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Antboy 3
Antboy 3 2016
Continuing on in my catching up of the last few 2016 films that have slipped past me is the latest in the Danish superhero Antboy franchise. I thought the first Antboy was ok, the second one was a lot of fun, so I was excited to finally get the chance to watch the third and supposedly final entry in this series. Not to mention that all three are currently available to stream on Netflix in the US. Since they are still marketed as kids movies, they are dubbed in English, but do yourself a favor and if you’re watching it because you’re a fan of superhero movies, do yourself a favor and watch it in the original Danish audio. Typically I tend to watch dubs over subs, but that’s usually due to one of two reasons: either it’s a cheesy film to begin with and the bad-to-mediocre dubs add to the camp factor, or it’s a newer animated feature and the dub is done in a highly professional manner that’s a similar quality to the original performances. This one falls between the two, what little I listened to of the dub is very mediocre in quality so it really detracts from the overall film. That said, I did think that this was a fitting end to the trilogy and quite possibly the best of the bunch.
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Spaghettiman
Spaghettiman 2016
You’d think that when I told you that there’s a movie about a guy who develops incredibly weird super powers and is a bit of a schlubby roommate with his overweight friend that it’s also a movie unlike anything else I’ve seen. But when it comes to this site and the amount of indie movies I’ve seen, there are actually quite a few bizarre similarities. This is not the only movie I’ve seen where the hero as a main character has the power to shoot food out of his hands. This also isn’t the only low budget movie involving superheroes where two friends and roommates have a friendly-yet-contentious relationship with each other. This isn’t even the only movie I’ve seen that seems to have chosen a random word out of the dictionary and added “man” to the end. The point is, I’ve seen quite a few of these movies, and I’m not trying to say that any of them are copying off each other, I highly doubt that any two projects had ever even heard of each other. But I have, and when looking at them comparatively, this ends up falling somewhere in the middle of these quirky, low budget, superhero movie concepts.
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Inseparable
Inseparable 2011
Something that I realized while watching this movie is that it’s actually a fairly common trend, especially for lower budget superhero films to present the actual superhero as someone with some type of mental break. Whether they are delusional in some way where they don’t entirely realize what’s going on, and often they are represented with an actual version of a psychotic break where they are seeing hallucinations and/or what they’re experience isn’t entirely real. This film is yet another one along those same trends and while I didn’t know it before I started watching it, I caught onto the thread very early on. It’s also interesting that it is a Chinese production, and yet it brought on Kevin Spacey and pushed him into essentially a lead role in front of the supposed main character. Like many of these superhero films with a delusional main character, the film becomes a mix of comedy and drama, though it doesn’t quite go into very dark territory that others tread into. It doesn’t do anything entirely new, but the leads are likable, especially Kevin Spacey and overall it’s a fun story.
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Superbob
Superbob 2015
It’s time to catch up with another movie from last year that I wasn’t able to see because it wasn’t released here in the US. This is a little independent comedy from Grain Media and first time director Jon Drever. Often, I think to myself that there’s almost nowhere new that a superhero movie can go, it just has to do something that’s been done before well. And while there have been several concepts out there about a loser who gains super powers to become a superhero, there hasn’t been anything that’s gone quite the same way about it that Superbob does, and that’s not even discussing the pseudo-documentary style of it either. I initially wasn’t sure what to expect from this movie, but the nervous charm of Bob made me laugh quite a bit throughout the film and it has a nice heart at the center of it all. A pleasant surprise of a movie and currently available in the US to stream via Flix Premier.
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The Last Superhero
All Superheroes Must Die 2: The Last Superhero 2016
It’s been a bit of a slow August, at least slow as in posts appearing on this site, the complete opposite when it comes to outside of this blog. But I was able to check out another recent release. Back when I first caught All Superheroes Must Die, I thought it was a great little ultra-low-budget gem that brought some new ideas and a horror vibe to superhero movies. Writer/director/star Jason Trost has gone a slightly different direction with his sequel that follows the events after his first movie along with revisiting events well before in a pseudo documentary style that becomes more like a mystery than a superhero movie. And it succeeds quite well as a mystery, it kept me guessing until near the very end without falling for obvious Macguffins and the documentary style was a nice touch to help explain the low budget feel, though there were a few moments of special effects that looked good despite the low budget.
