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Hancock
Hancock 2008
It’s time for my third movie that fits into February’s theme of Black Superheroes, and it’s probably one of my favorites for this month. I believe I watched it sometime after it had come out on home video and I had the same reaction of many people that I knew or read about online. The first half of the movie was great, but the second half sucked. And watching it again, it’s still pretty much how I feel about the movie although I feel like I’ve softened up to the second half a little bit. I was watching the unrated version this time, I think I watched the regular PG-13 version the first time. There wasn’t a whole lot in it that seemed to warrant the unrated part aside from one kinda sex scene which was played for laughs and possibly a few more swear words.
The movie is about John Hancock played by Will Smith. He’s basically what most people would really become if they were given superpowers. He’s drunk most of the time, anything he needs or wants he just takes, though he limits it to stuff he actually needs to survive plus copious amounts of alcohol and Jiffy Pop, and he plays the hero in his free time. But instead of doing things the smart way, he does it the brute force way. Watching Will Smith act like a jerk with superpowers was hilarious and I spent a lot of the first half of this movie laughing. Especially when he starts interacting with Jason Bateman, I’ve seen the movie twice and still don’t remember his character’s name, mostly because he plays the same character he always plays, but I love it. He’s a PR guy that decided to make over Hancock’s image and it starts with him going to jail for all the destruction he’s caused. My absolute favorite part that had me laughing on the lead up to it because I remembered what was coming was the jail scene… I’ll just leave it at that… no I won’t, there’ll be a picture of it right below this paragraph. I can’t resist.
The second half of the movie is where it goes a little off. The mythology of Hancock and how he came to his powers is that he is one of the last two immortals on Earth. Immortals who have access to their own off switch in the form of their mate, so when they grow tired of the eternity of life, they simply find their mate and they will become mortal, grow old, and die. The only problem is that Hancock’s mate left him 80 years ago and is married to Jason Bateman. That’s ok, but the way they reveal it is that she kisses Hancock, then throws him out of her house literally, meets him to explain their story but ends up fighting him in a big action setpiece instead. It just feels like a cop out excuse to have two superpowered beings fighting in the middle of the city, and why the heck does their fighting cause a storm? I also thought the final battle scene was handled pretty poorly, I wasn’t sure if she was actually supposed to be feeling his pain, or if they were trying to line up what was happening to each of them separately so they connected. Like he happened to get shot at the same time that the doctors used the heart paddles on her. I think it would have made for a better scene if the latter happened.
This movie surprisingly reminded me a lot of Super and Kick-Ass although in a different way. All three movies try to present superheroes in a pretty realistic fashion where the heroes face very real consequences based on their actions. But where the first two feature normal men becoming costumed crimefighters, this movie features a normal guy with a lot of flaws who happens to have superpowers and wants to do good. Kick-Ass and Super both deal with consequences like gunshot wounds and getting beaten up, Hancock deals with consequences like collateral damages, public opinion, and at least in the unrated version what happens when someone with Superman’s power climaxes. The other thing about the three movies is they follow a similar pattern of very comedic first and second acts followed by heavy drama in the third act. Aside from my complaint earlier, I think it works pretty well in Hancock’s favor. Will Smith does a great job conveying both the asshole moments as well as the more human side. Charlize Theron has her moments but for whatever reason, I just didn’t like her character very much, I liked her as Jason Bateman’s wife, but I just didn’t see her as a superhero. For whatever reason it just didn’t fit.
But as I mentioned in the beginning, I really liked this movie and had a blast watching it. The funny parts are really funny, the touching moments are pretty touching, and the action scenes are pretty decent. There’s really only three action scenes in this movie, the first one is great even though it’s pretty subdued where he takes out the robbery as his first act as a real superhero, the second one is kind of annoying with unnecessary special effects, and the third one is overtaken by overblown dying drama. This is another movie like the Incredibles that I would only half love to see a sequel to. I think Hancock is a great character, yet I’m not sure if there’s really a worthy story to make into a sequel. As far as Jena’s part, she didn’t watch this movie but I would have let her, she just wasn’t interested. Coming up next I go back to the downside of Black Superhero movies with Blankman. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Chronicle
Chronicle 2012
It’s the first new superhero movie of the year to be released in theaters and I was able to watch it… kinda. I’ll just leave it at that. I’ve actually done something I almost never do before watching a movie, I read a bunch of reviews for it. Which is kind of funny coming from someone who is now spending their free time writing reviews for movies. Not any real critics, mostly just other blogs, and Roger Ebert. The one person that really seems to come out on top the most out of all those reviews is Max Landis who turns out to be John Landis’s son, and creator/narrator of this funny and weird recreation of the Death and Return of Superman comic series. He’s the writer of this movie and is credited with making the dialog of the teenagers fresh, natural, and overall believable.
Anyway as you probably know, this is another in the realm of the “found footage” movement that is being loved and hated across America right now. It’s getting pretty tired on the horror side so it’s being expanded into other genres of movies, and this movie uses it to create a superhero movie. Kinda. In a way it reminds me of Unbreakable as it feels like the first act of a typical origin story of a superhero. It goes from the discovery of their superpowers, or in this case the creation of their superpowers, to the testing of those powers, to their first heroic act taking out their villain. And in both movies the villain is closer than you think. Just from the trailer, it’s pretty obvious that Andrew becomes the villain of the piece, but it’s not quite as clear who becomes the hero of the piece so I won’t spoil that bit of information for you if you haven’t seen it yet.
