Blog Archives
Scooby-Doo Mask of the Blue Falcon
I will easily admit to being a Scooby-Doo fan when I was younger. I watched many episodes of the Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo as well as A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, alongside the older episodes. They were goofy, silly, campy, and fun, but I enjoyed them. I also watched plenty of other Hanna Barbera properties back when Cartoon Network was new and filled most of its programming slots with classic cartoons and only a handful of fresh ones. Among them was of course Blue Falcon and Dynomutt either in their own show or one of the many Hanna-Barbera mashups like the Laff-a-Lympics. Scooby-Doo has never really seemed to completely go away, there’s always some new TV show or an endless stream of straight-to-home-video movies like this one. But many of the newest episodes and movies have had a lot sharper sense of humor while still retaining some of the goofiness and campiness the classic fans love. This one is no exception, there’s a lot of smart humor alongside the typical slapstick antics of Mystery Inc. It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve seen an episode or movie about Scooby-Doo, probably not since the live action movie, but I really enjoyed this movie, especially because of all the little background references and such.
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Iron Man 3
Iron Man 3 2013
This is the latest in the juggernaut that is Marvel Studios releases, and especially movies with Robert Downey Jr. in a metal suit. The early reviews were mostly blown away by the new sequel and as I had to wait an extra week for it to come out here in the States, I was starting to chomp at the bit to watch the movie. Of course, once it hit theaters around my neck of the woods, there started to be a few more rumblings of failure and a lot more opinion that this actually wasn’t the best of the trilogy. There were plot holes, and weak moments and ill-fated twists, and when I got the chance to watch the movie… I wasn’t quite sure what I really thought about it. It had it’s action moments, and Robert Downey Jr. doing what he does best as he has done in the past three movies including the Avengers, but there were also those plot holes and other things tugging away at the sides of my brain. I decided I couldn’t quite give the movie justice until I gave it a few days thought and watched the movie for a second time. 2D every time all the time for me FYI. I had an article previously where I talked about the Curse of Three, and while the impact has dwindled a bit with the release of The Dark Knight Rises, it hasn’t completely gone away and I still think there are weak elements in this movie that can definitely hinder the watching experience for some and completely ruin it for others. And fair warning, there may be spoilers in this review, I will try to be non-specific where I can, but I’m not going to dance around them if I need to call them out.
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The Rocketeer
The Rocketeer 1991
I know I watched this movie ages ago when I was younger, but rewatching it today I realized that the only thing I remembered from my first watch of this movie was that the guy had a rocketpack and it took place in the 30’s. When watching it again, I was really impressed with the style and the feeling of the movie. I also recognized so many different actors in this movie that I didn’t realize were in here. Mainly it was Alan Alda who I’ve been seeing in a lot of great roles recently. I did think there were some overly ridiculous plot points towards the end of the movie, but overall I quite enjoyed it. It’s been something pretty different than a lot of the movies that I’ve been watching lately for this site. It does slightly make me want to re-watch Captain America which was done by the same director, Joe Johnston. I don’t think it quite lives up to the quality of Captain America, but it still has quite a few charms to it.
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Filmwhys Podcast: Jaws & Superman II the Donner Cut
I am back into the podcasting game! I’ve been flirting with podcasts for a while, helped start one that ended up not being a good fit for me for various reasons, and I finally found a concept that I think works perfectly for me and for this site. Welcome to the first episode of Filmwhys, also known as the “Why haven’t you seen this film podcast?” Ever since joining the film blogging community and the Lamb, I see a lot of discussion about various popular films that I have never seen, and people who are amazed at how many important and popular movies that I’ve missed out on. So this podcast is my attempt to fill those gaps in my movie watching and catch up on some classic and modern classic movies. For my firsts episode, I’m pleased to have Fogs from Fogs’ Movie Reviews as my guest and we talk about the 1975 Speilberg classic Jaws. Yes, it’s true that I’ve never seen this movie before watching it for this episode. But, since this is a website about superhero movies, I thought it was only fair to ask Fogs to watch a superhero movie that he’s never seen before in Superman II: The Donner Cut, which is significantly different from the theatrical Richard Lester cut which he had seen.
