Turok: Son of Stone 2008

It’s always interesting to me when I discover films that I previously hadn’t heard about across my nearly five years of running this site. I was vaguely aware of the Turok video game series from the late 90’s, but I never knew that it was based on a video game. I also never knew that it was turned into an animated movie around the same time as the last installment of the game series in 2008. This film generally ignores most of the video game series and goes back to the roots of the comics to tell an origin story of sorts for Turok and his journey to the Land of the Lost more or less. It’s filled with plenty of blood and action, attempts at being culturally sensitive rather than playing into Native American stereotypes, but in the end it didn’t quite accomplish the most important thing that it should have done. It never really made Turok feel like a real character instead of an action hero stereotype.

The film starts out in such a tonal disconnect from the rest of the movie. It opens on a young, playful trio modeled roughly after American natives. The two boys go chasing after the girl’s hair clip down the stream and randomly start splashing each other with water until they come across a few members of a rival tribe decked out in war paint. The leader tosses his tomahawk and Turok unexpectedly catches it before going into a berserker rage and killing all of the men. Not only that, but he gravely injures his brother when he goes to check on him after all the carnage as he’s still in a blood rage. It shifts from the playful tone to a weird bloodbath to a more dramatic moment as Turok is banished from the tribe while his brother cries out in pain. All without really giving any information about who Turok is as a character. There’s no explanation of why he has this skill at fighting, he even seemed surprised himself when he caught the tomahawk aimed at his head. It’s as if showing us is the only explanation needed, and we as an audience just have to go with it.

As a comic, Turok has been around since the 50’s.

The rest of the film more or less follows the same way of thinking. There’s little to no explanation given to what’s going on. Which on one hand does help since there aren’t very many exposition dumps. But on the other hand, the film doesn’t quite give us enough to go on to connect with these characters and their situations. We have Turok as a main character. He’s been exiled and lives alone in the wilderness, but cares enough about his brother and family that he returns to save them from a warring tribe. It just so happens that the tribe is the same one that he was in conflict with earlier, and their leader is the son of the same man he killed and took the tomahawk. There’s also a hint of a message throughout the film, but it’s treated more as an afterthought than anything else. When Turok and company finally end up in this Lost World filled with dinosaurs, he fights a large water dino and the blood attracts an even larger water dino who inadvertently saves them. One of the members of a friendly tribe tells him that “blood begets blood” or something along those lines. It’s a concept that he uses again in a literal context later in the film when he uses his own blood to lure and trap a T-Rex-like predator dino. But there’s also the more metaphoric sense of the phrase where the blood of the tribe leader brought his son Chichak back for Turok’s blood. And Chichak killed Turok’s brother so Turok is also out for his blood.

The animation style itself isn’t anything that special. It hearkens back to a more Saturday morning action cartoon style without much of an anime influence that has been permeating US cartoons over the past decade or so. Though the blood does have a slight Asian feel to it. It’s not quite the low budget exploitation style of blood spraying in a giant fountain, but there is a large amount of it that splashes out during every attack. The moments of actual gore are kept to a bare minimum, like one moment where we see the remains of the Neanderthal leader who was killed by Chichak when he fired the push rod of his rifle through the leader’s head and the rest of the tribe used his remains for their dinner. So we get a shot of the dismembered leader with the rod still through his head. The guns themselves were a slightly interesting detail, as it gave Chichak’s tribe a huge advantage during the initial battle with the rest of Turok’s tribe. And when Chichak gets trapped in the Lost World with Turok and his family, he seems to have a near endless supply of pistols and ammo. It’s also inconsistent as to whether or not he has to go through the entire reloading process during each shot.

To top things off, there’s the requisite pseudo love story in play. Not just one, but a couple. The leader of this friendly tribe within the Lost World is played out to have affection for Turok, there’s also hints of love between Turok’s young nephew Andar and one of the female warriors in the tribe. But what’s really at play is supposed to be Turok’s quest for a place where he belongs. There’s all these subtle hints throughout the film about how he would prefer to be alone because of his killer instincts, but those same instincts make him perfect for the dangerous life within this new world that he finds himself in. The argument could be made that the film intentionally leaves this motivation ambiguous. It even ends on a note where the tribe’s leader has died and Turok would be the most appropriate candidate for a replacement, but the only thing the movie gives us is that he finishes the tribe’s mantra that essentially shows that he thinks of himself as a part of that tribe.

The last thing to mention about this film is how it portrays natives. It’s a difficult thing for me to discuss as I have little to no first hand experience and can only base it off of how it compares to other portrayals in TV and movies. There is a hint of the speech pattern that most people think of when it comes to uneducated savages, but it’s mostly underplayed to a point where it’s just a different rhythm of speaking. There is the warlike savagery, but that’s mostly directed towards the enemy tribe, one of the reasons why Turok is exiled is because his nature is too warlike and violent. The tribes may or may not be designed after a specific tribe, but it’s more likely that it’s just a generic amalgam of various Native American tribes. It never felt incredibly insensitive to me, but I’m not the one who really has any say in it. Overall the movie wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t anything special. My wife enjoyed it, but part of that was because she didn’t know anything about it and was thrown off by the unexpected violence and dinosaurs. I thought it could have been handled quite a bit better, but there were some good ideas here and there. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

When the Wind Blows 1986

This post is doing double duty for me as it technically kicked off yet another animation month as well as being a part of A Timely Blogathon that’s being run by Film Grimoire and MovieRob all about films that are 90 minutes or less even though it will have posted over on their site before I decided to share it here as well. And since I saved it for their blogathon it also just about wraps up my own animation month aside from one final movie I hope to cover tomorrow. This film is ten minutes shy of the 90 minute limit for the blogathon which isn’t surprising since most animated films run shorter than live action due to the amount of work involved in each minute of animation versus each minute of live action. The film itself follows an elderly couple in the English countryside who had lived through the second World War and are now faced with the fallout of the first attack kicking off a third.

Stylistically, the film feels and acts more like a stage play than what you might expect from an animated film. Almost the entirety of the run time takes place in the elderly couple’s house aside from an early moment at the store and a handful of fantasy sequences. It also only follows those two characters, with no other voices other than an announcement on the radio. The husband Jim is someone who has bought into the propaganda of his country wholeheartedly and also seemingly suffers from a bit of memory loss, though it’s usually played off for humor more than anything else. And his wife Hilda is a stereotypical housewife who is generally more concerned about the appearance of her home and propriety than anything else.

Most of the film treats these two characters as comical, as Jim has gotten a couple pamphlets that are government issued “What to do in case of the apocalypse” essentially, filled with survival suggestions that are more or less as effective as the fifty’s advice of “Duck and cover”. But through it all, he’s utterly confident in his government and their ability to survive and even flourish after the bomb eventually hits at around the midpoint of the film. Even as their bodies slowly succumb to the effects of radiation poisoning, Jim’s confidence never wavers. It’s tough to tell if this is supposed to be due to his underlying naivety and romanticization of the previous war efforts or if he’s putting on a brave face to try and shield his wife from her fears, or even a side effect from the radiation and their eventual malnutrition that causes his lack of mental clarity.

The animation style is rather unique as it combines mainly traditional, hand drawn animation with various other styles throughout the movie. Jim and Hilda are both drawn relatively simply, but their house and some elements of their background are often replaced with models or miniatures or possibly photographic textures which is occasionally jarring, but doesn’t detract from the viewing experience too much. There are also several moments of fantasy sequences as the characters discuss potential situations like what might happen if an enemy Russian came barging through the door, or when they reminisce about their childhood during World War II. There are also a couple fantasy sequences that seem to come out of nowhere and are much more symbolic than literal with images like Hilda turning into a naked fairy for some reason.

One of the moments where they reminisce about the war with archive footage.

What does work better is how the film handles their slow deterioration after the bomb has gone off. Even though it’s punctuated by Jim’s constant reassurances about how everything wrong is “natural” and to be expected after something like a bomb. Whether it’s the fact that their entire garden has shriveled to nothing, yet Jim is constantly hopeful that the sun will break through the clouds and the rain will make things green again. It’s difficult to determine exactly how much time passes as there are many moments where it fades to black as if there’s a time jump, but it’s unclear exactly how much time has passed. They initially say that they should be prepared for two weeks, but due to everyone else having the same idea, their supplies were greatly limited and they soon run out of food and water before crawling inside of giant paper bags as directed by the government approved pamphlet, laying down in their makeshift shelter made up of doors leaned against the wall, and praying a disjointed prayer. It’s even accentuated by the fact that Jim must not be a very religious man, that or his mind was clouded by their condition at that point, but he doesn’t even know who he should be praying to at that point, and when he finally does pray, he strings together random bits and pieces of well known prayers as the camera focuses on the outside of the shelter while the lights darken around them before seeing the small circle of the door move into a cloud backdrop. It’s a little cliched, but still a fitting symbolism of their deaths.

From the original comic, most of the dialogue is directly lifted from the pages.

There is a lot that works well in this film, the oppressiveness of the literal cloud around them is palpable after the bomb has hit, and their gradual decline in health is mirrored in the animation as their designs become more gaunt and sickly. In a way, it reminds me quite a bit of the Ghibli film Grave of the Fireflies. The biggest difference between the two is that this film tries its hardest to keep things light for as long as it can. The elderly couple feel like they’re just a pair of silly, absentminded old folks who are very quaint and set in their ways. But those same qualities that seem funny during the first half of the film take on a very different tone as things around them become bleaker, making the couple’s obliviousness seem much more sad than funny as they die a very lonely death. The politics are also quite interesting as the couple have subtle moments of racism and xenophobia when they discuss the “Russkies” and the Japanese bombing. It would have been nice to see them at least attempt to go outside of their home to seek out signs of life, though we do get a brief glimpse of a destroyed town with a slightly horrific description of burnt flesh that Jim optimistically writes off as dinner roasts. It’s still a fascinating what if scenario handled in a very unexpected way. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

After finishing up a full month of animated movies, I managed to complete one of my mini-goals. I have finished watching every animated movie that’s currently on my list, as well as a couple that weren’t. So with that in mind, I thought it was time to share my top 10 list of animated comic book movies. There are a couple conditions here – one is that I decided to exclude DC Animated films just because their output is so massive that they literally make up half the total list of films that I’m choosing from, and also because I’ve already done a top 10 list of just DC Animated films so I’m not looking to repeat myself. I considered also excluding Marvel in fairness, but their animated output is still quite small, and much of it is quite lacking. I also decided to exclude superhero movies that weren’t based on a comic i.e. no Incredibles. Spoiler alert, it would be at the top of the list. But with those conditions out of the way, let’s get to the list! And FYI, you can click any of the titles to check out my original full reviews on the movies.

10. Firebreather

I’ve been a fan of Peter Chung ever since seeing the Aeon Flux shorts on MTV during Liquid Television. This was a TV movie that aired on Cartoon Network that focuses on a kid who’s half Kaiju and half human who goes to a new school when his past comes back to haunt him. The animation is great, but the one downside is that it falls into the cliched high school tropes. But still, it has some good humor and great creature designs.

9. Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow

Before I actually saw this, I expected it to just be the kid Avengers. And while it is that to a certain extent, it’s not just a kid version of the Avengers, there’s actually a good story being told within this almost cliched concept. When most of the original heroes are taken out of the equation, and the villain they’re facing is an Ultron who has succeeded in controlling most of the Earth, it’s a little bit darker that you might first expect. One of Marvel’s better animated stories.

8. Turtles Forever

This is the most recent of these films that I have seen. As in, I watched it recently not that it came out recently. It’s another TV movie that was from the second series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that started in 2003. This film brought those Turtles together with the Turtles from the 80’s series and even a little bit with the original comic book version of the Turtles. It’s very light and breezy, but if you’re a fan of either of the first two Turtles TV series, this is worth checking out.

7. When the Wind Blows

This is another film that I just watched this month though I had heard of it a while back. It tended to be a little dryer than most of the other films and reminded me a bit of a lighter version of Grave of the Fireflies. It’s still essentially a movie where we watch two people try to support and care for each other under extreme circumstances as they are slowly dying. But this one somehow keeps things more upbeat due to the overwhelming optimism of the two characters in the face of such a dire situation.

6. Doctor Strange

Not the first nor the last Marvel movie on this list. Watching this more than anything else has me excited for the upcoming live action version of Doctor Strange. It has a compelling origin story, a great cast, good action, and it’s just overall well done. It’s also one of the early efforts from director Jay Oliva who has gone on to do some of my favorite DC Animated movies. Not too much else to say about this one, but it’s fun.

5. Hellboy Blood & Iron

This is one of two animated Hellboy movies that they made around the time of the Golden Army and also used the original cast for the voice over work. This was obviously my favorite of the two, though Sword of Storms could easily have made it to this top 10 if I had written it another day. Blood and Iron is Hellboy’s take on the vampire mythology and it also has some great flashbacks to shed some light on Professor Broom’s early days with the BPRD before he started palling around with a big, red, friendly demon. It also has a great take on the Elizabeth Bathory style of vampire rather than the typical Dracula version.

4. The Adventures of Tintin

This is the one English movie of a character that actually has a few films to his name, though they’re mostly French and not widely available in the States. This was really his first big introduction to an American audience from a largely European fanbase, and it’s still possible that a sequel to the film will happen now that Peter Jackson has finished with his Hobbit films and is apparently working on a secret Amblin project. I thought this was a great introduction to this character, and best of all, it wasn’t an origin story. It gave us everything we needed to know about Tintin even though he’s already well established as a character. There are some great action sequences and plenty of comic relief. It’s just an all around great little film.

3. Persepolis

This is one that I actually haven’t seen in quite a while, in fact it was one of my very first non-superhero comic book films covered for this site, but it still left a pretty big impression on me. It’s one of the few foreign comic book movies that I’ve seen here as it was originally a French language film, though I did watch the English dub. It’s more or less about the life story of Marjan Satrapi who was an Iranian woman who escaped the Iranian revolution to spend her days as a young adult living in France. It deals with a little bit of history, but mostly her struggles and her joys as she makes her way through life. It’s mostly black and white which is unusual for a modern animated feature, but that just made it all the more visually striking. It’s really a fantastic watch.

2. Wrinkles

This is a Spanish language film, though like Persepolis, I’m more familiar with the English language version with Martin Sheen even though it’s a little bit odd when everyone has very Spanish names. It’s a very touching and funny look at someone dealing with Alzheimer’s, both the person who has the disease himself as well as his roommate at the home for the elderly where he now lives. But more than that, it’s a story about friendship between two people and how that develops over time to an unconditional, platonic love. It’s funny, it’s heartwarming, it’s touching, it truly is a great film to watch.

1. Big Hero 6

But number one on this list has to the be the relative surprise hit from two years ago that took the barest of concepts from a Marvel comic and turned it into one of the best animated characters ever with Baymax. It’s an animated superhero movie that takes a more grown up look at how children deal with a death in the family and what it’s like to emotionally heal from that wound. But it also has great moments of action and enough humor spliced throughout the film to keep it entertaining from start to finish. Not only that, but it’s one of the most diverse casts of characters in any superhero film ever. Truly a great and entertaining film.

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So there’s my list, is there any that you think I left out? I’d love to hear what your favorites are, just let me know in the comments. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Suicide Squad 2016

Like with any recent DC live action movie release these days there’s a lot more to it than just “Did I like it?” or “Did I not like it?” It seems like it started a little bit with Manof Steel and escalated greatly with Batman vs Superman and once again there’s this great divide between a very low critical consensus and a record breaking box office. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Does it really even matter anymore as long as the money is flowing and nothing’s going to stop this DC train from moving along trying to catch up to the Marvel money train chugging a few billion dollars ahead. Obviously, I’m a superhero movie fan, you don’t sit through over 300 superhero movies without either being a fan, becoming a fan, or quitting about 100 movies ago. My expectations for Suicide Squad were very similar to the animated Assault on Arkham, and what I got wasn’t a far cry from it. The characters were fun, it was fast paced, sure there were some flaws with the story but at the end of the day, my wife and I had a great morning at the movies. It would just be nice if there was a little bit more cohesion so that everyone else had fun too.

The film starts off at a pretty brisk pace, introducing us to the main villains in a very Guy Richie style, with some stylish cuts, graphical overlays, and pop music blaring in the background. The songs are fun, catchy, could be distracting, but they give a nice sense of the characters. Except for Slipknot which is disappointing since that was such an obvious tell that he would be the first (and pretty much only one) to die. It wouldn’t have been much to at least give him an introduction in the same way that the other characters did so there was at least a little bit of a surprise when he became the example and showed the audience and the other members of the squad that the cranial explosives did indeed work. But that’s still a minor point within the overall movie.

What did work the most were the characters. And even though this is an ensemble cast, the real focus comes down to three main characters: Will Smith’s Deadshot, Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, and Viola Davis’s Amanda Waller. Everyone else gets a moment here or there, but as far as the characters who you really get a feel for, and have some sort of arc, it comes down to those three. And luckily, those three really killed it in this film. Harley Quinn can be a problematic character, and there is still a sense of overall misogyny as characters frequently referred to her sexual attractiveness trapped with a crazy head and her unflagging devotion to a Joker who isn’t exactly the best boyfriend. Though there are at least moments within the film where Joker shows that he’s not entirely uncaring for her, since he does rescue her from the vat of chemicals that he requested her to jump in, and broke her out of prison. It’s still not the best example of a healthy relationship.

Deadshot was always going to be the most sympathetic character, and Will Smith does a great job as he always does. It’s worth noting that he does actually get top billing in this film, which means that in the past ten years, there have only been 4 comic book films that had a Black actor in that top spot, and Will Smith has been that actor for 3 of those 4 films. Deadshot has the right amount of badassness and heart with his relationship to his young daughter. He plays the role well, with the right combination of well-deserved cockiness, sympathy, and empathy. Harley was also played quite well with the right mix of craziness and tenacity with the fighting ability to back up being chosen for the squad in the first place. Even though it doesn’t exactly seem to be quite in line with the other characters’ abilities and her place on the team seems more likely that she was chosen because of her popularity with comic book fans rather than any reason that Amanda Waller might have actually gone with.

What doesn’t quite go right with this film is the overall plot, especially the villain. It’s an early turn where we find out that the Enchantress isn’t actually a member of the team, but the actual big bad that the other little bads have to fight. She happens to break her brother free who becomes this mini-Balrog with tentacle powers that can rip anyone to shreds in an instant, except for our team once they finally meet up in the climax, and gets blown up with a supposedly massive bomb that only creates about a ten to twenty foot hole in the ground. Meanwhile, the teleporting, grungy, sinister looking Enchantress gets a magical makeover to look like a CGI-enhanced child-like Empress from the Neverending Story. There was just something about her during all of the climactic scenes that never looked quite right. Plus, she seemed to have just spent about three days creating this CGI cloud that doesn’t do anything until the squad almost reaches her, though there is at least the minimal explanation that she didn’t have her targets until she acquires Waller herself and gets the targets she needs right from her head.

But the real villain right from the start is really Waller herself, and Viola David does a tremendous job at showing just how manipulative she can be from start to finish. From getting her Task Force X approved in the first place, to when she coldly kills the rest of her team just before her rescue just because none of them were cleared to even know about the existence of Task Force X. She even gets to casually toss out a line to Bruce Wayne to let him know that she knows about the costume that he dons every night. From start to finish, there is a lot to enjoy with this movie, and this is coming from someone whose entire experience with the Suicide Squad comes from the animated Assault on Arkham from just a couple years back. And while I haven’t said much about the rest of the team, even though they’re not given a whole lot to do, Diablo, Killer Croc, Katana, and Captain Boomerang are all great with what they’re given. Even though director David Ayer has said that he approves and owns up to the final cut of this film, I do think that a better version of this film could be made with the available footage, but for now I’m happy with what I’ve been given. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

It’s time once again for another superhero podcast review where I’m checking out the last podcast that has been recommended to me. My final verdict comes down to one of three recommendations: Subscribe, Selected Episodes, or Unsubscribe. I’m always looking for new ones to check out so if there’s one that you’re a part of, or one that you listen to and I haven’t reviewed here yet, leave a comment, send me an e-mail at Bubbawheat@msn.com, or hit me up on Twitter @Bubbawheat. This is also one of the first ones where I’m going off of the minimum number of episodes listened to before reviewing with 3 plus a 4th that I’m listening to as I write this review, so before I get into things I will say that I’m not quite sure I have a full feel for this podcast but I’ll do my best to share what it’s about.

KAPOWcast

The Basics

Website: Soundcloud.com/kapowcast
Episode count (as of 9-3-16): 56 + some bonus episodes
Episodes listened to: 4
Episodes recommended to me by the podcast: #55 1 Year Anniversary, #36 Harley Quinn’s Mad Love, and #13 Relatable Characters in Comics
Release schedule: Weekly, typically on Saturdays
Episode Length: 0:45 – 2:00, averaging about 1:00
Audio Quality: Clear
Language rating: R
Spoilers: Yes
Production format: A single discussion with a varying group of hosts that covers various news discussions and a topic of discussion for the episode that deals with comics and/or movies.

The Format

One of the biggest difficulties that I tend to have with these types of podcasts is that it’s difficult for me to get a feel for the hosts when there are more than two. For Kapowcast, there seems to be a rotating panel of hosts and various guest hosts and none of their online presences has any cast list for me to go off of so I can’t list off their names here like I usually do. They spend the first third or so of each episode going over various comic book and movie news that’s cropped up over the previous week before moving on to the discussion topic of the episode. The topic ranges from comics to games to movie reviews to conversational discussion topics. There is a very familiar vibe to the conversations, you can tell that most if not all of the hosts are real life friends and quite possibly are recording in the same room with each other.

Comics vs Movies vs News

Looking through the general topics across their episodes, there is a strong focus towards movies, though when listening to the episodes the news tends to be a good mix between movies and comics, with an obvious lean towards movies since there often tends to be a heavier stream of movie news versus comics news. Since every episode does spend some time covering news, that will tend to take away some of the focus on the discussion topic at hand. I’ve mentioned it before, but for my own tastes I prefer the podcasts I listen to to focus less on the news and more on the actual movie or comic or discussion topic that they’re focusing on for the episode. And while they’re still just past their first year of podcasting, the focus tends towards what’s fresh, mainstream, and in the focus of the news.

