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Model By Day
Model By Day 1993
Every once in a while I run across a movie that I don’t really know anything about aside from the title, the year it came out, and the fact that it’s related to superheroes or based on a comic book. That’s all I knew about this film, and after watching it, I suddenly wanted to know a lot more about it, but couldn’t find anything else. All I know is that it’s supposedly a TV movie and the only air date I could find was on the Fox channel March 21, 1994, as well as vague (USA) release date of October 11, 1993 via IMDB. But the kicker is that this is very much an R rated film with a not-insignificant amount of nudity, some swearing, and noted Cinemax queen Shannon Tweed in a minor role. This would lead me to believe that it originally aired on Cinemax or a similar station, but I can’t find confirmation of that anywhere. This film is also noteworthy as the lead is an early role for Famke Janssen who would later go on to play Jean Grey in the X-Men films. I went in expecting a pretty bad film, and it was actually a lot more enjoyable than I expected. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a cheezy, slightly sleazy, made-for-TV movie made in the 90’s, but I had a lot of fun watching it, and Famke Janssen had a lot of charisma even back then.
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Mr. Freedom
Mr. Freedom 1969
In my search for 100 of the most important and influential superhero movies, this is the last of those films that I’ve sought out to watch. I gave it a certain measure of importance mostly due to the label that released it on DVD. When a film is released under the Criterion label, it gives it an extra bit of prestige as they don’t just seek out any films to release. Instead, Criterion is generally known for releasing films that a cinephile would be most interested in. And considering that Mr. Freedom is the single, solitary superhero film released under the Criterion label, I assumed that it’s a mark of quality. I won’t go so far as to say that I was completely mistaken, but this was not the film I expected it to be by a long shot. While there is still a hefty amount of social satire and striking visuals, it’s marred by quite a bit of heavy handedness, low budget, and a nonsensical nature.
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The Posthuman Project
The Posthuman Project 2015
Even though I try to keep myself up to date on superhero movies coming out, I rarely search out indie projects and obscure films anymore. Instead, I rely on my social networks and newsfeeds to point them out to me as they show up on other people’s radar, which is why I didn’t find out about this film until a few short months ago when it had its wide release through digital outlets. I’ve watched a fair number of low budget, indie superhero films and I do find myself coming at them from a different perspective. The acting won’t always be there, and neither will the special effects, but there’s usually something in the writing or direction that I can grasp onto and see what the filmmakers were going for. There is some of that here in the Posthuman project, but not quite enough for me to love this film in the way that I have with All Superheroes Must Die, or Squid Man. It’s got some good ideas, and a couple good characters, but it suffers in several places from trying to reach beyond its limitations.
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Lego Justice League: Attack of the Legion of Doom
Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Attack of the Legion of Doom 2015
I’ve been a big fan of the Lego brand for ages, along with their video games since the Lego Star Wars games and their movies from last year and this year. They came out with their Lego Batman straight to home video movie last year which essentially followed the plot of video game Lego Batman 2. There was another one that came out earlier this year which had the Justice League fighting Bizarro characters and Darkseid, and this continues that story where Darkseid is using Lex Luthor for revenge while Cyborg is the new member of the team. It’s a little bit funny that two animated films released within a week or so of each other both feature Cyborg as the new member of the team, with this film and Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem which I watched and reviewed a few days ago. Doing a brief comparison of the two, even though they are both essentially used to help sell toys, this Lego movie uses humor much better and doesn’t feel quite so shameless or formulaic. Instead, it brings the humor that the brand has become known for and is generally hilarious from start to finish.
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Book Nights: Overtaken
Overtaken by Mark H. Kruger
After finishing up the first book in this series, Overpowered I was very excited to move onto the sequel. Even though it took me a bit longer to get into the book, once I got about halfway through I really wanted to rush through to the end. I’m glad that I was able to dig into this series which has really brought me around on the superhero novel, as the first couple I read were bad to mediocre, but these last three have all been a real treat to read. Not quite enough for me to go seeking out more on my own, but I won’t be turning down any future offers to review if they come my way. Here, Kruger is able to take the hero that he built up in Overpowered and change the situation in an unlikely and fascinating way. As usual, there will be some spoilers in this review so fair warning.
