Officer Downe 2016

Even though this is seemingly a regular occurrence for me, I’m still surprised when I find new, low budget superhero or comic book movies that had slipped under my radar in the previous few years. This one came out late last year, produced by one of the directors of the Crank movies and directed by a member of Slipknot and was recently made available on Netflix streaming. It’s based on a short lived and lesser known comic from Image comics and the film itself is a colorful, kinetic, ultraviolent, grindhouse-esque movie with a lot more tongue-in-cheek humor to it. The set up is a lot of wacky and bloody fun that doesn’t entirely make sense, but takes you along for the ride until things get a little too self-serious towards the end as the joke starts losing its effectiveness. But I still had a blast with it.

Officer Downe kicks things off by telling you exactly what it is, after a brief monologue from the titular character, it cuts right to an oral sex scene between Downe and a naked woman, complete with an orgasm counter in the bottom right corner of the screen that dings its way up to 14, then when it cuts to the next scene it comes with the title card “Motherfucking L.A.”. Irreverent nods like this happen throughout the film including one character who is a black ninja who wears a flowery ninja outfit more fitting of a couch in your grandmother’s living room. He also cuts back and forth between speaking subtitled Japanese and speaking English as if he were badly dubbed, kicking the first switch over with the line “Fuck these subtitles”.

Kim Coates plays Officer Downe who is basically a personality-less killing machine who gets revived by a group of physically disabled telekinetics. He looks just like how the character looks in the comics with the oversized, reflective sunglasses and overly large policeman’s hat with an oddly proportioned upside down star. He’s one of those action heroes who talks with his gun when he’s not reciting the Miranda rights, or at least an action movie quippy variation on them. In three out of four of the action set pieces in this film, he winds up dead to be revived at a later time. The action itself is on the ultra-violent side, with plenty of heads exploding from gunshot wounds, hands getting cut off, etc. And along with the rest of the movie, the violence also veers towards being so violent that it’s absurdly funny like when Downe pulls off the leg of one of the nuns and uses it to beat the rest of the criminals surrounding him.

The violence overall is offset by the extremely saturated and vibrant color palette. There are plenty of impressively composed shots that absolutely feel like they were pulled right off the pages of a comic book with an extra hefty does of lens flares. There were also moments of other visual flairs like some flashes of fast motion as Downe recuperates from one of his resurrections and one of the villainous nuns has the odd ability to speak with reverb to make herself more impressive.

The other main character is a rookie officer who is brought into the inner circle of people who know the truth about Officer Downe. He’s part of a team whose entire job is basically just to follow Downe around, let him kill everyone until he eventually dies, and then bring his body back to be resurrected, and not interfere or else in his mindset he might turn on one of them as if they were a criminal. He’s reminiscent of the Agent Meyers character in Hellboy only he has a little bit more life in him. He doesn’t exactly follow orders and ends up helping Downe. Not only that, but when things get rough in the third act, he’s the one who rouses them all in a last ditch effort to save a captured Downe in one of the less effective moments in the movie.

The villains themselves are an odd mix as well. There is a trio of animal-headed villains called Fortune 500, though due to the budgetary limitations of this movie it was unclear if they were villains wearing animal masks, or if their heads were supposed to actually be those animals. They also hire the dubbed ninja who has his own posse of ninja minions, but not only that, but for some reason he has the ability to teleport. There’s also those weird nuns with the overly ornate habits and several of them have a giant cross painted on their faces. What’s also interesting is that the second in command nun was played by Allison Lohman who was an up and coming actress in the early 2000’s, but has seemingly been relegated to supporting roles in lower budget fare like this film.

Overall, this movie was stupid fun along the lines of recent tongue-in-cheek hits like Manborg or Kung Fury. The first half of this film is so over the top it’s ridiculously entertaining, though the joke does start to fall flat towards the latter half of the film as things get more focused on the rookie saving Downe. It almost could have been helped by a shorter run time even though it clocks in at a brisk hour and a half. Still, it’s colorful, fun, and ultra-violent. Surprisingly, looking at some of the other responses to this film, most people either aren’t in on the joke, or it quite possibly wasn’t what they were expecting, but I had a whole lot of fun with it and considering it’s currently on Netflix instant, it’s worth an hour and a half of your time. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets 2017

Ever since the first few trailers came out for this film I had certain expectations for how this film would turn out. The visuals immediately struck me as being absolutely gorgeous and showed me a world that I had never seen before filled with aliens that look unique but still familiar. My biggest concern from the very beginning were the two leads: Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne. DeHaan has had mixed success and Delevingne was by far the worst part of Suicide Squad and after watching the film my fears were confirmed. Valerian and his partner Laureline are the weakest spots in this fascinating and wonderful, fully realized universe. I just wish there was a better story and characters that I could explore this world without those two in it. And as is always the case in all movies, but especially recent movies I will be discussing the movie in full, including potential spoilers so here is your warning.

Before getting into the plot, something has to be said about the world of Valerian. The opening sequence is a quick shorthand into the essence of the real main character and that isn’t Dane DeHaan’s Valerian, but the city slash space station itself, Alpha. It’s essentially an intergalactic ideal of what the United States is supposed to be as it starts as a space station that accepts docked extensions from other countries and keeps expanding until it’s essentially a city planet that goes off into its own orbit and consists of thousands of alien species that live and cooperate together in peace. And while there is war and mystery in this universe, the space station itself is generally regarded as a Star Trek-esque utopia.

Unfortunately, with a thousand races, it’s difficult to get a real grasp on any single race other than a visually remarkable yet one-dimensional race. The most fully realized are the elegant and beautiful Pearls. They have an aptly pearlescent skin, somewhat androgynous quality, and a wise native quality that’s somewhat reminiscent to Avatar’s Na’vi only with the ability to adapt to the technologically advanced future. The only other real alien races with interesting qualities come down to specific characters where it’s difficult to determine whether the characteristics of the character are due to the alien race, or are specific to just that character. Like the trio of winged, ducklike aliens who feel like three parts of the same whole. They are a stereotypical informant character that seemingly knows anything and everything and are only interested in how much money that information can get them. The other interesting alien is Bubble, a shapeshifting alien sex worker whose voice and most common form is played by Rihanna. She has a bit of personality and back story, but she felt way too much like a filler character that (spoiler alert) was killed off without reason, without cause, and without remorse.

From the original comic series Valerian and Laureline.

The heart of this movie should be the two main characters, Valerian and Laureline. Valerian is played as a cocky, highly capable military special agent who’s supposedly in love with his partner Laureline. The problem is that his arrogance reduces the threat of any potential danger that he is in. Not only that, but it also puts the audience on Laureline’s side when he declares his love for her and yet the only way that he shows his love for her is that same declaration. Meanwhile, Laureline still offers blind devotion and dedication to him while also justifying her refusal of his advances. There’s supposed to be a playful back and forth between the two characters, but the two play most of it so flat that it comes across as more rote than playful.

But where this movie really shines is through the visuals. Alpha as this hodgepodge space station really looks like a living, breathing world filled with a myriad of visually different areas. From the underwater district to the red light district, there’s always some fascinating and beautiful detail somewhere on screen. And while clumsily named, the Big Market is a fascinating concept brought to life as this bizarre, multi-dimensional zone that connects two disparate areas taking up the exact same space. It’s also the most interesting action sequence as Valerian’s hand becomes trapped in the other dimension while the rest of his body is still on the regular one. Though it also added to the piecemeal flow of the overarching plot of the film as only the items they are retrieving make a continued impact on the film while the slighted mob boss disappears from the rest of the film.

There’s also this overarching mystery and wide reaching conspiracy that’s spread throughout the film, starting with the opening sequence/dream involving the Pearl alien race who have been wiped off the face of existence to cover up a global genocide. The mystery has some interesting points to it, but the pacing and revelations don’t add much to the story. Not only that, but the final reveal becomes a series of odd choices where some should work in theory, but they just don’t on screen. The Pearls aren’t after vengeance, and just want some semblance of their world back. But the commander of the station just also happens to be the one behind the kill order and is going to great lengths to cover it up complete with his own set of loyal, robotic soldiers who turn on the rest of the command staff once the reveal happens. And while most of the good guys are pinned down, Valerian is able to take them out with relative ease, and once the dust clears there appears to have been very few, if any, real casualties. Which is a shame, because on the surface this film has a lot going for it and it absolutely is a wonder to look at. But instead of becoming a highly sought after juggernaut film that Avatar was despite also having a severely flawed story, this seems headed towards being a failure along the lines of John Carter or Battleship. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle 2017

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything down here on this site, but I still have a lot of comic book and superhero films to cover so I haven’t fully gone away. This weekend I was able to make it to the theater to see the latest comic book movie to hit the screen with Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle. I was a big fan of the first film and while I thought that they brought a lot of the same attitude and action of the original, once I left the theater, much of the character development and overall plot just didn’t hold up to deeper thought once I left. It’s still fun, but not quite as impressive as the first entry in the series.

