Category: Reviews

Box Office Democracy: “Captain America: Civil War”

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I hesitate a little sitting down to write a rave review of Captain America: Civil War because a year ago I wrote a rave review for Avengers: Age of Ultron, and when I rewatched that to make sure I was all set for this new installment I found it rather tedious. Are these, perhaps, movies that trick us into liking them with their big action scenes, clever dialogue, and sweeping scores— but only really play in a big theater with a bucket of popcorn? Are there no legs to these films? Will we be as embarrassed of them in 20 years as we are of Batman Returns now? The correct answer to these questions is a resounding “who cares?” It doesn’t matter if these are immortal treasures, the Casablancas or French Connections of our time, only that they’re fun to watch now and they are, perhaps the most fun this side of Fast & Furious, and we should cherish and celebrate them even if they might be a bit fleeting.

I was the perfect age to be completely enamored with the Civil War comic book series. I was finishing up my junior year of college and I could not get enough of any super hero comic book with a political allegory thrown in. If you wanted to have someone talk your ear off about how Margaret Thatcher influenced British comics in the 80s with not even a whiff of proper context I was your guy. Civil War the comic felt timely and provocative while Civil War the movie feels decidedly less so. We seem less concerned these days about government surveillance and intrusion in to our lives. There was probably a good pivot to be made to police militarization and violence, especially when Captain America learns that the order is to kill Bucky on sight, but there’s seemingly no interest in exploring this and it’s hard to blame them when Marvel is interested in making a billion dollars, not in being provocative.

They’re going to earn that billion dollars, too. Civil War is a crisp, effective, action movie that provides ample fan service without feeling overdone. Early in the film I thought I was completely worn out by super hero action sequences, and then they get to the big signature set piece where all the heroes fight each other and I was completely riveted. It helps that their big dramatic fight scene has a brand-new wisecracking Spider-Man and a welcome returning Ant-Man to keep things light and glib and just the utter opposite of Snyder-esque. The final fight scene has that overwrought gritty feeling creeping in, but by that point the stakes have been jacked up so many times that I was willing to forgive it. It’s a dark violent fight but it’s so well directed and the cramped environment makes it feel immediate, imposing, and fresh. Civil War has some fantastic character moments but it needs to live and die by its action sequences, and with the exception of one that felt lifted from The Bourne Identity it consistently hit the mark.

I’m beginning to wonder if the Marvel Cinematic Universe is starting to strain under the weight of its own continuity. The scenes between Vision and Scarlet Witch were generally charming but they mostly felt like they were setting things up for future movies rather than relating directly to the action at hand. Similarly, I was thrilled to see Chadwick Boseman debut as Black Panther and while he’s a riveting presence (and an A+ costume) it felt like they were saving all the good bits for his solo movie, and while I’m excited to see it that movie comes out in two years, I paid for this ticket now. I understand that this is bigger than any one movie, but I want these events to feel important and self-contained and not just part of some endless march to Thanos or whatever the endgame after that is. Comic book movies should be evocative of their source material, but should avoid the more glaring pitfalls of sequential storytelling with excessive continuity when they can.

I like so much of what they put on the screen in Captain America: Civil War and most of my complaints seem to be about the things they didn’t do or problems outside the scope of a movie like this, and while I do think a more timely, more self-contained film would have been more enjoyable it doesn’t take away from how good it is now. We are looking down the barrel of a rough summer when it comes to standard-fare action movies, and when I’m sitting through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows I’m not going to be thinking about how Civil War dropped too many hints— I’m going to miss how it could stage a compelling grandiose action scene and how none of the characters looked like expressionless CGI blobs. Civil War is as good as superhero action films get, or at least as good as they get with no Hulk.

Seriously, I feel Hulk-starved at this point.

REVIEW: Remember

RememberWe have probably reached the saturation point of fiction in film and prose about the Holocaust. While it remains an intensely personal tragedy for those connected with it, dramas about those horrific years have all begun to gain a sameness. Dark, moody, sad and when well done, incredibly affecting. That was certainly the way I felt when I first heard the latest entry in the genre, Remember.