As far as the actual style of the handheld cameras throughout the movie, it’s occasionally distracting but they use enough explained cheats and other excuses for different video sources that it comes off pretty well overall. I found that the movie was a little slow to get moving along but once it got going it flowed through to the ending very enjoyably. I found that with this specific movie, it’s a great excuse to get the teenagers talking to the camera and there’s thankfully little to no overly shaky, motion sickness inducing camerawork that literally made me sick the first time I watched Blair Witch in theaters.
The other thing that’s talked about almost universally when I was reading about this movie is the flying. Yes the teens soon learn how to fly and they do it with a believable amount of trial, error, and lack of finesse. It’s not like the first time Neo figures out he can fly and suddenly becomes a Superman bullet rocketing through the sky. It’s a lot more like a baby bird first learning to fly without the advantage of instincts to help them out. They’re clumsy at first, yet completely ecstatic, and the method used to pull this off on camera is excellent. We’ve come a long way from Catwoman’s shiny videogamesque CGI actor replacement. The flying scenes are very realistic and believable.
I think my biggest problem with the movie is that while it seems like it’s the first act of a superhero movie, it’s much more focused on the villain of the piece. Yes, it is Andrew’s camera that’s filming most of the movie, and yes he’s the one that takes the dark path as foreshadowed by his shaky home life. And then at the end the hero becomes a hero by doing what has to be done and goes away. It would have been great to see more of his journey and what happened to make him choose the right path and make the right decisions. But at the same time it’s a morbid fascination that makes it almost more interesting to see how Andrew makes the decisions that take him further and further down the path of destruction, and most of them almost seem like they’re the right decisions, or at least the only decisions he has based on what he’s been through. I can’t put my finger on it, but I think somewhere it strays a little too far or too quickly for the audience to root for him throughout the last half of the movie even though he’s a very sympathetic character.
I’m glad I caught wind of this movie, it really came out of the blue for me and I enjoyed watching it pretty well. If I wasn’t doing this movie blog I might have let it fall by the wayside and I would have missed it altogether. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but it’s still a pretty great movie. I definitely recommend checking this out if you have the chance. Thursday I’m back to my regularly scheduled theme for the month with Hancock. Until next time this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Spawn
Spawn 1997
It’s Monday night and my latest batch of movies are due back the next day with Spawn still left to watch, it’s the second movie fitting my theme for February. Even though this movie is rated PG-13 just like Catwoman and Captain America, I figured it was a bit too far out there for my daughter so Jena sat this one out. I’d seen this movie before a long time ago, I don’t remember exactly where, probably on TV or home video. The one thing I do remember about the campaign around this movie is an interview with John Leguizamo talking about playing the clown who seemed pretty passionate about the comic and the fact that even though he was pretty short, he was still five foot something, where the clown was supposed to be around three foot something, so he played it hunched down as much as he could to make it closer to the comic. I remember thinking it was pretty impressive that he showed that much enthusiasm for the comic book.
Spawn comes from Image comics and creator Todd McFarlane, whose name I recognize as one of the few writer/artists in the comic book world that I know for the simple fact that he has gone to great lengths to make his name known. Next to Stan Lee, I would guess that Todd McFarlane’s name is one of the best known names in comics to non-comic fans or casual comic fans. I had never read, and have still never read a Spawn comic book but I am familiar with his image. He has a great look, and I don’t feel that it copied over to the screen very well. My impression based on comic book covers is that Spawn’s costume is sleek and smooth, but in the movie it’s very heavily texture and it ends up looking like molded rubber which is probably what it is. The only part that the movie got right was the cape, and even though it’s used infrequenly, I thought it looked fantastic as did all the moving parts of the costume like the chains, the spikes, and whatnot, but when he’s just walking around it looks like he’s in a rubber suit.
Anyway, this movie tells the origin of Spawn and has a ton of boring exposition especially at the beginning with what felt like the longest credit sequence ever. Something about hell’s armies, chosen one, blah blah blah, I kind of tuned out during that part. They introduce the man who would be Spawn as a government looking non-government military agent who specializes in assassinations. He’s killed by his boss played by Martin Sheen because he wanted out, and I think the clown told Martin Sheen to do it also, but you find that out later. They also exploded a chemical plant that somehow created an ultravirus that he was then able to weaponize and create a cure for himself and his would-be allies. Cut to Spawn waking up in a bum city slash alleyway with his face scarred from burns and occasionally glowing green, met by an out of time looking guy who also glowed green earlier who tries to reason with Spawn, help him, and teach him. Basically this movie’s attempt at an Obi-Wan type character.
You find out that Spawn agreed to lead the army of the worst looking CGI Satan beast I’ve ever seen because… you know, they never really explained why CGI Satan needed to have him specifically lead his army in the first place. And the battle begins between Cogli…whatever, the old guy and the Clown battling over Spawn’s conscience. The Clown is doing his best to get him to kill Martin Sheen and release the virus all over the world, while the old guy is trying to reach Spawn’s humanity and have him fight for good. Of course, being sent back from Hell comes with benefits in the form of necroplasm. At least I think that’s what they called it. It pretty much does whatever you want it to, like an evil Green Lantern ring, though it tends to be used for a lot cooler things than a giant fist or a giant flyswatter. At the same time I guess it’s also used for some weird lame things like suction cup hands and making him look like a wall for a few seconds only to be seen as soon as he stops hiding. There’s also a couple mentions of how you can die as a Hellspawn, you either have your head cut off or you use up all your necroplasm power.
