Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Abar, the First Black Superman

1977 Blaxploitation sorta-superhero movie

Rating: 4/20 (Fred: 4/20; Josh: 3/20; Ryan: 5/20; Libby: Was not able to finish because she had to explain racism to her 8-year-old son)

Plot: A black doctor experimenting with rabbits moves into a white neighborhood with his family. The white folk don't like it so much and respond like any normal racist would--killing their new neighbors' pet and hanging it at the front door, shouting racist things, attempting to steal their Frisbees, attempted murder. The titular local civil rights leader begins to defend them. Eventually, the doctor perfects his potion and turns Abar into a superhero.

I love movies that are in English but still dubbed. The dubbing makes the guy playing the doctor--J. Walter Smith, who also co-wrote this and then did nothing else at all in the movie biz--seem like an even worse actor than he is, something that I imagine was very difficult to pull off. Tobar Mayo plays the superhero, and I don't know if it's his build or his bald head, but I thought he could have pulled off action star in movies with bigger budgets. He was in Killer of Sheep which is a movie much different than this one although it tries to accomplish some of the same things. And he was "Third Indian" in Escape from New York. This is really inept filmmaking and storytelling. The first hour of the movie focuses, sometimes uncomfortably, on the racism. Director Frank Packard (his only directing credit) plays the Martin Luther King Jr. card early and often, hammering you over the head with the message. Then, the movie shifts gears dramatically, the doctor starts shooting rabbits to show that he's perfected the formula to make rabbits bulletproof, and we get more of the sci-fi superhero nonsense that my Bad Movie cohorts and I wanted for this week's selection. And it is nonsense! Sure, this titular superman can fight, but he's also got these telepathic abilities to turn prostitutes and drug dealers into college graduates, liquor into milk, and purse snatchers into quality citizens. He can also cause giant snakes to materialize. Superman can't do that! It's so goofy, and I think at this stage, the movie's message gets a little muddy. After all, this movie was really focused on the clash between hateful whites and black people minding their own business, not on the problems with black urban youth. The last half hour isn't enough to salvage this and make it an enjoyable bad movie although there is a twist at the end with Frisbee woman that has to be seen to be believed. And there is a misshapen pimp who made me laugh. Tony Rumford plays Dr. Kincade's son, and he's the worst child actor I've seen in a while. This was also his only role. His is a performance that stands out, and trust me, that's difficult in a movie like this. This is an interesting little socially-critical document, but it's not anywhere near a good movie and probably not a very good bad movie either.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

2009 prequel

Rating: 8/20 (Emma: 20/20; Abbey: 14/20)

Plot: Wolverine's story, leading up to that first X-Men movie. He gets metal put in him, falls in love, chops down trees, and has fights with another furry guy, but not necessarily in that order.

As some of my readers might recall, I sort-of watched this movie with my brother back when it came out. It was a leaked version without completed CGI. My brother tried to tell me that completed special effects wouldn't make a difference, but I really thought they would. Nope. He was right, and I was wrong. Other than Hugh Jackman, who really does his very best to give this a little something, this movie's got nothing going for it. Part of the problem is that it's a prequel, so any fight scene between Wolverine and anybody else has very little if any tension or suspense. And the fight scenes are ludicrous, the CGI effects laughable. I did like the montage during the opening credits that took Liev Schreiber's character and Wolverine through various stages of America's bloody history. I did wonder, as the duo stormed Normandy, why they didn't end up in Saving Private Ryan though. The Liev vs. Wolverine fights though? They're jumpy enough to give you vertigo, and unfortunately, there are about a dozen of them. And they're all sort of the same except the last one which takes place in an implausible location. I can't think of a movie that gets worse and worse and more and more nonsensical like this one does. I thought it had reached the bottom of the barrel with one of those overhead shots showing Wolverine screaming after his girlfriend dies, but I was wrong. Then, I thought we'd reached the bottom when Wolverine, after running around naked for a little too long, interacts with some farm people, farm people who end up dead in a really shocking scene that, to this conservative viewer, just seemed unnecessary. But no, that wasn't the bottom because there's a grotesque Fat Fred who might have been modeled after the obese glutton who dies in Se7en. I'm pretty sure he's got CGI man tits. And there's lots of Will.i.am, poker great Daniel Negreanu, and a climax that seems to go on for hours. The movie's absolutely no fun at all, and unless I missed something, doesn't really give us all that much background about the character or the story that isn't in those first two X-Men movies. This is superfluous entertainment, and no amount of bad special effects could save it. I'm almost insulted that this movie exists.