What made it compelling to sample was the notion that this was largely going to be a two person drama and when those two happen to be Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau, you pay attention. Both bring decades of experience to the screen and in their twilight years, have a gravitas that adds to their characters. The film, from director Atom Egoyan, is about the Holocaust but it is also about friendship, memory, and justice. Heady stuff and overall, the movie works.

Plummer is Zev Guttman, a survivor of Auschwitz, and now a widower, living out the end of his days in a nursing home. Complicating his grieving is the Alzheimer’s that makes memory an iffy thing at best. His friend at the home is Max (Landau), who pokes, prods, and forces Zev to recall details of their joint incarceration at the Germany Concentration Camp and the guard Otto Wallisch, who Max blames for killing both their families.

As we learn, Max believes Wallisch escaped Germany and assumed the identity of Rudy Kurlander and he is making it his mission to find and expose the man. He has found four with that name and needs Zev’s help in determining which is the killer. Screenwriter Benjamin August adds in twists and turns to sustain the suspense up until the final scenes when he hammers the audience with a powerful, shocking and somewhat incredulous twist.

Most survivors of the Holocaust refuse to forget it but they also don’t dwell on it overly much. The subtext here is that Zev’s fading memories are all Max has for confirmation of his suspicions and both men are reliving days best left in the past.

August does a good job setting things up and establishing the difficult circumstances haunting both men. He is aided very much by the winning performances from the leads, who avoid chewing the scenery but relish the complex men they were given to portray. They make the film enjoyable to watch even if elements are far-fetched and Egoyan glosses over them with some nice shots.

It is especially fitting that Lionsgate Home Entertainment released the home video edition this week, being the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. The high definition transfer looks fine. The muted colors and rich shadowy detail is well captured in the high definition transfer. The film itself was shot digitally by cinematographer Paul Sarossy with Arri products and the result looks good. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is adequate for our needs if unspectacular.

The disc comes with just a few standard features including the Audio Commentary with Egoyan, Producer Robert Lantos, and August and an electronic press kit package, Performances to Remember (16:49), giving props to the stars; and finally A Tapestry of Evil: Remembering the Past (13:47), a look at the real history of efforts to bring Holocaust enemies to justice.

Box Office Democracy: Keanu

Keanu is a lot of things, it’s a very funny comedy, it’s a sharp piece of social satire, and it’s a telling mirror held up to the tropes of the contemporary action movie, but what it isn’t is the movie they advertise it as, a movie about a cute kitten. I understand the urge to run those advertisements—if the internet has proved one thing, it’s that there’s no end to human cruelty; but if it’s proved two, it’s that people love cute cats so much—but it seems to be a great way to end up with a theater full of people who are not getting the movie experience they thought they were getting. While it’s very easy to Monday morning quarterback these kind of decisions, it’s now clear that this wasn’t the secret to untold box office millions, and the actual content in Keanu is excellent and should have been given a chance to stand on its own.

The similarities between Keanu and John Wick are reportedly coincidental, but they’ve clearly leaned in to it by naming their film after Keanu Reeves and calling on him for a cameo voice role. On the surface the movies have a lot in common, people are inspired to gratuitous amounts of violence over the grief the feel over losing a newly acquired pet, but the comparison dries up quickly after that. John Wick is this sublimely misanthropic movie about how the good in the world is a facade and how we can never escape our baser instincts, and Keanu is full of redemptive arcs for all but the most sinister characters, everyone has a chance at a better life and there’s a feeling of hope. Maybe this is the difference between a live kitten and a dead dog but it’s probably a bit more than that.

On the face of things, Keanu is a lot like any comedy you’ve seen for your entire life— but there’s something deeper lurking underneath. Rell (Jordan Peele) is struggling to recover from a breakup and is looking to find his joie de vivre again while his more together friend Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key) is more together but needs to find a way to advocate for his own needs and find time for himself. I’m sure these exact characters to this point have existed thousands of times in the history of film and thousands more on TV sitcoms, but they’re effective character shorthands. What Keanu uses these shorthand characters for is to discuss black masculinity, a topic I am wholly incapable of discussing in any sort of authoritative manner. I can say that when Rell tells Cameron that he sounds like “Richard Pryor doing an impression of a white guy” I laughed because I got the reference, but I can’t speak to the truthfulness of these observations. I urge you to seek out more insightful thoughts on this topic from black cultural critics or even from Key & Peele themselves in their interview for Sharp Magazine. I enjoyed it, I think it’s important; I’m too white to get further involved.