The Verdict

I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m less fond of news episodes because that news is only news for a short while. But the podcast itself stays around for much longer. Some of their discussion topics do sound like they could be quite interesting to listen to, and the banter between the hosts is fun to listen to even though it would probably take me at least four or five more episodes before being able to differentiate between them. There is another non-superhero related podcast that I’ve been listening to regularly, they have four hosts and about 9 episodes in there’s only one host that I can specifically point out and that’s because she’s the lone woman with three guys. But that’s all besides the point, the talk is fun and the topics they cover are great, but there’s just some unknown quantity that’s missing for me so it’s not entirely clicking for me.

KAPOWcast Selected Episodes

Zoom 2016

This year has been an interesting one, I’ve discovered and watched more films in the past month or two than I ever anticipated coming out this year with a few more to come. This film is one of the few that found its way to me via the PR department which suggested that I watch the film via the site We Are Colony. This film is one of the few where I do stretch the definition of a “comic book movie” to include movies about comic books themselves. The comic book in question is written by Allison Pill’s character and also plays a large part of the movie via animation. I wasn’t exactly sure where this film was going, and there is one major component of the story that’s easily spoiled, and is in much of the advertising for the film but is actually better if you’re unaware of it for the first watch. There’s a lot of humor, a lot of sex and nudity without having a lot of actual nudity, and it has an interesting concept that can be surprising, but I will be spoiling in this review. One final note about We Are Colony’s site, it unfortunately wasn’t a great experience for actually watching the movie without a solid high speed internet connection, there’s very little buffering allowed and there’s no option to lower the video quality – or if there is, it’s not easily found. So trying to watch this movie with a spotty internet was more of a pain than it should have been.

Before going too far, it’s worth taking a look at the whole concept of this film, something that’s not made explicitly clear within the movie until closer to the end. There are essentially three concurrent stories going on. There’s the one that feels like the main story, mainly because it’s the one the film starts with, featuring Allison Pill and Tyler Labine playing two co-workers in a sex doll factory. Pill plays Emma who in her spare time is drawing a comic book that includes herself as a busty femme fatale, but the actual story involves a sexy filmmaker who is trying to make an art film and struggling with the studio who wants something more commercial. His story is told through animation. But there’s also a third story that initially pops up out of nowhere about this Brazilian model named Michelle who wants to write a novel. What makes things interesting is that it all becomes this cyclical connection where you’re not exactly sure which story is supposed to be real life and which is supposed to be fiction. We learn early on that the animated Edward is a product of Emma’s creation. But eventually we learn that the novel that Michelle is writing turns out to be about Emma. Not only that, but the film that Edward is making is about Michelle. It’s a fascinating concept that works, at least until it doesn’t. The problem with this kind of concept is that it’s difficult to know where to cut this snake eating its own tail, and while the ending here is passable, it’s also a bit of a cop out.

Early in the story where there’s just a hint of color.

What really helps sell this concept of these worlds being created within the context of this movie is how each one develops into a more cohesive world the farther along it goes. But again, this is also an issue with the movie because Emma’s world appears to be fully fleshed out from the very start. When we meet Michelle, it’s on a photo shoot in an all white room where she keeps being told to be “nothing” by the photographer. We also get to see her in her home with her unsupportive husband played by Jason Priestly where nearly everything surrounding them is a colorless white. It’s not until she flies off to her home country in Brazil that color starts to come through in her world. This is also very pronounced in the animated world of Edward who starts out as a rough outline, and as the film cuts to the animation more often, the outlines become more detailed, color begins to pop in, and by the end, it’s a fully colored animated world. Emma’s world is generally unaffected by the progression of the story until we first see her connection to Michelle as she is writing her story and re-writing it which is shown by a beautiful effect of writing appearing in Emma’s background and coalescing into a part of the background in a few parts. It’s again a little troubling though, because where the other two stories are becoming more fleshed out throughout the film, when we see Michelle affect Emma’s story it becomes more stylized and less real.

Michelle before her only sex scene.

What does work the most about this story is the humor. Tyler Labine has always handled comedy well and he has great chemistry with Pill and there is a ton of mileage pulled out of the sex doll location alone. But on top of that, there’s a secondary story where Pill decides to get breast implants to become more like the drawing of herself, but realizes that large breasts aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. She also takes revenge at one point on her animated Edward, who is a total Lothario who tends to get his way by sleeping with whoever is in charge (as long as it’s a woman), by shrinking his manhood. This is played up by quite a few moments of embarrassment comedy, including one where he gets a high tech prosthetic member but decides to take it with him swimming. Michelle’s arc tends to be more dramatic and at one point gets a little too arty – but is immediately undercut by switching back to the animated studio head who rips it apart because she doesn’t understand what’s going on. Michelle does finally get to partake in a little bit of the humor when reshoots turn her story into a cheesy action movie.

On top of all the comedy, there is a lot of nudity. But surprisingly with all of the sex, there is almost zero actual nudity. Pill and Labine both work in this sex doll factory which includes these lifelike, naked dolls in the background of nearly every scene they are in, sometimes the foreground even. And when Pill goes to get her implants, the doctor’s office is filled with large backdrops of perfect looking naked bodies. And after she gets her implants, we do get to see Pill’s new larger breasts, but considering the actress doesn’t have breasts that large they are obviously prosthetics. And in the animated world, there is plenty of sex going on, but that’s all strictly animated nudity. The only moments of actual nudity shown are in Michelle’s time in Brazil when a woman she meets goes cliff diving sans top, and later Michelle decides to try it herself. It does help add another layer to the artificial nature of the three stories.

One of the best things about this movie is that there is so much to unpack, but at the same time, it’s enjoyable to watch. All of the characters are sympathetic and/or entertaining. The ending is slightly problematic, but it does what it needs to do for the most part. It brings all of the stories together where they finally realize what’s going on, but it doesn’t really offer a satisfactory solution, it merely ends with the words on Michelle’s page reading “wake up” before cutting to black, aside from an early credit sting where we hear from a couple of the animated characters who had been smeared complain about their state of being. There are two likely scenarios, one is that Emma is the crux. She is the story that we start off with, we see the initial creation of animated Edward, and she does draw the idealized version of herself which eventually comes into play when she gets her breast implants, and the “wake up” at the end is intended for her and her alone. The second scenario is that it’s a shared dream state and all three of them wake up at the end. The dream has always felt like a cop out in terms of story telling, but at the very least this film merely hints at the dream state without taking the next step and showing someone actually waking up. The concept itself is an interesting one, but I would have liked the film to have taken that concept one step further. As it stands now, the connectivity of the three worlds isn’t really introduced until later on. It would have been nicer if those triple parallels were worked into everything a bit earlier, but in a way that rewarded repeat viewings. But even with that complaint, there’s enough humor that it works more than it doesn’t. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

13: Game of Death 2008

Halloween is getting near and I’m down to my last couple horror movies based on comics. And as I feel like I’ve done several times on this site, I’ve gone backwards in my viewing. I initially watched this story as told by the American remake 13 Sins before coming back around and watching the original Thai version that was made a few years earlier. I knew there were several changes between the two versions but the original still had quite a bit of the same impact with the combination of suspense, comedy, and the occasional moment of gore. And as is often the case when available, I watched this film with the English dub rather than the subtitled version.

The basics of the story is that there’s a schlub who’s majorly down on his luck and randomly ends up taking part in a mysterious game show. It starts innocently enough by killing a fly for the first challenge, then eating it for the second. But as he progresses through the 13 challenges for the 100 million baht prize (roughly $3 million, translated via the dub to $1 million) the challenges get more gruesome and deadly. But ultimately, the challenges seem to be intended to change the personality of this mild mannered office worker into someone much more assertive and confident, even if it doesn’t ultimately end well for him.

From the beginning of the movie where he begins the game and descends to the 13th floor.

As for the similarities and differences between this film and 13 Sins, this has much less of a focus on the mythology of the game itself or the ones behind it. We do get a little bit of the special investigator who is trying to catch the main character Phuchit, or Chad in the English dub, but he is basically limited to a single scene and doesn’t have much impact on the overall story. We also don’t get much of Chad’s family, instead there is a friend of his who works with him and wants to help. She also happens to stumble onto some of the inner workings of the game, but in this version it’s more about her helping Chad rather than trying to expose this game to the world. The gore in this film is also much less pronounced, with most of it happening without a close up or even completely off screen.

Numbers related to the challenges are common but not overwhelming.

The main character in this film also undergoes a much more pronounced and tragic transformation than in the US version, especially notable in the motorcycle clothesline scene that takes place in both versions. In the US version, Elliot is able to remove the clothesline and save the bikers only for the film to reveal another person who sets up the same trap for the bikers to come back. It’s a significant change for two reasons, one is that it subverts the expectations for anyone who had already seen this version of the film, but it also removes much of the blame for the bikers’ deaths. Here, the death lies directly in Chad’s hands. He may not have known what he was doing, but they still died by his hands, while Elliot has the blame one extra step removed. One final interesting difference is that in the US version, the voice on the phone became an additional character. He initially sounded like a prototypical game show host before transitioning into something more sinister as the film progressed. Here, the voice on the phone changes with each challenge and has a much more casual tone to it.

Cover from the original comic.

Chad himself is very much a down on his luck schlub. At the beginning of the film, he gets his car repossessed because he hasn’t been able to make payments on it. He works in sales but had his last major sale sniped out from under him by his own co-worker. His ex-girlfriend left him to become a major singer and is on the rise to fame. And to top things off, his mother takes advantage of his generosity by continually hitting him up for money even though she spent his last gift on a phone for his sister. There are also touches of the challenges that represent moments from his past, like during challenge number five he’s required to eat a platter of shit which was also something bullies tried to get him to do when he was younger. That also becomes one of the many moments of situational humor throughout the film as his ex-co-workers end up coming into the same restaurant as him, and shortly afterwards more than one person comments on how bad his breath smells. There are a few other challenges that cause him to have flashbacks towards his abusive father which all culminate in the final challenge where he is supposed to kill his father with a similar knife that he tried to use to kill his father when he was younger. The twist at the end is that even though he has done some pretty bad things over the course of the game, he hasn’t changed enough to kill his own father, but his father was also playing the game and gladly kills his own son for the prize money. It’s also an interesting touch that Chad’s father is very much American which adds extra context to the film even though it’s never explicitly explored.

While it would be too early in the narrative, this should be #2 on a silver platter.