Bonus points for the work of Septimus Caton as a bartender. "Guys, whatever this is, take it outside." It's easily the best performance in this terrible movie. He's also got a great name.

Hey, I've noticed there's a second Wolverine movie coming out. What the hell could that possibly be about? Emma says we're seeing it in the theater, so I guess I'll know soon enough.

X2

2003 superhero sequel

Rating: 15/20 (Emma: 20/20; Abbey: 16/20)

Plot: The X-Men and X-Women have to find a mysterious mutant monkey man who attempted to assassinate the president, and the bald guys' mutant friends have to team up with the Lord of the Rings wizard and his mutant friends in order to stop the government from killing all the mutants. It's thrilling stuff!

X2? Really? That's the title you're going with?

A question: I don't like those outfits on that poster up there. Why isn't Wolverine wearing yellow and blue like in the comic books I've seen? What am I missing there? I do like Rebecca Romijn's costume though. How hot would it be to date lizard girl, by the way? That scene where she's attempting to seduce Hugh Jackman in a tent forced me to make some adjustments in both my pants and my list of superheroines who I would like to have sexual relations with. That's right--I bumped lizard girl ahead of Wonder Woman. More perversity: Can a guy be horny enough to score with Rogue?

I doubt this movie is really a 15/20, but it's at least 2 points better than the first one. The effects are improved. The vanishing monkey man effect in the White House was very cool, and the vocal music worked so well with that action choreography. I think monkey man is my favorite X-person although I wouldn't be interested in a sexual encounter with him. My least favorite X-person is Cyclops, but I think that's because his need to wear sunglasses indoors makes him look like a complete tool all the time. I think a flaw in the story-telling with these X-Men movies is that all their superpowers and the way they all come together in these scenes just seems a little too convenient. Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, and Brian Cox all seem perfectly cast, but again, I'm not a guy who is familiar with the source material for these things. There are a few missteps in this movie--a fight between Wolverine and Girl Wolverine, the weird plastic prison-escape (never understood that whole thing, by the way) with metal balls that managed to simultaneously look cool and be really goofy--but this is better written and has a better look than its predecessor. I'd have high hopes for the third installment, but I've heard bad things.

X-Men

2000 supermutant movie

Rating: 13/20 (Emma: 20/20; Abbey: 16/20)

Plot: The bald guy in the wheelchair and his mutant friends including a guy who wears sunglasses indoors and an albino woman and a fuzzy guy and Boobsy have to stop the guy with the funny-looking helmet and his mutant friends including his own fuzzy guy and a naked blue woman and a guy with a long tongue.

What's all this stuff about evolution? I heard at church camp that it wasn't real. Evolution, an opening scene that takes place in a concentration camp, hints at McCarthyism. I'm not sure this is as smart as it wants to be. In fact, I'm pretty sure this movie indirectly calls Jewish people mutants which doesn't seem very nice. The stories, including Magneto's big plot to take over the world or whatever the hell he's doing, are strong, but the storytelling isn't. Comic book movies usually confuse me, and this one wasn't exactly easy for me although it helped that this was my second time. There's an interesting hodgepodge of mutant super powers which I imagine is part of the appeal, but they do kind of come together in really convenient and therefore kind of unbelievable ways at times. Also kind of unbelievable--the special effects. The multitudinous explosions were fine, probably because Hollywood's had more than enough practice with explosions. However, a scene where Lion Man throws Wolverine around, the senator's oozing through bars and his rubbery visit to a beach, a fast motorcycle, and a big white laser show were all laughable. I was also annoyed by how much these characters talk during action sequences. There's a lesson that action movie screenwriters need to learn: Characters don't need to talk to each other during action sequences. Halle Barry's Storm Lady character actually says, "Do you know what happens when a toad is struck by lightning?"--a line that caused me to miss a chunk of the climax because my eyes were rolling too much. The entire climax at a national landmark is actually pretty dopey. I do like the conflict, especially since the good guys and the bad guys, in a way, are kind of looking for the same thing, but this movie felt repetitious after a while. I also got tired of them finding excuses to get Hugh Jackman to take his shirt off. His character even has a line about that in the movie. Now, don't get me wrong--I'm a warm-blooded American male and can enjoy a shirtless beefcake as much as the next fella, but this got ridiculous after a while.