Looking back on the first Kingsman, it turned out to be a combination of James Bond and Deadpool. It took the spy genre and threw in some R-rated violence, swearing, and a lot of irreverence but kept all the great action and adventure and it was hella entertaining. Often when discussing the first movie, the stand out scene was the violent church action scene. And in this movie, Vaughn seemed to have taken that scene, split it up and gave us a half dozen mini-church scenes in the sequel. Unfortunately, while the first film focused much more specifically on Eggsy’s training and character arc, the sequel focuses much more on bringing in new characters while the current characters generally remain stagnant throughout the film.

This time around we’re introduced to essentially the American version of Kingsman called Statesman. Instead of having a tailor as their front, they are inspired by a liquor company, a highly successful liquor company at that, as they make it a point to mention that their assets are considerably larger than Kingsman’s. And while the members of Kingsman are stereotypically posh, upper class British, members of Statesmen are stereotypical cowboys along with all the highly American accouterments. Their weapons are things like shotguns, whips, lassos, and baseball bat-themed gadgets. The characters are fun in small doses, but often felt like a one-note joke that stretched on for way too long.

Overall, Kingsman was quite fun to watch. The action scenes and jokes were well done and entertaining. The characters work well with each other, though Channing Tatum’s character had surprisingly little screen time based on how he was presented in the advertising. With most spy movies there are elements of double agents and misdirections and they are present and fairly well done here in the sequel. The absurdities were also ramped up from the original film, while there isn’t anything quite comparable to the fireworks scene from the first movie, the villain’s plan is just as absurd, if not moreso, and there is a cameo that is hilarious as it becomes not just a cameo but a running joke that gets funnier and more out there each time it’s brought up.

The most disappointing thing about this film is the lack of depth. It’s incredible fun on the surface level but doesn’t hold up to a more critical eye. While Eggsy has a surface level arc regarding his relationship with the princess that was essentially just a one-off joke at the end of the first movie, he really just remains the same from start to finish. The same goes for every other character in the movie with the slight exception of Harry, whose “surprise” return was highly advertised, but his arc really only exists because his memory loss regresses his character and his arc returns him back to his original state. The villain’s plan was also discouraging as something quite unbelievable both in terms of how successful it would be as well as the convenient timing of all the stages throughout the world.

Besides the lack of depth, there’s also a significant lack of female representation. In the previous movie one of the fellow recruits was female and she was just as capable as Eggsy though she was basically kicked out of that movie’s climax. And in this movie she gets killed off early on without any replacement character. There was also a great female henchwoman in the first movie without any replacement in this film aside from a shallow and unfaithful girlfriend to a henchman. The main villain in this movie is Julianne Moore, but she is more of a character with the plan and in a movie filled with over the top action, there’s nothing for any women to do. They even introduce the Statesman version of Merlin with Halle Berry playing the Statesman tech who wants to become a field agent. But at least throughout this movie she never gets her chance to do anything without being behind a computer.

There are plenty of mistakes that the Golden Circle makes in terms of movie sequels, but there are still a lot of things that it gets right. While it doesn’t really delve any deeper into any of the characters, it captures the same tone and feeling of the first film and fills it with plenty of fun action, crude humor, and colorful characters that play well off of each other. If you’re looking for a James Bond satire, this isn’t quite what you’re looking for, but in terms of a kick-ass spy movie that’s a great, light watch that will make you laugh, this is right up your 50’s themed bowling alley. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Atomic Blonde 2017

Still trying to catch up on some of last year’s superhero and comic book movie offerings I managed to get around to one that I didn’t know much about but I had heard good things. Even when I checked it out from the library, the librarian recommended it as a good movie. I’m a fan of Charlize Theron in general as well as action movies with female leads as there are so few of them, and this movie delivered pretty much everything that I could have expected. Especially considering that the director’s previous effort was John Wick which I have heard nothing but good things about. And in case you didn’t know, this film was based on the graphic novel The Coldest City. The film has a lot of rawness, sex, great action scenes, bright colors, and a decent 80’s vibe but while it was a fun watch, there was just something missing so that it didn’t quite become an absolute favorite of mine immediately.

One of the more refreshing things about this film is how we’re introduced to Theron’s character. She’s completely naked, coming out of an ice bath, but she’s also covered head to toe in cuts and bruises as the aftermath of the mission that we’re about to see. Bookends like these can be hit or miss, but in this case, it works well to introduce us to a character that’s not perfect, but not ashamed of that imperfection. It’s not glorifying her body or her injuries, it’s just showing us this character where she is in her life at that moment.

It’s reflected well in the climactic showpiece action scene that’s presented in a way that looks like there are no cuts. This is a complete contrast to what has almost become the standard in superhero action scenes with quick cuts that often make it difficult to tell exactly what’s going on, but are likely easier to choreograph with the help of stunt doubles. In this scene, the action is not only easy to follow, there’s also this sense of complete and utter exhaustion that comes when someone without superhuman endurance has to cope with a deadly situation for an extended period of time. And this film captures that feeling excellently and without losing any sense of urgency or pacing.

Where the film falls down a little is the sense of the double slash triple agent. While all the actors play their parts well to where you can never be sure where anyone’s allegiances really lie, from McAvoy to Boutella to Theron herself, there’s always a question of who is working for whom. But in the end, it doesn’t really make any difference, Theron is working for Britain in Germany against the Russians and with the Americans and the French are thrown in for good measure, but none of the espionage double crosses have any weight to them. Boutella is just a sexy distraction, and while McAvoy does the best job at making you question whether he’s working with Theron or against her, the rest is all background noise that makes little difference.

All in all, the specifics of the politics surrounding the plot make little difference as it’s still a lot of fun to watch unfold and go from action setpiece to action setpiece. And it’s all set to bright neon colors and a fantastic 80’s soundtrack, aside from when it rolls out the song that everyone uses any time a movie has an excuse to cross 80’s and German with 99 Red Balloons. The look of the film is really one of the best elements. Nearly every shot is bathed in a bright, saturated color that helps give it a comic book and otherworldly feel while still making it tied to the 80’s.

In many cases, having a wraparound where one of the characters is telling the story isn’t the best method of storytelling, but it works well in this case. It adds an element of humor, and even though it removes a small element of suspense as you know fully well that Theron comes out of the situation injured but alive, it actually adds to the continuity as the action scenes create the wounds that we’ve already seen. It also allows for some comic relief and is one place where the mystery element works as what we see happen and what she relays back in the interview don’t always match up perfectly. Ultimately, there’s nothing truly groundbreaking about this film, but it’s a fun action movie that looks fantastic and has plenty of sex and violence without feeling exploitative. I wouldn’t consider it one of the best comic book films of last year, but it was a very entertaining watch and I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to give it a shot while it was still in theaters. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

I Kill Giants 2017

It’s been a long while since I’ve sat down and written a movie review. This past year I’ve tried and gotten through the opening paragraph twice, but haven’t been able to finish one out just yet. But I’m trying to revitalize my interest in this site. Or let me rephrase that, my interest has not gone away for this site, just the ability to give it the time that I want to. But things are starting to change and as I’ve started to prepare for the new year, I’ve been getting a jump start by trying to catch up on what I’ve missed. The first one that I decided to grab was something that I always enjoy doing for this site, a lesser known comic book movie that’s not really about superheroes at all. This is a family fantasy drama adapted from the Image comic by Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura released in 2008 about a young girl who appropriately kills giants. It comes close to being a cliched version of the outcast/weird girl living in her own fantasy world to escape reality, but there’s enough different about this to make it stand out.

One of the great things about this movie is the slow reveal. We get little bits and pieces of the story that build on each other and while much of it can be gleaned on a first time viewing, the slow reveal works well. We don’t even learn the main character Barbara’s name for quite a while. We get to see the struggle of Barbara’s family, her older sister has taken on the role of caregiver to the three kids, but we don’t know why. Even as we begin to realize that something is wrong, Barbara’s mother is sick but Barbara has been blocking it out so strongly that it even mutes the word “mother” when spoken by another character. It’s not until Barbara begins to accept what is going on that we are able to see more of the reality.

