Blog Archives
Superhero Podcast Review: 24 Panels Per Second
Time for another round of podcast reviewing with a superhero flair to it. I generally listen to about 13 hours of podcasts a week, and often I like to fit in podcasts that talk superhero and comic book movies since I’d say I’m fairly knowledgeable about that topic. So each week I’ll be taking a closer look at some of those podcasts that I have been listening to, and once I run out of those I will be looking at some new podcasts every other week. If you know of or run one of those new-to-me podcasts, give me a shout in the comments or on Twitter and I’ll add you to the list.
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June-ing the Cult: Trash Film Guru & Turkish Superman
Süpermen Dönüyor aka The Return of Superman 1979
Throughout the month of June I thought it would be a great time to catch up on some of the more obscure and cult superhero films out there. But instead of just randomly picking a few, I decided to reach out to some of my other blogger friends who blog on plenty of other cult films on their own and ask them for their recommendations. So starting off with this film today and over the next four weeks I’ll be tackling these cult superhero films. Some are older, all of them are foreign and it should be a lot of fun. And kicking it off out of the gate is Ryan C from Trash Film Guru with his choice best known as Turkish Superman.
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X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Apocalypse 2016
We are starting to get deep into the summer movie season as we kick into the latest comic book movie with superheroes fighting superheroes, but at least in this case every movie has been about mutants fighting mutants. And very similar to the last two theatrical releases this year, I enjoyed this movie as well, but thought that overall it had some notable issues with it. There were definitely moments where I had a nice fanboy grin plastered on my face, and there weren’t really any parts during the film where I thought it was dragging, but after it was all over and I started thinking about it a bit more thoroughly, there were just too many questions that kept dragging through my head. And as is often the case with theatrically released movies, there may be spoilers ahead so read on only if you’ve seen the film or don’t care about knowing what’s to come.
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Superhero Podcast Review: Hero Movie Podcast
This is the first in a series that I’ve been considering doing for a while now. I tend to listen to quite a few podcasts including several movie podcasts that specifically focus on superhero or comic book movies. You know, kind of like this site. I’ll be starting off with podcasts that I have listened to, and as I run out of those, I’ll be expanding to other new podcasts that I discover, or if anyone would like to submit a podcast for me to review – either from a listener or a podcaster, just leave a comment, tag me on Twitter or send me an e-mail at Bubbawheat@msn.com. I will be giving my thoughts based on my personal preference, but will also try to break down the podcast based on several different categories so that you may be able to determine if it is a podcast that you would be interested in as well.
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ABCs of Superheroes
ABCs of Superheroes aka League of Superheroes 2015
I really do love Twitter, something that I have stopped doing for a while is scouring the internet for possible superhero movie titles that I may have missed. Instead, until I run out of titles to review I merely sit back and keep an eye out for any that might cross my path, which just so happened with this film. I noticed a retweet from one of the producers by Lloyd Kaufman so I reached out to him to request a screener knowing literally nothing about the film aside from its title. After watching the film it made complete sense that Kaufman RT’d it for a couple reasons, one was that he made a cameo in the film, and second because it has a very Troma-esque feel to it. Blood and nudity abound alongside low budget effects, questionable acting skills, and a very tongue in cheek humor about itself. And just like the best Troma films, it all combined to make a very hilariously entertaining film.
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Avenging Force: The Scarab
Avenging Force: The Scarab 2010
I’ve often said that the worst superhero movie that I’ve ever seen is an incredibly low budget and indie superhero movie based on a public domain comic book called Captain Battle. This falls right along the same lines, and even had one of the same distribution companies. It feels like it could have been a mockbuster, though it came out two years before the Avengers. It has many of the same issues as Captain Battle, though the filmmakers were technically much more competent, they were still a long ways away from being good. Everything about this film was poor from the story to the costume design all the way through the acting and directing. At least the actors pretended their guns had some recoil, so they have that going for it.
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Paper Man
Paper Man 2009
There are several reasons why I occasional stretch the boundaries of what I consider a “superhero movie”, sometimes it’s because I already decided to watch the film and didn’t want to feel like I had wasted my time on it, other times it gives me an excuse to watch something that’s very much unlike a typical superhero movie. This one falls very much in the latter category even though I knew next to nothing about this film before I put it on aside from the fact that it starred Jeff Daniels and it had Ryan Reynolds playing yet another superhero, albeit an imaginary one. As it started playing, I quickly fell in love with the cast and really enjoyed the rather quirky dramedy about this struggling writer developing a completely non-sexual relationship with a teenage girl played by the always lovely Emma Stone.
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Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: Civil War 2016
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is back with its latest installment of their ongoing franchise. And even though I watched this movie on opening night, I feel like everyone and their mother has already voiced their adoration upon this film, probably just because it was released in many other countries a week early. As a whole, Marvel films have been pretty high on my radar starting off with Avengers as the first MCU that was released since starting this site and most of the Phase 2 sequels were much better than the originals until they hit a bit of a snag with Age of Ultron that felt like they were too focused on setting up future films to worry about focusing on the current one. On that front, I felt like Civil War was a success, while it greatly helped to have knowledge of past films, Civil War felt much more self-contained than Age of Ultron. It has the fun aspect that permeates all of the Marvel films as well as some incredible action and some thought provoking themes, but it just didn’t quite knock it out of the park for me this time. And fair warning since this has just opened in the US, there may be spoilers ahead.
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Super Capers
Super Capers 2009
Another month has come and gone and after going through last month watching fewer horror movies than I had hoped, I’m moving on to yet another themed month. For the month of April, I decided that I want to get some of the bad movies out of the way, specifically many of the awful looking superhero movies geared towards kids, some that I grew up with and others that I’ve never seen and never really wanted to see. To kick things off, I decided to watch this parody kids movie from 2009 called Super Capers and starring the perennial teen star who would go on to do nothing of note and this was actually one of the last few movies that he worked on before disappearing off the Hollywood planet. The film itself is actually more like a superhero parody film along the lines of Superhero Movie. It has a handful of good jokes, but it’s underscored by way too many cartoonish sound effects that hamper the humor rather than enhance it. And while it has an interesting cast, the actual characters are generally one dimensional punchlines and those punchlines aren’t all that great. It was a bit better than I was expecting it to be, but it’s still a far cry from a good movie.
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Filmwhys #66 Cloverfield and Superman and the Mole Men
Episode 66 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is James Thompson from the Meanwhile… podcast who asks me why I hadn’t seen Cloverfield, one of the first twists on the found footage style of filmmaking and an attempt to give the US a giant monster worthy of Godzilla from producer JJ Abrams. And in return, I ask him why he hadn’t seen Superman and the Mole Men, the first feature length superhero film ever made and the precursor to the long running Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 