There’s also the requisite loves story where Spawn loved Wanda, but since Spawn was left in Hell for five years, she has since married Spawn’s old partner and has what looks like a six year old kid. Was this written by the same person that wrote Superman Returns? It seemed like they used the same math. They also never explicitly said whether or not the kid is Spawn’s kid or Spawn’s partner’s kid, though it seems like she was Spawn’s kid. Of course good wins out at the end with Spawn escaping Hell and taking over for the old guy in the fight for good or whatever.
I wanted to like this movie. I remembered liking it when I saw it the first time, but it wasn’t all that great at all. There’s so much of it that just doesn’t make sense. Why was Spawn chosen? Why is he needed specifically to lead Satan’s army? Why do they need him specifically to kill Martin Sheen, why not just have the Clown do it? Why send him back to Earth in an old alleyway right next to the guy that escaped Hell 500 years ago and has been fighting them ever since? Why does Spawn have an entire body of necroplasm for him to use while the old guy just has the one arm? And what the heck did Spawn do to all those other Spawn-looking demons when he was back in Hell the second time? Was he stealing their necroplasm? Just shooting out weird green electricity? And most of the CGI in this movie is horribly dated. The only good parts were Spawn’s cape, some of his armor powers, and some of the scenes with the Violator. Although I get the feeling that the better scenes of the Violator were done with models or animatronics rather than CGI. Either that or just better CGI.
The best part of the movie surprisingly is the Clown. Funnily enough I remembered not liking the Clown very much when I first saw the movie. But somehow his constant string of bad jokes, farts, and just plain being disgusting was pretty funny when paired with the ultraseriousness of Spawn’s origin. But what made this even more enjoyable to me was how much my wife reacted to his disgustingness. She has a very weak stomach for things like nasty food, farts, and especially the stained underwear scene, and the more uncomfortable she became, the funnier the scene became. That probably makes me a horrible person. For the Clown and the cape alone, I thought this movie was worth seeing. But for anyone else, it just doesn’t hold up that well anymore. I’m hoping to watch and review Chronicle before Tuesday’s post, but if not then Hancock will be up Tuesday instead of Thursday. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Catwoman
Catwoman 2004
I’m ready for the first movie of February. I do have a theme for this month and I’ve got 9 movies picked out ready to go for it. Plus three extras movies because they’re new. So to start things off I’m watching the movie which may or may not be the worst movie of the month, you’ll just have to wait to find that part out for sure. It’s the 2004 comedy Catwoman. I’m sorry it’s not technically labelled as a comedy but there were a lot more laugh out loud moments in this movie than there were in Super or Kick-Ass. The only problem is that the moments in this movie were meant to be taken seriously.
I vaguely remember the advertising and buzz for this movie when it was first coming out. I believe they were building on the buzz of Halle Berry’s role as Jinx in the Pierce Brosnan Bond movie which to this day is still the only Bond movie that I’ve ever seen. Not sure what that says about my movie preferences. Instead of doing a spinoff movie of the Jinx character the powers that be in Hollywood decided to create this movie which was supposed to create a new franchise. Apologies if this entire paragraph is a load of crap, it’s all stemming from my flawed memories instead of doing a little bit of typing and actually looking it up. I find it to make things more interesting that way.
Anyway, this movie was a chance for Halle Berry to have a starring role and to spin off Catwoman into her own movie franchise if it was successful. Long story short, it was not successful. They reworked the origin, outfit, and pretty much everything that made Catwoman Catwoman. Instead of being a slightly more criminal foil to Batman, in this movie she was chosen to be another in a long line of Catwomen by an Egyptian cat that tests her by seeing if she’ll climb out onto a ledge from a high rise apartment building to “rescue” the cat. And of course during that she is saved by a conveniently passing cop who thinks she is a jumper and of course they immediately like each other. She also conveniently overhears a diabolical secret of the cosmetics company that the new line of beauty cream they are getting ready to launch makes people sick, addicted, and ruins their face if they stop using it. She is then killed and conveniently resurrected by the same Egyptian cat and all of his cat friends. This gives her cat powers like being able to see and hear better, and she gets all the catlike traits of batting at quick moving objects, sleeping on high ledges, loving catnip, hissing at dogs, the list goes on and on. Pretty much every cat trait you can think of, Halle Berry does at some point during this movie. And it’s funny less than half of the time.
What’s more funny is the even worse cliched one-liners that she spouts during any of the so called action sequences. They usually amount to her running around the walls like a cat using the early CGI actor replacement which turns her into a shiny videogame-esque character that they try to hide with fast moving cameras and quick cuts. There’s even the bad bait and switch plot which is ruined because they show Sharon Stone talking about the harmful effects of the cream at the beginning, then set up the whole fact that she is playing Catwoman into her own plans which feels like it’s supposed to be a surprise for the audience, but the audience already knows that Sharon Stone is in on it the entire time. And because Catwoman wouldn’t be a real hero unless she was facing off against someone else who is superhuman in some way, they throw in the fact that Sharon Stone has been using the cream so much that her skin is as strong as marble and she feels no pain anymore… yes really. So it’s a magic cream that gets rid of wrinkles, gives people headaches, makes them addicted, destroys their skin if they stop using it, but makes their skin rock hard yet still beautiful if used over the course of years. Riiiiight.