I very much enjoyed Key & Peele when it was on Comedy Central, so it’s no real surprise that I found Keanu generally hilarious. In particular, there’s a bit where Clarence has to convince a car full of young gangsters that George Michael is a black musician making music that speaks to their lives and situations that was easily the strongest bit in the whole film. It was cut with a remarkably weak scene with Anna Faris playing herself as a set of drug clichés that felt indulgent and overly long. It’s generally well paced and consistently funny and, perhaps most importantly, has the good taste to wrap up the movie before it gets boring. Keanu passes one of the most important tests a comedy can pass: I would 100% stop and watch it if I saw it was on cable.

Mike Gold: Breasts & Politics & Comics, Oh My!

diary-of-a-femen-8683304Time to hurl a hand grenade.

Some portions of the modern American feminist movement – which is not and has never been a monolithic force – conflate sex with sexism. Others in this movement think they are two different things. To me, it’s all about choice and, as Margo St. James said, “call off your old tired ethics.” At the very least, stop telling consenting adults what they can and cannot do with their own bodies, lest you be thought of as a Republican.

For those still with me, I’d like to bring to your attention a graphic novel published in Europe two years ago but just made available digitally by Europe Comics called Diary Of A Femen, by artist Séverine Lefebvre and writer Michel Dufranne. Europe Comics describes the story as “A fascinating album (we call ‘em graphic novels out here in Americanland) that helps us understand the inner workings of the controversial feminist organization… Five female characters combating stereotypes.” The story is based upon the real and controversial Femen movement(s) and the creators’ involvement with some movement members.

And, check this out, boys! It’s got naked titties! Whereas that might alienate some of its potential readership here in the States, I maintain that breasts are not inherently sexist and, hey, maybe those boys will learn some important stuff. I know I did, and I’ve been a fellow traveler with the feminist movement for, gasp, about a half-century.

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Sverine Lefebvre

Diary Of A Femen is about a young woman named Apolline, and it is her story. It is not the story of the movement and certainly not of feminism in general: this is a story about a real woman who endures the real travails of life. As such, the first 12 story pages detail the routine life of a young, attractive woman and, despite all outward appearances, that routine is pretty dreadful. If you’ve never fully understood the day-to-day meaning of being a sex object – being objectified by people (notice I didn’t say “men”) who are so accustomed to the societal perception of women that they don’t understand how they’re at fault. Apolline has a routinely bad day, but this time she decides to check out an organization that purports to change that.

Their mission has real meaning to Apolline, filling a hole in her life she knew was always there but hadn’t done anything about – as of yet. Joining a Femen meeting to see what it’s all about, she is warned that by becoming an activist she will take on the very, very real risks of losing her job, her friends, her family and, possibly, her freedom. She takes on these risks and goes through the intensive training one must go through to be a functioning street activist. She then joins the group for public protest… and that is where the proverbial shit hits the fan.

Apolline comes off very, very real, and what happens to her and the decisions she makes are equally real. So is the activist training, planning and risk-taking; I found that to be surprisingly accurate. And her story might not end the way you expect.

This is a very worthy book that tells a fascinating story in profoundly professional terms. So call off your old tired ethics, buy Diary Of A Femen, download it onto your computer or tablet, and read it with the intention of learning something. You will.

And yes, kids. It’s in English.

