Blog Archives
Graphic Horror: Afflicted
Graphic Horror: Afflicted 2014
Even though my blogathon is over, I like the tag “Graphic Horror” enough that I’ll be keeping it and using it right alongside “Almost Super” for horror movies that aren’t quite superhero movies, even if they are based on graphic novels and therefore included in my big list of superhero and comic book movies. When I saw the trailer and early promotional tweets about this movie I was very interested. It was a found footage movie very similar in style to Chronicle only with a horror twist to it, where these two friends go on a world trip and one of them catches something that starts to make him sick, but then gives him superpowers before taking a much darker turn. There was another element to the story that the PR wanted to keep a secret, but I didn’t go digging into what it was until they decided it wasn’t that big of a secret to keep once it hit its wide release and I found out that the superpowers were brought on because he is becoming a vampire. This actually made me a little bit more interested in the movie because I’m always a fan of vampire movies and I thought this would do for vampire movies that Chronicle did for superhero movies and I think I was right.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #17
TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 17
Episode: Turn, Turn, Turn
Original airdate: 4-8-14
Once again, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has a tie-in with a currently released Marvel movie, and once again I was able to catch it so I was aware of the connections, and this time around it’s not just the fact that they’re cleaning up in the same location that the movie’s climax took place in. This time around the movie changes everything and going into the episode with that knowledge actually takes away some of the tension that the show tries to present. There’s also a few extra references, like knowing the fate of Nick Fury, the allegiance of Agent Sitwell, and who is the driving force behind the Clairvoyant whose identity goes through plenty of twists and turns in this episode and leaves you guessing until the very end. Things are changing and this episode brings a major shake-up which the show really needed. Fair warning: spoilers abound.
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Captain America: The Winter Soldier 2014
This year is reminding myself of how much different the superhero movie schedule is compared to last year when there were about a dozen movies packed between the end of May and the middle of August, while this year has the movies much more spread out closer to one every month with Captain America kicking off the more traditional superhero fare as early as April (as opposed to the few comic book movies like 300 & I, Frankenstein and the few movies with a less direct superhero connection like Robocop and the Lego Movie) and yet this is also more of a far cry from a traditional superhero plot and instead feels much more like a conspiracy thriller along the lines of a dozen or so great movies whose names I can’t recall at the moment. There’s also a bit more of Captain America adjusting to life in the 21st century which I have been wanting to see ever since the first movie. In short, I loved every minute of it. Also, as a warning, I don’t always tread lightly around spoilers, though most of the spoilers I already knew or assumed before seeing the movie.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #16
TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 16
episode: The End of the Beginning
original airdate: 4-1-2014
Thankfully we’ve seen the last multi-week hiatus for this show and it will now be running straight through till the finale and things finally seem to be ramping up to full speed with yet another tie-in episode to a current release movie. Unfortunately, unlike the Thor crossover and like most of this country, I have yet to see the new Captain America movie which I have heard from those who have seen it that there are events happening in some of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Facilities at the same time that the show is taking place. But I can say that it doesn’t take much away from the episode. This episode finally brings out the clairvoyant, and while I won’t spoil who it is, I will say that I was right when I thought it would end up being a woman. There’s a few questions answered, still several left unanswered, and all wrapped in a nice mix of action, drama, and tension.
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Graphic Horror: 30 Days of Night
30 Days of Night 2007
This Graphic (Novel) Horror blogathon is coming to a close and I’m finally coming around to one of the movies that first came to mind when I was thinking about movies that I should cover. I saw it back when it was still fairly new and quite enjoyed it, but hadn’t seen it since then and have never seen the sequel. I always thought it was an interesting concept for a vampire movie. One of the vampire’s biggest weaknesses was the fact that they couldn’t be out in the sunlight, but in the Arctic Circle there’s a full 30 days of night without any sun, not only that but according to this story the town basically cuts itself off from any other town South of it for the duration of the darkest part of winter so this clan of vampires can essentially feed at will for a full month without any fear of being discovered and stopped by a larger force from outside of town. There are also plenty of great visuals along the way that really had a graphic novel feel to them, whether or not they were actually taken from the pages of the original comic.