There is also the ongoing thread of his friend Tong who initially sees him going about some of his challenges but is unable to confront him directly. She is a computer specialist so she’s able to hack her way into the game itself to see some of the video feeds of Chad and tries to stop him. Her journey isn’t a major part of the plot, but it’s used well enough to give a slight break from Chad’s exploits. She even gets to see the face behind Chad’s game who ends up being a teenage kid with a handful of bodyguards. It does take a little bit away from the game that works better as this faceless entity – something the US version handles better, but the scene does play out well enough. It is often very difficult to discuss a remake, or a film that has been remade without comparing the two versions. These two films are very similar but also make some very different choices. While the US version handles many aspects of the game itself better, the Thai version has a much stronger focus on the character and has a tighter story. If I were to choose between the two, I think the Thai version is a stronger film, but they’re both worth watching. I also think it works better if you watch the original version first as there are a few moments in the US version that play with your expectations if you’re familiar with this version of the story. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Faust: Love of the Damned 2000

And with just a few days left before Halloween, I finished my goal of watching the last horror movie on my list of films based on comics. This was a bit of an odd one, I even tried watching it about a year ago but only made it about a half hour in before I got sidetracked with other things and just never got back to it until now. It’s a low budget horror movie that has elements of exploitation cinema with just a touch of a superhero plot mixed in. It’s incredibly bizarre with a guy who sells his soul to a demon, a lot of sex, a bit of torture, plenty of gore, and a demon summoning ritual slash orgy at the end. There’s even a bit of a love story mixed in, but it’s so bizarre and convoluted that it’s difficult to put into words.

The crux of the story follows a guy named John Jaspers. He’s an artist who just happens to be dating a woman who owes money to the mob. Apparently they kill her and beat him up which causes him to be distraught enough to try and commit suicide only to be interrupted by an old guy who makes him a deal so that he can seek revenge. And in return, he gets a cool set of Wolverine-like ninja claws. But it also comes with a vampire-like curse where he becomes addicted to killing. And is also a servant of the old guy who goes by the name M. And later on starts turning into a demon with a cape that’s supposed to look like wings. And also goes catatonic after a major killing at some random foreign embassy which puts him in a mental hospital where he meets the female psychologist that he eventually falls in love with, but also becomes a sacrificial host in an orgy slash party to summon a giant monster and make the old guy immortal. Deep breath, or something along those lines. It’s all very convoluted and doesn’t always make a whole lot of sense.

Nope, nothing at all like Wolverine, though X-Men did come out this same year.

What makes things worse is that it isn’t entirely told in a linear fashion. It’s not exactly a timeline that’s too hard to follow, but we do start with the embassy massacre before getting the origin story told through flashback once Jaspers starts to talk to the music therapist. The plot also bounces between a few different characters each with their own mini-character arc. We honestly start out with detective Margolies played by Jeffrey Combs. He’s the typical “plays by his own rules” detective that captures Jaspers without killing him despite orders to the contrary by the police commissioner who ends up working for M. There’s also the music therapist who connects to Jaspers but gets caught up in the entire mess. Meanwhile we also get to see bits of M’s journey as he prepares for this important ritual that will give him something or other. M doesn’t quite seem to be the devil himself, but does have plenty of demonic powers that come into play here and there. But if that wasn’t all, we also get to follow quite a bit with his right hand woman Blue who seems to be some type of demonic succubus who wants to have sex with anyone that comes across her path.

From the original comic, it appears that Blue in the film is quite accurate to the comic.

Even though there are plenty of characters with their own little story arcs, none of them really have anything in the way of actual character arcs. Several of the characters change personalities, but the reasons are typically from external forces rather than internal changes. Jaspers himself begins the story as a mindless killing machine that for some reason decides not to kill detective Margolies. He then becomes a mostly catatonic mental patient. In his flashback, he’s supposed to be a sensitive artist who suffers from the loss of his girlfriend while slipping in an out of a vaguely Southern accent. And by the end, he becomes this gleefully sadistic demon of vengeance. All of these changes aren’t exactly explained outside of satanic forces. These forces also eventually get to both Margolies and the therapist who ends up getting sexed up by M in order to summon a giant penis-like demon. Blue is another odd character, she seduces pretty much every man she comes in contact with, including Jaspers, and as punishment for one of these transgressions, M uses his power for a bit of bizarre body horror where he enlarges her breasts and buttocks to such an extreme that she becomes this four pronged blob with her head in the middle.

The effects overall were quite good for a film of this budget level. Aside from the weird cape-as-wings, the demonic make up for Jaspers looked great, including several slight variations that were used depending on the level of transformation. There were also plenty of moments of blood and amputations as well as a few moments of body horror similar to the one with Blue, including a bizarre scene where M pulls a live, giant snake out of Blue’s belly button. There was also quite a bit of sex throughout the film, most of it did come from Blue who rarely had a scene where she didn’t show her breasts, though many of the sex scenes weren’t played up for their eroticism, instead it was an odd combination of eroticism and horror. This was especially true when the film revealed the sexual trauma in the therapist’s past that continually comes back to haunt her. There were some interesting moments throughout the film, but it was mixed in with a plot that never really made sense. It was trying to make Jaspers sympathetic, even though he went on a mass killing spree, including one where he killed several cops. There was a bit of an overlying mystery as several secondary characters were revealed to be working with M and his satanic cult. But ultimately, none of it ever added up to anything worthwhile, and the mediocre acting performances didn’t help either. Not exactly a so-bad-it’s-good movie, but far from anything watchable either, it’s just a bizarre little oddity of a film. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Surrogates 2009

Without any real clear direction that I wanted to take for the rest of this year, I decided that I would work on clearing out the mini backlog of movies that I’ve purchased over the past several months and even years that I keep putting off for one reason or another. I also put four movies up on a Twitter poll and even though there were only a few votes, this film won. Surrogates was barely a blip on the radar for me, it came out against Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and also when my daughter was 2 and we weren’t going out to the theaters any time soon. It was a moderately high-budgeted movie that flopped here in the US, but ultimately made a small profit when including its worldwide gross. It’s got a fascinating concept and does a lot to build this slightly futuristic world, but then it gets bogged down by the action and falls flat on its face with an oversimplified ending.

One of the best things that Surrogates has for it is the overall high concept. In the near future, science has developed a system of robotics that can be controlled and operated remotely in a pseudo-reverse-Matrix sort of situation. These robots essentially behave just like regular people except they don’t get sick, don’t transmit germs, don’t age, and can look like whatever you want them to look like. But stepping into the world of the movie, there’s always this element of unreality and the film captures this very subtly. All the surrogates have this slight uncanny valley-ness to them whether it’s a slight CGI sheen that gets rid of the actor’s facial imperfections or something similar. It’s especially notable with Bruce Willis’s surrogate who has this wrinkle-free face and awful-looking hair. We get to see this world full of beautiful people, which in a way is just like any other Hollywood movie, except this amplifies and comments on it. There’s even a great moment once Willis’s surrogate gets destroyed and he has to venture out into the real world. This is the first time he’s had to interact with other people without this extra layer of security and he gets hit with a wall of anxiety. It’s like everyone is on the internet while still interacting in the real world at the same time. Unfortunately this aspect of the world isn’t explored further and Willis cures himself of his anxiety by the next scene.

Ving Rhames as the anti-robot cult leader the Prophet.

Honestly, this film has a major problem with setting up this complex world with a fascinating concept of these surrogates, and then smashes the concept to the ground with an oversimplified answer. Just like Willis’s anxiety, it’s cured by the very next scene. The same thing happens with the overarching mystery of the film. Ultimately, the villain of the film is setting out to destroy all of the surrogates and their users, because he sees them as an addiction that needs to be cleansed so that the world can heal. Willis is able to save all the users, but decides against saving all the surrogates so that this virus completely wipes out every surrogate across the globe, since conveniently they are all created by a single company. It’s just such an oversimplified, happy ending that it really does a disservice to the rest of the film that came before it. There are plenty of issues that they could have explored via these surrogates, especially addiction, but it’s all just covered at a very surface level. They even mention how nothing the surrogates feel are supposed to affect the users, but there’s a scene midway through the film where a group of people are apparently getting high by shocking the hell out of their surrogates. That pretty much seems like it’s affecting the user, and the way Willis reacts to it makes it seem like it’s a very well known practice.

An excerpt from the original five-issue comic run

But since this film does eschew a lot of the high concept sci-fi in favor of the action and mystery, how do those aspects of the film hold up? To be honest, only moderately. There are a few fun moments with the two big chase sequences, one where surrogate Willis is chasing the perp into Dread territory – localized districts that somehow have their own jurisdiction where surrogates are not allowed – and one where human Willis is chasing his partner’s surrogate who has been taken over by the real villain. But the first one has an odd disconnect with the level of danger. There is a weapon involved that can actually harm Willis’s human body, and his surrogate is equipped with superhuman abilities, but there’s still a large sense that he’s never in any real danger. The second chase works much better and even has a few great moments of comic relief that helps sell the reality of the world. At one point, it becomes a car chase and Willis ends up plowing through several pedestrians, but since they are all surrogates, they are barely phased and treat it more like an inconvenience rather than a life-threatening situation. Getting back to the mystery aspect of the film, that one is also on the more mediocre side of things, there are a few shocking reveals here and there, but for the most part it’s part and parcel with a typical dystopian sci-fi story where all the clues are handed to the main protagonist and they keep leading him to a much larger conspiracy than he ever expected.

When I was halfway through this movie, I was curious about how people reacted towards this movie, and when I say people I mean film bloggers who follow me on Twitter. I asked about other people’s opinions because I had the general impression that it was a failure of a movie, but at the time I was really enjoying the world that it was setting up. But once I finished it, I could totally understand the reactions of those who answered, who mainly said that it was alright but mostly forgettable. One even compared it to the Purge, which has a similar one-note concept but has had a few movies to help flesh that concept out and explore different aspects of it. This movie only had one opportunity to do that and even shot itself in the foot where it wouldn’t be allowed to explore it further in later movies unless they went the prequel route. It’s a film that doesn’t take any chances, there are great ideas that could be explored, but it only scratches the surface. The relationship between Willis and his wife is a perfect example. He hasn’t seen her actual body in years, and she harbors guilt for their son who died in a car accident with the implied detail that she was driving, as her scars and multiple medications reinforce. But the resolution to that conflict also feels shallow. His wife isn’t really allowed to learn anything, she’s merely forced to leave her surrogate shield behind. And while it would have been a much darker ending, it would have made more sense for the character if she would have committed suicide as the film initially implied, it would show that not all the consequences of Willis’s actions were bright and cheery, but that likely wouldn’t have tested well with audiences so we’re left with a weaker story as a result. Such a shame. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Monkeybone 2001

While I did put up another poll on Twitter for the movie that I should watch & review next, I haven’t had time to fit in the 3 hour cut of Batman v Superman just yet. So in the meantime, I had a little bit of time the other night and decided to toss on this film which is currently streaming on Netflix. It’s a movie that I had watched many years ago because I’m a fan of weird animation and dark fantasy movies. I remember generally liking this film, but never had a real desire to revisit it or own it. Watching it again now, I really appreciate plenty of the visuals and designs on the fantasy world, but the overarching story that drives the plot forward leaves a lot to be desired, especially everything that happens in the real world.

This film is one of the few films directed by Henry Selick, probably most well known as mistaken for Tim Burton when he directed the Nightmare Before Christmas. This film fell between James and the Giant Peach and Coraline and is the film with the most live action elements in it, even though James and the Giant Peach had some. Monkeybone was based on the comic miniseries Dark Town that itself was never actually finished, at least in publication. Interestingly enough, within the comic, everyone in the other world had button eyes which would make an appearance in Selick’s next film. Monkeybone takes some elements of the comic, but fleshes it out with a very different story about an animator who falls into a coma and is trapped in this world that is a mix of his imagination and a sort of purgatory.

