Blog Archives
Tank Girl
Tank Girl 1995
It’s really hard to know where to start with this movie. I was originally going to do a month of female superhero movies back during the first year of this site, that is until I realized that there’s only like 5 of them, I had already reviewed 2, and they are all horrible movies except for this one. Kinda. This is also much more of a sci-fi movie than a superhero movie, except for the fact that it’s impossible not to realize that this was based on a comic book as there are comic book images and animation thrown at you at almost every scene change. The plot of this movie is all over the place and so is the tone, there’s even a musical sequence in the middle of the movie that comes out of nowhere. Really the only thing that holds this entire movie is the performance of Lori Petty as Rebecca, the Tank Girl herself, which was enough for me and my wife to enjoy this movie, but only just.
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Defendor
Defendor 2009
This is the last of a small group of similarly themed independent superhero movies that I’ve come around to watching. Alongside Special, Super, and to a lesser extent Kick-Ass, this is definitely the one with the least amount of humor in it, but I think it’s coming to be the one that I like the most. It’s not exactly a big movie but it does have a nice cast consisting of Woody Harrelson as Arthur Poppington/Defendor, Elias Koteas as Officer Dooney, Kat Dennings as Angel/Kat Debrofkowitz, and Sandra Oh as the psychiatric evaluator. The way I like to describe the tone of the movie is if Forrest Gump was Batman. There is some humor in it, but the movie rarely uses Arthur’s mental disability as a source of humor, instead it uses it much more as a source of empathy. And instead of stumbling his way through significant moments in history, he stumbles his way through a local drug lord’s activities. It has moments of lightness, but also becomes a bit of a crime drama mixed with a bit of social commentary. If you can find it anywhere out there, it’s worth your time to check it out.
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Robocop
Robocop 2014
So I once again managed to make it out to theaters to catch a new release this year which brings my total up to 3, and while I didn’t make any official goal this year, it’s bringing me well on my way of reaching last year’s goal of 10 theatrical viewings which I only made it about halfway. I had a few reservations about seeing it, it is a reboot and these kinds of reboots of 80’s movies have had a pretty hit and miss track record. The early reviews coming in were mixed, so I had some hope there. And when I watched it, I quite liked what I saw. But when I discussed it for an upcoming Lambcast episode, it didn’t hold up very well to dissection. There is a great cast here, there are some updates that work quite well, from the drones angle to the conservative news show host, and even some nice little callbacks to the original movie. But there are also quite a few missteps in the movie, like the fact that while the satire is on a different topic and scale than the original, it also carries much less of an impact, and the final act doesn’t carry any of the same punches as the original. There’s nothing wrong with the movie by any means, but it’s not much of an improvement and like most remakes, it wasn’t really needed in the long run.
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Filmwhys #24 Saving Private Ryan and Constantine
I’m still truckin’ with these podcasts and still havin’ a lot of fun with them. This time around on the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast my guest is Ryan McNeil from The Matinee who asks me why I haven’t seen Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielburg’s epic World War II movie about a group of soldiers trekking across war-torn Europe to find a single soldier and bring him home. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen Constantine, with Keanu Reeves playing John Constantine who has the ability to see angels and demons who are all around us and is stuck on Earth fighting the demons to try and win his way back into Heaven when his life runs out.
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The Bad Samaritan Must Die
The Bad Samaritan Must Die 2012
Being a site that focuses on mainly superhero movies to watch and review, there’s not too many opportunities to recieve screeners for movies as most of the films are big tentpole films from major studios who aren’t that worried about the opinion of a small time niche movie critic. But once in a while I’m able to run across a smaller independent film that’s looking for more exposure as is the case with this film. If you’re interested in helping support independent film then make sure you check out the film’s official site at TheBadSamaritan.com where you can read some behind the scenes info, watch a trailer, and even buy the movie for yourself. As for what I thought about the movie? I admit that it took me a little while to warm up to it. But once I did, I enjoyed it for what it was. It’s a look at a vigilante as more of a cult leader, someone who gains a fiercely loyal following during a time when they feel like the best quality in a person is strength. It has some strong ideas, but as is often the case in independent cinema, it does struggle a bit behind the lack of a proper budget.
