Blog Archives
Mosaic
Mosaic 2007
It feels good to finally be getting back into a somewhat regular schedule over here at my home for movies since spending so much time at my second home for television over at Channel: Superhero. I think it helps that I’ve decided to make this month animation month which tend to offer up much shorter movies than the live action versions. I have also been thinking about women led superhero movies so I thought it was a perfect fit to take a look at this film that you wouldn’t even know by looking at the cover art or the title was about a young woman who becomes a superhero. It was one of a brief series of films for original characters including this film, the Condor, and the live-action Lightspeed. Mosaic is about a shapeshifting race of people who evolved from chameleons and have remained hidden within the population, and a teenage girl named Maggie comes in contact with one of their runestones and is imbued with their powers. It generally feels like an 80’s or 90’s style low-to-moderate budget animation with more action than story, but it was a fun little adventure and happens to be free to watch on Hulu, so there’s that.
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Barbie in Princess Power
Barbie in Princess Power 2015
You know that superheroes are getting almost overwhelmingly ingrained in the popular culture when even Barbie is getting in on the action. It’s also a bit of a shame to think that before this movie came along the last superhero movie to feature a woman in the lead role of a superhero movie was back in 2009 with the DC Animated Wonder Woman movie. As someone with an 8 year old daughter, I have seen my fair share of these countless Barbie animated films which typically range from tolerable to ok. There’s nothing special about any of them with the exception of the webseries Life in the Dreamhouse which is actually quite funny. This one falls right in line with the rest of them with a fairly predictable plot, simple one-note characters, and a bit of a moral to the story in the end. It does have the benefit of tossing out a small handful of superhero references, though they are some of the most well known and obvious ones they could have pulled from. Obviously it’s not a film that I would recommend the average movie-goer to go out and pick up, but if you have a daughter between 4 and 14, especially if they like superheroes, this is one of the best choices available. More than that, along with Powerpuff Girls they are the only superhero movies led by females.
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Batman vs. Robin
Batman vs. Robin 2015
April has unintentionally become animation month here at Flights, Tights and Movie Nights as I take a look at a couple home video releases as well as catch up with the last couple Marvel animated movies I haven’t gotten around to yet. Batman vs. Robin is the latest DC Animation release that was originally touted as their first original story, though it is apparently partly based on the Court of Owls by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo as well as a sequel to last year’s Son of Batman which was a decent, though fairly mediocre effort from the studio. It has a much stronger underlying theme of what being a father and being a son means, though it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Road to Perdition which I had just recently watched. It was still a mighty fine effort with some nice performances, impressive action sequences, and a few twists and turns along the way. And FYI, Batman vs. Robin is currently available via digital download, and will be released on DVD this Tuesday, April 14th, and as a warning I will be delving into the film in its entirety, including any spoilers.
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TMNT
TMNT 2007
It’s already April of 2015 and I still haven’t followed through with finishing up the 100 Essential Superhero Movies that I finalized back in June of last year. I still have a few more to get to and will also be updating the list for 2015 to include some significant films that came out last year and remove a few that just barely squeezed their way onto the list. This film is often overlooked nowadays as the original 1990 live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the one looked at through nostalgic eyes, and any newer fans of the franchise can look to the current Nickelodeon series or heaven forbid, the Michael Bay produced franchise starter. It was a modest success with a moderate budget but plans for a sequel never materialized. It’s a bit of an oddity in itself, it loosely sequelized the original three live action movies from the 90’s and yet was entirely animated, it also shied away from using the full title and instead opted for just the initials. Something that was akin to the early reports of the Michael Bay version dropping the “mutant” part of the equation and opting for “alien”. And while the story isn’t very deep, it was a lot of fun to revisit these characters an a relatively updated format while still holding true to most of their roots.
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Graphic Horror: Dr. Giggles
Dr. Giggles 1992
It’s tough for me to decide which of the two recent films I watched are better: Virus or Dr. Giggles. I think I would give the edge to Virus, only slightly due to some of the innovative special effects. Dr. Giggles is very much just a standard psychopath killer horror movie overloaded with as many doctor puns as they could fit in. The most entertaining part of the film was picking out actors that I recognized from their later work, like Larry Drake who went on to play Durant in Darkman, Holly Marie Combs who played the sister no one remembers from Charmed, Doug E. Doug from Cool Runnings, and Glenn Quinn from Angel. It’s filled with plenty of horror tropes, some weird doctor-like contraptions, and not really much else in the way of plot or scares. It was produced in part by Dark Horse Entertainment and also had a tie-in two part comic book that came out right around the same time as the film.