 

Box Office Democracy: “The Huntsman: Winter’s War”

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In my first year of reviewing movies I ranked Snow White and the Huntsman as the ninth worst movie of 2012 and by that time news had come out that neither star Kristen Stewart nor director Rupert Shane would be returning for the sequel, and I predicted that it would probably be a better movie. I was right, The Huntsman: Winter’s War is a better movie, and it still isn’t a very good movie.   Freed from trying to retell a more famous story, there are some interesting choices made in the script— but it’s all overwhelmed by the crushing clichés of high fantasy. At its lowest points Huntsman is the slickest Lord of the Rings fan-film you’ve ever seen; at its highest it’s a kind of cute romantic comedy starring Nick Frost.

The Huntsman: Winter’s War wraps around the first movie with a little bit of an origin story and then the kind of sequel where you barely need to bring any of the cast back. The story now revolves around a previously unmentioned northern kingdom ruled by Freya (Emily Blunt) the ice witch sister of the evil queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) from the first film. Freya has a plotline so similar to Elsa in Frozen that it feels like the script was written by lawyers, everything feels just distinct enough while still constantly threatening to break in to a chorus of “Let it Go” at any moment. Freya, it conveniently turns out, raised and trained a whole army of Huntsmen (and Huntswomen) and her sociologically fascinating but completely implausible ban on the very concept of love ends up driving away Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and starting him on his journey that leads him to the first movie. We then skip ahead to after and Eric with one of the eight dwarfs from the first movie (Nick Frost) plus a new dwarf (Rob Brydon) end up on a convoluted quest to rescue the evil magic mirror to save the completely absent Snow White and save the world, I guess. Sara (Jessica Chastain) is Eric’s presumed dead wife who saves his life at a miraculous moment, and then just a bunch of fantasy junk happens until they have to wrap it up.

I feel like a crazy person typing all that up. There’s just an insane amount of idea bloat in this film and it struggles to find a focus.

Some of that struggle for focus is the result of not having a clear protagonist. Going strictly by the screenplay writing books it’s Freya, because it is the change in her attitude that allows the climax of the movie to happen, but she’s practically a Bond villain in terms of her scheming for the rest of the film and it’s hard to feel particularly invested in the well-being of someone who keeps a room full of people turned into ice sculptures. In terms of screen time (and billing) it’s Eric, but he doesn’t change his attitude one iota through the film— he’s right about pretty much everything all the time and is super capable and has no need to improve, he’s Aragorn with an axe. It’s probably supposed to be Sara, she has a clear narrative arc and she has the biggest impact on the events of the film but they try so hard to obfuscate her actions and intentions that it’s hard to connect with her. That along with the stilted narrative structure leaves the movie feeling like a series of vignettes and not like a cohesive narrative.

I did genuinely enjoy the love story between Nick Frost’s dwarf and Alexandra Roach’s. It was cute, and it felt clever, and most importantly… it didn’t feel like it was shaken out of the fantasy magic eight ball like every other piece of Winter’s War. It was the only thing that felt genuine or surprising. This was a movie full of twists and every one of them was telegraphed so far in advance and the one that might have been surprising was shown in its entirety in the trailer for the movie. That simple, silly love story was the only thing I liked, the only thing I will remember fondly in this overplotted mess, but it deserves to be recognized. If the next movie just takes those two characters I’d be first in line for more; otherwise, please put this series out of its misery.

Box Office Democracy: Midnight Special

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At the theater I see most of my movies at, they sometimes run interviews with filmmakers after the credits. These are never particularly hard-hitting affairs, usually filled with variations on the question “just how is it you came to do such brilliant work on this movie” and so on. After Midnight Special, they ran an interview with writer/director Jeff Nichols where they asked him what it was like to be a writer who only wrote films he was going to direct and a director who only directed films he wrote. Putting aside that this isn’t nearly as uncommon as this interviewer seems to think, it kind of brought in to focus the nagging problem I had during the film; it’s a wonderfully directed movie and only an okay script. There are fantastic, compelling acting performances holding up a script that thinks it’s too clever for context, and a third act that feels utterly without consequence. A movie can go a long way on gritty atmosphere, tension, and a pervasive sense of intrigue, but it can’t quite get all the way to the finish line— and so Midnight Special is a frustrating good instead of a dizzying great.