There’s also the whole split personality that is explained as a side effect of the whole Catwoman origin process. Instead of being a shy, mousy, frumpy woman, she becomes a confident, independent, sexy woman. In the early part of the movie she seems not in control of this, mouthing off to her boss then immediately wanting to take back what she said. And later she seems to be more in control of it by embracing it fully while she’s wearing her Catwoman outfit yet still using it sparingly during the rest of her life. The costume is equal parts ridiculous as well, with a cat-eared mask that makes it look like she has a giant head, to the S&M inspired leather bra, shredded pants, and a whip. They even use an early moment to “explain” the whip where she rips off a beer tap and uses it for a whip then has the “aha” moment. You can almost see the lightbulb going off above her head during this scene. I skipped over this, but there’s plenty of these lightbulb moments early on like when she discovers her newfound agility by… being good at basketball.
There’s just not enough words to go through how many places this movie just fails to hit the mark. It’s cliche after cliche, from the bad costume to the bad villain, to the bad love story, to the bad dialog, to the bad funny sidekick in Alex Borstein. I enjoyed watching this movie only because I found it hilariously bad. Pretty much any time Halle Berry opened her mouth during a fight scene, it made me laugh. And I knew it was going to happen from the beginning, but Jena loved this movie. She loved all the cats in the movie and constantly asked if Halle Berry was turning into a cat. Although I suspect that on some level she liked the movie’s awfulness the same way we did. There were several moments when she started laughing at scenes that were just bad instead of funny . Stay tuned for Sunday when I watch Spawn as my second movie for the easiest “can you guess the theme” for February. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Kick-Ass
Kick-Ass 2010
I’m ready to watch my last movie of January, I picked Kick-Ass up with one of my Christmas giftcards to finish out the card after getting the Simpsons fourteenth season, both on Bluray. It was my second sight unseen purchase for this blog after Super. I was about to get the DVD for $5, but saw that the bluray + DVD was only $10 so I just couldn’t pass it up. In all the reviews of Super that I read after watching the movie, it was compared to Kick-Ass, and there is definitely a very strong connection to the two movies.
Even though the movie is called Kick-Ass, it should almost be called Big Daddy and Hit Girl, as they are the actual Batman-like heroes of the movie. In fact, Big Daddy’s costume looks like a simplified version of Batman’s costume. A funny sidenote, I read a funny blog somewhere that talked about the eyeliner used wearing the batman mask that mysteriously disappears when the mask comes off. This movie actually has a brief scene where you see Big Daddy put the black paint around his eyes that shadow the area not covered by the mask. They are both martial arts and gunplay masters even though Hit Girl is only around 12 years old. They also have the money and the arsenal to back themselves up, since they fund themselves from the coffers of the drug dealers they take out. Kick-Ass is just a high school kid that has dreams of being a superhero and the guts to actually get a costume and a couple batons and make it happen, with varying degrees of success.
There feels like quite a bit of realism to the scenes with Kick-Ass. He gets hurt pretty bad during his first real encounter with a couple small time thugs and acts pretty scared during his early brushes with real criminals. But whenever you get to the fight scenes with Hit Girl and Big Daddy and the final fight scene, things get pretty fantastic and John Woo-esque. And even though this is technically an independent film, this looks a lot less like an independent film than Super does. Where Super uses a lot of muted colors outside of the costumes of The Crimson Bolt and Boltie, Kick-Ass has vibrant colors everywhere, from all of the costumed heroes, and even in the backgrounds of the mob boss’s family moments. Kick-Ass also uses a lot more fantasy martial arts choreography and fancy camera moves while Super tends to have a lot more straightforward action scenes.
The other thing that this movie and Super have in common is the death of one of the main characters. I won’t say which one, but in this movie it feels like the death was more earned. It felt a lot less like it was done for mere shock value and somehow felt like it was the natural progression of what had to happen for the characters to grow. I can’t put my finger on what the difference is, but I didn’t feel as cheated by the death as I did in Super.
I also find it interesting that this is often labelled as a comedy movie. Yes there are some comic relief moments, and a lot of the situations are so bizarre that they end up being comical by nature, but this really feels like a great superhero action movie. It doesn’t feel like the comedy moments are played to the detriment of the action scenes. All of the fights are well paced, visually intense, and straight up balls to the wall. The violence is bloody and it typically feels action movie real rather than comedy real. There were plenty of moments that made me laugh out loud, but that happened in Superman the Movie as well, yet that’s not considered a comedy. There were just as many moments in this movie that had me on the edge of my seat watching the scene play out.