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The Lego Movie
The Lego Movie 2014
So I managed to make it out to theaters to see my first theatrical movie of 2014. It’s not exactly what you might call a “superhero movie”, but there are quite a few superheroes as supporting characters so I’ll let that slide. It’s almost more like a Lego version of the Matrix, complete with “the one” also known as “the special”, the master builders who can change the code by rearranging the Lego blocks, and-spoiler- a bit of a twist involving a second world outside the world. Aside from that, there’s a lot more laughs, a lot more heart, and a lot less violence. I loved it, my daughter Jena loved it, and my wife loved it. It’s a whole lot of fun from beginning to end.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #13
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 13
Episode: T.R.A.C.K.S.
Original Airdate: 2-4-14
After a couple weeks off, S.H.I.E.L.D. Is back and even though it’s starting to feel cliched to say this, but this was once again their best episode yet. It combines one of my favorite formats of storytelling with plenty of action, comedy, and a gut punch of an ending. There’s callbacks, teases, and honestly the weakest part of the episode was the Stan Lee cameo. It’s also a little frustrating that there’s only one quick episode before yet another hiatus due to the Olympics, but hopefully this will be the last one before this show finishes out the season strong. On the villainous side of things, I’m actually not entirely sure I like the direction they are going, but hopefully things will pick up on that front as things start ramping up to the finale.
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Ghost World
Ghost World 2001
Once again I’m back with another non-superhero graphic novel adaptation, and another one where I knew next to nothing about this movie going into it aside from an early appearance by Scarlett Johansson, and when it popped up, I also remembered seeing a pic of this movie with Thora Birch wearing the Catwoman mask. It’s a little hard to describe this movie, it’s not really a coming of age story even though it mainly follows the life of one girl in an important transition in her life. It’s not really a romance movie even though there are some relationships throughout. It’s not really a comedy even though there are some laughs scattered through the movie. It’s not even what I like to call a slice of life movie as it is a bit deeper than that. One thing I can say about this movie is that it is quite thought provoking and full of relatable characters and typical situations, but with enough of a twist so that they are still worthy of being a cinematic creation. It has really stuck with me in a way that’s hard to describe, but that’s what I’m here to try and do.
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The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger 2013
Today I get the chance to both catch up on a movie that I missed this past year, and also cover a movie that was based on a comic book property that’s not exactly a superhero movie, even though it comes pretty close to one. It was the biggest box office bomb of the year, and was critically panned with only a handful of exceptions along with a handful more that thought the movie as a whole was bad, but the climactic sequence at the end was a blast. There seemed to be a lot of controversy surrounding this movie and not all of it had to do with the movie itself. I wanted to be able to look past the backlash and enjoy what could have been Pirates of the Old West, and in a way it kind of was. But it felt much more like it was Pirates of the Old West 5, only they also had to fit in an origin story, and a wraparound story, and flashbacks, and even a brief dream sequence. When it comes down to it, I enjoyed bits and pieces of the movie, loved the ending, but overall it was a bit of a mess.
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JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time
JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time 2014
This is a movie you might not have heard about until recently even if you follow DC Animation, it’s a bit of a stealth release, only popping up on people’s radars when it was included in Target’s mailer last week as it is a Target DVD exclusive. One thing I immediately found out about it was that it is something much lighter in tone than many of the recent DC Animated movies. It’s much more in line with an updated version of Super Friends so I was excited because it was something that I could watch with my daughter Jena without worrying if there was too much blood in it. I’m always a fan of a time travel story and this has some very fun moments without bogging itself down with the nitty gritty details of it. The movie mainly follows a couple soon-to-be-members of the Legion of Super-heroes 1,000 years in the future: Dawnstar and Karate Kid. But back in the present, there’s also plenty of the Justice League and the Legion of Doom with many of their classic Super Friends roster with the addition of Cyborg who was only in the tail end of the Super Friends. I had a lot of fun with this movie and so did Jena.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 