But what’s more interesting about this film is the fantasy elements. Barbara is a D&D nerd who loves fantasy stories. She almost constantly wears bunny ear headbands, doesn’t have any friends at school but doesn’t care. She fully embraces her quirkiness as she goes around to various safe spaces where she has created charms, wards, traps, and other things to protect the town from giants and titans. She even carries her weapon of choice in a purse that she has emblazoned with her weapon’s name and symbol. The giants themselves are mentioned, but rarely seen. Throughout the movie Barbara spends most of the time tracking down a single forest giant before the climactic battle with a titan. The forest giant is typically back in shadows or within fog, it isn’t until we see the titan that we get to see a full blown look at the creature and it does look pretty great.

But aside from the fantasy realm, there’s also the real world. Sophia moves in as the new girl and quickly befriends Barbara despite her quirks. There’s also a trio of bullies though the way the bullying is treated is interesting. In the beginning of the movie, Barbara is generally unaffected by the bullying and stands up to them. Not only that, but the main bully suffers legitimate consequences by getting suspended. There’s also a school psychiatrist played by Zoe Saldana, and similar to the earlier slow burn we don’t know exactly why Barbara is being seen by the psych except for the fact that she’s odd and possibly troubled. But as the sessions reveal more about her troubled life, she ends up lashing out. First at Saldana, then at her friend Sophia. We also get to see her moments of withdrawal at home despite her older sister’s attempts at reaching out.

The film has a good mix of alternating between the fantasy and reality elements. There’s always only a slight hint that Barbara’s giant fantasies might be real, especially when it comes to the climax and we hear a radio broadcast that the extreme weather was localized and unheard of in that area when earlier Barbara explains that many natural disasters were actually caused by giants. There’s also a change in Barbara’s appearance and demeanor depending on how fully immersed in her fantasies she is at the time. Mostly realized by her bunny ear headband which is sometimes droopy and sometimes perky, and eventually goes away entirely. We also find out more connections between her sick mother who inspired her giant killing weapon and even the giant killing theme overall.

Another really great thing about this movie that isn’t put front and center is that practically the entire main cast is women. Not only is Barbara and her friend Sophia girls, the bully and her henchmen are girls, the psychiatrist is a woman. In fact, there are really only three significant roles played by men in this movie: the principal, the psych’s husband, and Barbara’s brother and they only get one or two lines a piece. Not only that, but none of the characters feel like they all had to have been women. Most of the characters could have been replaced by a man and it wouldn’t have changed the story whatsoever. It’s incredibly refreshing and all the characters are fully realized. Even the older sister Karen gets a few great little character moments that give her depth.

I Kill Giants is a great little fantasy that gets the balance right between the fantasy and drama. It’s all about Barbara’s journey of acceptance towards her mother’s sickness and eventual death which she does through her fantasy battles against the giants of fear. It mostly foregoes the coming of age story in favor of the struggle of acceptance. The performances are great, the visuals are also well done, and it all combines for an enjoyable film. I’ve heard that there are some extreme similarities to a recent film When a Monster Calls which is unfortunate, though this source material predates the other and there’s plenty of room for more of these types of stories. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom 2017

Last year I decided to take a chance on the first Howard Lovecraft movie. At the time, I thought it was just a low budget knock off film that somehow was trying to trade in on the HP Lovecraft lore and was also based on an indie comic. This year I did a little bit more digging and discovered Arcana Studio spun off of Arcana Comics. They do seem to be a low budget animation studio, but the majority of their films are adaptations of their comics which I think is a great concept. I wasn’t a huge fan of the first Howard Lovecraft film, it seemed like a fascinating world, but there wasn’t much of a character arc and the tone seemed like a weird childish goth with mediocre voice actors except a couple token cameos. The sequel works much better with an overall darker tone with less kid-centric humor, bigger roles for the notable voice actors, and more of a character arc for Howard himself. I actually quite enjoyed this one and am curious to see where things end up in the third movie coming out in a couple weeks.

One great thing about this movie is the darker tone which comes across right out of the gate with a creepy dream sequence, and Howard’s mother acting obviously oddly like something is wrong. There’s also many fewer sequences of the more kid-friendly aspects of the first movie like the cutesy minions and the squid family. They’re still there, but their presence is much more truncated. We also get a much more interesting villain voiced by Jeffrey Combs. Even though his actual plan and actions are rather weak, Combs sells his performance to make King Abdul an interesting character. There’s also another new villain that pops in a couple times but it’s difficult to really get a handle as he just speaks to King Abdul a couple times then disappears without really doing anything. But besides that, this also brings much more magic into the mix with Mark Hamill’s character Dr. Henry Armitage who becomes the Obi-Wan to Howard’s Luke. Despite voicing plenty of villains that makes you question his motives, Dr. Armitage is a pretty great character.

One disappointment with the previous film was the lack of character development for Howard himself. In many of these types of stories, it’s all about the growth of the main character, yet he previously let everyone else do the majority of the work for him and he was already pretty confident to begin with. Here, Howard gets a lot more growth to him. Besides just learning magic, he also does a lot more on his own after Armitage goes away and he’s travelling with his father and the astral projection of Spot who also isn’t able to be the muscle this time around. Howard solves puzzles, uses his magic to defeat Ron Perlman-voiced tentacle heads who only say one word. He also has the overarching goal of saving his mother and protecting the three journals. There’s even a nice moment where he dives after the newly created Necronomicon to prevent Dr. Armitage from getting it even though there had been no signs of wrongdoing on his part before or after. It still adds a nice touch of distrust without being overt as Howard was warned to keep the journals from everyone, including and especially his father.

From the original comic

The art design and animation is similar to the previous movie. It’s quite obviously lower budget with relatively simple movements, but the designs of the creatures and some of the backgrounds look pretty good. The characters, especially the Lovecraft family have great little goth features like the bags under the eyes and Howard’s father Winfield has one iris smaller than the other. The music wasn’t anything special, unnoticeable as being especially bad or good. The humor overall also worked well as it was mostly relegated to the crazed rantings of Winfield and only occasionally devolved into childlike humor like having two of the giant Shuggoth creatures slamming headlong into each other.

One of the most disappointing things about this film is potentially one of the best things about it. It is quite obviously steeped in the mythology of the writings of HP Lovecraft. The unfortunate thing is that if you’re someone who is unfamiliar with those writings, there is a lot of unnatural sounding words that don’t necessarily make any sense. And if  you are a fan, it’s questionable how faithfully this children’s animation lives up to the author’s original intent. There is a lot more talk about the creeping madness, and Cthulu as the destroyer of worlds this time around. This isn’t quite the level of growing up that happens in the later Harry Potter books and movies, but this is still a good step up from the first film. It’s a little unfortunate that it is beneficial to have watched the first movie, but there’s enough going on that’s standalone that it’s not entirely required. I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to and I’m looking forward to checking out the third film in the series. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Bad Kids of Crestview Academy 2017

This was one of the last movies that I tried to watch before I went on my hiatus and I even tried a couple times. And while it’s not a great movie, it wasn’t exactly the quality of the film that kept me from finishing it, it was just other things going on at the time. I’ve seen the previous movie and while it had a few good moments, I wasn’t a fan of that one either so I didn’t have very high hopes. This is a horror/comedy/mystery/etc that really feels like a retread of the first movie with only a few slight differences here and there. It’s another group of kids in a weekend detention that get massacred over the course of the movie with a little extra mystery going on in the background. Some of the comedy hit me a bit better this time around, but I just felt like this was another mediocre go around that didn’t learn anything from the first movie and as it hints at a third movie, I just hope that it goes in a different direction if it gets made.

Like the first movie, this has a group of rich kids stuck in Saturday detention, kind of like a horror comedy version of the Breakfast club only with a different group of cliques this time around. There’s the poor bad girl, there’s the preppy senator’s son, the clueless Asian girl with the colored streak in her hair and a thing for cats, and the slutty rich bad girl. Also like the first movie it begins in medias res so we know that the main character makes it through till the end, we just don’t know exactly how she got there. There’s also multiple flashbacks to the inciting incident where nearly everyone got their detentions in the first place and the main character Siouxsie’s sister was killed. Although everyone except for Siouxsie believes that she had committed suicide by jumping off the top of the building. The visual style of the movie is relatively plain even though they try to juice it up by transitioning with comic book style art. The art itself looks great, but it doesn’t always make sense as to why it pops in other than to make an otherwise visually uninteresting movie more interesting.