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Graphic Horror: Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight
Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight 1995
The Graphic (Novel) Horror blogathon is coming to a close, but not before I manage to eke out a couple more horror movies here in March. Also, if you haven’t checked the main page for the blogathon recently, there are a couple updates with folks out on different blogs who have contributed their own articles so be sure to check them out. I was a big fan of the television show Tales From the Crypt, and even though it was around the time when this movie came out, I probably didn’t catch it in theaters, instead finding it when it came to home video and agreeing with the general consensus that the movie wasn’t nearly as good as most of the episodes made for HBO. I especially found it interesting in this viewing that I had a hard time finding good screenshots to take as there is rarely anything interesting happening on screen and the creature effects are mediocre at best. The movie eschews the show’s typical morbid twist and instead relies on a macabre fantasy/action plot with demons and a fun wraparound with the Cryptkeeper tying it in with the television show. There are moments of fun in this movie but they are few and far between.
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300: Rise of an Empire
300: Rise of an Empire
I was originally going to wait until this came out on home video, but I recently got the opportunity to go to a Winter Soldier pre-screening event. As this was the first time showing up to one of these events I thought that an hour and a half early would be enough time to be able to get into the showing. Unfortunately I was wrong, by well over 50 people wrong. Not only that, but the theater wasn’t doing a very good job at communicating how many people actually were in the line ahead of us and it wasn’t until about 10 minutes before the showing was supposed to start when they finally came to us near the back of the line and told us the bad news and offered us tickets to any other movie showing at the theater. Luckily there was a screening of 300 starting right at that exact moment so that’s what I went with. So on top of seeing an underwhelming movie, it also has the detriment of being the movie that I had to see instead of Captain America 2. I was a fan of the original 300 and even own it on DVD (though I don’t think I’ve re-watched it since buying it. While this still had involvement with Zack Snyder, the direction was passed onto Noam Murro who seemed to think the best way to follow Zack Snyder’s style was to increase the amount of slow motion moments of blood flying at the camera.
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Graphic Horror: Alien
Graphic Horror: Alien 1979
This is something that I haven’t done very much since starting my Filmwhys podcast, and that is to go back and watch an essential movie that I hadn’t seen, only I didn’t do it to talk about during an episode of Filmwhys. (Instead I’m talking about it here in a review) Before now I had seen Aliens a few times, and somehow skipped ahead and watched AvP in theaters, but never went back to watch the original even though there’s always the debate over which is the better movie: Alien or Aliens. For my part, I don’t think I’ll ever like this one as much as Aliens, but it is still a great movie that I really enjoyed. And for the record, I did watch the 2003 Ridley Scott director’s cut of the movie instead of the theatrical release, although I didn’t go back and check to see what the differences between the two versions are.
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Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher
Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher 2014
Last year when I watched the Marvel Iron Man anime movie Rise of Technovore, the best part of that movie were the bits featuring the Punisher, so while that movie was ok but fairly middling, I had quite a bit more hope for this one. But what I ended up getting was more of the same. I do think that the way this movie handles the Punisher as a character is much better than the way he is handled in any of the other live action movies, but I wasn’t as fond of how it handles Black Widow. There are plenty of well done fight scenes, but they had a little too much anime flair to them and some of the voice acting fell a bit flat except for one role who played it overly animated. The plot kept things interesting and while I didn’t like everything in this movie, there was plenty enough to keep me in through the end of the movie. A step up from last year’s Technovore, but only a small step.
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Graphic Horror: The Cell
Graphic Horror: The Cell 2000
When I first decided to run this Graphic Horror blogathon, I was planning on only covering the movies that were actually based on graphic novels, but when no one jumped on the Cell, I couldn’t let that go considering that this was pretty much the first movie that I thought of when I came up with the entire idea for the blogathon in the first place. When I was younger, I never really got into horror movies much, but after seeing Seven there was a while where I would seek out these not-quite-horror movies focused on serial killers. I was also a big fan of artistic music videos like Nine Inch Nails and a couple of Madonna’s videos and this movie looked right in line with that surreal, dreamlike music video style, though honestly I don’t think I’ve revisited this movie since that time. But it has still always stuck with me as an interesting concept with beautiful visuals even though the other things like the plot never really stuck with me as closely. I had even forgotten that Vince Vaughn had a significant role in this movie.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 