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Joker: Folie á Deux
Joker: Folie á Deux 2024
This movie falls into a weird space in the DC films continuity. It was released well over a year after James Gunn was hired as the head of the DC films division and a year before the first fully James Gunn produced DC movie Superman, but it’s not a part of either the DCEU or the DCU, instead it’s an Elseworlds movie following the outside of continuity Joker movie from five years earlier. And this movie even goes further from that premise, shifting from inspired by Taxi Driver and the King of Comedy into something that keeps that same tone but throws in a musical reality into the mix. It’s something that’s really bizarre to describe that doesn’t seem to be catering to the fans of either genre. The musical numbers don’t fit very well with fans of the dark and gritty style of movie, and the dark and gritty style of the majority of the film doesn’t mesh well with typically bright and cheery musicals. I found the film rather fascinating, especially with the thought in my mind that it’s pretty much impossible to find the line between what’s actually happening in the world of the movie and what’s happening entirely in Arthur Fleck’s imagination.
Read the rest of this entryShazam! Fury of the Gods
Shazam! Fury of the Gods 2023
While I have already technically watched the other 2 final movies of the DCEU which came out in late summer and December of the same year as this film which was originally released in March. This is MY final DCEU catch up movie and while it had its ups and downs, I don’t think there was ever any movie that I actively disliked. There are many of them that have some serious issues, but also every single one of them had something that I enjoyed in them. This was the follow up to the very fun Shazam! movie that mixed a lot of immature humor that came from having a 14 year old playing an adult superhero mixed with some pretty dark horror-esque monster imagery. This sequel basically copies that same structure despite the fact that it’s been four years and while Billy Batson is nearly 18, he still basically acts like he’s still 14. The villains were trying to be a mix of scary and sympathetic that didn’t fully work, but I do love me some Greek mythology references and the film did make me laugh out loud a fair number of times so it wasn’t a bad film at all in my book.
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Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 2023
I’m back catching up with another DC movie in my much smaller backlog, at least if I don’t count all of the animated movies but that’s a topic for another day. I actually remember practically nothing about the advertising for this movie. The only thing I really remember about it was that it was a hero/villain team up a la Blade 2, Thor 2, and plenty of other sequels that I can’t think of right now. I absolutely did not remember anything about Aquaman’s baby which is basically the entire opening. I also remember the walking back of Amber Heard’s role in the movie after the media fallout from her trial, and that was really felt while watching. There was a whole lot of dumb stuff on display, and I thought that Aquaman himself felt a lot more childish than I remembered from the first movie, but what pulled me through was the chemistry between him and Patrick Wilson as his brother slash archnemesis Orm.
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The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie 2026
I mentioned this in my review for the first Super Mario Bros Movie just a few days ago but this was my first theater trip since having a date night with my wife to see the Naked Gun back in August. This time around I took my older daughter to this movie as she’s a big Mario and specifically Rosalina fan so we had to go see this one together. We waited a week because it was tracking to be a pretty huge opening weekend and I prefer a less crowded theater so we waited until its second weekend and went to a fairly early Sunday showing where there were only about 3 other families in the theater (although the one with the youngest kids initially sat a few rows in front of us until someone pointed out that they weren’t in their correct assigned seating so they moved a couple rows behind us, but about 4 different times in the next 30 minutes, the dad went back to the row they were sitting at with his phone as a flashlight trying to find something or other on the floor). The movie itself was mostly more of the same, but with much less direction and way more and more varied fanservice than the last movie including much that was completely lost on me as I’ve never played Galaxy or much of any Mario game past the SNES. It was still a fun diversion but not likely something that I could see myself coming back to time and time again. And since this is still a new movie, here is your spoiler warning from here on out.
Read the rest of this entryWakanda Forever
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2022
I’m honestly a little bit surprised that I have continued my return to writing for this site after having written only 5 reviews in 3 years and now this is my fifth review in just over 1 month. I’m actually quite happy getting back into the rhythm and hope to continue where my aim is to not go more than 2 weeks without a review. Though that may be questionable once I catch up with all the heavy hitters from Marvel and DC. I still have 2 more MCU films to catch up with, a few Sony Marvel films, and many DC films though I imagine I’ll mix in an ultra low budget film here and there though the next 2 will definitely be Brave New World and Thunderbolts*. But getting back to the topic at hand, I’ve finally managed to catch up with Wakanda Forever from back in 2022. At the time I chose to watch and review Black Adam and the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special instead which in hindsight, was likely a mistake. I did enjoy Black Adam more than most, but Wakanda Forever is a much better film overall, with a touching tribute to Chadwick Boseman both at the beginning and the end of the film. It’s also a celebration of culture with almost zero time spent with white American characters, and besides the African culture represented through the Wakandan lens, there’s also the South American Mayan culture influenced in the Talokan underwater race along with a little bit of time spent in Haiti.