The only bit of a downside was the relationship between Dave and Katie. It was played up a little too much in several scenes when she thought he was gay, and when he came out to her she seemed to come over to his side a little too quickly. I don’t disagree with the fact that they got together, I just didn’t quite agree with the way the actually got there. Overall I find I don’t have a whole lot to say about this movie just like most of the other good movies because there’s not much to pick at. I enjoyed the comedy, especially the parts with his two high school friends and pretty much anything Hit Girl, I enjoyed the action, even with the violence it was very comic book stylized violence with action movie choreography and editing, and I enjoyed the characters. My only other problem with the movie is a problem with how quickly things on the internet can change. Even though this was probably filmed only two years ago, all the references to MySpace instead of Facebook make it feel a little dated already.
And with this movie comes the end of my first full month of this project. I’m already well into the movies for February so look out for my review of Catwoman on Thursday and several Tuesday bonus reviews as I have 9 movies planned to watch for next month which has an easy “can you guess the theme” plus two extra movies after I realized that the new Ghost Rider movie comes out in February. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Super
Super 2010
This was actually the first movie that I bought sight unseen specifically for the purposes of this blog. It helped a lot that it was only three dollars at the rental store, technically two for six along with our other choice, Black Swan. I grabbed it at the same time as I rented the first four Superman movies and I held off on watching it until I found a good place to schedule it into this blog. It’s labelled a comedy, but it’s really a pitch black comedy with a lot of violence, gore, and drama. It’s also one of a recent trend in mimicking the real life superhero movement that’s been happening in a few places around the country. At the same time, it’s kind of a deconstruction of the typical superhero movie, there’s several places where a typical hero would make one choice, yet this movie makes a completely different choice, sometimes for comedic effect, other times for a more serious tone. There’s also a subtle difference that I only just realized after watching Kick-Ass, in most movies you root for the superhero, but often in this movie you worry about the superhero. Not always just for his safety, but often for his mental well-being.
The first act is by far the funniest, it starts off with oddball nice guy Frank played by Rainn Wilson who’s married to recovering (and lapsing) drug and alcohol addict Sarah played by Liv Tyler. She leaves him for a cool drug dealer Jacques played wonderfully by Kevin Bacon. After getting his ass kicked trying to convince Sarah to come back to him, Frank has a vision of God which was obviously an amalgam of the random TV shows he was watching, including a tentacle Hentai and a cheesy Christian channel superhero sendup of Bibleman called the Holy Avenger played by Nathan Fillion. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was also watching a little bit of Hannibal in there too. Although what the heck kind of cable or satellite service does he have that has tentacle porn only a few channels away from a cable access Christian station? The Holy Avenger bits were some of the funniest, especially the devil character that constantly flicked his tongue. Anyway, in his vision he sees a drawing of a mask with a starburst behind it. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that he should become a superhero.
The comedy continues into the second act as Frank becomes the Crimson Bolt, weilding a pipe wrench and accosting crime wherever he sees it, including drug dealers, pedophiles, and the worst of them all, line butters. While they do play up the blood in these scenes for comedy, especially in the line butting scene, I think a pipe wrench to the head would have killed most of those people rather than just seriously injuring them. I mean, it worked for Colonel Mustard, right? In these scenes there’s often a lot of blood, but usually along with comedic overreactions. He eventually ends up staying with comic book shopgirl Libby played by Ellen Page after he gets shot in his first attempt to retrieve his wife Sarah from Kevin Bacon’s drug mansion. She’s a great character who’s hyper, loves comics, loves the idea of being a hero, and loves the idea of Frank being a hero.
The third act is where things started getting real and uncomfortable. Libby’s infatuation with Frank’s Crimson Bolt caused her to become his kid sidekick Boltie who is way too much in love with the violent aspect of the job. Her first initiative was to go after a guy who she thinks maybe probably keyed her friend’s car. She broke a glass vase over his head which embedded shards of glass into his face and she almost smashed his head in with a large sculpture. When seeing a couple of Kevin Bacon’s thugs at a gas station, Frank gets chased down the street only to be saved by Boltie running Frank’s car into one of the thugs and Frank uses one thug’s gun to shoot the other thug. Both of them were left to most likely die while the crowd of onlookers around them actually cheer for the victory, before this point the news was reporting him as a violent pscyopath. The two heroes then go to the discount gun store to buy an arsenal of weapons to storm the drug lord’s palace and rescue Sarah once and for all. Boltie’s infatuation finally comes to a head when she comes into the living room and tries to seduce The Crimson Bolt while she is wearing her costume. Even though he shuns her advances, she forces herself on him in a very uncomfortable scene. Frank then goes to throw up and sees a vision of Sarah in the toilet which leads them to the final bloody confrontation at the mansion. And when I say bloody, I mean pipe bomb, limbs missing, smashing a guy’s head on a sharp tile bloody, as Frank essentially descends into madness, but succeeds in rescuing Sarah. Who leaves him again after a few months, but finds a great guy and starts a large family. But Frank’s ok with it because the guy is good for her and he’s still in the picture as their friend. And instead of helping people as The Crimson Bolt, you see that he spends his time helping people as Frank by doing little things like holding the door or saying “thank you”.