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Graphic Horror: Virus
Virus 1999
Moving my way down in quality for this year’s Graphic Horror before hitting the planned high point at the end comes this lovely gem that came out the same year as the Matrix but with a wholly different interpretation of special effects. It actually started its life as a movie script, but was considered to be too special effects intensive at the time and so it was first made into a comic book from Dark Horse. John Bruno was cutting his teeth working on special effects under James Cameron before getting this film as a director, and unfortunately it really shows that he was more of a special effects guy than a full director. There are many issues with this film, but the special effects work really is not one of them. While there are a couple name actors with Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Sutherland, they are definitely not bringing their A games. It’s a horror film with a small cast that doesn’t know whether it wants to be a slow burn thriller, a gore fest, or a survival action film, and the blending of these genres do not work very well at all. It has some fun moments here and there, but for the most part, it’s a rather boring slog-fest.
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Graphic Horror: Whiteout
Whiteout 2009
Kicking off this month in Graphic Horror is a film that I hadn’t really heard about before making my superhero and comic book movie list. It came out in 2009 and starred Kate Beckinsale playing a US Marshall in Antarctica. The movie isn’t so much a horror movie, but it’s definitely a thriller. There’s a murder plot, paranoia, and lots and lots of snow. The mystery unfolds in a generally satisfying, but ultimately predictable way, and the film stretches the incredulity of life in Antarctica on the verge of winter. It’s not anywhere near a bad movie, but it’s definitely a forgettable one which makes me realize that it’s not that surprising that I had never heard of it before now.
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Abar: The First Black Superman
Abar: The First Black Superman 1977
The first year of running this site, I wanted to do something for Black History Month and so I covered all of the Black superhero movies that I could find, and there weren’t very many. After running this site for a couple more years, I have gotten a large enough list that there are a couple more obscure Black superhero movies that I can still cover. Unfortunately I hit a snag when I couldn’t find a ready copy of Up, Up, and Away, a Disney Channel original movie. But I was able to find one for this film, Abar: The First Black Superman. I didn’t know a whole lot about this film aside from the fact that it was a low budget, blaxploitation flick that had very little with the traditional Superman. It was a lot more preachy than I expected, and the superpowered elements of the story don’t show up until the last thirty minutes. But those thirty minutes made the movie worth it through its complete incredulity.
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Book Nights: The Heart Does Not Grow Back
The Heart Does Not Grow Back
by Fred Venturini
It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a book on here, mainly because I don’t seek out what I perceive to be a very small subgenre of fiction outside of comic books. It doesn’t help that my past experiences have been bad to mediocre, but I’m never one to turn down something for free so I accepted the offer to review another piece of superhero fiction. The brief description had me interested, it seemed like there were some horror elements and it wouldn’t be a straightforward superhero origin story. What I ended up with was a superhero story that was one of the most original takes on a superhero that I have ever seen, on screen or off. It’s got coming of age elements to it, and the main character is someone who I could relate to probably more than I should care to admit to. It also has some well written moments of tension during some horrifying and gruesome moments that feel all too real. It’s a fairly short novel, and while I expected to take a couple weeks to read through it, I managed to finish it in less than a week.
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Kingsman: The Secret Service
Kingsman: The Secret Service
When I think about the latest superhero film from writer/director Matthew Vaughn, one thing that comes to mind in an odd sort of way is predictability. And the reason why I say that it comes to mind in an odd sort of way is not that the film follows an extremely stereotypical plot. Instead, it sets itself apart from several of the traditional spy movie tropes by pointing them out, and as soon as it does that it somehow becomes predictable in which ways it will then follow the spy movie trope as well as which ways it will subvert them. But what Matthew Vaughn is able to do is to craft a film that is still enjoyable regardless of whether or not you can tell what’s coming next. After Stardust, Kick-Ass, and X-Men: First Class, there are a lot of things that Vaughn knows how to do right, and they all seem to come together in Kingsman along wrapped in a James Bond style super spy wrapper.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 