Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

When the first Guardians film came out, I heard so many people rejoicing that Marvel had finally gotten "weird". And while I appreciated the humor, the soundtrack and some elements of the design, all I could think of was that Hunter S. Thompson quote, "It never got weird enough for me." Well lo and behold this sequel has come along to deliver on the promise of that first film.

Like Tim Burton did with Batman Returns, this is James Gunn bending the superhero genre towards himself. He played it safe for that first film, and now he's able to let his freak flag fly. This feels much more like the work of the mind that gave us Tromeo & Juliet, Slither and Super. Who other than Gunn would use a movie this expensive in order to dissect the insidious message of a 70's pop song?

No matter how fun and frivolous art can be, it's always telling us something. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is the perfect type of pop song: it's great to dance to, and the lyrics stick with you.

Wonder Woman (2017)

Oh man this movie is everything I love about Super Hero Comics: it's silly, serious, action-packed, and it has an ethos. I 100% reject the idea of keeping politics and social issues out of genre, and so does this film. It has a message to impart and it imparts it while also telling a pulpy, "blood and thunder" story that's filled with gods, goddesses, and super-powered Germans. More than ever we need super heroes, but since they don't exist, we have to become them. Wonder Woman herself cannot come down off the screen and save us, but she can inspire a whole generation of little girls and boys to care for others and to fight for what they believe in. Now, let's cue up that electric strings sting, and get to work.

Now, here's a Twitter thread of 75+ female film writers on Wonder Woman that was curated by the great Marya Gates! Give them your clicks and attention because this world needs female voices.

Tank Girl (1995)

Of all the various low/mid-budget comic book movies of the 90's (Ninja Turtles, The Crow, Spawn, Blade, Barb Wire, etc.) I think Tank Girl might be the masterpiece. Sure it bombed. The audience for the comic was so minuscule that I'm not even sure why someone shelled out money for the rights. And even the super-indie fans of the source material were put off by the Hollywood co-opting of their culture. So then why am I calling this a niche masterpiece? Because to a whole generation of weirdo kids just discovering punk, indie and DIY, this was the film pointed the way. It's a crash-course in collage-culture. Complete with a Cole Porter musical number and a whole bunch of bad-ass women to look up to/fall in love with.

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

The other day on Twitter, critic Scott Weinberg asked for people's opinion of "...the #1 BEST feature film based on a Marvel superhero". I replied, "Iron Man 3 because it's about consequences and is amplified by Downey's personal history. Also it has an auteur's stamp." While the Russo Brothers are far too early in their collective career to have a discernible "stamp", they sure as hell understand consequences and how to wring every possible emotion out of them. It makes sense that they began in television where it's all about the actions of one week having ramifications in the next. Lots of people are saying that TV is becoming more and more like film, but the door swings the other way as well. I can certainly foresee a day where this interconnectivity becomes impenetrable and annoying, but right now we are in an amazingly sweet spot and I can't wait to see where it goes next. Also, Robert Downey Jr.'s  checkered past helps a lot.

American Splendor (2003)

For most people, the words "comic book movie" means The Avengers, Batman and Superman. But it can also mean Ghost World, Persepolis and American Splendor. Comics is simply the medium. A comic can be about anything. It doesn't have to be about larger than life characters doing this or that. It certainly doesn't have to be excessively gritty. The wonderful thing about American Splendor (both the comic and the film) is that though it exemplifies everything that those other comics and movies are not, it is still both a comic book and a comic book movie. As Harvey Pekar says, "Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff." His story is just as worthy of our attention as Bruce Wayne's. In-between these two poles lies an endless wealth of stories to tell and styles in which to tell them. You can put anything you want inside of those panels. In fact, you might not even need panels. It's all valid.

House Styles

Back when I started reading comics in 2nd grade, the art contained within was all pretty similar. Even though the gap between Dan Jurgens and Neil Adams is admittedly gigantic, you would be hard-pressed to deny that there isn't at least a little commonality there. From the golden age onward, that was just how you drew superheroes. A “house style” one might call it. If you wanted a unique visual take on things, you had to turn to the independent books like Madman, Love & Rockets and Mage. And then there was the Image Comics revolution.