I hope that's not why Emma's suddenly into X-Men movies. For whatever reason, her biology teacher showed the students this movie in its entirety and part of the sequel. She likes them for some reason. Hopefully, Plastic Man is in the sequels. He's an X-Man, isn't he?

The Avengers

2012 superhero mayhem

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A glowing cube--perhaps the same one from a Transformers movie or something--threatens the existence of mankind, and Samuel L. Jackson and his motherfucking eyepatch have to assemble the titular group of superheroes in order to save everybody. The boring emo villain from Thor's movie is also involved. Thor and his hammer, Iron Man and his snarkiness, Scarlett Johansson and her glorious posterior, Captain America and his patriotic shield, some guy with a bow and arrow, and the Incredible Hulk and his magic indestructible pants team up to deliver all sorts of one-liners and do superheroic things.

I really got tired of hearing about this cube. Everytime one of the characters mentioned "the cube," I just thought, "The cube? Really? Is that the best they could do?" This movie depends on character development from the characters' individual movies except for the two who don't have their own movies. There's potential with Johansson's character maybe and I like her costume because I'm a pervert, but the bow-and-arrow guy (Buckeye?) played by Jeremy Renner is just a dull character. The new Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is fine; this is the new best movie with the Hulk in it. I still think Chris Evans is perfect for Captain America although he's a little overshadowed by all the personality around him, especially with Downey Jr.'s arrogant Iron Man. And Samuel L. is fine although I prefer him in more realistic roles like he got in Pulp Fiction or the Star Wars prequels. He kind of seems like he's going through the motions here although that could be because he can only use one of his eyes. But look at all those characters! It was a lot to keep track of, and since this is a comic book movie, the plot was almost incomprehensible to me, at least for the first half before everything comes together. All I really understood completely was that there was a cube because that was referred to about three hundred and fifty times. If I had played one of those drinking games where I took a shot each time a character said "the cube," I would have died from alcohol poisoning. Once things were cleared up, this story's a pretty thin earth things vs. alien things with the titular superheroes battling some fairly nondescript and unmemorable space beings who were apparently brought here by the cube. The aliens do have a funky gyrating caterpillar thing, and the destruction to the poor city during the very long climactic action sequence is an impressive demonstration of terrific special effects and creative camera movements. There's one sequence in particular that I really enjoyed where the camera was swooping around to the different characters kicking ass--like Thor would hammer somebody 200 feet away while the camera follows to reveal Buckeye shooting an arrow which the camera would follow to the Hulk smashing something. It was very well done, almost poetic comic book character movements and cartoon violence.

For those of you who keep up with this sort of thing--Is Buckeye going to get his own movie eventually? How about the cube?

The Amazing Spider-Man

2012 superhero reboot

Rating: 9/20

Plot: It's just like this Spider-Man (hyphenated for Kent) except with a mutant lizard man instead of a goblin. And this one is in 3D.

Thank God! I've been wanting a movie to explain the origin of Spider-man for years!
It's like they decided to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man by releasing the same movie again with different actors and a different villain. When that first movie came out, the story already felt stale to me because Spider-Man was one of the handful of superheroes who had a backstory that I knew fairly well. So here's the story again, so soon after the other one came out that it's impossible not to compare the two. I'm not going to do much of that, however, other than taking time to mention that there was a Randy "Macho Man" Savage-sized hole in this one.

This is what they showed me on the plane. I was going to try sleeping but couldn't. It's entirely possible that I dozed off throughout this, and I'm pretty sure it was edited for time. Either of those could explain why this seemed so choppy and poorly-paced. And there seemed to be quite a few lazy storyteller shortcuts in this, like how the bad guy finds out that Peter Parker is really Spider-Man. This is heavy on the one-liners--as predictably lame as one-liners can get--and since you can't see Spider-Man's mouth move, they always seemed like voice-overs, lines added during the punch-up stages of the script-writing process. The action sequences are dizzying and cartoony, all special effect and no soul, and since you already know how everything's going to turn out in the end, you kind of just want them to end. I really liked Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. He's charming enough and everything. This version of Spider-Man was a little too cocky though, and that character trait was either not developed enough (i.e. Spider-Man as a dynamic character who learns a little humility while he fights crime) or that was lost in the airplane edit. Denis Leary and Emma Stone's characters were silly cliches, and Rhys Ifans and his stump were really good, the lizard villain (I think he's named The Lizard) just didn't do it for me. The budding romance between Peter Parker and whatever the girl's name seems like it was developed to grab fans of Twilight movies. I might have just thought that because of Garfield's hair though. Oh, I did like Charlie Sheen's dad as Uncle Ben although he was also a little cartoonish. This adaptation of the Spidey story has a troubling lack of depth, a movie made for teenyboppers. If you're easily entertained by watching a guy in spandex fly around the city, there's plenty of that. A lot of that, I'm sure, was for the 3D or even just big screen crowd. I was just irritated. More irritating was a scene where a bunch of tough New Yorkers--construction workers and firemen, aka the real heroes--help out our titular superhero with some cranes. And most irritating? That would have to be the music, a horrible mix of bombastic blockbuster score and emo tunes.