Midnight Special is about a boy, Alton, with some kind of powers. They’re never made particularly clear, which becomes awfully convenient when they need him to do just about everything to make the story come together in the end. It’s also about his parents who love Alton so much that they’ll give up their lives and endanger innocent people to rescue him from a cult that might not have his interests at heart, but when it becomes clear they might not see their child again they never once tell him they love him or that they’ll miss him. It’s all tight-lipped stoicism and meaningful glances. It’s also about a manhunt to find him both by the government and by two agents of this cult, but the methods of the pursuers are vague and the cultists seem to give up very easily considering they think the boy will bring about biblical judgment. Midnight Special is a movie where nothing feels particularly weighty because nothing makes all that much sense.

There’s a pleasing depth to the world of Midnight Special, and while they drop us right in to the middle of the action it all feels lived in and real. The problem comes in because, while I don’t want more exposition per se, I can’t help but wonder if some of the stories we don’t see on screen aren’t more interesting than the one we’re seeing. The story of an established rural Texas cult refocusing itself around a precocious young boy and rewriting their scriptures, or the story of the NSA discovering that said precocious cult child is spilling national secrets, or even a 20-minute short about how the world would react to whatever the hell happened at the end of that movie. A movie should always try to leave the audience wanting more but Midnight Special left me wanting something completely different and something I’ll never be offered, and that’s slightly less pleasant.

Michael Shannon was seemingly created to be in movies like Midnight Special. He’s quiet, he’s intense, and he can convey an incredible amount of information with his expressions. He’s needed in this movie because while the information might seem thin or a little nonsensical, he can instantly ground it by wordlessly conveying to the audience what it means to his character and how we’re supposed to feel in the audience. He isn’t angry at Alton when the crashed satellite destroys the gas station, he’s afraid— stuff like that. Joel Edgerton and Kirsten Dunst are also very good and they’re acting against the type I have for them in my head, which is nice. They both feel like such substantial presences on the screen and while that might seem like damning with faint praise, it isn’t— their tiniest reaction or mannerism feels gigantic in this film.

I’m unhappy to admit that I was probably wrong about Adam Driver. I didn’t like him for a long time and it seems like he’s a real actor. I didn’t like him in Girls, I still don’t understand why people think he’s so incredibly good-looking, but he was good in The Force Awakens and he’s great here in Midnight Special. He’s firmly in my McConaughey Zone for actors that are going to take me a while to get past their so-so starts to appreciate their good work, but at least the newest inductee has a name I don’t have to look up every time I need to write it down.

It’s great for science fiction that Midnight Special exists. It’s a nice, slower, less special effects intensive kind of sci-fi that has a really good vibe (Alton reading 1980s Superman and Teen Titans comics in the back of the car was an especially nice touch). It’s an emotional film and its an effectively tense film but it never feels particularly clever; it’s a well-decorated house that’s collapsing into a sinkhole. It’s the kind of movie I would stick with if I ran across it on cable but would be not paying attention at all by the end.

REVIEW: Justice League vs Teen Titans

jlvtt2Now that the DC Animated Universe has solidified its characters and reality, it makes sense to go exploring. After all, if there’s a Robin, surely there must be other teen heroes. We meet some of them in the newly released Justice League vs Teen Titans.

Robin (Stewart Allen) is the focal point as his go-it-alone and I-know-better-than-everyone-else attitude actually gets him into trouble on a case that foreshadows the arrival of the demon Trigon (Jon Bernthal). A frustrated Batman (Jason O’Mara) arranges for Damian to spend time with Starfire (Kari Wahlgren) and the Teen Titans. Interestingly, this interpretation of the Tamaranean princess positions her a caring, mentor figure as opposed to the current fish-out-of-water incarnation or the innocent warrior she was originally seen as. She is training the next generation composed of the Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle (Jake T. Austin), Beast Boy (Brandon Soo Hoo), and Raven (Taissa Farmiga).

As you would expect, Robin does not fit in and upsets the nascent team chemistry. Starfire eventually hits on the idea of a fun outing, a team bonding trip to the carnival where icy exteriors soften amid the friendly competition.