Though founded by mainstream artists working in the conventional style, Image’s emphasis on “creator owned” books lead to them embracing a lot of the more unconventional voices out there in comics. Thanks to their open submission policy, you suddenly had manga and indie inflected art turning up in books that got shelf space right next to “the big two” of Marvel and DC. Of course it was only a matter of time before these unorthodox voices found their way into the mainstream as well. Now when I walk around my local comic shop, I see all sorts of styles ranging from the deliberately paced David Aja on Hawkeye, to the pop art inflected Mike Allred on Silver Surfer, to the street-art stylings of Ron Wimberly in the pages of She-Hulk. Today a superhero book can look like ANYTHING! Yet sadly, the same cannot be said for superhero movies.

Rather than embracing the visual diversity inherent in their comics, Marvel and DC have both opted to hold true to that old-fashioned “house style” mentality for their cinematic universes. DC is dark and brooding, Marvel is bright and playful. I assure you that if Jeremy Renner ever gets to star in a Hawkeye movie, you will not find any of the ground-level, every-day simplicity that made the Hawkeye comic a hit. And even though the “New 52” incarnation of Batman has embraced a bright color pallet (complete with healthy doses of pink and purple) you will find those colors sadly absent from the monochrome Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

I get that both companies are spending billions on large interconnected universes where characters from one film can pop up in another, but do they think we just won’t “get it” unless all the films look the same? I don’t know about you, but I’m perfectly capable of accepting the fact that Captain America looks one way in his own book, and slightly different when he pops up in someone else’s book. No cognitive dissonance here. Give your fans a little bit more credit. If a firmly entrenched institution like super hero comics can change its aesthetics to more accurately reflect the full range of the human experience, why can't our super hero movies do the same?

Snowpiercer (2014)

Picking an angle for a piece on Snowpiercer is extremely difficult. You can focus on the train angle and make parallels between the plot and the momentum of the titular choo-choo. Or you can go the video game route and discuss how each car is like a different level. There’s also the political angle, the “tightly balanced, ecological system” angle and the battle over final cut angle. All of these are perfectly fertile topics for discussion that I would love to eventually read in-depth pieces on, but what caught my attention the most was how in the era of Michael Bay, Bong Joon-Ho opted to hew closer to the aesthetics of a very different era of blockbuster.

Though I have not seen Transformers: Age of Extinction, the overwhelming critical consensus seems to be that the action sequences are long, loud special effects orgies where it is difficult to distinguish one character from another. So of course this translated into a bajillion dollars at the box office. But things weren't always this way. Back in 1972, Francis Ford Coppola was able to break box office records with a leisurely paced and sumptuously photographed crime drama called The Godfather.

Now while I’m sure that there is a healthy number of people out there that appreciate The Godfather for what it has to say about America, the immigrant experience and capitalism, I’d be lying to myself if I didn't cop to the fact that most people saw this film for the sensationalistic stuff like the horse’s head and Moe Green’s eye. That’s just the nature of the beast. But what is it that makes these violent moments different? Why are these kills able to wedge themselves so deeply in our minds while stuff like Transformers, The Lone Ranger and World War Z simply go in one ear and come out the other?

On the audio commentary tracks to The Godfather Part I and II, Coppola discusses the unique way in which he approached the film’s violent scenes:

“The trick with violence in a film like this is that you have to try to make every moment be in some way eccentric or have some unusual, memorable aspect so it’s not just a bludgeoning or just violence but there’s some kind of context that singles it out…We’re always trying to figure out how to make these violent scenes memorable or interesting or to just give it a detail that is a little different that somehow makes what it’s really about (which is somebody murdering somebody) just a little more poetic I guess, or memorable in some way.”

I’m not certain if Bong Joon-Ho has ever listened to either of these commentary tracks, but having now experienced the action set-pieces in Snowpiercer, I am absolutely certain that this sort of cinematic thinking is thoroughly ingrained in his DNA.  Each battle is completely unique, memorable and able to stand apart from the ones before and after. When I think back on my experience watching this film, a lot comes to mind, but the bits that stick out the most are little things like fish, eggs, a subtly placed Al Bowlly cue and of course the most unexpected New Year's celebration ever. These weird little touches are what fuel the, “sacred engine” and give this film life. This is the stuff that makes me certain Snowpiercer will be able to live on beyond the standard summer movie season. This is a train that can't be stopped.