I’m not sure what to really say about this movie, I loved parts of it, I was shocked by parts of it, and parts of it were genuinely touching. I laughed out loud many times during this movie, like the line butting scene I mentioned earlier where he goes across the street to change into his costume in his parked car, where everyone can still clearly see him changing, comes back and smacks the guy in the head who starts profusely bleeding and writhing on the ground in agony, then also smacks the girl he was with for good measure, then runs off yelling “Don’t butt!” Rainn Wilson does a great job of making you really care about Frank even when he gets pushed off the deep end. He does what superheroes aren’t supposed to do aside from maybe the Punisher, but at the end of the movie, you still like him. And it bothered me a little bit that at the end of it all, there’s absolutely no consequences of his little killing spree.
The changes in pacing and tone throughout the movie might be a little jarring and there’s definitely a few places where the movie might shock you. There’s one spoilerific scene near the end of the movie. While I was watching it I guessed what had happened a few moments before the reveal, but it was still a pretty stunning moment. This movie is absolutely not for everyone, and it bears a lot of similarities to Kick-Ass, but in Kick-Ass things turn out more or less the way a Superhero comic should. In this movie, the results are more or less the same, but it just takes a different route to get there. So if you liked that movie it might be worth a watch. And my full thoughts on Kick-Ass will be up on Sunday. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Should I watch Chronicle?
Even with having a Tuesday bonus review, I thought I’d still write up a short blog post like I’ve been doing every Tuesday. As far as a quick movie update/preview goes, I just got done with watching my rental haul, and I bought a bunch of movies for this month and later this year. I think I’ve spent a total of about $60 for the purposes of this blog. Aside from rental fees though, these are all movies that I bought because I enjoyed them in the first place, or a couple that were cheap and I was pretty sure I would like them. Coming up in the next couple weeks is my reviews of Super, Kick-Ass, Catwoman, and Spawn. And I picked up the Blade Trilogy, Hancock, Ghost Rider, and the Incredible Hulk to watch soon.
But the question of the blog is Chronicle. I only just recently learned about this movie from the City of Heroes message board. It looks pretty interesting, but the question I have is should I include it in a movie review blog about superheroes? Just going from what I see in the trailer, and a couple minor things I’ve heard online about it, here’s what I’ve got: It’s set pretty much in the real world using the “found footage” style like Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch Project. It involves three teenagers who gain superpowers in the traditional superhero sense of the word. They get telekinesis, invulnerability, flight, and possibly other similar minor powers. They don’t become superheroes with this ability, in fact at least one if not more of them become more or less a villain. There is the chance that one or two of the other kids step up to become a hero and stop him, but there are no costumes or secret identities.
So what do you think? I believe it comes out February 3rd. I already have more than enough movies that I plan to get to in the entire month of February. It does look like an interesting movie that I wouldn’t mind watching regardless of this blog. But that’s the question of the day. Do you think I should review Chronicle in this blog? Or do you think it looks too sci-fi, too unheroic, too anything to fall into the realm of superheroes? Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Until Next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths 2010
I’m writing this bonus review because my daughter picked out this movie when we were at the rental store through no provoking from myself, I was in a completely different section of the store at the time. It’s one of the DC Universe straight to DVD animated movies from producer Bruce Timm who was the big driving force behind pretty much all of the DC animated stuff since Batman: The Animated series. I’ve seen a lot of the movies and they’ve all been pretty fantastic and if I continue this blog into next year, I will definitely be adding them to the list. But like I said, she picked it out, I watched it and wanted to write about it so here it is.
This movie mostly takes place on an alternate Earth where the typical supervillains became the heroes while the typical superheroes became the villains, and once again the same people win. Lex Luthor and The Jester are the last of the alternate Justice League to still be alive and the Jester sacrifices himself so Lex can escape with a special power source. He escapes to our Earth to recruit the Justice League to help his Earth. In this point in the timeline Batman is just in the final stages of creating their space station base of operations. They agree to help but Batman stays behind to watch over Earth in the meantime.
One of the first things I noticed about this movie is I didn’t recognize hardly any of the voice actors, no Kevin Conroy, no Mark Hammil though that’s not a big deal since the Jester had a small part. After a while it wasn’t quite a big deal, but for most of the movie they just sounded a little off. Without going to too much more detail on the plot, when there’s a story like this you just know there’s going to at some point be a big fight between everyone and their double. And there is. And it’s pretty good. Superman’s double is Ultraman who’s more of a mob boss to the crime family. The Flash’s double is some british guy named Johnny and I don’t think I ever caught his superhero name. Wonder Woman’s double is some lesser character who she fights earlier but ends up being matched with Super Woman who seems pretty much on par with Superman, though she never uses any heat vision. Martian Manhunter’s double looks fairly similar in design, but has four arms, four eyes, and is taken out by the Jester in the beginning. Green Lantern’s double is also pretty similar and I never remember catching his name either. And Batman’s double is more or less the main villain even though he’s not the leader of the villains as Owl Man voiced pretty well by James Woods.
There’s also a lot of talk about the infinite Earths in this movie. I’m familiar with the comic book storyline Crisis on Infinite Earths, in fact my initial choice for the name of this blog was “Movie Night on Infinite Earths” before I settled on the current name. I’m familiar that the story exists, but that’s about it. This movie explains the concept pretty well including the concept of “Earth Prime”, the original Earth where all existences originated from, which thankfully is not the same as our Earth. And if Earth Prime is destroyed, then all other Earths are destroyed as well. My only problem with that theory is that Earth is in no way the center of the universe. It’s just a single planet. But aside from that quibble as well as one other, since when can Wonder Woman fly? It was kind of cute how they introduced this movie’s origin of her invisible jet. It was actually Owl Man’s jet which had a cloaking device that they used to escape the villains on the second Earth. While they were escaping, the villains created a lightning storm around them which fried the controls for the cloaking device, but the jet remained cloaked. And at the end, the Flash hits his head on it and Wonder Woman merely comments “Spoils of War”.