The humor in this movie is relatively hit or miss. While humor is always subjective, the moments with Sean Astin’s Headmaster Nash were some of the best as he plays the uptight and slightly clueless principal very well. He has some great exasperated moments as he admonished Siouxsie with unintentional sexual innuendos as well as later in the movie as he clears out the bathrooms during a party where teens are smoking weed and having oral sex. The rest of the humor didn’t land quite as well with some of the absurdities of the deaths and plenty of juvenile sex jokes. There were a few moments of nudity to help accentuate the sex comedy element of the movie, but they were few, far between, and not really very exciting.

Not quite foreshadowing, but the arrows point to the killer.

There is a problem with the overall mystery of the movie as it doesn’t really offer any sort of clues as to what’s really going on. We see the deaths and there is the general suspicion cast on Siouxsie herself as we see her taze and tie up the Dean while the rest of the kids have an air of generic suspicion as people start dying since they are the only potential suspects aside from the enigmatic janitor who also played a mysterious but also somewhat neutral role in the first movie. Max Rainwater acts like a developmentally challenged person, but it’s all an act. He also has a thing with the cockroaches who are revealed in this movie to be actual robotic spy bugs placed by the senator. The mystery is really just overly convoluted, the characters have no really distinct motivations and the whole thing barely makes any sense. It was all the senator’s son so he could show his mother that he could clean up after himself since he was the one who actually killed Siouxsie’s sister and everyone in detention was a potential witness. Except that they really weren’t.

Crestview Academy’s biggest problem was that it had a hard time picking a lane. It’s a big mashup of several different genres, but they just don’t mesh together in a meaningful way. The mystery was too weak to hold the movie together on its own, the horror elements had decent moments of gore but very little actual impact, and it could have all been held together by the humor but that was too few and far between and when it was there it rarely landed. Sammi Hanratty as Siouxsie was another high point as she did have a great handle as the slightly suspicious bad kid who was really just trying to get to the truth of the matter. She was the most well developed character and one you could get behind and root for. The rest of the characters were one-dimensional stereotypes that didn’t lend anything important to the story. Max the janitor had a few interesting moments, but at the end of the day, his motivations were extremely unclear especially if you had never seen the first movie. It doesn’t do anything terribly badly, but it never comes together to create anything more than the sum of its mediocre parts that was done just as well in the first movie. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Accident Man 2018

It feels like it’s going to take forever for me to catch up with the previous year and a half of superhero movies that I missed out on, but I’m continuing to inch my way through them. I had vaguely heard about this movie before going on hiatus but didn’t know anything besides the fact that it was an action movie based on a comic book before going into it, which is honestly always a treat. What I found was a stunt-oriented revenge movie involving hitmen that reminded me a lot of the movie Payback which I really love. The plot is honestly a relatively standard guy working his way up the chain of command with a bit of dark humor laced throughout since there’s plenty of killing going on. Not only that, but the director was Jesse V Johnson who directed a great action oriented Wonder Woman concept trailer way back in 2013.

The title of the film comes from the fact that the protagonist of the film Mike Fallon is a hitman who excels at making his hits look like an accident. The film opens with him somehow tricking someone to get roped into a noose so that he could be forcibly hanged. He then goes to a bar, pays off the bouncer and just goes to town on the drunken patrons just to blow off a little steam. Mike is also part of a group of hitmen who hang out at a pub run by their mentor slash retired hitman Big Ray. The inciting event happens when Mike’s ex-girlfriend is killed, but it ends up being a hit from his own company that reveals some shady double-dealings so he has to work his way through the layers of separation that normally keep the hitman operation running smoothly as he finds out who put the hit out on his girl.

Where this movie really shines are the fight scenes. The majority of the actors are actor slash stunt actors. Scott Adkins who plays the lead Mike is probably best known by someone reading this site as the stunt actor for the terrible version of Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He’s also joined by Ray Park aka Darth Maul and Toad from the first X-Men, Michael Jai White aka Spawn, and Amy Johnston who hasn’t had a notable role yet but has done stunts for tons of movies. And with all of these stunt actors, the fight scenes are the best parts of the movie. Scott Adkins pulls the moves off and makes it look effortless, though by the end of the movie, I felt like he was leaning on his spinning jump kick in the same way that Jean Claude Van Damme would lean on his jumping splits.

The overarching plot works well enough as Mike works his way through the inner workings of his own hitman operation, able to discern the truth of the initial murder via his experience and knowledge of his fellow hitmen who each have their own unique methods of killing. It’s actually a nice little visual flair as Mike visualizes both the framed killers as well as the actual killers. It also helps to get behind the protagonist as an audience when they do a flashback scene to show how Mike became a hitman in the first place as a bullied teen who wanted to get back at his tormentors. He just went a little bit past revenge and into full blown emotionless killer. It also helps that his mentor Big Ray was played by Ray Stevenson who also played the Punisher at one point. There’s also a touch of giving Mike some morals as we found out that his ex-girlfriend was carrying his unborn baby. He doesn’t exactly give up his killing ways by the end of the film, but there’s a slight hint of morality that didn’t exist when the film started to give him a slight edge as an anti-hero at the very least.

The overall look of the film is relatively basic, even though it’s inspired by a comic book, there aren’t the extraneous comic book touches. Even though it does have a similar set up where Mike introduces each of the individual hitmen with a cutscene backstory, there aren’t any extreme flourishes similar to Suicide Squad. Instead, it’s a much more pared back and straightforward moment. One odd touch that may have been an unintentional artifact based on the method of filming was that there were several odd moments of blue light flares. It does look a lot more polished than other low budget vigilante films, as there are plenty of those in the superhero genre. All in all, it was a really fun ride. It shared a lot of similarities to Payback with the likable villain, Mike working his way up the ladder of this planned hit, different teams of characters working against Mike in the background, and they even share an actor in David Paymer. It’s dark, it’s violent, the action is great, but it still manages to not make things too serious. Accident Man was quite a bit of fun. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Wilson 2017

I’ve almost caught up with the movies that I missed in 2017, but still have plenty to go from 2018. This is one that I heard about right around when it was released in theaters, but never got the chance to seek it out. It’s a dark comedy and the third movie based on a Daniel Clowes comic after Ghost World (which I loved) and Art School Confidential (not so much). I would rank it right in between the two films as it does have a handful of problems, but the comedy works well and it does a good job to make the audience feel for this quirky-but-obnoxious guy played by Woody Harrelson.

It also helps that Wilson has an overall interesting life despite being someone who has next to zero friends. The film starts out with what he feels like his only friend moving away, and the death of his father. He has stalker-ish moments when he tries to hit on a random woman who he had a cordial moment with at a pet store by ramming his car into hers to get her number. Wilson’s personality really is the make or break of this movie, either you enjoy and get a laugh out of his antics, or if you don’t then there isn’t much else here for you. In general, he doesn’t have much of a character arc, it’s just the situations of his life that change over the course of the movie. He goes from a lonely sad sack, to a slightly less lonely sad sack. Aside from his positive attitude, the film also brings out a fair amount of sympathy for the character as everything in his life goes wrong in the beginning of the third act. When the oddly reconnected family spend the weekend at Dern’s sister’s house, a fight causes Wilson to spend a couple years in jail for kidnapping his biological daughter. Not only that, but when he’s released, he discovers that Dern has moved on and is dating someone else, his dog died, and even his neighborhood changed significantly in just a few years.

What the film does best is revel in uncomfortableness. One of the best moments is when Harrelson, Dern, and their biological daughter are riding in the car together and having a shared moment about swearing and basically being themselves when Wilson decides to turn on the radio and Carly Rae Jepson’s Call Me Maybe is playing on the radio. Everyone’s face immediately drops and the daughter mentions that it totally killed the moment before asking repeatedly to turn it off. It’s those kinds of moments that really help endear this movie to the audience. Wilson is uncomfortableness personified and the movie really helps sell that he’s never quite in the right place. Whether he’s talking baby-dog talk to someone in response to them talking that way to his dog, or when he’s attacking a teenage boy bullying the daughter he was stalking from a distance and had yet to actually meet. It’s all just comedic uncomfortableness. And for the actor’s parts, they all handle their roles well. Especially Harrelson and Dern who work well together, and Dern really feels like the type of character to need someone like Wilson at the moment, but easily grow out of him. Judy Greer plays a dog-sitter who frequently watches Wilson’s dog when he has to go out on his escapades, including his unexpected stint in jail. It was initially unexpected when she became the next romantic interest, but the film handles it well enough.

