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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #15
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. week #15
Episode: Yes Men
Original airdate: 3-11-14
Wow, two weeks in a row, what a shocker! But seriously, it’s nice to see some regularity, too bad it’s not continuing for very long. At least next week there is a Marvel related thing going on. Not only did we get two episodes in a row, but we actually got a real tie-in to the Thor movie rather than the weak tie-in involving a spear and an Asgardian, neither of which featured in the movie at all. This time around we get an actual Asgardian from the movie with Jaimie Alexander’s Lady Sif and a villain that is from the Thor comics. Not only that, but there is a great shift in the team dynamics within the main cast that really helps to further some of the characters. There isn’t too much humor, but there’s a lot of drama and a lot of action in yet another great episode. Not to mention the fact that it’s really taken me this long to realize how much of a strong female cast this show has in general. Fully 50% of the team is made up of women, and they are all just as strong as their male counterpart. It’s something that’s great to see, and maybe I just don’t read enough other viewpoints on the show, but I certainly don’t see it getting a lot of credit for that aspect. The fact that the team is pretty much whitewashed is a different story, but there is at least a fair number of ethnicities when it comes to the other characters and villains that pop up.
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Stan Lee’s Mighty 7
Stan Lee’s Mighty 7 2014
I just happened to stumble across this a few days ago and since it was pretty short at just about an hour long I decided to check it out as a bit of a sorbet between horror bites. It’s basically an extended TV show pilot though I haven’t read if it is going to become a show or not. The movie centers on Stan Lee as a caricature of himself, or at least the personality he portrays as his somewhat public persona. He stumbles upon a crashed ship of aliens, including two essentially space cops and five until recently captive fugitives which he eventually gets to sign a contract so he can use their likenesses in a new comic book sold as a reality superhero show. It originally aired on the Hub network and it is pretty obvious that it is aimed at kids, but there is a bit of fun to be had here and there aside from the cliché storylines and silly humor. I seriously doubt that it would be anything that I would find myself watching on a regular basis if it did become a full fledged cartoon series, but if there was another short movie like this I would check it out.
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Graphic Horror: Vault of Horror
Vault of Horror 1973
Following up from the Tales From the Crypt adaptation the year before comes yet another adaptation of several of the EC Comics stories from their various horror comics like Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, and others. It follows basically the same format as Tales From the Crypt with a frame story about several people coming together and telling tales of their demises. The difference is that this time they are all taking an elevator that brings them to the sublevel instead of the ground floor, and they are talking about these vivid dreams they’ve been having, and also there is no curator inviting them to speak, instead they bring up speaking on their own, and there is no woman in this group. There’s also something about the stories in general that weren’t as interesting overall as several of the ones in the Tales From the Crypt anthology. I also found it interesting, even though I’m not a Doctor Who fan at all but I noticed that Tom Baker is one of the main characters in one of the stories.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #14
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week #14
episode: T.A.H.I.T.I.
original airdate: 3-4-2014
It feels like it’s been forever since there’s been a new episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I also just read that this episode has had the lowest ratings of the season which is disappointing because I think the show has been getting much stronger these past several episodes. It’s unfortunate that it’s been hurt by both a weak starting few episodes which lost a lot of viewers, and these past two months which have been strewn with frequent hiatuses. Two weeks off, one week on, three weeks off. I almost think it would have been a better idea to have just taken six weeks off so there could have been a continuous string of new episodes. There seems to be a lot invested in this show so I hope that there are strong streaming numbers that help this show get to a season 2 because guest star Bill Paxton sure didn’t bring any viewers.
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Graphic Horror: Tales From the Crypt
Graphic (Novel) Horror Blogathon: Tales From the Crypt 1972
Welcome to my first entry in the Graphic (Novel) Horror blogathon, where I and other bloggers take a look at horror movies that could be, should be, or were graphic novels. I’m kicking it off by watching the movie that was made many years before one of my favorite TV shows that were both inspired by the pulp EC comics series including Tales From the Crypt, the Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, and several other titles. I had never seen this movie before today, but as this was an anthology inspired by the comics just like the television series, I was already familiar with the story of two of the shorts even though there were some minor differences, mainly in the length as the TV series was a full half hour while this includes five shorts and a wraparound story in about an hour and a half. The budget for this movie felt quite small with many cheap looking visual effects, but I think it still often captured the feeling that I got from the Tales From the Crypt television show with the macabre stories and occasional twist endings. While not as good as the TV show, it was still entertaining to watch.
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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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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 