Meanwhile, Trigon’s forces have been seeping into the world and Superman (Jerry O’Connell) has been possessed and has fled, leaving a depleted League to figure out what’s happening. Why Shazam and Green Lantern are absent is never properly covered which is shame but Cyborg (Shemar Moore), Wonder Woman (Rosario Dawson), Flash (Christopher Gorham), and Batman get to work.

Once the connection between Trigon and Raven is established, the inevitable conflict between teams is brought forward and the battle is mercifully brief. While Sam Lu’s direction is solid, it’s a shame that, I gather, budget concerns limited the fight to showing any two opponents at one time as opposed to nearly multiple figures making for a richer battle. The only two rule grew annoying throughout the entire production.

JLvTitansThe DC Universe Animated Original Movie benefits from Bryan Q. Miller and Alan Burnett co-writing the screenplay since it treats all the characters with respect and allows time for characterization. There’s some nice byplay between Starfire and Nightwing (Sean Maher) and Superman and Wonder Woman that strengthens the overall production.

The generation gap between the teams is no longer as wide as it once seemed in the comics and the bickering between sides is kept to a minimum, in favor of the teen’s sticking up for one of their own. While this might be about the obvious Robin learns the obvious teamwork theme, it’s also about a young girl confronting her destiny and dealing with the world’s worst parent.

trigon_tt_jlDC clearly intends on doing more with the Titans in the animated world given the final scene just before the credits roll.

The 79-minute animated film comes in a Combo Pack with Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD in addition to a collector’s edition complete with Robin figurine. It looks and sound just fine, as one would expect.

There are a smattering of extras including Growing Up Titan (23:46) wherein Marv Wolfman, Mike Carlin, co-publisher Dan DiDio, and producer James Tucker explore the nature of sidekicks and why the Teen Titans has remained one of DC’s most enduring titles for five decades. The same gang reunited for Heroes and Villains: Raven (6:05) and Heroes and Villains: Trigon (5:17) does much the same for this satanic arch-villain. Rounding out the collection is A Sneak Peek at DC Universe’s Next Movie: Batman: The Killing Joke (10:15) and Batman: The Brave and the Bold: “Sidekicks Assemble!” (22:52) and Teen Titans: “The Prophecy“(23:02).

REVIEW: Actionverse from Action Lab

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We get a hell of a lot of press releases over here at ComicMix. That’s understandable, even though we’re not really a news site – for those of you who watch Fox News, there’s a difference between “news” and “opinion.” We get ‘em from all sorts of people and places and most of the larger comics publishers, except DC Comics. Hmmm… I wonder why that is?

actionverse-molly-danger-297x450-9787457Perhaps the publisher who leads the pack in sending out press releases is Action Lab. I say this because in the time it took me to write these words we received another seven releases from Jamal Igle. Yes, the artist on Supergirl and Firestorm and New Warriors and Iron Fist / Wolverine and all sorts of other worthy stuff. His creation, Molly Danger (Hendrix much?), is over at Action Lab where Jamal also serves as Vice President of Marketing. Our very own Ed Catto made him the subject of a Supergirl-focused column about two months ago.

Not a problem. Some publishers seem to send out releases every time one of their staffers goes to the bathroom. Jamal’s are actually informative. The number one secret to getting outlets to read your press releases is to always have something interesting or newsworthy to say. If we didn’t already have a publicity/marketing human here at ComicMix who could eat Jamal’s lunch, I’d kidnap him.

actionverse-stray-7672553So after receiving notice of Action Lab’s upcoming superhero universe, I let out a long, slow sigh. Damn near every publisher that indulges in heroic fantasy tries this, and a lot of them were as good as they were unsuccessful in the long run. Malibu’s Ultraverse, Dark Horse’s Comics Greatest World, Dynamite’s line of pulp characters… everybody meets everybody, but the established (and incessantly reestablished) universes at DC and Marvel preempt too much of the readers’ time and dig too deep into the readers’ wallet to allow even really good projects such as the ones I just noted any chance at traction. Which, of course, is the point: DC and Marvel used tonnage to crowd competitors out of the newsstand, now they crowd ‘em out by draining time and money. This is the purpose of capitalism.

