Blog Archives
They Call Me Superseven
They Call Me Superseven 2016
A while back I talked with writer/producer Scott Rhodes about his webseries Superseven and he mentioned his plans to turn several episodes of that webseries into a feature length film. Well, that has happened and not only that but it will be getting some home video and online distribution early next year. I was offered a screener for review and much like the webseries it spawned from I really enjoyed it. If you haven’t heard of it, Superseven is an homage to the superhero slash spy B-movies from the 60’s, most of which I have yet to watch for myself. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and it wears its low budget on its sleeve, but is a lot of fun and worth watching when it becomes available.
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The Heroic Trio
The Heroic Trio 1993
I’m continuing my journey through the superhero and comic book movies on Netflix that I have yet to review which are mostly foreign and kids films. This was one that I really knew nothing at all about aside from the fact that one of the stars was Michelle Yeoh, but it was highly recommended to me on Twitter when I was trying to decide what film to watch next so I gave it a go. I will say that it was a lot funnier than I expected, but at the same time it tends to hop around all over the place, narratively speaking. And even though I generally watch dubs over subtitles, the original Cantonese language option wasn’t available on Netflix. It’s one of those movies that feels like it has a lot of backstory to the characters, but we only get to see a snippet of what’s fully going on.
Antboy: Revenge of the Red Fury
Antboy: Revenge of the Red Fury 2014
I’m still moving through my Netflix queue of superhero movies I haven’t reviewed yet and I was a little surprised to see this film on the list, especially since it did actually include the original Danish language track on it. I remember the first time I watched the first Antboy, English was the only available option that I could find. I still watched most of it in dubbed English, though I was able to switch partway through when my daughter and wife weren’t interested in watching the film along with me. This sequel picks up more or less where the first film left off, it brings back almost all of the major characters except for Ida’s sister. It also completely eschews adults in favor of the young characters. In fact, the only real adult in this film is the villain the Flea, not even Antboy’s parents get a moment of acknowledgement.
Superheroes
Superheroes 2011
It’s been a while since I watched a superhero related documentary, but this one has always been popping up when I looked around for them here and there. It was originally aired on HBO after a premier at the Slamdance Film Festival. It’s a very rudimentary look at the Real Life Superhero Movement (RLSH) as it existed in 2010 as it has in depth interviews with several members of the RLSH as well as a few members of police that they encountered during their time together. It generally lets the superheroes speak for themselves, though it does give an overall impression of looking down upon the movement as a whole where most of the heroes focused on are kooks or have other issues and there’s only a small portion near the end that really sheds a positive light on the whole concept.
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The Crow: Salvation
The Crow: Salvation 2000
I’ve had my share of ups and downs with the Crow series, the first one is one of my all time favorite films and I never bothered with any of the sequels until starting this site. Not only that, but it’s taken four years before I finally got to the final entry in the franchise. Well final for me since it’s technically the third one released, it’s not like they’re interconnected at all, and there’s the ever present possibility of another film in the near future even if it’s been in development hell for years now. But back to the film itself, it was a bit of a pleasant surprise. For what it’s worth, this is definitely the second best film in the Crow franchise, unfortunately there’s still a pretty wide gap between this film and the first one.
Barbarella
Barbarella 1968
I had heard a little bit about this film and always had in the back of my mind that it was based on a comic book but for some reason it hadn’t made it to my master list before now. But this month I was granted a new free trial of Netflix and went through all of their superhero and comic book offerings and came up with a list of eight films to try and watch during this month. For whatever reason, this was the first film that I decided to check out from that list, I guess I was in the mood for a cheesy sci-fi movie, and while I knew it was going to be somewhat of a sex romp, I was still a little surprised at how much nudity and sexuality came through in this film even though much of it was edited out during some theatrical releases of the film in the US. Barbarella originally started out as a comic strip in a French magazine before being collected in a series of graphic novels and eventually translated into English. It even ran in Heavy Metal magazine. As for the movie, it’s generally notable as it stars Jane Fonda but is basically a B-movie sci-fi film with a mix of sex and adventure.
Alter Egos
Alter Egos 2012
It’s been a while since I’ve gotten around to watching a proper superhero movie to review here, I’ve been busy with Channel: Superhero as usual as well as work stuff. But I finally caught up with this film that I had heard of back when it got picked up by Kevin Smith for his new SModcast pictures presents which was quickly renamed to the Kevin Smith movie club where it ran for three years until 2013. I had no idea what the movie was actually about aside from the catch phrase “Alter Egos” and honestly thought it had more to do with the real life superheroes that these lower budget indie superhero flicks tend to move towards. But instead, it has built a world all its own and it only focuses on a small portion of that world. It has a fair amount of humor, and uses the minimal special effects to the film’s advantage to craft an all around entertaining movie. I really enjoyed this look at the struggles of a superhero’s persona with the hints of the larger world revolving around it.
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FTMN Quickie: Punisher Extended Cut
Punisher: Extended Cut 2004
Often there aren’t very many differences between an extended cut of a film and the theatrical edition. Often it’s just a scene or two, or a couple extra shots before or after certain scenes. And once in a while there’s a film that has some drastic differences between the theatrical cut and the director’s or extended cut like with Superman II or Daredevil. This falls somewhere inbetween those two. There is enough of a difference that I felt like I should comment on it, but there’s not enough of a difference to write a completely new review for the whole film, so instead I decided to just do a little quickie review of the Extended edition of the Thomas Jane Punisher film from 2004. If you would like to read my full thoughts on the theatrical version of the film, read here.
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Graphic Horror: From Hell
From Hell 2001
Next up on the chopping block is the first of many Alan Moore adaptations, though I have covered most of the later ones already here. This is a fictionalized account of the Jack the Ripper murders in the late 1800’s in London’s East End. I will say that one thing this film did do for me is renew my interest in the actual Jack the Ripper case, at least for a few hours of Wikipedia and Google video searching. I find it interesting that last year or so there was someone who claimed to have used DNA evidence to “solve” the murder, and yet none of that was enough to make it into the Wikipedia pages a year later. The film is more of a thriller mystery with Johnny Depp put center stage with his slightly eccentric character, though much more dialed back than most of his characters in recent years post Jack Sparrow. I had heard mixed things about this adaptation, and I fall on the line that I thought it was greatly dumbed down for audiences even though I have no experience with the comic, but I was intrigued by the mystery slightly. And since this is a mystery film I will give warning that I will be discussing the killer as presented in this film in case you would rather watch the film and be surprised.
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Graphic Horror: Creepshow
Creepshow 1982
One thing that I’ve been a big fan of for quite a while is the TV show Tales From the Crypt, and before that show existed it was a series of several different comic books from EC comics under titles like Shock Suspenstories, the Vault of Horror, and Weird Science. This film was made as an homage to those comics combined with the short stories of Stephen King. Last March during my first Graphic Horror Blogathon Jason Soto over at Your Face! reviewed this film and put it on my radar, but it’s taken me this long to finally get around to it. Another reason why I wanted to watch this is because Movie Reviews 101 and Movie Rob are holding a Stephen King-a-thon all this month so be sure and check out all of their Stephen King reviews while you’re at it. As far as the movie goes, it’s not quite on par with Tales From the Crypt for me, it’s much more on the comedic side of things than the horror side and that didn’t quite work for me though I could see the appeal of it.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 