One of the more frustrating things about this world is how ill defined so much of it is. We are introduced to this world when Brendan Fraser slips into a coma after a freak car accident. He then falls down into the ambulance stretcher and on down into “Downtown” in a really gorgeous sequence. But the first elements of Downtown that we are shown are from Fraser’s suitcase of “emotional baggage” including several drawings he made as a child that suddenly appear in claymation form. This leads us to believe that we are experiencing a world created solely from his imagination. And yet later on in the film, it turns out that this is an actual place with gods such as Hypno, the god of sleep, and Death herself and is also populated by other people who are in their own comas. This is complicated by the fact that there’s also this convoluted plot so that people will somehow have more nightmares for Downtown’s entertainment and possibly their sustenance.

Another frustrating element of this film seems to come from possible studio interference. There is very much a tonal disconnect between much of the dark imagery used throughout the film and the often sophomoric physical humor. This film could have worked a lot better if it was allowed to explore the darker undertones of this world outside of a few brief moments. Especially when it came to the ultra-nightmare sequence that looked like an image that was a cross between David Lynch, MC Escher, and HR Giger. It was set up to be this intense sequence, but it ultimately played out more like a motion comic and it was over after only a few moments.

A panel from the original Dark Town comic.

There were still plenty of good elements throughout the film, the production design especially is spot on with a combination of several different special effects techniques to bring Downtown and everything else to life. From a handful of stop motion animated characters like Monkeybone himself to plenty of characters with animatronic faces to some traditional animation and even what looked like some subtle CGI animation for the Picasso-esque bull bartender. The entire vista of Downtown with the look of a giant metal hand also feels very reminiscent of Nightmare Before Christmas though there is a subtle difference that removes it from the well known Tim Burton style. Rose McGowan even has a small role as a catgirl waitress who ultimately helps Fraser but also gets to have one of those darker moments when we see her viciously attack a rat guard. The sheer variety of creatures and designs really help bring life to the world, especially considering their use of non-human proportions often using oversized faces and undersized bodies in many varied proportions.

The plot of the film is really where it all falls apart, especially once it gets to the point where Monkeybone returns to Fraser’s comatose body instead of Fraser himself, which isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility as Monkeybone is essentially Fraser’s id. But Fraser as Monkeybone doesn’t so much play it as an id, but instead as a literal monkey. A monkey that gets turned on while watching the National Geographic channel. The one aspect of his character that does work well is how he manages to incorporate monkey-esque squeaks and grunts into his speech while making it feel as close to natural as possible. It also falls too far into the fantasy realm once Death herself boots Fraser back to the real world in the body of a recently deceased Chris Kattan who is supposed to be a world class gymnast. There is the absurd aspect of the team of organ donor doctors trying to collect his organs while he is still running around, but it’s helped by the physical performance of Kattan as he rolls his head around as if his neck was broken and walks as if he barely has control of his limbs. While the entire concept of what is going on doesn’t entirely make any sense, Kattan does his best to sell it. I haven’t even mentioned the literal nightmare fuel or Megan Mullally playing his sister who seems desperate to pull his plug. It would make sense if his sister was either set up to be some sort of villain who wanted him dead for some sort of inheritance or life insurance, or if she played it more sympathetic and meant what she says about their pact against staying on life support. But instead, she plays the character as this typical heartless and flippant character who can’t wait to pull the plug on her brother without having any weight to it at all. And to wrap things up, Fraser’s fiancee played by Bridgit Fonda who basically has no real personality to speak of other than to be Fraser’s love interest. She has a small amount of agency, but for the most part it all ends up being ineffective. It really is a good concept, with great designs, but it’s too bogged down by a nonsensical plot and once they get out of Downtown, I just don’t care anymore. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

It’s the beginning of a new year and for most movie blogs that means the year-end wrap-up list. And even though it took me a couple extra days, I once again managed to watch every superhero and comic book movie released in the US (that I’m aware of). The only other film that I haven’t watched was the bollywood superhero film A Flying Jatt which I don’t believe ever got a US release where I could watch a subtitled version. And instead of merely going through some number of my favorites, I decided to do something just a little bit different and go ahead and rank every single comic book film of this year from worst to best. And one quick disclaimer, while the title reads “Comic Book Film”, as I always do for this site I include superhero films that were never based on comics as well as comic book adaptations that aren’t about superheroes.

Skip to #10 thru #1

#26 The Curse of Sleeping Beauty

There’s a small handful of gorgeous visuals, but it doesn’t help the uninteresting story about a guy stuck with an old house, a family secret, and a bunch of creepy mannequins that come to life.

#25 Max Steel

An incredibly standard teen superhero origin story. It had a passable comedic alien robot sidekick, but every character was underdeveloped and it spent way too much time in tired high school tropes without any actual action.

#24 Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell

The latest holiday-themed animated Marvel fare where Hulk and a bunch of supernatural comic book heroes enter the dream realm and save some kids from Nightmare with the help of Doctor Strange. It’s very kid-focused with a hint of a message but the Halloween themed heroes don’t get much development especially since it’s unlikely that you’ve ever heard of them before.

#23 Batman Unlimited: Mechs vs Mutants

This is the latest in the Batman-cartoon-tied-into-a-toy-line and it really comes off as such. There aren’t any female characters, all the vehicles and mechs look like they were pre-packaged to be sold to the 4 to 11 year old boy demographic, and it’s all action and comedy. At least the comedy does hit once in a while, especially towards the end.

#22 Spaghettiman

This is a bizarre, ultra-low budget superhero film about a guy who gains the power to expel cooked spaghetti from nearly any orifice of his body. The humor worked for me more often than it didn’t, but it can be a difficult concept to wrap your head around.

#21 Batman: The Killing Joke

This is one of the most popular Batman comics and often credited for contributing towards making comics as a whole darker and more adult. And while the overall story and concept is stylish and compelling, there’s just something that doesn’t quite resonate any more, and the added Batgirl prologue doesn’t mesh well or accomplish its intended goal of giving her character more agency in a story where she was simply a victim.

#20 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

While the first film was a disappointment to most fans of the franchise, I thought it was ok. And while I do think that the sequel improved in many places, especially with plenty of 80’s style fanservice, it didn’t go far enough. Casey Jones was a big disappointment where he often felt more like a petulant child rather than a disturbed vigilante. The turtles were great as a whole, but they once again gave Shredder the shaft, this time in favor of comic relief villains by way of Bebop, Rocksteady, and Krang.

#19 All Superheroes Must Die 2: The Last Superhero

I was pleasantly surprised when I watched the original All Superheroes Must Die, and it was one of the first ultra-low-budget superhero films I watched for this site. The sequel trades the horror movie vibe for a documentary style mystery with a nice little action scene at the end. It has some compelling characters and it hides the low budget quite well. Plus, it’s freely available to watch on YouTube.

#18 They Call Me Superseven

Another ultra-low-budget superhero film, I did enjoy this one slightly more due to the comedy. It’s a combination of James Bond parody with the feel of the Adam West Batman. Much of the footage is pulled together from their webseries, but aside from a few redundant montage scenes, it comes together as an actual movie quite well.

#17 Electra Woman and Dynagirl

And another movie pulled together from a webseries (only I believe this webseries never actually aired as such). This is essentially a superhero parody that often forgets that it’s supposed to be a parody so it takes itself seriously until the end of the scene. That said, it still works more than it doesn’t and can be fun to watch. Plus, it’s a superhero film with two female leads and never oversells that point.

#16 Zoom

This is one of two films where I fudge the release year a little bit. It’s considered a 2015 release due to a festival run last year, but its home video release was this year so I’m putting it on this year’s list. Also, this is the only film on this list that I consider a comic book movie because a large portion of the film is about a comic book, rather than being based on one. It’s a fascinating concept that ties together three different stories, and while it’s often hilarious, it can get a little muddled on a first time viewing. Plus the ending feels like a bit of a cop out.

#15 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

We finally get to one of the biggest movies of the year and one of the biggest disappointments. I have watched both versions and while I do think that the extended version solves some of the problems, it doesn’t solve all of them. Despite how low this is on the list, I did quite enjoy it. Though some could say that I’m too easy on movies. There are some great action sequences in this. The mystery aspect generally works, but the tone is too dour and the set up for future movies is more annoying than exciting. Fingers crossed for Wonder Woman.

#14 X-Men Apocalypse

The latest in the X-Men prequel franchise was a bit of an odd mix. While there were plenty of great moments and characters, whenever a superhero film brings in a villain with god-like powers it’s never easy to come up with a plausible solution on how to defeat him. Plus, this prequel series is going on thirty years, three movies, and it only now feels like Xavier has finally gotten his starting line up of X-Men? But aside from the problems, there was still fun to be had, especially the Sweet Dreams sequence that copies the Time in a Bottle sequence but doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

#13 Lego DC Super Heroes: Justice League: Cosmic Clash

We’re halfway through this list and while next year brings Lego Batman to the big screen, there have been plenty of Lego DC heroes on the small screen and they are always a lot of fun. This one brings in Brainiac as an obsessed collector who needs Earth to replace a broken planet-in-a-jar. The biggest downside is how they turn Supergirl into an insipid cheerleader, but at least there’s a random Voltron moment at the end that’s extremely satisfying.

#12 The Chair

And this is the movie where I cheat on release dates in the exact opposite way than I did earlier. This film ran the festival circuit this year, and I believe was released on home video to backers of the original kickstarter, but won’t be released to everyone else until later this year. Regardless, I did get a chance to watch it and I quite enjoyed it. It’s a very dark, pared down psychological horror/thriller that makes you feel uncomfortable during nearly every moment. And Roddy Piper gives an amazing performance as one of the guards.

#11 Batman: Bad Blood

This was the first superhero movie released last year and while I generally liked it, it hasn’t really stuck in my memory very well. This was one of the latest in the ongoing Batman and Damian Wayne storyline that started with Son of Batman. It greatly expanded the bat-family with a couple lesser-known bat-members: Batwoman and Batwing, and it teased Batgirl at the end. The biggest drawback was that I felt like I was missing quite a bit since I wasn’t familiar with the characters beforehand. But it still came together with a sense of mystery and plenty of action.

#10 thru #1

Cowboys & Aliens 2011

Now that I’ve finished watching every comic book movie of 2016, my latest quest is to finish watching every major comic book movie ever made. And while this may have been a large task a few years ago, depending on what metric you look at, I only have six movies left that have had a significant box office take and have more than a few thousand user ratings on IMDB. This movie, the Losers, Red, Red 2, Blue is the Warmest Color, and Push. So my goal is to finish off these last few films during the rest of January and all I’ll have left is the obscure and new releases left to cover. Coming back to today’s film, I pretty much skipped over this film when it was released in theaters. It wasn’t on my radar at all, and afterwards it pretty much fell off the face of the internet. It’s an odd mix of genres, a sci-fi western works better when there’s western elements in a sci-fi setting rather than vice versa. Though I suppose I was a fan of Brisco County Jr. But this film did not work for me or my wife whatsoever. It just never felt quite right and we couldn’t get past the incredulity of cowboys fighting highly advanced aliens.