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Lego Batman the Movie: DC Heroes Unite
Lego Batman the Movie: DC Heroes Unite
This is a home video release by DC Premier and Traveller’s Tales releasing on Bluray and DVD May 21st, and it’s actually rather interesting because most of this movie is drawn from the Lego Batman 2 video game. Many of the scenes may have been reanimated to improve the quality and make minor corrections, and there has also been some new material created for the connective scenes, but aside from that it’s directly taken from the video game. While there have been many movies based on video games, I believe this is the first video game turned directly into a movie. I’ve been a fan of the Lego series of video games ever since the first Lego Star Wars games were released on the Playstation 2, they have a very irreverent sense of humor and a lot of meta jokes based around the fact that they are in a Lego world and Batman is no different.
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The Pumaman
The Pumaman 1980
I had never heard of this movie before starting this site and accumulating my big list of superhero movies to watch. And on top of that, I only recently found out that it was also an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which I did end up watching shortly after watching this movie proper. It’s a low budget movie produced in Italy about a hero with the blood of the Aztec gods running through his veins. But what it really amounts to is that this giant Aztec man gives him an ugly belt which gives him an ugly costume and the abilities of the Pumaman. This allows him to shred metal with his mighty claws like a puma, see in the dark like a puma, slow his heartbeat to feign death like a puma, fly like a puma, even teleport… like a puma. And there has to be a big bad villain to this whole story, which ends up being this weird bald guy who dresses like he’s in a bad sci-fi movie using an Aztec mask to put people under mind control.
Batman & Robin
Batman & Robin 1997
I decided to watch this as part of the ipc’s Shitfest 2013 so keep an eye out for a slightly different version of this review over there. When Batman & Robin first came out it was pretty anticipated. While Arnold Shwarzenegger wasn’t the most obvious choice for Mr. Freeze, he did at least look the part in the trailers, somewhat. I wish I could remember what my initial reaction to the movie was, but if I had to guess I would say that I enjoyed it but also noticed a few things that weren’t quite right with the movie. The puns that crept into the last movie have steamrolled into this one full force. The action became more cartoonish, and the neon visuals were bigger and more colorful. This movie seemed to have taken on a life of its own, and when all was said and done, it almost no longer resembled Batman outside of the costumes.
Superman Unbound
Superman Unbound 2013
This is the latest DC Animation home video release coming May 7th. I’ve been a fan of every one of these movies that I’ve seen and I’m still dying to get around to the handful I haven’t seen yet. This one continues their run of quality releases following the Dark Knight Returns, though it didn’t quite win me over as much as that one did. This follows Superman and his cousin Kara and their struggle with the Brain Interactive Construct that’s going through collecting the information of the universe as well as cities he keeps as souvenirs including Krypton’s capital city of Kandor, and now he has his sights set on Earth. Superman is the only one that can save the planet and he needs the help of his cousin. The quality of animation and voicework were spot on as usual, but there was just something in it that just wasn’t quite the story I was interested in.
Batman Forever
Batman Forever 1995
It’s been a while since I’ve seen this movie, though I remember loving it when it first came out. I was 15 at the time and remember going to Six Flags that summer and getting that question mark logo you see in the poster below on a t-shirt that I wore quite often for probably a year or more afterwards. I also find it somewhat interesting that there are actually several inside jokes that I don’t think I ever got when I was younger because I wasn’t that knowledgeable about the Batman universe outside of the movies or the animated series. There’s a brief reference to Nightwing, and at the end the psychologist’s name is Burton. After the very dark and gothic version of Gotham from Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher took over the reigns and lightened it up both in terms of his garish neon lighting as well as his pun-filled humor. None of this really sat well with me and it only portends things to come in the next movie Batman and Robin. It was filled with too many jokes and silliness that it barely felt like a Batman movie. While there are still some decent action sequences and other moments here and there, it’s a far cry from the quality seen in the Burton movies previously.
Comic Strip Double Dip Blogathon: James Marsden
James Marsden Double Dip
Cyclops / Richard White
There’s still a couple more weeks left in this blogathon before I call it to a close and I’d say it was pretty good for my first one. If you haven’t done your article yet, be sure to get it in. There were another two entries these past couple weeks so head over to the blogathon main page to go see them. For my third entry in this blogathon I chose another member of the X-Men who followed Byran Singer to his other superhero project and played both Cyclops and Richard White. I’m talking about James Marsden.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 