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Deadpool and Wolverine
Deadpool & Wolverine 2024
It’s been yet another long absence from this site as it’s been over a year since my review of the Flash, and in that time I’ve only made it out to theaters once to see Barbie a month later and now a year later I’ve made it back into the theater to watch a Marvel version of the Flash with Deadpool and Wolverine, only this one was done much better. I loved the first two Deadpool movies and the majority of Wolverine’s movie appearances so I had high hopes for this one. The rumor mill was spreading pretty rapidly though two cameo rumors that I had read about ended up being false, one character reportedly not returning showed up and another reported cameo was a no show. But I absolutely loved all the characters they chose to bring back as someone that was highly familiar with all of these movies and rumors and I will be talking about the majority of them so if you’d like to be kept spoiler free, here’s your warning.
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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 2023
I’m doing what I can to keep this blog alive. It took an extra week but I did go out to the theaters to see the latest MCU movie and I have a few opinions. Even though this was the worst critically performing movie after the Eternals (which I still haven’t seen but plan to… eventually) it has a high audience score so I was fairly certain I would still enjoy it. I did, though there were a few issues that bothered me after the fact, but not while watching the movie. I think some of the character complaints were valid and the ending was a little weak but the visuals were fantastic and the humor has its own little niche that’s similar to Guardians of the Galaxy while still having its own tone unique to Ant-Man and Peyton Reed despite the rocky start. Like with many of the middle MCU films where it’s a superhero film crossed with another unique genre, this still gives us something new with a revolution story mixed with a sci-fi twist. I thought it was a fun continuation of the Ant-Man character and I hope we get some more down the line. And as with every new movie reviewed here, I will be diving into spoiler territory beyond this point so you have been warned.
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Thor: Love and Thunder
Thor: Love and Thunder 2022
It’s time for yet another new Marvel movie and while I did manage to get out to see this movie opening weekend, I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write about it until now. I did however speak my thoughts on a recent Lambcast so you can hear more of my opinion along with 4 other Lamb members. I went into this movie hearing a fair mix of things, several people compared it negatively against Ragnarok so I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to get into. For the most part, I loved this film in a similar manner as Ragnarok and while I do see the complaints, they didn’t detract from the film too much for me. Not only that, but I felt like this had a much better emotional throughline for several of the characters. And since this is a new release, I’m always compelled to issue a spoiler warning and there are several things to spoil that have been left out of the trailers so be warned.
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Dark Phoenix
Dark Phoenix 2019
This is apparently the swan song for the Fox version of the X-Men that really started the modern era of superhero movies and re-started with 2010’s First Class, and is now lumped into the Disney conglomerate so future cinematic X-Men will likely be tied into the MCU. It’s also one of the few 2019 releases that I wasn’t able to make it out to see in theaters even though this was a generally lighter year for superhero and comic book movies, or at least the year was heavily front loaded with several releases in the early months of the year. In general, I’ve been a fan of nearly all of the X-Men movies aside from the ones everyone hates. But I’ve also generally enjoyed the more recent ones that have been pretty middling to most audiences. I don’t think they handled every character very well, but they did do a few things right in this movie and I enjoyed more than I disliked. And while this is still a relatively new release, I will be discussing the plot in its entirety so there may be spoilers.
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RoboCop Prime Directives: Crash & Burn
RoboCop Prime Directives: Crash & Burn 2001
I’ve finally come to the end of this four part miniseries and it’s going to be difficult to really say too much that I haven’t said in the previous reviews. There were a few more ultraviolent moments as well as some entertaining bits. The interstitials felt almost nonexistent compared to the previous two episodes though they did have some good moments through the end credits. The budget really showed in this episode with the climax using the most of the extremely limited budget and without a great, compelling story and characters to back it up, it really fell pretty flat. There were some nice callbacks here and there but it was mostly just an uninteresting finale to a dull miniseries.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 