On top of everything else, they toss in the amnesiac hero with a past. And while Daniel Craig is absolutely the best part of this film, hands down, his memory loss became a hindrance after a while. It exists to accomplish two different things. One is to make him the audience surrogate, since he doesn’t know anything about his past, he has to re-learn everything. The second is to make him more sympathetic since the more we learn about his past, the worse it makes him look as a character, until it finally comes back around again. But we find out that he’s a wanted man, he has a gang of outlaws that he betrayed. But on the plus side, he ultimately did it all for love, so that makes everything ok in the end. And it also makes it ok for him to fall for a new love that’s been following him around all movie because she’s played by Olivia Wilde and his old love is dead.

Moving onto the complete tonal dissonance that’s created by having full-on futuristic aliens attacking an old west town. The aliens have highly maneuverable flying ships and highly destructive weapons that can fire repeatedly without needing to reload, and have advanced targeting. And the cowboys have one guy that managed to steal one of the aliens’ arm cannons, plus weapons that require multiple shots to kill one of the aliens. But the aliens don’t much like the light so that somehow puts them on even ground. Despite the fact that their aversion to sunlight never seems to come into play during the entire course of the movie, it’s merely spoken as a line of exposition. The design of the aliens themselves is decent, but nothing extraordinary. The use of a secondary pair of hands that are used for more delicate manipulation is interesting, but also odd considering that in order to use them makes them vulnerable.

Panels from the original graphic novel.

There are a handful of themes throughout the film, but it also feels like they are presented in a dissonnant way. Harrison Ford’s character has a braggart and blowhard son played by Paul Dano. He makes a fool of himself by shooting off his gun everywhere before getting his ass handed to him by Craig without any effort. In retaliation, he fires a random shot that hits the deputy sheriff in the arm and gets him put in jail before the aliens eventually capture him. Ford also has a Native American… employee? It’s unclear exactly what his role is aside from looking after Dano, but it becomes a moment where he is a surrogate son to Ford, yet Ford’s racism never allows him to see it until it’s too late. There’s also the meek Doc slash bartender who eventually learns how to shoot and saves the day, and the young kid who is too scared to do anything to save himself until he finally becomes a man and kills the enemy alien. And to cap it all off, it ends with a big enemies-come-together-to-fight-a-common-foe battle at the space ship. They all feel like typical Western character arcs and they’re handled in a very standard way without much hoopla.

There are a handful of fun moments throughout the movie. Once again, Craig is a force of nature and the scenes where he has to leap into action are handled excellently. He also gets a fair bit of humor in when he runs into his old gang and busts the teeth of one of the lead henchmen, and yet this doesn’t cause him to waver in his loyalty. Ford’s performance is passable, he somehow manages to have lines that seem completely over the top, like when he’s telling the tale of when he had to kill a man when he was just a young boy, but on a scale of 1 to 10, his energy never goes above a four. As for the rest of the cast, Wilde does have a nice ethereal look to her that fits her eventual otherworldly reveal but she’s otherwise bland. The same goes for Sam Rockwell’s Doc. It was nice to see Clancy Brown in a smaller role as the priest as he is always great. It just overall felt like a shame that so many creative minds worked on this project and came up with something that didn’t work on so many levels. From the cast to Jon Favreau as the director, even Steven Speilburg as executive producer. Though the writers were much more hit and miss considering they were behind projects like Van Helsing, Amazing Spider-Man 2, but also the new Star Trek movies and Mission Impossible 3. It’s just such a mixed bag that never quite worked for me. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

RED 2010

I’ve almost completed another one of my mini-goals to have watched every “major” comic book movie ever made. This was another film that came out during a time when I wasn’t watching many movies, and especially not many R rated movies. I’ve just come off of a review where I completely fell in love with the Losers and I’m not entirely sure that I would have loved that film quite as much had I seen this one first. It follows a somewhat similar set up, only instead of a disgraced and left-for-dead team of CIA operatives who at one point break into the CIA with plenty of comedy, this is a group of retired CIA operatives who at one point break into the CIA with plenty of comedy. While the caliber of acting in the Losers was decent, with Chris Evans, Idris Elba, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, this cast is a significantly higher caliber with Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and plenty more. While I do still love the Losers, I think RED beats it out in almost every possible way, aside from having a character with multiple awesome t-shirts.

The film starts out simply enough with an older guy looking for any excuse to talk to a woman who is younger, but not obnoxiously young. He seems to be trying his best to fit in, and then come the guns and it never quite stops after that. But the movie never quite loses the romance and connection angle even though their relationship greatly changes over the course of the movie. It helps that the relationship is what kicks off the film so it doesn’t feel like it’s tacked on for reasons. And while Parker is initially resistant, she has a great arc where she becomes excited and finally enamored of his action movie lifestyle. For his part, Willis keeps his character rather understated and more focused on the action, but that combination ends up working quite well between his experienced and routine reactions to everything that’s going on and her combination of panic and thrill. The addition of Helen Mirren and Brian Cox’s relationship also adds an extra dimension that helps sell it that much more.

Where this film really shines is through the talent involved in every role. Willis, Freeman, Malkovich, Mirren, even Dreyfuss in a small role. Karl Urban was also great in the role of the young agent assigned to head the operation to eliminate Willis considering some of the other roles that he’s known for like Bones and Dredd. Not only that, but most of the other actors aside from Willis are playing against type and still pulling it off in spades. Malkovich’s character was especially fun to see him play a crazed conspiracy theory nut who happens to excel at misdirection and is actually right more often than not.

But what the movie is really all about is the action and fun, and everyone in this film seemed to be having a lot of fun. Again, similar to the Losers it had quite a bit of a heist feel to it during several of their mini-infiltration and escape plans where everything seemed to be going in their favor until something happened that looked like it was going to mess everything up until it turned out to still be going exactly as planned. There was also a bit of a road trip and mystery aspect of this film as they are trying to uncover why Willis was targeted for a hit in the first place and since this is an action movie of course the answer goes all the way to the top. Almost literally in this case. One of the few downsides was that the reveal of the true villain of the movie was rather underwhelming, especially when Urban plays such a great opponent throughout the entire film. Another downside was that the death of Morgan Freeman’s character felt too underplayed. It was set up to a certain extent that he was living with terminal cancer and potentially only had a short while to live anyway, but there was only a brief goodbye scene when they decided what they were going to do and he was never really mentioned again afterwards. They even set up the fact that he could have been shot in the chest in such a way that he could have survived, but didn’t ultimately go that route.

That said, this was a ton of fun to watch. There isn’t really any underlying meaning or themes buried in this film so it makes it difficult to really discuss this film without just giving examples of scenes and jokes. It is a very basic action comedy, but it is done very well. There are plenty of great moments of action, especially the fight between Willis and Urban in the CIA headquarters. In fact, their entire antagonistic relationship helps carry this film just as much as the positive relationship between Willis and Parker, even moreso because they both follow similar paths and meet somewhere almost in the middle. Though I never expected to see Willis and Urban share a kiss. RED is just all around mindless fun with a hint of a good mystery and heist aspects mixed in. I’ve heard mixed things about the sequel, but I’m curious to see where it goes from here. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Red 2 2013

I’ve almost completed my recent goal of watching and reviewing the last few major comic book films I have yet to cover here. This film came out during the second year of this site and it was the first summer where I started to realize how many comic book films were actually coming out and how difficult it was for me to keep up with all of them. And since this was a sequel to a film that I had yet to see, it was one of those that fell through the cracks until now. I hadn’t really heard much about this film, and what little I did hear was generally mixed. But since I did enjoy the first one so much, I though I would enjoy this one as well. There is definitely a different tone to this film, and while the plot still isn’t much to speak of, I did laugh more often and harder than I did in the first film, so it’s got that going for it at least.

One of the biggest differences between the original and the sequel is the relationship between Willis’s Frank and Parker’s Sarah. In the first RED, Sarah was new to everything and the two of them were kind of building a relationship. Here, the relationship is established and we have Frank acting protective over his girl while Sarah is still intoxicated by the thrill and wants to be involved as much as possible. In fact, Parker’s performance was the most entertaining out of the entire cast and she also had the biggest character arc. While she did get involved in a few minor ways during the first movie, she becomes much more involved here, especially as she starts to try and embrace a role as a femme fatale with comedic-yet-effective results. But she also gets to take on the other side of the equation where she shoots and kills someone for the first time. The moment isn’t given much time to breathe in the overall fast pace of the movie, but it’s there.

As a sequel, RED 2 does generally follow a standard sequel formula: more of the same, only bigger. This time around instead of travelling around the US, they are travelling around the globe. And on top of that, they have one of the top assassins after them from Korea played by Byung-hun Lee. Unfortunately, he plays the assassin as rather ineffective and was way too focused on his private plane that was hijacked by Frank and co. Not only that, but he ended up switching sides on a dime with relatively little convincing. Malkovich’s role was also diminished even though his screen time was increased. Where he was a very unstable wild card in the first movie, he was a much more standard character with only a few glimpses of his conspiracy theory infatuated former self. The addition of Anthony Hopkins was a welcome one and he played both the absent-minded mad professor and calculating villain with equal skill.

Where the film does lack is the overall plot. There’s a little bit too much convolution in what all is going on, with a plot that Frank and co were supposed to have been involved with but weren’t, but actually were. Plus a bomb and Russia and an imprisoned scientist and a lot of other things that don’t entirely make sense, but somehow the characters are having enough fun that you can just go along with it to see where it takes them next. It doesn’t help that Neal McDonough is a big step down from Karl Urban, both in presence, menace, and even screen time. At least Helen Mirren and Brian Cox both make a welcome reappearance in their roles and really help to provide a nice, albeit brief counterbalance to Frank and Sarah’s relationship. The same is also true of Catherine Zeta Jones as Frank’s old flame and current kryptonite. Even though the film once again falls back to killing one of the team with only a brief moment of grief before never mentioning her again.

As with the original, there’s not much depth to discuss here. The action works for what it’s supposed to do. Nearly every character gets their moment to be a badass at one point or another, and they save the world at the end. The sequel tries to ramp things up by putting their escapades on a global scale, but it ends up being more of the same. Not that it’s entirely a bad thing because it’s still a hell of a lot of fun. The comedy was definitely kicked up a notch for me this time around, especially the comedy centered around Frank and Sarah’s freshly minted relationship. There wasn’t as much of a heist aspect this time around, but there were a few schemes here and there that were fun to watch, as always. I’m not sure how much mileage they could get out of a third movie, or a proposed TV series, but at least as far as these two movies are concerned, I loved them and I’m glad that I own them even if I did get them on clearance. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Blue is the Warmest Color 2013

As of this moment, this is what I will refer to as the final “major” superhero or comic book film that I had yet to watch and review since starting this site. It’s one that I’ve put off for a variety of reasons. One of which is the multiple, extended, and explicit sex scenes over the course of this three hour movie. Now, I’m not generally one to shy away from sex and nudity, but when you’re the father of a 10 year old girl who has a very bad habit of staying up much later than she should, you tend to be very careful about what you watch in the living room. But once I got past that hurdle albeit in shorter chunks over the course of four evenings, I did enjoy the extended and raw tale of a young woman finding herself through school, romance, and sexuality. And while I myself am not a teenager, a woman, or gay, there was still plenty about Adele’s journey that I strongly related to throughout the course of this film.