The animation was great as usual for these movies, and it was fun playing the guessing game when they were going around fighting the various lesser villains on the alternate Earth. Since almost all of the villains had anywhere from minor to major design changes, but there was still enough similarity that you could recognize them. I think my favorite was a huge bulked up Jimmy Olsen who was still good friends with Ultraman. That, and when Lex Luthor proves that he’s not a threat to the Justice League during their first introduction by being naked in the police station. It’s a fun romp if you enjoy these kind of parallel universe type stories. I hope you enjoyed this bonus review, Thursday’s review will be Super with Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page. Until then, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
The Incredibles
The Incredibles 2004
It’s Friday evening and I’ve been looking forward to watching The Incredibles again. This has got to be one of the best superhero movies that I’ve ever seen, and next to Batman this is one of Jena’s favorite superheroes as well and she loved the movie from start to finish. While the Incredibles aren’t based on any existing comic books, they epitomize the classic Superhero types and of course they are very strongly inspired by the Fantastic Four. Some people even go so far as to say they almost directly copied them. Instead of Mr. Fantastic Reed Richards, there is Elastigirl Helen Parr. The Invisible Woman Sue Storm is replaced by the daughter Violet. Those two are pretty much direct copies, especially Violet since I’ve never heard of any other superhero that pairs invisibility with forcefields. The baby Jack Jack has a brief touch of the Human Torch’s powers and Dash has a little bit of the Torch’s personality. And Mr. Incredible is the brawn of the team as is The Thing, but those connections are a bit more of a stretch. And it’s not like one can’t count dozens of superheroes from different publishers that are essentially the same. I personally don’t think it’s a big detraction of the movie and I’m not even sure many people other than a few fanboys on message boards. In fact I think it’s kind of funny when I read that parts of the Fantastic Four script was changed because it was too close to this movie.
The movie starts off in the past, with an interview of all the heroes talking about what they would like out of life, and it turns out later on that later in life they all end up wanting the opposite of what they want at that moment in time. Like Mr. Incredible says that he’d like to take a break from heroing, and yet fifteen years later, all he wants to do is to be a hero again. It also shows the heroes in their prime with a great action setpiece filled with a lot of funny bits like the obligatory cat in the tree and of course there’s the standard superhero rescues like a bank robbery, a train disaster, and the kid sidekick. And yet there’s enough of a twist for all of these to make them feel fresh, even the kid fan that goes on to screw things up. I noticed this especially with the train scene and there’s that quick moment where Mr. Incredible braces himself for the train impact. It’s not the typical steeling himself that usually accompanies these moments where the hero grits his teeth and prepares for impact, but instead he turns his head and closes his eyes. He’s prepared for it, but in a much more realistic way. I also really like the subtle nod to one of my favorite films when Mr. Incredible is trying to remember Incrediboy’s real name and starts off by calling him Brody, which was the name of Jason Lee’s character in Mallrats, he also happens to voice Incrediboy and later Syndrome. And it ends with the wedding of Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl.
It then goes on to touch upon the public’s distrust of superheroes and their love for litigation, which causes the government to discontinue their superhero program and place all of the current heroes into basically the superhero protection program. Jump fifteen years into the future and Mr. Incredible is a pencil pusher who’s gained a lot of weight and Elastigirl is now a happy homemaker with three children. Violet who is the shy, unsure of herself teenager who can become invisible, Dash is the hyper troublemaker with superspeed. The powers feel in this context feel a lot more symbolic than just being copies of the Fantastic Four. The introduction of both of the kid’s powers feel pretty organic, interesting, and funny.
Throughout this movie, there is what feels like a great blend of drama, humor, and action. The emotional scenes feel earned, and the action scenes are all exciting. My favorite of the action scenes are the two infiltration scenes with Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl alternately breaking into Syndrome’s inner lair. It’s not too often that someone with Mr. Incredible’s power sneaks in through the back rather than going into a frontal assault through the front doors. It’s also rare to see a hero get to where it feels like he’s truly been defeated. It’s a very subtle, yet fantastic moment after Mr. Incredible thinks that his family is dead and you can just hear him quietly sobbing in the background.
