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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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Superbob
Superbob 2015
It’s time to catch up with another movie from last year that I wasn’t able to see because it wasn’t released here in the US. This is a little independent comedy from Grain Media and first time director Jon Drever. Often, I think to myself that there’s almost nowhere new that a superhero movie can go, it just has to do something that’s been done before well. And while there have been several concepts out there about a loser who gains super powers to become a superhero, there hasn’t been anything that’s gone quite the same way about it that Superbob does, and that’s not even discussing the pseudo-documentary style of it either. I initially wasn’t sure what to expect from this movie, but the nervous charm of Bob made me laugh quite a bit throughout the film and it has a nice heart at the center of it all. A pleasant surprise of a movie and currently available in the US to stream via Flix Premier.
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The Last Superhero
All Superheroes Must Die 2: The Last Superhero 2016
It’s been a bit of a slow August, at least slow as in posts appearing on this site, the complete opposite when it comes to outside of this blog. But I was able to check out another recent release. Back when I first caught All Superheroes Must Die, I thought it was a great little ultra-low-budget gem that brought some new ideas and a horror vibe to superhero movies. Writer/director/star Jason Trost has gone a slightly different direction with his sequel that follows the events after his first movie along with revisiting events well before in a pseudo documentary style that becomes more like a mystery than a superhero movie. And it succeeds quite well as a mystery, it kept me guessing until near the very end without falling for obvious Macguffins and the documentary style was a nice touch to help explain the low budget feel, though there were a few moments of special effects that looked good despite the low budget.
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Avengers: Age of Ultron
Avengers: Age of Ultron 2015
I think it’s actually quite fitting that I have a review of Ultron just after my review of Suicide Squad. Both films had large expectations behind them, and both ended up falling quite a bit short of them for many fans. The biggest difference is that while considered a disappointment, it still snagged around a 75% approval rating from critics, though I imagine that many of those positive reviews still have the word “disappointment” or some variation of it within the text. In fact, one of the reasons why I didn’t immediately review this film after seeing it for the first time in theaters myself was because I felt like I needed to let it settle for a bit and I wanted to give it a second viewing with tempered expectations to help see some of the positives without getting stuck on the feelings of being let down from the perfection that was the first Avengers movie. I just didn’t quite expect that second viewing to come almost a year and a half later. But here we are. So, did it improve from that initial viewing? Yes, but there are still plenty of flaws throughout the run time.
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Suicide Squad
Suicide Squad 2016
Like with any recent DC live action movie release these days there’s a lot more to it than just “Did I like it?” or “Did I not like it?” It seems like it started a little bit with Manof Steel and escalated greatly with Batman vs Superman and once again there’s this great divide between a very low critical consensus and a record breaking box office. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Does it really even matter anymore as long as the money is flowing and nothing’s going to stop this DC train from moving along trying to catch up to the Marvel money train chugging a few billion dollars ahead. Obviously, I’m a superhero movie fan, you don’t sit through over 300 superhero movies without either being a fan, becoming a fan, or quitting about 100 movies ago. My expectations for Suicide Squad were very similar to the animated Assault on Arkham, and what I got wasn’t a far cry from it. The characters were fun, it was fast paced, sure there were some flaws with the story but at the end of the day, my wife and I had a great morning at the movies. It would just be nice if there was a little bit more cohesion so that everyone else had fun too.
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Turtles Forever
Turtles Forever 2009
And finally wrapping up this month of animated movies that’s seeped slightly from July into August I’ve reached another milestone. This is the last animated film that I currently have on my list. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any others out there, I know there’s plenty if I expand to foreign comics, but I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten every English one. As for the actual movie, Turtles Forever came out of an event that was done for the 25th anniversary of the Turtles and so they made this TV movie based around the current series that started in ’03 and was airing on CW4Kids. The main focus of the movie was to bring the 80’s animated series into a connected continuity with the 00’s series, and apparently to also make fun of it. There’s a ton of meta humor that often gets in the way of telling any sort of real story, but that’s ok because it is a ton of fun to watch. Especially if you’re someone who grew up with the 80’s Turtles and even if you’re like me and have never seen a single episode of the 00’s Turtles.
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When the Wind Blows
When the Wind Blows 1986
This post is doing double duty for me as it technically kicked off yet another animation month as well as being a part of A Timely Blogathon that’s being run by Film Grimoire and MovieRob all about films that are 90 minutes or less even though it will have posted over on their site before I decided to share it here as well. And since I saved it for their blogathon it also just about wraps up my own animation month aside from one final movie I hope to cover tomorrow. This film is ten minutes shy of the 90 minute limit for the blogathon which isn’t surprising since most animated films run shorter than live action due to the amount of work involved in each minute of animation versus each minute of live action. The film itself follows an elderly couple in the English countryside who had lived through the second World War and are now faced with the fallout of the first attack kicking off a third.
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Flash Gordon The Greatest Adventure of All
Flash Gordon The Greatest Adventure of All 1982
I only have one other animated movie to cover after this before I have watched every one that I’m aware of out there which gets me one step closer to my goal of watching every superhero and comic book movie ever made. This film was actually made a few years before it was ever shown. It was initially created as a TV movie by Filmation, the animation studio behind such 80’s staples as He-Man, and many of the DC shows that weren’t produced by Hanna-Barbera, but it was quickly retooled into a TV series. It wasn’t until after the show had been cancelled that they went back to the original footage and aired it as a TV movie as it was intended. It has yet to receive an official release, but it did get a home video release in Japan where it can currently be found online with Japanese subtitles. I was never a big connoisseur of Filmation shows aside from vague memories of He-Man, She-Ra, Bravestarr, and Fat Albert. Watching this I could see the appeal, and it actually felt much more adult than most of what they were known for. There were obvious cost-cutting techniques and rotoscoping, but there was a level of faithfulness that didn’t quite ever come across in the live-action movie. They were able to pull off more monstrous looking creatures within the world and overall more of a sci-fi vibe to it. For me, it didn’t quite come to the fun and campy level that the live-action movie did, it felt like it took the material more seriously, but the quality just wasn’t quite enough for it to be a truly great film.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 