One of the hardest things to discuss about this film is that it doesn’t feel like there’s much overall depth to the piece. Wilson is an entertaining character in his own right, but at the end of the day he’s still the same character, just in a better situation through circumstances outside of his control. There’s nothing special about the look or the sound of the movie, it just is what it is, and if that’s enough for you then that’s great. And it did get enough big laughs out of me to enjoy it, but I don’t think it’s going to be the type of movie that sits with me for a long time after this. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

The Immortal Wars 2018

One thing I don’t talk about too much on here is my local library. Ever since video rental stores have all but died out (there is a Family Video nearby but we don’t go there), aside from streaming I source most of the movies I watch for this site lately from my library. This is not the first time that I happened across a movie at that library that I had never heard of before but I could tell from the cover and back of the box that it was a perfect fit for this site. This is a combination of X-Men, Hunger Games, and a little bit of Gladiator, only the weakest bits of all of those movies along with some poor special effects, weak acting, and a bland script. It’s not quite Captain Battle level bad movie, but it’s right alongside some of the Asylum films that I’ve seen and I’m actually a little surprised that the sequel is already being made for a planned trilogy.

This movie takes place in the future where everything is seemingly dark and/or on fire with generic flame effects and/or random embers floating across the screen at all times. This future is a dystopian wasteland where there are superhuman beings called deviants and/or scrags that are rounded up for an annual and/or regular televised series of fights to the death. These fights are highly rated and often bet upon. The difficulty comes through the fact that nearly all of the backstory and setup for this world is given through expository dialogue that’s difficult to wade through and/or easy to miss which makes much of the rest of the plot hard to follow and/or be interested in.

The main character more or less is Trikalypse who has various powers including super strength and telekinesis. Most of her dialogue is when her and various other deviants are holed up in a series of prison cells that look like a hallway with doors made out of light-up prison bar doors. She doesn’t have much backstory or personality as she plots with the hotheaded woman who can control fire and apparently knows everything about this televised event. She has a little bit more backstory, but it’s generally told through just a quick bit of dialogue.

There are plenty of issues with this film, a couple of them are the acting and writing. It’s difficult to really sell dialogue that’s really bad like when two characters are fighting and one says “I’m stronger than you” and the other replies “No, I’m stronger.” And besides gripping fight dialogue of that caliber, it’s just as difficult to spit out pages of random exposition that’s supposed to fill in the background of this future world and televised gladiatorial event. One of the other combatants is supposed to elicit a sense of empathy as they are presented as a father/daughter pair where the father is a big brute of a man and the daughter is a young child who supposedly has psychic powers that are supposed to help him fight somehow. Instead it boils down to her telepathically telling her dad to choke the guy harder, but instead he releases the guy and ends up getting killed.

Even if the acting and writing weren’t so bad, it could be saved through the action. Unfortunately, while the majority of the actors seem like they have martial arts training, the filmmakers aren’t able to use dynamic choreography to make the fights exciting, nor do they use any interesting camera angles or editing to liven up the fights. Instead, they are typically overly short battles with occasional bursts of cheap special effect bursts of color that’s supposed to signify the deviant’s super powers but instead looks more like handfuls of colored powder. Not only that, but it rarely even seems to affect the battle in any significant way. There’s never really any clear indication of what exactly the combatants powers are or what they do aside from an early moment where they are all listed through on a statistics screen during an explanation from Eric Roberts’ MC Dominion in an unclear role as television producer, evil mastermind, and high stakes bookie with a pair of headphones used as a chin guard in a way that’s unclear as to whether it’s supposed to make him look like a supervillain or a futuristic microphone.

There is just so much wrong with this film that it’s hard to go through all of them. From the wooden acting, the boring fight choreography, the boring exposition, the poor and overused special effects, and uninspired cinematography. It all adds up to a very disappointing film. There are touches here and there of interesting moments where it seemed like they were trying for an interesting visual, and there were a small handful of special effects that actually looked like significant effort was put into them. But that was all too few and far between. Even with the help of semi-recognizable working actors like Eric Roberts and Tom Sizemore, there just wasn’t enough to work with to make this a good movie. And almost as bad, it also never made its way around the bend to become a so-bad-it’s-good movie either. Nobody in this film was completely incompetent, they just weren’t very good. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Ethel & Ernest 2016

I always enjoy getting around to watching comic book movies that aren’t just about superheroes. This is the second film that I watched based on a graphic novel by Raymond Briggs after the lesser known 80’s animation When the Wind Blows. Briggs is probably best known for his children’s book the Snowman and while children’s books do share some similarities with comic books and graphic novels, there’s enough of a difference that I don’t include any of them in my list. This has a somewhat similar style as When the Wind Blows except that the backgrounds in this film are gorgeous. The two main characters actually feel like they inspired the two characters in the previous movie but they are actually inspired by the author’s actual parents. This film chronicles the relatively basic life of two simple people living in London through the events of World War II as well as their years afterwards. It might be simple, but it’s a poignant look at these two people’s life from the perspective of their eventual son.

The look of this film is another great part of enjoyment. The backgrounds are generally simple suburban or country homes but they are gorgeously detailed in a similar fashion as a Miyazaki movie. The characters themselves are more simple and feel much more British and working class rather than Miyazaki’s more traditional anime style. It also follows their lives from being in their early thirties through the years to old age and eventually, their deaths. The changes in their characters as the years go on are relatively subtle, but effective, as is the change in their house decor aside from the couple’s bed that remains unchanged from the time Ernest brings it home to when their son visits their now-empty house. It’s also very effective when we do see Ethel first and Ernest shortly thereafter when they have passed. The style for their characters becomes very different, the clean lines become more like scribbles and the color has gone, making them look very different, very fragile and sad.

But what’s great about this film is also something present in When the Wind Blows is its optimism. Aside from a few brief moments during some of the worst parts of World War II with the air raids and having to send their young child to live with his Aunts in the country, Ernest is the eternal optimist. Ethel tends to be the one with moments of pessimism, especially when it comes to their child Raymond. Whether it’s when Ernest cuts his beautiful, curly hair for the first time shortly before he starts school, or when she hands Raymond a comb for his unruly hair when he brings his wife-to-be to visit to his chagrin. Despite the fact that they are lower working class, and their home is damaged multiple times during the war, it’s never a devastating blow to the family. They merely sweep up the broken glass and move on with their lives. Even at his lowest point when Ethel is in the hospital with Alzheimer’s or Dementia and no longer recognizes Ernest as her husband, he has a brief moment where he leaves the room with his hands covering his face, but after she passes, he is able to get on with his life until his passing shortly afterwards.

Like the characters that this movie presents, the movie itself is quite simple in its presentation. It subtly informs us of the passage of time and current events through the eyes of our characters and their son Raymond who really changes the most over the course of the movie. The voice acting was quite brilliant, with Jim Broadbent and Brenda Blethyn voicing the titular characters and are the majority of the screentime. The one downside is even though Raymond’s wife is shown on screen a couple different times and seems like she is important to his life, she isn’t even given a single line of dialogue. But that’s a minor issue in an otherwise gorgeous and fascinating slice of life movie. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Steam Engines of Oz 2018

I wasn’t intentionally going down the Arcana studios rabbit hole, but I just happened to see this DVD at the library after returning Howard Lovecraft and the Kingdom of Madness so I decided to pick it up and get it over with. I didn’t have very high hopes for it even though I was about fifty-fifty with the Howard Lovecraft trilogy. In general, I’m a big fan of Oz adaptations and I do like it when they go away from the traditional Dorothy route and get into some of the extended lore even if I technically haven’t read any of it myself. But this suffered from many of the problems that existed with the Howard Lovecraft series, especially the low budget animation and limited quality for voice actors outside of a few notable characters. But this one also suffered from lack of interesting characters or a cohesive story and failed on almost all accounts.

One of the biggest issues with this movie is the lack of anything resembling an interesting character. The supposed main character is a naive engineer named Victoria, but aside from generic kindness, she doesn’t really have any defining character traits or personality at all. She is merely an empty vessel that the plot pushes around as things happen around her. She has a few companions, but they are all pretty much just as personality-less as she is. There’s the wizard Oz’s brother Digg, a Munchkin engineer Gromit who seems awfully tall for a Munchkin, and they eventually meet up with Oz himself as well as the Cowardly Lion’s son Magnus and a few other Munchkins of little note. Digg and Gromit also have no defining character traits other than Digg is kind of a stuffy British type while Gromit is supposedly an engineer but never does any engineering. Not only that, but Victoria herself is supposed to be a great engineer.