I can go on and on about what this movie does right, from the hilarious Edna Mode, to the great voicework of the kid actor playing Dash. I especially love the amount of joy and enthusiasm he has when he first gets to let loose with his superpowers on the volcanic island. Even the subplot of Mirage turning against Syndrome to help Mr. Incredible. And I’ve been thinking about it for a while, there’s just not much that this movie does wrong. My only question is that the interim fifteen years are rather glossed over. There seemed to be an awful lot of superheroes out there, and once they all go away, things just carry on as normal? Were there any supervillain uprisings, or did the supervillains pretty much go away too with no superheroes to pit themselves against? And if things were perfectly calm during those times, then does the world really need the superheroes to return? And even though I’ve heard a lot of people clamoring for a sequel, especially more than a sequel to Cars or Monsters Inc., but I’m honestly not sure what kind of story they could tell in a sequel and have it come out as complete as this movie. I get the feeling if they tried to create a sequel, it would end up just being much more of an action setpiece. Maybe if they set the movie several years in the future again and have the children ready to set out on their own, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen anytime soon, if ever. Regardless, this is a fantastic movie and will be one of my favorites for a long time. This was a movie that I devoured when I got it on DVD. In fact, I believe several of my favorite moments talked about in the film’s commentary or special features. Which is something I don’t explore as much as I used to. I was even able to get Jena to talk about this movie for a little while, check it out right below. This Tuesday has a special bonus review of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths instead of my usual blog, keep an eye out for it. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America 2011
Ahh, my first chance to watch one of the recent crop of Marvel Studios movies and I kick it off with Captain America: The First Avenger, having just watched the 1990 Captain America movie a few days earlier. I was actually a little surprised at how many similarities the two movies had, although I suppose it’s very possible that the similarities are the ones taken directly from the comic book origins. As I mentioned in the last post I’m not very familiar with Captain America, I’ve only seen him in now a couple movies. But the origin is pretty much the same, the only difference is in this movie they used special effects to make the jump between scrawny Steve Rogers to buff Captain America that much more effective. I’m reminded of the scene in the first Spiderman movie with Tobey Maguire, except I believe they didn’t use special effects for that scene, they just shot skinny Tobey at the beginning of the shoot before he started his training and buff Tobey at the end of the shoot where he bulked up naturally. In this movie they have Chris Evans’ face on a short 90 pound wimpy looking kid. My wife was horribly distracted by this, in her words “they put his face on a midget”. I wasn’t put off by it and I thought the special effects for this were excellent and didn’t fall into the uncanny valley.
As far as the similarities to the Cap origin I just watched, there’s the same “It’s Alive” chamber moment of transformation along with sparks going everywhere and the Nazi spy killing the German doctor who created the procedure. The Red Skull was once again the initial recipient of the super soldier serum with some pretty harsh side effects, although in this version he was already a megalomaniac who wanted the procedure done on his own terms and damn the consequences. And of course there’s also the being frozen for a few dozen years, but in this movie it’s only barely touched upon in the beginning of the movie and used at the end as basically a trailer for the Avengers movie coming out later this year. Nearly this entire movie takes place during WWII instead of during the present. I was looking forward to seeing how this Captain America adjusted to the present day, but instead that will have to wait until the Avengers. And I just recently read a news story that confirms this theory that Captain America will be the main focus of the new Avengers movie.
The one subplot in this movie that was new to me was the fact that the Captain America image was created as war propaganda to help sell war bonds. I thought this was a fun sidestory, but I also thought it could have been cut down a bit. It doesn’t make as much sense to me that they would waste someone with his abilities in the publicity racket instead of immediately putting him on the front lines. I know that his picture was in the paper, but I felt that at that period in time he could have done a few events, then they could have easily switched to a look-a-like while sending the real Cap to do some actual fighting.
The Red Skull was the villain in this movie and he’s essentially super-Hitler with no face. He was the leader of his own sub-organization called Hydra, with their own super-goofy salute which they thankfully only used once maybe twice, and his goal was to take over the entire world. The other main thing that bugged me a little about this movie was the high-tech excuse for PG-13. That is, instead of using real guns, The Red Skull found this magic cube that let him create magic guns that disintegrated people instead of putting bloody holes in them. I know why this was done: it let them get away with killing a bunch of people by disintegration because that’s sci-fi violence instead of bloody violence. I would have rather seen non-blood violence using real guns rather than blue-flashy exploding guns. It also let them not use Nazi paraphernalia and instead have high-tech faceless soldiers that the audience can then dehumanize so it’s ok if they die by the dozens.
There is one other thing that I knew about Captain America that wasn’t covered in any of the movies that I’ve watched: Captain America’s sidekick Bucky is one of the few comic book deaths that haven’t been resurrected in some way… at least for a very very long time. So when they revealed that Steve’s friend’s name was Bucky I knew that he was going to die in this movie. And that scene as an action scene was pretty good. As a death scene, it was pretty cliche. There were a couple other cliche comic book movie moments but they were thankfully few and brief. There was the slow motion jumping over an explosion shot, and the girl who wistfully looks up into the sky as the Hero flies away to great peril.
I really liked the costume design in this movie as well. Both the propaganda ready original costume and the combat ready revamped costume worked well for what their purposes were and the shield looked and was used pretty well and fairly convincingly. My side character of this movie was Mr. Stark. He didn’t have a lot of screen presence but he was used enough and his name was used just enough to really catch my interest in him and made me wish there was more of him. Not enough there for his own spin-off movie, but I would love it if they used another Marvel hero from this era that featured him as a side character again. He’s obviously similar to Iron Man‘s Tony Stark, but different enough to be an interesting character. I’m curious how popular he is to other fans of the movie, as I haven’t read hardly anything about this movie outside of Twitter comments and other similar comments from people who liked the movie. And I really liked the movie, my complaints that I’ve mentioned in this blog are all pretty minor. While I was watching the movie I was hooked through and through, it’s not flawless, but it’s an excellent movie for sure. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 