Before getting too much into the plot of this film which is basically a slice of life movie, it seems appropriate to discuss the most infamous part of this film which are the extended and quite graphic sex scenes. What the filmmaker seems to get wrong about these moments is how much of a stark contrast they are to the rest of the film. There is a conscious effort to make the film seem real, raw, and not glamorized. The actors, and especially Adele rarely wear any make up and her hair is done up in a very natural way. There are plenty of moments that highlight the banality of life where she is just sleeping on a train, and plenty of scenes where they are eating simple meals. But when it comes to the sex, it becomes near pornographic. The focus isn’t placed on the normalcy of the sex, but rather on the eroticism and titillation. Even so, the movie has focused on Adele and her feelings, which can make the explicit sex an amplification of the strength of her feelings and as a viewer it creates a feeling of uncomfortable voyeurism. And despite being much more explicit than the average R-rated movie, there is still a sense of fakery in how the two are posed and the angles that are shown that fall somewhere in between how sex would actually happen in real life, and how sex is viewed in pornography.

But when all is said and done, the sex is really only a small portion of the movie and when that is removed, there is still a captivating story of a young woman and her journey into adulthood. The other misnomer about this film is that it’s often billed as a lesbian movie. But there’s not really enough information given in the film to decide for sure whether or not Adele is a lesbian or bisexual. Early on, we see her first high school relationship with a guy that ends with her breaking it off because things don’t feel right. And when you watch it with a lesbian frame of mind, Adele’s disappointment in the relationship is because she is a lesbian trying to fit into a heterosexual world. But it could just as easily be that she was trying to fit into a high school world to date a guy that wasn’t right for her. Later on in the film, she seeks comfort with a male coworker of hers. But the regret is about the infidelity in her relationship, not that she betrayed her lesbianism with a man. We also hear about how she has had several flings after her relationship with the blue haired Emma ends, but it’s never explicitly mentioned whether they were men, women, or a combination of both. It’s also never entirely clear how the passage of time works. Since there is rarely any make up, and it was filmed over the course of months, Adele always looks the same age even though there are occasional clues to the passage of time, like her eighteenth birthday party, and the fact that she is teaching which would require several years of college. But it was often difficult to really grasp that passage of time in terms of the characters and what they were going through. The story felt like it could have taken place over the course of two to three years, but it’s more likely that it took place closer to ten years. From the time Adele was 15 to 25.

The heart of the movie really is the character of Adele, and specifically her relationship with Emma, and their non-sexual interactions are where this movie really shines. Adele is able to give a heartfelt performance in every instance, whether it’s their early chance meetings, her timid courtship, the painful break up, and their uncomfortable reunion. Adele is able to convey a sense of uncertainty and longing incredibly well with her. Two of the best scenes in the film are two of the party scenes with Adele and Emma and Emma’s art friends. The first is a fantastic portrayal of a shaky relationship that’s obvious to the viewer, but not to the other characters within the scene. There’s just enough tension built around Adele keeping herself busy by playing the hostess while Emma soaks in all the attention from her friends. Adele accepts the only attention that she is given despite the fact that the only attention that she wants is from Emma. The same thing is repeated at the end of the film where Emma takes herself away from Adele’s presence and Adele is left awkwardly orbiting. She keeps her sights on Emma, but an opportunity to reenter her circle of influence never presents itself until she finally removes herself from the situation. It’s the small moments like those that I was especially able to connect with so strongly. That feeling of wanting something so badly, but being unable to do anything about it. It was those moments that drew me into Adele’s life much more so than any of the sex. This isn’t a film that I want to revisit any time soon, even though I do feel like there is more that I could get from a second viewing. It wasn’t until near the end when I paid attention to other uses of the color blue besides Emma’s hair, as Adele wears blue in both of her post-break up meetings with Emma, and when Emma leaves the coffee shop, she is surrounded by blue walls as she goes through the other room even though she no longer has the blue hair at that point. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

A great moment of anti-glamour.

Justice League Dark 2017

While this isn’t the first comic book movie to be released in 2017, this is the first 2017 comic book movie that I’ve gotten around to watching. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of DC’s animated movies and especially those directed by Jay Oliva. There’s just something about his action and style that gets to me every time. This is also the next in the continuing series of movies loosely connected continuity surrounding the expanding Justice League. And this had the right amount of action, humor, and drama to keep me hooked from beginning to end. Even though I was only vaguely familiar with many of the characters in this film, I connected with them and enjoyed this from beginning to end. Especially with its connection to the unfairly cancelled NBC series Constantine. My only real gripe with this film is that once again it pushed Batman front and center when he had no real reason to be included in this story other than the fact that he is DC’s cash cow and has to be included in every possible thing they do.

While this didn’t get as much press as the Killing Joke did, this is the second DC Animated film to get an R rating and it lives up to its name in the first five minutes. We get to see a handful of scenes where regular people get driven insane where they see regular people as demons and have to be stopped by Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman. The only difference is that in two of the cases, they had already killed before they are stopped, and in the last case the woman kills herself. And while Batman initially refutes the idea that magic is causing the madness, he ends up recruiting some new magic-knowledgeable heroes who are introduced in generally efficient ways despite most of them being underutilized in the film universe. And while it’s still heavily male-dominated, Zatanna plays a strong role that’s not pushed off to the side or treated as merely a love interest. Though the film doesn’t entirely do away from any sort of romance since she does have a history with Constantine and it does get brought up a few times.

What’s really great about this film is that it brings back Matt Ryan as the voice of Constantine. Not only that, but it also brings back another actor from the NBC series who played a secondary character Ritchie. Jeremy Davies played in two episodes and does a great job in his small role here. Though Felix Faust was also in the series and is played here by Enrico Colantoni instead. The rest of the cast does their roles well with Jason O’Mara returning yet again as the voice of Batman. The other lesser known characters of Deadman and Jason Blood slash Etrigan the Demon with a small appearance by Swamp Thing. Both Deadman and Etrigan do get their moments of backstory, even though they never explain why Etrigan generally only speaks in rhyming couplets. The rhyming is something that could be handled very badly, but the film includes just enough to get the gist of it, and plays with it a couple times towards the end so it doesn’t ever get annoying. Deadman also seemed like he could have been a difficult character to adapt, since only certain people could see him at any given time, and he can generally only interact with the real world when he’s possessing someone else’s body, but his rules were spelled out relatively early on and the film rarely, if ever, broke them.

Like with many of these animated films, it’s not just about the action and a villain to fight, there’s a bit of mystery and misdirection. There is plenty here with a couple twists thrown in for good measure, and they do work out in a way where you don’t see them coming, but they make sense in retrospect. In other words, they aren’t just twists for twist’s sake. There’s also plenty of humor mixed in with the action, some of Batman’s reactions were especially funny like his nonplussed reaction to the defeat of a poop demon. The addition of magic also created plenty of inventive action scenes unlike the typical martial arts style combat seen in most of the Batman movies previously. Here, we get to see plenty of demons, fireballs, and whatnot light up the screen. It’s movies like these that give me hope for the future of DC Animation which has been a little bit more hit and miss in the recent year or two. I just hope that I like the next couple just as much as I liked this one. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Bullet to the Head 2013

One of the few things I remember about when this movie came out was that it was one of two very similar movies, at least in theory, that came out within a few weeks of each other. The other one was the Last Stand starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, his 80’s era action rival. I didn’t see either one at the time and it wasn’t until later that I found out that this one was based on a French comic called Du Plomb dans la Tete by Matz and Colin Wilson. Like many comic adaptations, it veered away from some of the basics of the source material and feels like a typical buddy cop slash odd couple slash revenge movie where they get ahead by killing their way up the crime ladder. But what sold me on the movie were all the little details that went into it, and especially Stallone’s character. It’s hard to put a finger on it, but it was a whole lot of fun to watch from start to finish, even if it took me four sittings to finish, through no fault of the movie.

Stallone plays a hitman named Jimmy “Bobo” Bonomo, he’s a career criminal with little remorse for those he’s killed, but has his own sense of moral code. He’s a character that would fit right alongside Mel Gibson’s Porter in Payback. He has an odd and straightforward sense of humor, and plenty of skills that have kept him alive for this long. He ends up reluctantly working with a cop who’s after the guy who double crossed him, they end up working their way up the criminal chain of command until they get to the top. Or technically somewhere in the middle, but it more or less works out for them in the end, and the cop gets to see a different side of a criminal while getting himself in over his head in the process. Again, it’s a fairly standard plot with an odd couple vibe to it. Sung Kang plays officer Kwon who is more or less the straight man. He’s tech savvy with his smartphone while Stallone still has a flip phone, he tries to go by the book while Stallone just straight up kills the guys they’re after. And there’s this ever present animosity that never quite goes away even as they develop begrudging respect for each other where Kwon sees Stallone’s relationship with his daughter and Stallone doesn’t get ratted out by Kwon.

One great thing about this film is its score. It’s a nice little blues score that isn’t often used for this type of action movie and fits well with the New Orleans setting. Though there were occasional moments where you half expect someone to sic a corked alligator on a target a la the Simpsons Spin-off Spectacular. There was one moment in the beginning that was especially well crafted as the rhythm of a passing train seamlessly melded into the percussion for the score. It was just unfortunate that it was never repeated anywhere else in the film, at least not noticeably.

A film like this wouldn’t be much without its villains, and there’s a nice little trio going for them here. The real threat would be the merc played by Jason Momoa. He’s the young heavy with something to prove against Stallone’s old pro, especially as Stallone gets the better of him time and time again. He’s set up to be brutal, relentless, and in it for the joy of the kill rather than the allure of money which makes him a compelling enemy, although a little shallow. It did stretch the credulity a little when the final fight comes down to a hand to hand combat with vintage fireman axes, but there’s still plenty of good action to be had. The next is Christian Slater’s sleazy mid-level criminal who likes to live in excess and he plays that role quite well. And finally is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as the mastermind behind the operation, the money man with a pair of crutches and a smooth tongue. They all fit into their roles well enough, but they are all pretty standard crime boss roles that don’t really do anything special.

Where this movie shines is just in the chemistry between Stallone and everybody else. He is more or less a force of nature and everything gravitates towards him. He’s not exactly the comic relief, but he has some of the funniest lines in the movie. On top of that, he can still work the action scenes and make them believable despite starting to look his age. Another slight downside is the role of his daughter. While she is generally a strong character, she becomes more of a tool for the plot rather than an actual character with her own motivations as the film goes on. She’s used as a hostage for leverage against Stallone, and she becomes a love interest for officer Kwon because of course she does. She’s set up to be a strong, independent character, but nothing she does in the film is of any consequence after she gives Kwon a few stitches. But despite that, it was still a fun action movie that worked for me much more often than it didn’t. An easy film to compare this to would be 2 Guns which I recently re-watched, and while the chemistry between Washington and Wahlberg was much better than this movie, the overall plot and action was handled better in this one, which kind of makes it a toss up. This is still most likely a mediocre movie, but I really enjoyed watching it. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Bad Kids Go To Hell 2012

In yet another instance where I happen across a movie that I wasn’t aware of, this was brought to my attention due to a pseudo-sequel which came out earlier this year called Bad Kids of Crestview Academy which I will be watching at some point in the near future. But this was an odd concept of a horror comedy version of the Breakfast Club. It even has Judd Nelson in a small role as the principal or headmaster, whatever his title is. The movie was co-written by the original comic book author Matt Spradlin. Even though they added in an extra member to this horror Breakfast Club, it didn’t help to add much interest, and while it did get a few big laughs out of me, overall it wasn’t that interesting of a film. Either as a horror, mystery, or comedy.