Besides the characters, we’re also given a look into a different era of Oz that isn’t given much backstory or explanation. There are basically three different factions. The first is the Emerald City controlled by the Tin Man who has put away his heart and is trying to industrialize Oz and get rid of all magic. He has an army of mostly incompetent soldiers with electric guns, electric swords, giant riding tigers, and eventually robotic flying bugs and soldiers come into the battle out of nowhere with no explanation. Second is the lions who are mostly actual animalistic lions except for three of them who speak and are anthropomorphic with clothes. One of them is the Cowardly Lion’s son voiced by Ron Perlman and while there’s a darker undertone to their initial introduction as they are prepared to feed Victoria to the pride, they end up being friendly for no real reason. Third are the Munchkins who have become steampunk hipsters who also have electric guns and planes but also have magic even though it never comes into play or makes sense with all the technology that they are using. And even though she doesn’t come into play except to move the plot into motion and save the day at the very end, there’s also the Witch of the North and her flying monkeys. In theory, the world is an interesting place with a lot to go on, but it’s never clear what any group’s motivations are and they just go to war because that’s what is supposed to happen in the movie.

From the original comic

The most interesting character is actually the Tin Man. He is given the most backstory, motivation, and character arc out of any of the main characters. He rules from a place of misguided compassion as he calls his prisoners “honored guests” despite the fact that Digg has been in a cell for eighteen years. We also get his original backstory via Oz voiced by William Shatner and the second best character in the movie based on vocal performance alone. It’s great to see that backstory done in a different style with 2D, black and white animation to give it a past tense feeling that works well. It was also nice to see a nod to Return to Oz with a visual cameo by Tik Tok and Jack Pumpkinhead. Tin Man also has the best visual design to him as he very much looks like a steampunk version of the Tin Man, but also still looks recognizable as the Tin Man.

The plot itself doesn’t help matters much either as it’s generally just tossing Victoria around from one setting to another as she goes from the underground engine room of the Emerald City to the group of lions to the Munchkin town back to the Emerald City and back through the rest like a pinball. There’s no real motivation other than a cryptic warning that the Tin Man must be stopped from someone she’s never met before and really has no reason to believe, especially as she seems to be indoctrinated into the Tin Man’s vision of progress. There’s no questioning by Victoria, it’s all just blind acceptance and no real struggle or growth. She doesn’t learn anything, she doesn’t grow up, basically all she does is give the Tin Man back his heart after fighting a battle that likely caused the deaths of many lions, soldiers, and Munchkins.

Besides the lack of interesting characters or a worthy plot, the animation itself is quite bland and obviously low budget. There are a few interesting character designs, but the backgrounds are very low quality and the movement from all of the characters is very stiff and stilted. All in all, it’s such a shame because there is the skeleton of an interesting story here, but it’s all wasted. Not only that, but looking at what’s available to see from the comic that it’s based on, the artwork there is absolutely gorgeous and a far cry from what ended up in the film. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Hardware 1990

This is another somewhat interesting story when it comes to comic book movies. When this film was released in 1990, the comic book publishers of 2000 AD which was the home of Judge Dredd noticed the striking similarities to a short story they published years earlier called Shok. It was a very short 7 page story but the similarities are striking. Both the movie and the comic feature a guy bringing home a robotic head that reassembles itself to terrorize a woman who is holed up in a highly secured apartment. There’s even a moment in both stories where the woman uses a freezer to disguise herself against the robot’s heat vision. As for the film itself, it’s very much schlock, ultra-violent horror which oddly enough reminds me of another comic book movie Virus that would come out 9 years later. Those two stories both have killer robots that reassemble themselves, have a slow start, are trapped in a relatively small space, and ultimately have a low body count. And while there are some major issues with this film, it’s actually much better than the latter movie.

The film’s best qualities are its aesthetics, it’s gritty, it’s grimy, and it really sells the low class future tech that’s somewhat technologically advanced, but it’s also old for its time so it doesn’t always work exactly the way it’s supposed to. The apartment is obviously in the bad neighborhood in a future where it’s likely that every neighborhood is the bad neighborhood. Mo is a scavenging nomad who collects scrap to try and sell for some extra cash. His girlfriend Jill is a struggling artist who uses what he can’t sell to make modern art that she apparently can’t sell either. The technology is filled with neon lines, vector style computer graphics, hydraulics, plenty of dirt, and a near constant orange/reddish tint. It’s the type of tech that really feels lived in and well used. Nothing is clean, nothing is new, and none of it works quite right.

The other great aspect of this film is the lengths it’s willing to go for shock value. While there aren’t many deaths throughout the entire movie, in fact there are really only two significant deaths, the film goes all out for both of them. And while the latter death isn’t necessarily justified as one of the rescuing apartment security or something along those lines gets smashed in half by the hydraulic doors, it works in its practical gore effects along with a genuine shock moment as he also shoots another member of the rescue party in the head. The first ultra-gore death is much more deserved as we had been introduced to the ultra skeevy and pervy neighbor who has been watching and photographing Jill through the window as well as making harassing calls and was likely the one behind the frequent doorbell rings with no one there. He’s the best worst character that is absolutely disgusting in a way that makes you almost want to cheer for how badly he gets killed.

The film isn’t without its flaws though. It does take a long while to get going and the suspense doesn’t always work as well as the movie thinks it does. The robot head gets painted with a stars and stripes paint job before being put into the center of a wall art project. We follow a lot of Mo and Jill with touches of their relationship as well as some of the other small characters that make up this semi-post apocalyptic world. It is fairly nice that several of them have interesting character traits like how Shades definitely has something messed up going on in his history and the brief sex scene between Mo and Jill is filmed in such an odd way and whatever titillation is gained from the scene is very quickly undercut when its viewed from the perverted neighbor across the way spying on them through a camera.

It’s also interesting that the film seems to make you think that Mo is the main character of the movie, when it’s really Jill who makes it through to the end as a badass horror movie survivor. While she doesn’t really have a whole lot in the way of personality outside of being an artist and Mo’s girlfriend, once things start going down is when she really shines as a character. She is smart, fearless, and resourceful as she figures out how to hide from the heat vision inside the refrigerator. Going back to the comic, one could even argue that the film pays homage to the twist in the final panel where it’s revealed that while the audience thinks that the girl destroyed the robot and her boyfriend is returning home to see her alive and well, it turns out that the robot had actually killed the woman and had disguised itself as the woman. In this film the role is reversed where the robot kills the boyfriend and at one point Jill is able to tap into its main processor and hears the robot speaking with her boyfriend’s voice, in a way impersonating him.

All in all, while it can be difficult to get through the slow pacing of the first half of this movie, it is ultimately a solid schlock horror movie with some ultra-violence and gore despite the overall low body count. The effects for the robot hold up quite well with the exception of the low-res robot vision moments. But the actual design of the robot is striking and terrifying at the same time and once the killings begin, the tension mounts in the best way possible with a satisfying climax. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

The Kitchen 2019

It’s the last month of the year and I was able to catch up with the last major theatrical release of this past year. There are still a few other home video and TV movie releases that I haven’t gotten around to, but I should get pretty close before the end of this month and will have a ranked list next month. As for this specific movie, I didn’t hear very much good about this when it was in theaters and while I strongly considered going out to watch it, I just missed it. I thought it was interesting that it was based on a comic and it was about Hell’s Kitchen which is usually associated with Daredevil, though it has absolutely nothing to do with any superheroes at all. Instead, it’s a period drama about the mob featuring comedic actresses. Unfortunately, the trailer featured pretty much all of the comedic bits in the mostly dramatic movie, none of the characters really had any strong personalities to draw me into their stories and by the time things got interesting in the third act, it wasn’t enough to save the film.

It’s difficult to get a real feel for any of the characters until well over halfway through the movie. The movie starts with a super quick introduction to all of the three main women that basically tells us only the most basic and stereotypical information about each of them. Melissa McCarthy’s character Kathy is a mother, Tiffany Haddish’s Rose is a Black woman married to a White man in the 70’s who also has a racist mother that doesn’t like her, and Elisabeth Moss’s Claire is a battered wife. That’s pretty much the extent of what we get to know about these characters before each of their husbands get arrested and sent to jail for three years while the women are all homemakers with no jobs and only one of them has kids.