A History Of Violence (2005)

A few years ago, when The Dark Knight Rises was about to be released, David Cronenberg was out promoting Cosmpolois and made the following statement in an interview:

“…a superhero movie, by definition, you know, it’s comic book. It’s for kids. It’s adolescent in its core. That has always been its appeal, and I think people who are saying, you know, Dark Knight Rises is, you know, “supreme cinema art,” I don’t think they know what the fuck they’re talking about.” [1]

This caught me a bit off guard as it was Cronenberg himself that directed one of my favorite comic to film adaptations – A History of Violence. This statement also seems odd coming from a man who has spent the better part of his career elevating the base genre of horror to the level of art. And what about films like the Oscar nominated Ghost World, American Splendor and Persepolis? When you get down to the heart of it, a comic book is nothing more than source material. Just as great movies have been based on books and plays, so have awful movies. And some of those great films even began life as pulpy novels intended for base amusement. The French New Wave practically made a habit of it. I guess that’s why it was Jean-Luc Godard who coined the phrase, “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.” I could not agree more.

Batman Returns (1992)

Batman (Michael Keaton) has to take on The Penguin (Danny DeVito) and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) and an army of circus clowns, and missile-packin' penguins and...

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I really like Batman Returns. I don’t care if this damages my geek cred. I don’t care that the plot makes absolutely no sense, I don’t care that Batman is hardly in the film and it doesn't really phase me that when Batman is on screen, he does some rather un-Batman like things (ie: strapping a bomb to someone and throwing them into the sewer to blow up). You can’t even chalk this up to adolescent nostalgia. I was in second grade when this PG-13 film came out. I don’t think I actually saw it until at least 1995.

What I love most about this film (besides the dark/subversive humor) is the degree to which it embraces practical effects. When you really think about it, this was the last big blow-out for practical effects. Literally everything is hand-made. Exactly one year later Steven Spielberg and his digital dinos would change everything. Three years after that Burton himself wholeheartedly embraced digital technology with Mars Attacks! And though he’s made some good films since, they seem to be fewer and far between. Barring his masterpiece Ed Wood, this was the last stand for the Tim Burton we all fell in love with. Le sigh…

The Dark Knight Trilogy Ultimate Collection (Review)

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Soooo, judging by the box office numbers, everybody saw Iron Man 3 last weekend, right? What a fun movie! I don't read the comics and I only saw the previous Iron Man movies once each, so I was coming into it ready for anything. I wasn't disappointed!

First of all, it was so much nicer actually seeing Robert Downey Jr. and not just hearing his voice coming out of the Iron Man suit. And secondly, Shane Black is such a good fit for Iron Man that it's not even funny. This movie reminded me a lot of the awesome-yet-underrated Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. It's got razor sharp writing, funny henchmen, it's set at Christmas, it has industry jokes, and it's an all-around winner. Oh yeah, and RDJ is in both too, obvs.

I also have to give props to the cast. Rebecca Hall *coughgirlcrushcough*, Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce, and Ty Simpkins in particular all did a great job. And of course Robert Downey Jr. was really given a chance to shine.

I'm so glad these films aren't strictly catering to the comic book crowd and are accessible to everyone in the audience. In this film I didn't feel lost or like I should've rewatched the previous films to know what was going on. The film certainly references the previous Iron Man films and The Avengers, but it stands pretty well on its own. At least, most people should have known what was going on (I'm looking at you, girl who asked her boyfriend seven hundred questions in the middle of the movie!). At any rate, this is not to be missed, if only so you're not the ONLY person who didn't see it (says the girl who refuses to see Avatar). And enjoy!

Dredd 3D (2012)

In a violent, futuristic city where the police have the authority to act as judge, jury and executioner, a cop (Karl Urban) teams with a trainee (Olivia Thurlby) to take down a gang that deals the reality-altering drug, SLO-MO.

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Let me state up front that I've never read a single issue of 2000 AD. Though I grew up a comics kid, my knowledge of Judge Dredd prior to this film, was limited to a TV commercial I saw when I was 11 where Sylvester Stallone exclaimed that he was, "THE LAW!"...and then the, "making copies" guy mocked him. Even at such a young impressionable age, that commercial did nothing for me. But then again, I find machismo off-putting. Those gritted teeth and bulging biceps never did anything for me. I always favored Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell over Rob Liefeld. So when I first heard of this latest cinematic incarnation of Dredd, my interest was less than zero. But then I took note of the people who brought this film to life: Alex Garland, Andrew Macdonald and Anthony Dod Mantle. The Danny Boyle Gang! Making a 3D film about a fascist super-cop? As intrigued as I was, it still wasn't enough to get me to actually go to a theater. Apparently the rest of America felt the same, which is a shame because THIS FILM IS FUCKING AWESOME!!! Do yourself a favor and either Netflix or Redbox this bad-boy so that you can get in near the ground-floor of a film cult while it's still in its infancy!