I picked up my keyboard and dropped Jamal a note saying “let’s see what you’ve got” and he rapidly replied with pdfs of the six-part Actionverse miniseries. I read the run during my just-concluded post-MoCCA recovery, which seemed appropriate as MoCCA focuses on smaller, independent publishers.

actionverse-6758259This universe consists of many Action Lab characters: The F1rst Hero, Fracture, Midnight Tiger, Stray, and Igle’s own Molly Danger. If you’re not familiar with any or all of them, Actionverse is a good place to check ‘em out.

By definition, putting the band together requires the creators to succumb to originitis, where by necessity the story revolves around establishing who’s who, what’s what, and where it’s all happening. Actionverse is no different, but at least each issue focuses on the introduction of one character joining the evolving storyline. Structurally, across the six issues we’ve got us a story that is structured in a fashion similar to the first issue of original, Tower Comics T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents by Wally Wood, Reed Crandall, Gil Kane, and Mike Sekowsky. This is the highest praise I can offer to the first issue of a new super-team.

We’ve got us a fun, unpretentious, straight-forward super-team here that is devoid of Greek choruses, one that I enjoyed reading and will indulge in further. If you enjoy superhero comics but have grown tired of the DC/Marvel’s rebooting/reimaging/rebirthing reflux, check out Actionverse. Six issues, six weeks, by (gasp) Anthony Ruttgaizer, Jamal Igle, Shawn Gabborin, Ray-Anthony Height, Sean Izaakse, Vito Delsante, Marco Renna, Chad Cicconi, Steve Walker, Mat Lopes, Ron Frenz and probably a few others.

Shipping against Civil War II and Rebirth, I’d hate to see Actionverse get lost in the shuffle. And, besides, you deserve something new and different.

Box Office Democracy: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

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It’s easy to kick a studio while they’re down, and a little of that seems to be happening with the reactions to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Warner Bros. has struggled mightily in bringing their heroes to the screen in recent years (recent decades if we don’t count Christopher Nolan’s work) and there’s an attempt to pile on. If Batman v Superman were a Marvel Studios film I suspect it would be getting more positive coverage as people dug to find the good things and used them to redeem the things that don’t work; instead people are endlessly picking at the numerous mistakes. Don’t get confused, Batman v Superman is an awful movie and Zack Snyder should be stopped at all costs but in the hands of literally any other director I could believe there was a salvageable property here and there’s time to right this ship.

Superman as depicted in Batman v Superman isn’t fun to watch, nor does he feel faithful to the character. I’ll be honest: I stopped reading comics on a weekly basis in the winter of 2012 and I haven’t been keeping up since then, so maybe Superman has become an extremely violent, petulant baby in that time— but I sort of doubt it. The Superman in this film is terrifying to consider. He’s quick to anger and never particularly nice to anyone that isn’t Lois Lane; more like Miracleman than Superman. The only never ending battle on display in this film is the one Warner Bros. fights for Superman to appear cool, but they’ve succeeded in creating a character that would only seem cool to an edgy teenager or the 90s comics industry. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be rooting for Batman or Superman when they come to blows, but I’m almost certainly not supposed to be thinking Lex Luthor is right about everything— and yet that’s just where I was for 80% of this movie.

The non-Superman characters were mostly pretty good. Ben Affleck should release a video where he makes it very clear he’s addressing all the people who doubted he could be a credible Batman, drop the mic, and then walk away. He’s a great Batman; I’m ready to put him in the upper echelon with Bale and Keaton (and Kilmer but let’s not get sidetracked) after seeing this movie. He’s believable physically, and he captures that kind of arrogant paranoia that I think Batman should embody. The scenes with Wonder Woman in costume are a giddy rush, and they represent her so well in the fight scenes without any clunky exposition or holding anybody’s hand. We all know who Wonder Woman is, we’ve been alive in the world. The scenes before she puts on the costume are less good; they kind of play her like an off-brand Selina Kyle, but they might have been going for an air of mystery and were betrayed by the PR team. Jesse Eisenberg has the most off-beat take of any established character, and while there isn’t a strong comic book foundation to what he’s doing, it does feel like what a billionaire megalomaniacal industrialist would look like in the modern start-up culture and he’s so unsettlingly creepy that I’m going to give him a pass.