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Avengers: Age of Ultron
Avengers: Age of Ultron 2015
I think it’s actually quite fitting that I have a review of Ultron just after my review of Suicide Squad. Both films had large expectations behind them, and both ended up falling quite a bit short of them for many fans. The biggest difference is that while considered a disappointment, it still snagged around a 75% approval rating from critics, though I imagine that many of those positive reviews still have the word “disappointment” or some variation of it within the text. In fact, one of the reasons why I didn’t immediately review this film after seeing it for the first time in theaters myself was because I felt like I needed to let it settle for a bit and I wanted to give it a second viewing with tempered expectations to help see some of the positives without getting stuck on the feelings of being let down from the perfection that was the first Avengers movie. I just didn’t quite expect that second viewing to come almost a year and a half later. But here we are. So, did it improve from that initial viewing? Yes, but there are still plenty of flaws throughout the run time.
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Superman: Braniac Attacks
Superman: Braniac Attacks 2006
I’m down to the second to last DC Animated movie and I hope the last one doesn’t end up on a down note like this one did. This came out in a bit of an odd timeline. It was six years after the end of the Superman animated series and right around the end of Justice League Unlimited, and while they brought back Tim Daly and Dana Delaney as the voices of Superman and Lois Lane, they replaced Clancy Brown’s Lex Luthor with Powers Booth and brought in Lance Henrickson for Brainiac. Overall, the movie felt like it was intended for a younger audience and spent much of its hour and seventeen minute run time packed with fight scenes. There were a few moments here and there that made me laugh or surprised me, but overall it felt like a bit of a letdown.
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The Batman vs Dracula
The Batman vs Dracula 2005
While I watched most of the run of the first incarnation of Batman: The Animated Series, I didn’t follow it with any of the later series including the one simply called The Batman. I don’t really know much about it at all, reading up on it it seems like it was intended to be a Batman for slightly younger audiences than the original series, but it found its footing a little bit better in later seasons. The first thing that struck me was the incredibly different and jarring design for the Joker. But as for looking at the movie as a whole, it didn’t have too much of a kid-friendly vibe to me. It got surprisingly dark in places, but it was mostly superficial. It’s a fun film that seems like a perfect movie to throw on for Halloween if you’re also a fan of Batman.
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Batman and Mr. Freeze: SubZero
Batman and Mr. Freeze: SubZero 1998
We’re moving right along in this animation month and it’s time once again for one of the animated films for the younger folks. This was really the first straight to video project for DC Animation. Yes, technically Mask of the Phantasm came before this, but that also had a brief theatrical release so it’s not quite the same since it likely had a bit of a larger budget. I don’t think I had ever seen this one, and for whatever reasons it didn’t quite bring up the same memories from the show like Batman Beyond did, oddly enough. There were a few holes that I poked through the plot line here and there, but overall it was a decent movie. I think its biggest flaw is just that it pales in comparison to most of DC’s better work, and even though I hadn’t watched it in years, I felt like Freeze’s episodes in the Animated Series themselves packed a bigger punch than this film did.
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Superhero Podcast Review: Superhero Speak
It’s time once again for me to look at another superhero themed podcast and give you the details along with my personal perspective on it. I’ve been an occasional listener of this podcast for a long while now, and they’re another podcast that has a large back catalogue. After this, I have just one more podcast that I’ve previously listened to before moving on to submissions and random searches. If you host or are just a fan of a current podcast whose main focus is superheroes or comic book movies let me know and I’ll cover it in a future edition of Superhero Podcast Review. You can reach me in the comments section, on Twitter where I’m @Bubbawheat or e-mail me at Bubbawheat@msn.com. Now that that’s out of the way, onto today’s review.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 