It’s unfortunate that the trailers seem to undercut the drama with a touch of humor. While the movie isn’t sold as a comedy, there’s enough prominent jokes in the trailer that it feels like it’s trying to be the next Suicide Squad rather than the next Scarface or Goodfellas. There is a lot about the story that’s unclear in the beginning, but it’s never really sold as any sort of mystery. We’re introduced to these women and see their struggle as they rise to power within the family. We’re seemingly supposed to root for their success and worry about their pitfalls. But before long, they get themselves in deep into the criminal element, especially as they go outside of their territory to try and bring in what could be thought of as a big account where a Jewish community is constructing a building but they are in with the Brooklyn mob. The women do some pretty dark things in order to get the Jewish to work with them and it’s difficult to root for them at that point. Not only that, but the turn seems to come out of nowhere and we don’t see much remorse or doubt at this point. It’s not until the reveal in the latter half that Ruby has been working the angles this entire time and has been playing against everyone, but it’s a twist that probably would have worked better had the audience been in on it from the beginning so we could see the workings of her plan rather than have them be revealed past the point where we would care.

It’s also difficult to see this as an overall tragedy where there’s an overall arc with a rise to power and a fall from grace because by the end of the movie, two of the three women are presented as having won, more or less. While they have been working against each other at points, they come to a begrudging alliance in order to head up the start of a powerful mafia empire. This feels like it’s supposed to be a win, but there’s not much time spent on the things that they’ve lost. Especially Claire who actually had the strongest arc of the three characters. She started out as a battered wife with no real personality, but when Domhnall Gleeson shows up out of nowhere to rescue her, she grows into a strong mob enforcer who begins to almost relish the act of killing. But once again, it doesn’t quite go far enough because it has two other characters and plenty of plot to focus on.

What’s most disappointing about this film is that it has a lot of things going for it. While some people might not care for the leads in general, they are all great actors and can handle everything they are given. It’s just that they’re not given the best material and it never comes together in any sort of satisfying way. The comic relief was too minimal for this to feel like a lighthearted action comedy, but it was too awkward for it to feel like a proper release in a straight up drama. The characters were too shallow to really care about their story arcs and the story was too thin to be invested in what’s going on around them. Things just kept happening seemingly out of nowhere with no set up, no foreshadowing, no lasting consequences. Characters died left and right, some of them got funerals, others didn’t. The constant shifting of power should be fascinating to watch, but it’s just handled poorly that it’s difficult to follow what’s going on at times. It’s a shame because there’s a strong concept here, and it’s refreshing especially as it’s a female-centric story in a genre where that is rare. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

The Other Side of Adaptation: Comic Books Based on Movies: Labyrinth: Coronation vol. 1

This is the start of a new series where I aim to actually start covering comic books little by little here on this site. But I wanted to do something a little bit different. Instead of looking at the comic books and graphic novels that inspired the movies that I’ve covered already on this site, I thought I would go in the opposite direction and take a look at comic books and graphic novel sequels, prequels, and adaptations where the movie became popular first and the comic was the adaptation or spin-off. I decided to start out with Labyrinth: Coronation for a few reasons. One was that I own and enjoyed the Labyrinth manga sequel Return to Labyrinth, I enjoy the movie, and it was the one that sparked my eye the most at my local library. In this review I’ll be covering the first volume of the collected work which collects the first three issues from a twelve issue miniseries. And for a bit of a spoiler to my overall thoughts on this volume: I already picked up volume 2 to read and review.

The story of the comic is a bit of a mix between a prequel and an inbetweenquel. The framing device is Jareth telling a story to baby Toby while Sarah goes through the events of the movie. The story he tells is basically Jareth’s origin story which is strikingly similar to the story about Sarah and Toby. There are several moments throughout the story where it cuts back to Jareth, Toby, and a random goblin named Beetleglum or something similar as it’s a running joke that Jareth gets the goblin’s name wrong in a different way every time.

Instead of a bratty teenage sister looking after her baby brother, it takes place in the Victorian era where a common woman named Maria falls for a bit of a con artist as they pretend to be royalty before having a baby. This time it’s the baby’s father who strikes a deal with the goblins to take the baby away while the mother ends up in the Labyrinth at the behest of the Owl King of the goblins. The rest of the beginning follows along roughly the same as the original movie. There’s obstacles, trickery, and also some more kindhearted denizens of the Labyrinth who will help Maria along the way. There’s also an interesting element where Jareth keeps implying that he is an unreliable narrator and while everything hints that the baby in the story is actually Jareth, there is a slight question surrounding things because of the unreliability.

The similarities to the original Labyrinth story are pretty clear early on. Maria is given thirteen hours to solve the Labyrinth to save her baby. Although Maria herself is initially a much stronger character than Sarah. She’s more or less an adult, and the child’s mother rather than her sister. She’s not nearly as bratty as Sarah, though she isn’t perfect. She’s a commoner happy to pretend to live as royalty despite her husband being pretty shady himself. And he bears a pretty striking resemblance to Jareth to boot. As far as the other characters in the first volume, there’s a goblin knight with a pure heart trying his hardest to be a bandit so he can fit in with the other goblins. They also eventually run into a sentient rosebush who bears some resemblance to Groot with his abilities, and while his or her vocabulary is generally better, there is an oddity with the text bubbles being written in scribbles in different sizes with an overall air of madness to it. They are all quite interesting in and of themselves and they fit together quite well with the potential for the goblin knight to betray Maria in a similar way to Hoggle.

The overall art style is also quite striking and interesting. It feels not dissimilar to Brian Froud’s art style who was the initial art designer for Labyrinth and the Dark Crystal. The comic is in full color throughout though there was one slightly confusing double page layout that was intended to be read all the way across from left to right rather than reading each individual page. Although thinking about it now, it’s actually quite fitting for the Labyrinth comic to try different and potentially confusing layouts because the Labyrinth itself is intended to be mixed up and confusing. It’s a great start to the story with several questions and freshness while still being familiar. The references to the original movie during the framework scenes with Jareth and Toby are great touches as well and I’m interested in seeing where the rest of the story goes and how closely it ties into the original movie the closer it gets to the end. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Labyrinth Coronation vol 2 2018

This is the second edition of my new series where I take a look at comic books and graphic novels that were adapted from movies rather than the other way around as I typically cover here. I’m continuing through the Labyrinth prequel mini-series that I started in the first edition. This will likely be a shorter article as the overall presentation of the story remains the same and I’ll just be focusing on how this volume furthers the story. There are still some nice moments that echo the original Labyrinth movie, but it feels like it’s starting to veer farther from the source material into something new yet still familiar. And as I will be discussing the story of this volume, there will be spoilers ahead so be warned.

This volume introduces a couple twists to some of the characters that we’re already familiar with from the first volume while adding another. The new character is reminiscent of the bookworm from the original movie. Only this time, she’s a younger character that has never left home and hellbent on organizing the revolution against the Owl King of the Labyrinth. She’s introduced as Cible and it’s eventually revealed that due to a Brazil-esque clerical error, her full name is Banderghast the Invincible. She’s a fun character for the most part though she can get a bit annoying at times and it’s difficult to tell as of right now how her character arc will progress.

The other big shake up comes when it’s revealed that the chivalrous goblin is actually the son of the Owl King and is a disappointment who wants to leave his birthright. And yet, the Owl King is still able to use his son and his predictable failings to not only trap Maria at the end of this volume, but he also makes her lose her trust in her friend and companion.

Where this story really helps set itself apart from the movie Labyrinth is that Maria actually figures out some of the secrets of the Labyrinth earlier on and is able to shape it and transform it using a sentimental piece of chalk. She realizes that it is in part a dreamscape and uses that to her advantage. There’s still some dramatic tension as the Owl King is able to bring in the subconscious of Maria’s husband to hamper her travels and she is unable to control the world of someone else’s subconscious. I’m still very curious to see where this story and where these characters go. The scenes with Jareth and Beetleglum also help further the story and keep things grounded to the original Labyrinth movie while still making the two of them feel like real characters. Jareth does lose a little bit of his intrigue in favor of the much more interesting Beetleglum, but it’s made up for through the fact that this entire story is more or less expanding on Jareth’s character and origin. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Bloodshot 2020

It’s been quite a year, right? But I’m not here to talk about that, instead let’s try to get right back into catching up with the handful of releases that actually made it out into the wild. This was actually the last theatrical release before things went to hell but I didn’t quite get around to seeing it back then. And based on the reviews it got, I wasn’t that enthusiastic to catch up with it. Even borrowed it from the library a couple times. But I finally checked it out once again, watched it, and you know what? I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the best example of a comic book/super powered character movie. It suffers quite a bit from a first time director who came from a visual effects background, an early-but-significant twist that was spoiled in the trailers, and extremely forgettable dialogue coming from one-dimensional characters. Despite all of this, I’m a sucker for an interesting concept and that’s the best thing this movie has going for it. It won’t be enough for a lot of people, but it was just enough for me.