Verisimilitude

Dear Hollywood Film Executives,

Long time fan, first time complainer. Like most Americans, I love to spend my hard-earned cash on seeing your movies in theaters while eating overpriced popcorn as well as buying every edition of certain movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Also, like many Americans, I love comic books and comic book movies. There is just something so fun about watching grown men and women run around fighting crime in suits made of iron or costumes that would put most fetishists to shame. Yet, as much as I love these movies you turn out, I have a beef with you — and it's a big one. Let me cut to the chase: Stop making comic book and superhero movies grounded in reality!

Wow, I feel so much better getting that off my chest. I will readily admit that I love the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy, but only so far. Those movies got a lot right where the Tim Burton/Joel Shumacher films got a lot wrong. Yet of course, where Nolan nailed Bruce Wayne as a man with personal issues, Burton and Shumacher succeeded in bringing big, bold comic book worlds to life on the silver screen.

When I read a Batman graphic novel, I love seeing the Dark Knight take on a psychotic mass murderer like the Joker or Victor Zsasz who are both grounded in a certain amount of reality. At the same time I also love seeing him grapple with Mr. Freeze, Solomon Grundy or Poison Ivy, who are characters so removed from reality it makes them a blast to read about.

Batman can have a dash of reality now and then, but think about it: he's a grown man running around dressed as a giant bat. Does no one in Gotham ever put two and two together, that the Caped Crusader has all the goods and equipment only a billionaire could buy? Yeah, that's real realistic. Now we have the upcoming Superman movie produced by Nolan, which you are so proud to tout as grounded in reality. Really? What the fuck Warner Bros.? Have any of you execs ever actually read a Superman comic? 

He Said/She Said: The Amazing Spider-Man

Well since last month's addition of Colin and Rachel to the blog went so well, we've seen fit to add a few new faces this month. As those of you who have followed the blog since the beginning might have noticed, we don't often review films currently in theaters. Well that's about to change with these fun and insightful video reviews from our own geektastic Siskel & Ebert - ladies and gentlemen will you please put your hands together for John Carlos & Tracie!

As you can already tell from the title of this post, the film they will be addressing is The Amazing Spider-Man. Please do enjoy!

The Avengers (2012)

Let me start this by saying I am not an Avengers superfan. As of this writing, I haven't seen Iron Man 2 or any of the Hulk movies, nor have I read a single superhero comic book. I was worried that this film would be appreciated only by people very familiar with all the backstories (remind me what S.H.I.E.L.D. is again?) and that I would be sitting there very confused.

So glad I was wrong! This movie is FUN. It has crazy superhero action, funny quips (mostly from Downey Jr as Iron Man, go figure) and it doesn't alienate non-fans with you-have-to-read-the-comic moments. I suppose I saw enough of the superhero movies (Thor, Captain America and Iron Man) to follow it, but I had such a good time watching it that I didn't mind the very few moments of WTFness. What exactly is a "tesseract"? Who cares! Did I just see the Hulk beat up a jet? Yes, yes I did. Speaking of the Hulk, he's by far the best part. While other characters get their little one-liner jabs in, the Hulk just pummels people. Awesome!

The characters all get their little moment in the sun, Loki's pretty awesome as far as villains go (he's like the Pete Campbell of supervillains: jealous, petty, and greasy-looking), and it's a damn good ride. I haven't had that much fun in a movie theatre in a while! Go see it!

And who the hell is Thanos?

Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010)

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) wants to date Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), but first he must defeat all seven of her evil Exs.

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Since you found your way to a blog that has the word "Nerd" in the title, it can be assumed that you have already seen this film. You already know how funny it is. You already know how awesome the action is. You already know how cute the romance is. You already know how rocking the music is. You already know the millions of video game and pop culture references. And in case you didn't know all of those things...now you do.

see this movie, SEE THIS MOVIE, SEE THIS MOVIE! 

It's criminal that this film did so poorly in theaters. But thankfully in less than a year it has become a cult sensation on DVD/Blu-Ray with special screenings popping up all over the place. I don't care if you don't like Michael Cera, rectify a wrong and see this movie as soon as possible. It's a Total K.O.