Blog Archives
Batman: Gotham Knight
Batman: Gotham Knight 2008
It had been a long time since I visited this movie so I figured it was overdue for a revisit. Gotham Knight is one of the more unique entries in the DC Animation canon. It’s an anthology consisting of several short films loosely tied together and all featuring Batman in one way or another. While they did try this again later on with Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, this one is done by different anime directors with very different styles while Emerald Knights all shared the same style as they were done by a single director within DC Animation. While there are a few high points, and a few weak spots, overall it’s quite enjoyable and Batman generally translates quite well to an Anime style. The only thing I don’t think translated quite as well is that Bruce Wayne is generally shown in a Bishounen style, as in he has a more effeminate look to him which is very different from the very masculine style in western animation and comics. But aside from that, it was an enjoyable movie and a welcome departure from the traditional animation style without going too far into typical Anime philosophizing and introspection that plagued the recent Iron Man anime Rise of Technovore.
Read the rest of this entry
TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #3
TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 3
Episode “The Asset”
Original Airdate: 10-9-13
After a bit of a hit and miss start with a lot of setup in the first couple episodes, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Finally hits a stride in episode 3 which I thought should have been called “Gravity” especially due to the release of Gravity this past weekend and a lot of the subject matter in the episode, both literally and figuratively. There are plenty of special effects and action scenes, and most importantly there’s a lot of character development as well as some twists and turns in where the story is going. This episode really felt like it was hitting on all cylinders and it kept the humor up to boot. Really the only thing missing, which I didn’t even miss, was any sort of tie-in to the larger Marvel Universe. But an overall solid episode that I really have a hard time finding fault with except for a couple minor nitpicks.
Read the rest of this entry
Persepolis
Persepolis 2007
While I still have plenty of straight up superhero movies to go, I thought it was a good idea to branch out into non-superhero movies based on graphic novels. And of course, this black and white, animated tale of the life of an Iranian woman living through a revolution and a war, dealing with prejudice at home and in France, was originally a graphic novel by the same name. Even though it’s in black and white, the animation is visually striking, not only that, but the story itself is very engaging. Not only does Marjan suffer through a lot of strife, but she also has plenty of moments of joy and is always surrounded by people who care about her. It’s a really great movie and well worth your time to watch.
Read the rest of this entry
TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #2
TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 2
Episode “0-8-4”
Original Airdate: 10-2-13
The first episode had a lot going for it, but also had to give a lot of time for setup and introductions. This is the first episode where we have the full team and we get to see them actually act as a team. There are of course going to be a few bumps along the way, and I felt like the quality of some things didn’t quite live up to the spectacle of the first episode, but I still had a great time and enjoyed a lot of the little things throughout the episode as well as the fun extra at the end. The episode is centered around an “0-8-4” aka an object of unknown origin that has been found in Peru and the team goes on their first mission as an actual team in order to assess and retrieve it. Things of course go sideways when the Peruvian military show up, calm down when it turns out to be an old flame and colleague of Coulson’s, then go sideways again when rebel forces start attacking them both.
Read the rest of this entry
Filmwhys #15 Inception and Special
It’s time once again to ask the question why I haven’t seen some movie or another. This episode features someone I’ve been collaborating with for a while now, Terrence Faulkner over at The Focused Filmographer where each week we comment on the new movie posters. Today he asks me why I haven’t seen Inception if I’m such a fan of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, his epic and multilayered vision of a heist within a dreamscape. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen Special, a low budget film about a parking enforcement officer named Les who joins a drug study only to have them give him the delusion of having super powers.
Read the rest of this entry
Bounty Killer
Bounty Killer 2013
I was actually first made aware of this movie through a company that offered to allow my site to host a giveaway for the movie. I thought it looked like a lot of fun, had a couple recognizable names in it, and it was based on a graphic novel, so I decided I would give it a shot and I was not disappointed. It’s got great action, a great visual feel to it, and even a bit of T&A. There’s even some interesting twists and turns along the way to keep things interesting. The acting’s not going to win any awards, but that’s not surprising for this type of movie, it has a great grindhouse feel to it, but it’s much more stylish and sleek with either a decent sized budget, or someone who knows the right way to stretch a small budget. It looks great, sounds great, and I had a great time watching it.
Read the rest of this entry
Flights, Tights, and TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1
TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Episode 1 “Pilot”
airdate 9/24/13
airdate 9/24/13
I’ve been wanting to add TV shows to this site for a long time, but there are a couple big problems with that situation for me, one is that there were very few new TV shows that I could look at an episode at a time as they came out, I had wanted to do it with Arrow last year, but for whatever reason I just never got around to it. And if I wanted to go back to an older series I would want to do a full season at a time, and when I barely have enough time to watch movies, it’s an even taller order to take the time to watch a full season of a show, even if it could be broken up into smaller chunks. But I this year I was excited by a new series coming out this year, it’s based in the Marvel cinematic universe and it brings back everyone’s favorite Avenger, Agent Coulson. I’m talking about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. And it started with a very impressive pilot. I just hope it lives up to its premier.
Special
Special 2006
It’s time once again for me to tackle this month’s obstruction for the 5 Obstructions Blogathon hosted by My Films Views. This month’s obstruction was deceptively simple: write a review that’s more than 1,250 words long, and if you want to go the extra mile write a review that’s over 2,000 words long. I try to average my reviews at about 1,000 words, I personally feel like if they’re much longer than that they are being too wordy and also fewer people want to read overly long reviews. I also thought about using this to go off on a bad movie, which is often easier to write about than a good movie. Instead I decided to take a closer look at a movie fewer people will have seen. I hope you enjoy and also be sure to check out some of the other entries in the blogathon.
Read the rest of this entry
Judge Dredd
Judge Dredd 1995
I’ve been wanting to watch this movie for a while, ever since I watched the Judge Minty short even though I know it’s a far cry from the more serious tone of both the short and the recent Dredd movie with Karl Urban. What really made me want to watch it was watching Demolition Man which also starred Sylvester Stallone and had Rob Schneider in a small role, so I wanted to watch this movie with the small thought in mind that this is a future that takes place after Demolition Man, and in a lot of ways there are some similarities, but this is a very different movie than Demolition Man. I also went into this thinking that it was going to be a very bad schlockfest with Schneider hamming it up and Stallone giving a bad performance, and yet it’s not that nearly as much as I expected it to be. It’s actually a relatively good movie, but it has a poor script that doesn’t make good use of the characters, and it’s also notable for breaking one of the only things that I know about Judge Dredd the comic character: he never takes off his helmet, and yet Stallone takes his helmet off a mere 15 minutes into the movie and doesn’t put it back on again until the very end.
Read the rest of this entry
Filmwhys #14 The Untouchables and Chronicle
Apologies for the late post for this episode of Filmwhys. I had an issue with my usual recording program not wanting to record for whatever reason, so I had to find a quick replacement, and that replacement ended up being a trial version that only recorded in 5 minute chunks and also recorded an echo off of my microphone, so the clean-up editing took a lot more time than usual, but I hope I managed to remove all the annoyances and cover up the breaks as neatly as possible. Anyway for the actual episode, I talked with Ryan McNeely from 5 Word Movie Reviews who asks me why I haven’t seen the Untouchables, a great film from Brian DePalma about Elliot Ness, Al Capone, and the Chicago way. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen Chronicle, a unique take on both found footage and the superhero film from just last year.
Read the rest of this entry
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 