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Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem
Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem 2015
It was only a few months ago that the first Batman Unlimited movie came out to home video and it’s already time for the sequel. It’s a little tough to get behind this kind of movie that is inherently designed to market their toy line, and watching it with that in mind, it does exactly that in spades. With just two films, they introduce a large number of heroes, villains, and accessories. The first film introduced all the animal themed villains, while this one introduces all of the monstrous themed villains. Though the problem that I had with the first film carries over just as much with this film. I.E. there are no women outside of a single villainess Silver Banshee who I was never familiar with before seeing this film. Like Animal Instincts and last year’s JLA Adventures, this is very kid friendly and lighthearted as opposed to the typical hard PG-13 DC animation with their other Batman and Justice League animated films. Taken at face value, it’s harmless and entertaining enough, it’s just the whole concept surrounding it that rubs me the wrong way in more ways than one.
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The Death of “Superman Lives”; What Happened?
The Death of “Superman Lives”; What Happened? 2015
It seems that I’m finally getting around to some of the backlogged non-theatrical releases that have come out this year. This film was originally launched as a kickstarter by John Schnepp a couple years ago to chronicle his quest to find out what happened to this multi-year project that ended up never getting made. He gets interviews with many of the major players including all three script writers, producer Jon Peters, director Tim Burton, and plenty of concept artists. Enhancing the interviews are snippets of the film recreated in animation or in a couple cases live action as well as plenty of concept art and behind the scenes archival footage. It’s not really an investigation of how this film got cancelled, instead it’s more like a look back on the making of the film that ends just before they would have started filming. As someone who has heard a little bit about this project, and probably from the source that most people would have heard it from: Kevin Smith, I thought it was generally fascinating, though it did run a bit too long for my taste and especially for my wife’s taste.
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Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four 2015
This is the fourth Fantastic Four movie that I’ve watched and reviewed for this site, it seems like the franchise gets rebooted every ten years or so. This one has been plagued for well over a year with reports of reshoots, studio interference, the director Josh Trank acting odd on the set, large sections of his film being pulled out at the last moment in the editing room, and now that it’s come out it’s getting largely negative reviews and the box office is over 30% less than early projections. There’s quite a bit of backlash against this film for quite a few reasons: it hasn’t been done well in the past, fans seem to think it would fare better with Disney Marvel behind it, and the early reports had the film changing seemingly everything that people supposedly knew and loved about the Fantastic Four. I will say that I don’t believe that it deserves the 9% it has at the moment on Rotten Tomatoes, I can imagine that it’s a high amount of mildly negative reviews which isn’t entirely fair to the film. What is a bit more obvious is that whatever the reason, this film became a victim of studio interference rather than a single creative vision. Ten years from now, the story surrounding the film will be much more prominent than the film itself as it will likely fade into obscurity unless someone has the guts to finish an alternate cut of the film to bring back the original intent. For my part, I could see where the film was going initially and I was interested, but it made a reshot nosedive towards the end and I could feel that a lot of the characters were missing from the final product.
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Rat Pfink A Boo Boo
Rat Pfink A Boo Boo 1966
No, that’s not a typo in the title, the movie I’m talking about today really is called Rat Pfink A Boo Boo. Well, technically it very well could be a typo, but it’s one made by someone who worked on the film though the director claimed later on that it was intentional. Before I get to the actual movie, I do want to talk about the site where I watched this film. Which is appropriate as the film feels like about half filler anyway so you’re not missing out on much. Anyway, I found out about Fandor last year because they were promoting a meet and greet with director Jeremy Saulnier with his film Blue Ruin. While looking through their site, I also noticed that they had the Wild World of Batwoman streaming. The other day, I finally decided to watch that film and signed up for their 2 week free trial and tweeted, asking for suggestions on what films to watch during my trial. @Fandor actually responded the next day with a martial arts superhero film I hadn’t heard of that’s available at their site. I was just really impressed that they took that extra effort to check my profile and suggest an appropriate movie to me instead of just some random film. Then I noticed that they also had this film which I always assumed was going to be an obscure film that I would have to track down so I decided to go ahead and watch it. And even at just over an hour long, it felt nearly twice that, not to mention the jarring shifts in tone, both color and narratively.
The Wild Wild World of Batwoman
The Wild Wild World of Batwoman 1966
This is one of the last couple films that I’ve put on my 100 Essential Superhero Movies list that I had yet to see. There are a couple reasons that I added this film instead of a more well known, or better film. One is that it was essentially one of the first fan films, or probably more accurately a mockbuster. It was made by Jerry Warren who didn’t have the rights to the Batman character, but wanted to capitalize on the TV show’s popularity and so he made this Batwoman movie. There were enough changes made to the characters that even though he was sued for copyright infringement, he actually won the case. It was also one of very few superhero movies that became popular as a cult film when it was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Watching it today, it is very obviously along the lines of an Asylum mockbuster where the characters seemingly know that they’re in a parody of a film even though it’s all supposedly being taken seriously.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 