. I will say that ultimately it doesn’t make a significant impact in the overall story, there are a few scenes here and there and a couple extra jokes laced with some profanity that would have pushed the theatrical version just over the PG-13 limit, they don’t make a difference in the overall narrative, but it does answer just a few extra questions.
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Doomed!
Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four 2016
In the superhero movie world there’s one big secret out there that’s very poorly kept, the fact that there was a Fantastic Four movie fully produced, completed, and then shelved never to be released back in 1994. It’s also fairly widely known to those with any hint of an interest that the film was made merely to extend a deadline for the filmmaking rights to the characters. The only problem was that everyone below the line was never aware of this, from the director to the actors, and all of the crew. This documentary tries to tell the rest of their story and is able to fill in quite a few gaps in this story, though the entirety may never be fully known since the executives who know the other side of the story aren’t exactly keen on sharing. But regardless, this doc paints a fascinating picture through the eyes of people who were passionate about making this little movie that could despite a low budget, a rushed schedule, and a practically non-existent post production. This is an early review and the film will be released digitally on October 11th and available on Blu-Ray and DVD on December 20th through distribution by Uncork’d Entertainment.
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Electra Woman and Dyna Girl
Electra Woman and Dyna Girl 2016
It’s time for me to take a look at yet another movie that came out earlier this year. This film was very loosely based on the 70’s kid show of the same name produced by Sid and Marty Krofft. In fact, they are also producers on this movie, which is a little surprising considering some of the much more adult directions they go to in this. There’s some crass humor and occasional moments of gore even though they’re played up as a joke. It follows a bit of a cliched formula, but at the same time it comments on those same cliches in a similar way that Deadpool did, but not nearly as successfully. There were some fun moments here and there, but the tone felt off and the jokes about the cliched story weren’t quite enough to distract from the actual cliches.
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Hero of the Year
DC Superhero Girls: Hero of the Year 2016
This is the first feature length movie based on the initiative that DC has started about a year ago that combines toys, a webseries, and comics that are targeted towards girls rather than boys. And since there isn’t a large enough roster of notable women superheroes in the DC universe, they add in a handful of villains into the mix to make up the full slate. One of the biggest issues that I had with the webseries was that it focused too much on the girly aspects of the concept and not enough of the superheroism, this film is much closer to the right balance with a fair amount of action, humor, and friendship without spending too much time on makeovers and costume designing.
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Zoom
Zoom 2016
This year has been an interesting one, I’ve discovered and watched more films in the past month or two than I ever anticipated coming out this year with a few more to come. This film is one of the few that found its way to me via the PR department which suggested that I watch the film via the site We Are Colony. This film is one of the few where I do stretch the definition of a “comic book movie” to include movies about comic books themselves. The comic book in question is written by Allison Pill’s character and also plays a large part of the movie via animation. I wasn’t exactly sure where this film was going, and there is one major component of the story that’s easily spoiled, and is in much of the advertising for the film but is actually better if you’re unaware of it for the first watch. There’s a lot of humor, a lot of sex and nudity without having a lot of actual nudity, and it has an interesting concept that can be surprising, but I will be spoiling in this review. One final note about We Are Colony’s site, it unfortunately wasn’t a great experience for actually watching the movie without a solid high speed internet connection, there’s very little buffering allowed and there’s no option to lower the video quality – or if there is, it’s not easily found. So trying to watch this movie with a spotty internet was more of a pain than it should have been.
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Batman Unlimited: Mechs Vs Mutants
Batman Unlimited: Mechs Vs Mutants 2016
Within a month of me finishing all of the animated comic book movies out there, they went and released two more already. Starting off with the latest entry in the Batman Unlimited series, something that I tend to think of as the “toy series” as it coincided with the release of a new toy line and overall is more kid friendly than the current Warner Premier animated movies that tend towards PG-13 to R for a more adult audience. Even when just looking at this comparatively to the other two Batman Unlimited movies that came before this one, there was a level of inconsistency with many of the characters like Penguin and even Killer Croc. But while it did take a while to win me over, the level of humor across the third act made up for a lot of nothing in the first two. At least a little.
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Almost Super: Sinister Squad
Last year I checked out my first Asylum feature with Avengers Grimm and this year the same director has created a pseudo sequel that’s much more of a mockbuster with Sinister Squad. While Avengers Grimm seemed like it was just a loose amalgamation of an Avengers movie having an extremely loose connection to Age of Ultron, this hews much more closely to Suicide Squad. It’s tough to really call this even a pseudo sequel as the only character that appears in both movies is Rumpelstiltskin though his character is very different in both movies besides being played by different actors. The only real connection is the writer/director Jeremy Inman whose first film, Superhero Party Clown, I actually quite enjoyed. This movie feels like it has more character to it, and while it’s nearly as incomprehensible as Avengers Grimm was, there are many more enjoyable moments and the acting overall is much more passable. I won’t say I fell in love with this movie, but I’m not disappointed that I watched it.
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Inseparable
Inseparable 2011
Something that I realized while watching this movie is that it’s actually a fairly common trend, especially for lower budget superhero films to present the actual superhero as someone with some type of mental break. Whether they are delusional in some way where they don’t entirely realize what’s going on, and often they are represented with an actual version of a psychotic break where they are seeing hallucinations and/or what they’re experience isn’t entirely real. This film is yet another one along those same trends and while I didn’t know it before I started watching it, I caught onto the thread very early on. It’s also interesting that it is a Chinese production, and yet it brought on Kevin Spacey and pushed him into essentially a lead role in front of the supposed main character. Like many of these superhero films with a delusional main character, the film becomes a mix of comedy and drama, though it doesn’t quite go into very dark territory that others tread into. It doesn’t do anything entirely new, but the leads are likable, especially Kevin Spacey and overall it’s a fun story.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 