Hopefully, the studio that makes these Spider-Man movies will give a little better effort in 2022 when they reboot this again. And hopefully, the sequel to this tedious reboot will reunite Sally Field and Burt Reynolds. It's about time Burt Reynolds gets a shot to play a comic book villain. Maybe he can be that guy with all the arms or the Riddler.

Super

2010 superhero movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Frank's kind of a loser, so I'm not sure why he's surprised when his wife leaves him for a drug dealer who used to sell to a guy named Jim who went to high school with a guy who had a one-night stand with the woman who sold my mother a cat. Inspired by a religious superhero program, he becomes the Crimson Bolt and starts fighting crime, vigilante-style. Unfortunately, the bad guys hanging out with his wife have guns, so Libby, a comic book store clerk, becomes his sidekick--Boltie.

Well, terrific. Now every time I see Ellen Page in a movie, I'm going to feel like a dirty old man. It couldn't have helped that this movie came out around the same time Kick-Ass did. But Kick-Ass didn't have a scene with a kid being urinated upon by two other kids like this one did in its opening seconds. That might have been the highlight of the movie although my first laugh was because of some white-outed hands. There are some darkly funny moments in this movie. I'd definitely watch that religious superhero television show, the Holy Avengers "gay" comic art was funny, the childish animation of the opening credits was a lot of fun, and a reference to Ellen Page and "midgets" was about as much as I can handle. There's also a Haxan allusion which was neat. My favorite scene involved some tentacle rape, divine visions leading to superhero gifts. It was fantastic, and the serious music backing up such ridiculous ideas clashed exquisitely. I always like Rainn Wilson although he's consistently distracting in anything he does. His faces behind the Crimson Bolt mask in this were very funny. Ellen Page's character is just too weird; she really overdoes things in this. However, she spends a lot of the movie in superhero spandex, and you do get that Ellen Page sex scene you've always been waiting for, you pervert. She's l2 years old! The biggest problem is that the transition from darkly comic to just darkly violent is too much of a jolt. No, wait. The biggest problem is indie rock music. There's just way too much music in this.

Captain America: The First Avenger

2011 history lesson

Rating: 15/20

Plot: It's the exact same plot as this movie actually.

Either I'm in a really good mood or Captain America: Full Sequence is the best of these pre-Avengers Marvel movies. As always, I went into this knowing nothing of the titular superhero. Like the rest of these superhero movies, this does a fine job of explaining Captain America's origins. It's a lot like the other superhero origin stories, but I really like how the protagonist becomes no more than a goofy propaganda symbol before he runs off doing remarkable things. And the makers of this really nail it with the stage shows and posters and things. They also nail 1940's America which looks stylized and cool, straight out of a comic maybe. The bad guys are the same ones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Nazis with an interest in the occult, although there could have been a better bad guy than Red Skull Man. The special effects are mostly fine although there is a scene where Captain America, right after he gets his powers and starts dressing like a flag, runs in a way that makes Superman's running in the original Christopher Reeve movie look normal. It's the newly-Superheroed Rubbery Blubbery Leg Syndrome, I guess. I don't know much about Chris Evans, the guy who plays Mr. America here, but he also played Fire Man in the Fantastic Four movie. I'll have to watch that one, I suppose, just in case they're in the Avengers movie. Speaking of those guys. Fire Man, The Rock, Ice Surfer. Who else is there? But I digress. I liked Chris Evans as the hero here. I also liked Tommy Lee Jones who seems to do his best work when grumpy. This is the type of movie that a true patriot, such as myself, would have trouble not enjoying. I mean, watching this red white and blue guy sneaking around in such a dopey superhero costume with the most conspicuous prop ever? What's not to like there? How come I didn't read about any of this in my 8th grade American history class?