Besides just being a horror comedy version of the Breakfast Club, there’s also an element of a mystery that unfolds over the course of their Saturday detention. They are serving detention in a brand new library that was built on the land owned by a local Native American. We eventually learn that four of the six kids in detention were involved in his murder which was made to look like a suicide. Their parents are also all powerful members of the community and contributors to Crestview Academy itself. Meanwhile, the main character Matt is a poor kid who’s on probation from juvie, has gotten himself expelled from the school, but for some reason decides that he should still serve his Saturday detention. They hold a seance that supposedly brings back the ghost of the dead guy who starts killing the kids.

As for the rest of the group, they’re an odd mix of characters. Here the jock is Craig who has a leg brace where he sneaks in his incriminating digital camera and a gun. The popular girl is Tricia who is on the cheerleading team but also has a drug habit reminiscent of Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions only without the crucifix necklace. The nerd is kind of split into two characters. There’s the girl nerd Megan who surprisingly got detention for doing a wild striptease in the middle of a classroom for some reason. You can tell she’s the nerd because of the glasses, tightly tied up hair, and asthma inhaler. The boy nerd is Tarek who doesn’t really get much to do and barely has any lines. And to round things out is the oddball/outcast Veronica with her goth makeup and an all around bad girl persona to go along with it. Matt is also a bit of a bad boy with his background in juvie, but as we see via the flashbacks, he seemingly was just constantly in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether he was wiping paint off his pants during a striptease where it looked like he was openly masturbating, or when he tackled a kid in a runaway wheelchair. The film even ends with everybody dead and him right there in the hot seat to take the blame.

As far as the deaths are concerned, they are a mix of being so over the top ridiculous that they are almost funny, and rather mundane like Megan coughing up blood from an untreated asthma attack. The most insane ones were Craig falling down the stairs and landing with one of his crutches plunged through his chest and his heart stuck right on the tip. The other was the randomness of a tangled air hose that whipped a giant statue around so the axe chops off a guy’s head. There are elements of scares here and there throughout the film, but it rarely lasts long before the air is taken out of it, like a ghostly, screaming spirit that turns out to be a busted Abraham Lincoln hologram. The twist at the end also felt like too much too late as we find out that the teacher and Veronica were both in on all the deaths so they could turn it into a best selling book. But then it was actually also the janitor who’s the son of the dead Native American. There’s also an odd bit with CGI bugs that keep popping up everywhere throughout the movie but are never really explained.

The film is also told through various flashbacks, besides the overdone and unnecessary in medias res where we start out by seeing everybody dead besides Matt before immediately cutting to an “8 hours earlier”. The flashbacks work well enough to help flesh out the characters and their backstories, though by the time the film had ended, it felt like there was still quite a bit of background missing. Hardly anything is known about Matt other than the fact that he’s a seemingly good guy with horrible bad luck. The rest of the characters don’t really stand out beyond their character stereotypes. Judd Nelson’s headmaster is just a one-note joke that stays way past its welcome, and they toss in some random shock humor that felt more like it was just being offensive for offensiveness sake, like constantly referring to the kid in a wheelchair as a “retard” despite Matt’s frequent corrections. The comedy did hit for me here and there, but mainly due to its sheer randomness, like a bit of slapstick, or the look on the wheelchair kid’s face as he’s hurtling down the lunchroom. But the horror wasn’t scary, the mystery wasn’t very interesting or solvable, and I didn’t find the comedy all that funny. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom 2016

I’ve never been a huge HP Lovecraft fan, essentially the only things I know about his writing are that it involves a lot of madness and tentacle creatures and gave some inspiration to the first Hellboy movie and In the Mouth of Madness. It seemed quite unusual that these kinds of stories would translate to a comic book made for kids and that comic would then be turned into an animated movie complete with the voice of Hellboy in a small role even. When I initially saw the box art for the film several months ago, I dismissed it as one of those cheap knock-off movies that tend to mimic a popular movie from a few years earlier like Karate Panda or Dragon Flight School. And to a certain extent, that’s exactly what this is only there’s not really any movie that it’s trying to cash in on, it’s just a lower budget animated film that managed to get a few medium profile actors to lend their voices. It wasn’t a horrible experience by any means, but there also wasn’t much enjoyment to be had outside of a couple brief laughs.

One surprising thing about this film is the level of macabre detail there is on several of the characters. The film starts out by taking us to a mental institution, Howard himself has dark circles under his eyes, his mother has noticeable lines under her eyes, even Howard’s father has the pupils of his eyes slightly different sizes. When Howard gets to the frozen kingdom, the creatures there have a decent mix of Lovecraftian horror while still being family friendly. The main creature which some characters seem to imply is some type of avatar of Cthulhu itself, but Howard simply refers to as “Spot” after mishearing his name at one point as “Su-sussudio” is a very Cthulhu-esque creature with several tentacles coming out of its mouth, a head that feels like a squid, leathery wings, and one hand that’s simply a large tentacle. Spot is an odd sort of intelligent, he generally speaks in short, simple sentences but he also comes up with several complex words that belie his lack of intelligence.

The structure of the film is basically the stranger in a strange land typical of the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. While he is warned by his institutionalized father to destroy the Necronomicon, he still reads from his father’s diary which brings him to this frozen land of madness. He gains his companion Spot, finds a group of helpful locals, and gets sent on a quest to retrieve another of his father’s journals by the local queen and her pack of weird looking minions. Much, if not all of it are inspired by the writings of HP Lovecraft, but it’s all given this sheen of kid-friendlyness to it where nothing really feels very scary. Even when it comes to the multi-eyed Shoggoth voiced by Ron Perlman. He is also tasked by the denizens of this frozen kingdom to be the one to help lift this curse of eternal winter. And by the end of the film, it appears that he has made progress even though we don’t get to see the full effects of the end of winter, it’s merely a comment by one of the characters that it’s starting to feel warmer.

As with many of these fantasy world stories, it is very episodic. But unlike most other fantasy world stories, there isn’t much growth for Howard as a character. This doesn’t feel much like a coming of age where he learns to face his fears or grow up in some way. He begins the journey as a character that already seems prepared to face whatever is coming his way. His only initial flaw seems to be his fear towards his first encounter with Spot, but he very quickly gets over that fear to help save the creature and become friends. Every other challenge he faces with only a small amount of fear, but mostly bravery. Which is ok in some regards, but it’s disappointing because that means he doesn’t get the chance to grow as a character. He’s supposedly also learning more about his father, but that also amounts to mostly lip service and name dropping. Also, every challenge he faces is solved through the brute force of his companion Spot. All in all, the movie wasn’t incredibly annoying, but it wasn’t very deep either. There may have been a bit more for someone who is a fan of HP Lovecraft’s writings, but from someone who only knows vague hints of tentacles and madness it fell rather flat and confusing. It’s like a cash grab for a property that isn’t really set up to make a lot of cash through name alone. Maybe it’s a good adaptation, but all I can tell is that it’s just a basic kids movie about someone getting thrown into a random fantasy realm and it does not hold up to any of the classics in that niche. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Red Sonja: Queen of Plagues 2016

There’s a few reasons why I haven’t covered any motion comics on this site before now. The biggest reason is that every motion comic that I’ve looked into is presented more like a TV season, with each issue of the comic that it’s adapting is its own episode and there tends to be a half dozen to a dozen episodes. Queen of Plagues is presented as a single movie that runs just over an hour, but the animation style is still much more like the typical motion comic style where the comic book art is translated almost exactly to screen with only minor changes to remove text boxes and animation based on moving and stretching the original art elements. While the voice work and animation – specifically the lip synch – fall in line with my limited experience with motion comics, it is much better than some of the lower budget ones that I’ve heard about with only a single voice actor and no lip synch animation at all. The film itself was a nice story even though it took a little while to get going.

Compared to traditional animation, the limited style of a motion comic does take a little while to get used to, but at the same time, this is literally one of the only ways to truly bring a comic book to life. The animation starts out with the original artwork, reframes it to fit the screen, and breaks it apart into pieces that can move. There are pros and cons to this style of animation, the biggest con is that there are limitations based on what artwork there was to begin with. Scenes with large amounts of dialogue and few panels can feel static, especially if it’s supposed to be an action scene. This particular movie doesn’t have that problem often, there are only a couple instances where the dialogue outpaced the artwork which resulted in the two characters essentially bouncing off of each other in a repetitive cycle. The lip sync and facial animation are also quite simplified, with only minor changes typically created by stretching and squishing facial features. Other movement is also quite flat, without any rotation, merely shifting or rotating the flat artwork. It’s passable, but still a far cry from even lower budget animation. There’s also panels that have less detail but are still recreated exactly, without any additional detail. Again, it works well to see the comic quite literally come to life, but it takes a little getting used to.

The actual plot of the film involves a nation beset by a plague and an invasion as well as flashbacks to a couple different moments in Sonja’s life; her rescue from gladiatorial slavery by the king of this nation, and her childhood where we see the origin of the she-devil. It initially seems like one of those stories where it’s the ragtag army of women, children, and the king against the insurmountable odds of an army of merpeople. But there are some twists and turns especially in the latter half of the story, and it weaves quite well with Sonja’s flashbacks to both her time in slavery where she fought side by side with the woman who is now the general of the opposing army and also fraught with the ghosts of her past. Sonja as a character has a great mix of humor and badassery, but there are also a couple secondary characters who actually go on an impressive character arc. Ayla and Nias start the movie as unsure rabbit hunters unable to fire upon a group of marauders and end the film as capable warriors in their own right and it never feels unbelievable based on what happens throughout the movie.

As far as the voice acting is concerned, there aren’t any major players like there tends to be in many DC Animated features, but Misty Lee takes the lead as Red Sonja and is a veteran voice actor in her own right. She pretty much nails the character in both her fierce warrior moments as well as some of the more vulnerable scenes. Shannon Kingston also does well as the twins with the character arc, she plays them both similarly but with notable differences. The rest of the cast is quite passable, but nobody else really stands out one way or another. When the twists towards the end started happening, they were surprising, but they also ultimately made sense within the entire narrative and tied together with the flashbacks quite nicely as well.

When I started this movie, my only point of reference for Red Sonja was the 80’s movie with Brigitte Nielson and this was a nice step up from that movie. It’s nice that it includes so many strong female characters without ever sexualizing them. Yes, Red Sonja does have a few moments in a chain mail bikini, but the focus is always on her as a whole rather than any of her assets. The villains in the movie are also given mostly sympathetic motivations for their actions as they are doing what they feel is right at the time rather than just acting evil for evil’s sake with only a couple exceptions, though they both play generally minor roles in the grand scheme of the story. I wasn’t quite sure how I would respond to this film before watching it, but aside from the understandably limited animation, once the story started rolling, I quite enjoyed it and by the end I was really taken by the story and invested in the characters. I hope this was a big enough success for Shout Factory to continue making these motion comic movies, or even for longer series, but time will tell. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.