I generally find Zack Snyder’s work to be unappealing visually, and Batman v Superman is no exception. Things are too slick, slow motion is used too much, only a handful of scenes take place in daylight. Gotham City and Metropolis look the same because there’s no room for points of contrast. I suppose Gotham’s abandoned docks are supposed to feel seedy and give the city a dilapidated edge but Metropolis has a crashed alien ship taking up a huge part of their downtown so there’s no contrast there. The contrast between Superman and Batman should be reflected in every part of their environment and instead everything takes place on the same dreary streets and rooftops.

The common refrain after seeing a movie like this is that it “destroys their childhood” of the viewer, and that’s always nonsense. No one from Warner is going to break down my door and set any of my trade paperbacks on fire or draw a bunch of bloodstains in the margins or anything like that. However, superhero movies are trading on nostalgia. If they can’t get a dyed in the wool DC Comics person like me to feel a connection to this film (and if you go back and read paragraph three of this review I desperately want to feel this connection) then I can’t imagine who does. They’ve made a misanthropic film, an ugly film, and worst of all they made a Zack Snyder film.

REVIEW: The Hateful Eight

Hateful Eight Blu-ray-CoverA new film from Quentin Tarantino is never anything short of an event. For his eighth film, The Hateful Eight, he insisted on it being shot in 65mm using Ultra Panavision then arranged with the Weinstein Company to go back in time and release a roadshow version of the film. That is, the 70mm version would play in select theaters and become a Must See film.

The movie is wonderfully cast and beautifully shot with award-winning music from Ennio Morricone. But this is the first time I can say with genuine feeling that I was bored to tears.

Eight people find themselves waiting out a blizzard in an out of the way location, Minnie’s Haberdashery, and no one is as they appear which we learn over the course of two and a half tedious hours. While in some ways this is a thematic sequel to the far superior Django Unchained, this offering lacks the verve of its dialogue and the outrageousness of its characters.

Part of the problem is that fate and a sloppy script bring these eight together and they all seem to know one another in one way or another. Since they all arrive in various ways, it cannot be said to be by design but once they are in the building, its front door repeatedly nailed shut to fight the wind, they talk.

And they talk and they shout and they reminisce and they taunt one another but really, there’s very little said.

Hateful Eight RussellThe standard release is 20 minutes shorter and probably a tighter story which may have been prudent. Watching the wide screen version at home, you see the gorgeous exteriors which probably benefitted from lenses but once we’re inside, the feeling of closeness is absent, robbing the film of some of its intended tension.

The thread holding things together, is ostensibly that bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is bringing Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to Red Rock to be hung. By chance, the Haberdashery also hosts The Hangman Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the Sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern), a seemingly addlepated former Confederate General; and Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a laconic cowboy.  Their host is Bob (Demián Bichir) and one is left to wonder where Minnie is. But central to the story is bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), who forces the issue of race to be discussed in the post-Civil War portion of the 19th Century. Warren has a personal letter from President Lincoln, which makes him a minor celebrity and cause for suspicion.

Told in five chapters, with odd narrative interludes, the story does have a major surprise towards the second half and explains a lot but by then I was beyond caring since things just poked along without being quirky, fun, or engaging. This was a supreme let down from a far better storyteller.

Thankfully, the 1080p transfer in 2.75:1 is gorgeous, one of the bets high definition experiences I’ve had in a while. The immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is just lovely.

Ironically, the extras here are uncharacteristically brief, a sign of the film’s box office disappointment. No expense was invested in tricking this out with special features we get a Combo Pack with Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD and just the electronic press kit release Beyond the Eight: A Behind the Scenes Look (4:58) and the slightly more interesting Sam Jackson’s Guide to Glorious 70mm (7:49).

The release arrives tomorrow from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

 

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