Bloodshot takes place in the not too distant future that grabs bits and pieces from other big sci-fi franchises like Robocop, the Matrix, and Total Recall. Vin Diesel plays quintessential hero soldier Ray Garrison, the type who’s amazing at his job and comes home after each mission to his loving-yet-constantly-scared-for-him wife. And like Robocop, he gets himself killed and brought back through the power of modern technology. Instead of becoming a slow moving, heavy duty cyborg, he’s a much more modern and high tech creation of nano-technology. Someone who’s basically made out of self-repairing mini robots that turn him into Wolverine. It’s soon revealed that he’s also being controlled through false memories and his unwavering sense of revenge to go on assassination missions while he thinks that he’s just going rogue on a personal vendetta.

That idea of using someone’s memories and personality traits to manipulate them without them realizing that they’re being controlled is a fascinating concept in itself. It could have easily gone the route of Total Recall where the character and audience don’t fully realize whether or not he’s still being controlled and manipulated or if he’s actually doing things of his own free will. Instead, everything is spelled out pretty clearly with the exception of the final line that is supposed to sow the seeds of doubt, but instead just feel like a half-hearted joke. It’s made pretty clear through the characters and the situations when Bloodshot is being controlled, and when he breaks free and turns his revenge on those who were controlling him in the first place. There are a few moments that feel like the start of more intelligent filmmaking, like when Ray first sees his wife after the opening scene mission her face is mostly obscured from the audience. Yet that concept is dropped in the very next scene and never really revisited. It’s still entertaining, but at the same time, it’s a little disappointing when it could have been taken so much further.

Where this film lacks the most are the characters themselves. Vin Diesel is pretty bland for the most part. He’s basically a blank slate generic hero type. He doesn’t really get any good one-liners, and his personality is pretty much rooted in either his action hero type stunts or his personal vendetta. He simply reacts to everything going on around him. Next is the generic love interest KT, not Katie. She’s the reluctant participant forced into the evil plan because her lungs have been augmented and can be turned off at a moment’s notice. There’s the sadistic henchman who has the most personality other than the fact that it’s all pretty generic with the chewing gum and his baseball cap. Guy Pierce once again gets to play the evil genius mastermind after his role in Iron Man 3. This is basically the same character minus the nerdy backstory. The only other fun character is the good guy genius IT guy who breaks Bloodshot free from his mental control and is constantly eating.

Where this movie does have some redeeming qualities are the action scenes and special effects. There are a few rough edges here and there as it’s a relatively medium budget film for a special effects blockbuster, but the look and design of the nanites are pretty impressive. The fight scenes themselves have a nice flair to them outside of the occasional overuse of the Matrix/Zack Snyder style slow down/speed up. The glow from the over-use of the nanites is also a pretty nice visual, as is the moment towards the climax where the Bloodshot pushes himself to the limit and the color basically drains from his skin as the nanites struggle to keep up with the damage he’s taking. The robotic limbs also look pretty natural and functional in a way that doesn’t call attention to them, instead it just makes them seem like they’re just there.

While there’s nothing groundbreaking about this film and the concept could have been taken so much further, this is still a halfway decent little action romp. The fight scenes are good, the twists are basic but still complicated enough to keep things more interesting than a standard personal vendetta movie. It’s probably helped that I have taken such a long break before watching this movie that it feels more fresh to me than it would have had I watched it when it originally came out. Vin Diesel has teased the prospect of a sequel despite a lackluster box office due to mediocre reviews and really bad timing. I think they can do a lot more with this property than what they’ve given us so far, and I hope they bring it around for the sequel. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

The Old Guard 2020

This has been on my “to watch next” list for a very long time even though it did completely pass me by when it came out last year. While I did read that this was a popular movie when it was released on Netflix, I never really got a feel for how well people enjoyed it and it never really hit my radar. But when I did finally watch the trailer, I was very interested. I have generally enjoyed everything that Charlize Theron has done even when she’s been in some not great movies. Despite Aeon Flux being awful and Snow White and the Huntsman not being that great, Theron was great in them and Atomic Blonde was one of my favorite comic book movies of the year it came out. There are definitely a few flaws throughout this movie, but overall I quite enjoyed it and I’m glad that a sequel is in the works to start filming early next year. And while this movie is over a year old, it’s still relatively new so here’s your spoiler warning.

This film is about a small group of immortals who have found each other throughout time and decide to do their own form of good deeds, or something like that. It’s not exactly clear what their motivation is though hints are scattered throughout the film. While there are moments of storytelling crutches, there is enough information scattered throughout character moments and action scenes that it rarely feels like there are any exposition dumps. It was a bad sign for the movie to start in medias res, but it was slightly forgiven as it caught up to that moment before the end of the first act. We’re given an audience surrogate new recruit to this group of immortals through a Marine named Nile, but she’s being recruited during a moment of crisis for the group so that there isn’t a whole lot of time spent on catching her up. Instead she’s just given a crash course as she and the audience are fed information in-between action scenes.

The concept of immortals in this film is handled in a fairly interesting way. They don’t know why they’re immortal or technically they’re not exactly immortal, it’s more like they’re unkillable with an indeterminately long lifespan. Charlize Theron plays Andy aka Andromache of Scythia who is anywhere between 3,000 and 10,000+ years old. She tells the story of one other who is barely mentioned except for the fact that he was an immortal who lost his immortality. They are all connected to each other through some type of psychic bond that comes through their dreams. When Nile died/was reborn as an immortal, they all dreamed of her death and used those details to find her. And while the movie doesn’t specifically comment on it, there’s probably some type of unseen force that directs them to carry out the jobs that they do. The group as a whole doesn’t comment on any of these jobs with specific details but the CIA officer, Copley gave them their last job and is hunting them down has been doing his own research. At the end of the movie, he reveals that the small jobs that they have done and the people they had saved created a ripple effect that greatly benefited humanity without the immortals even being aware of the impact they caused.

There are also several great little moments about the detriments of immortality. The biggest one is that they feel pain even though they can’t die. This is revealed through the story of Quynh who was Andy’s first teammate. They were captured as witches and Quynh was placed in an iron coffin and thrown to the bottom of the ocean where she would constantly drown and revive for hundreds of years. Booker also recounts the story of his family, how he watched his three sons grow old and die while he remained the same age. It was a story of pain and anger as they felt he was keeping his secret of immortality from them. All of this was used to try and shortcut Nile’s recruitment to abandon her own family even though she does argue at one point that she could still have many years worth of time with them without risking her secret of immortality. There are a few other moments of interest, though the loneliness of immortality is touched upon but barely given any time as Andy had spent hundreds to thousands of years alone with her secret before finding another.

The action scenes are all handled well, one of the best scenes was early on with a fight on a small drug running cargo plane between Nile and Andy. When the bigger fights happen later, the skills honed through hundreds of years of combat training are shown through their accuracy. Most kills are head shots, and the ammo is replenished by taking the weapons of those they’ve killed. The shots generally keep you in the action without a lot of distracting cuts or stylish slow down/speed ups. Instead it’s presented with a more raw and visceral feel to it. The motivation of the antagonists of the film feel well conceived. There’s the big pharma CEO who basically wants to bottle their immortality and sell it for as much money as he can make while thinking of the immortals themselves as intellectual property that he has to protect and keep to himself at all costs. Also worth mentioning that he is played by Harry Melling who was probably best known as playing Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter franchise and he is excellent in this role playing a similar, yet very different role here. While Copley has been hunting them down for the pharma CEO, he’s also basically being played as he is doing it for the greater good of humanity as he thinks they hold the cure to disease like the one that took the life of his wife. There’s also Booker, the immortal who watched his sons grow old and die and is the mole who had been feeding information to Copley allowing him to capture them. His reasoning behind the betrayal of the team is brought upon by his general malaise and depression that wants to find a way to end his seemingly eternal life. While Dursley’s character is definitely over the top enough that the audience will root for his death, the rest of them are easily redeemable.

There is a lot of world building that has to be done in this movie and while there are some shortcuts that leave plenty of questions unanswered, it does give us the seeds of a fascinating start of a franchise. It teases an easy sequel with the reveal that the thought-lost-under-the-sea Quynh is back and not foaming-at-the-mouth-insane as someone who is very likely to be the villain in the next film. It also throws the somewhat predictable wrinkle that Andy has now lost her own immortality, but it slightly subverts it as she doesn’t go down in a blaze of glory. Instead she survives but is now mortal. Given the reveal of the Quynh it does lead into a predictable outline where Andy will have to come to grips with guilt of knowing that Quynh was suffering but unable to find and rescue her. The outline may be predictable but the details could be interesting and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where this story goes. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.