I was pretty sure that this contained some inaccuracies and thought I'd do a bit of research to get things right and not offend comic book aficionados who might stumble in and read this. So I looked up the bad guy's name. Red Skull really was his name! I just have to assume I'm right about the rest of this stuff, too.

The Dark Knight Rises

2012 blockbuster

Rating: 16/20 (Kent: 19/20; Dara: 15/20)

Plot: [Spoiler free!] One of my creepier experiences was when I was at a grocery store in Terre Haute called Great Scot. I was eight, and one of my favorite things to do was roll the Coke bottles down the noisy conveyor belt. My mother wandered off--as she frequently did--to take care of the bottles, and I was approached by a guy in a raggedy trench coat. He had a mustache, one of those mustaches, and I didn't trust him, mostly because one of his hands was submerged in the folds of the trench coat. In my eight-year-old brain, I could only assume that he either had a gun or a penis in that unseen hand, and either way, I wasn't comfortable with the way this trip to the grocery store was going to end. "Hey, kiddie," he said in a way that could be described as damp, "want to see my Batman comic." I ran off and found my mom loading up the cart with Zingers and told her about the encounter. "Well," she said, "I've warned you about that."

Is there another third superhero (I know, I know--Batman ain't a superhero) movie that is any good at all? Superman III is a travesty. Spiderman III is embarrassing. I don't remember the other Batman's third movie, but I assume it's awful. I had my doubts about this one, but it's a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. The Dark Knight is better, mostly because of Ledger's use of hand sanitizer, but I really enjoyed where this one took the characters and where it left them. Now, you need to be aware that I am typing these words as a person who does not read Batman comic books. I don't know how faithful Nolan is to those, but I really don't care about that sort of thing all that much. There are a handful of new additions to the cast. As much as I like Matthew Modine, I don't really understand why his character is around so much or why he's Matthew Modine. I wasn't excited to see any Catwomen in this, maybe because of that dreadful Halle Berry movie, but Anne Hathaway has a nice shape to her and her character was really interesting. The rapport with her and Bale was great. The other new addition is the villain Bane played by Tom Hardy. He's a good villain, a combination of evil brains and terrifying brawn, but having to follow the Joker? Those are tough purple britches to fill! Still, it's a great character until the very end when something unfortunate happens which lame-ifies him a bit more than I'm comfortable with. A lot was made of the voice when the previews came out, but I really liked it even though I really wish I had subtitles during a couple scenes. It was Sean Connery in a gas mask. Bale's voice remains irritating. I guess I understand the need to disguise his voice, but why does he need to use the deep-voiced, gravelly Batman voice when it's just him and Alfred? Bale, as I said an hour or so ago, makes a good Batman, but I think he's an even better Bruce Wayne, and this trilogy is really more about Bruce Wayne and his redemption than it is Batman. Or maybe it's about Gotham City, a microcosm of modern humanity. Marion Cotillard isn't very good in this, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns on his action hero switch and makes his character work. I also really liked how this connected to the other two movies, referencing the first thematically and tying it all together in some nifty and relatively non-cheesy ways. This movie does have one of the lamest death scenes you're ever likely to see. No, I'm not even talking about that one. I'm talking about the one that comes after that. There were also all kinds of time problems during the climax. I thought for a moment that I was watching 24 or something. As with the first movie, you've got some stuff that happens right when it's supposed to happen, but I can probably ignore that. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention Michael Caine when I wrote about Batman Begins, and I don't want to forget him here. Where the other actors play their parts, Caine manages to rise to a new level here. His story in this third movie was surprisingly touching. These movies aren't perfect, but even though I'm far from an expert on this kind of movie, I'm pretty sure it'll be the best superhero trilogy for a very long time. At least until they get start on those Plastic Man movies.

Am I weird for wanting a Catwoman action figure? How about if I purchase one while wearing a trench coat?

The Dark Knight Redux

2008 middle movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: I once played poker with a woman dressed as Heath Ledger's Joker. It was around Halloween time, but it still didn't make a lot of sense. It was before I saw The Dark Knight, so I didn't know if she was imitating the character or just gassy. I'll tell you one thing though--I'm pretty sure people dressed as movie characters have more tells than people dressed as ordinary people. If I'm remembering correctly, I won almost 13 dollars that night.

I like how all three of these movies open with a bat symbol.

What an opening this one has! Wisely, this starts with the Joker who is the most intriguing character in a trilogy with a lot of intriguing characters. Unwisely, this doesn't end with the Joker, and when I wrote about this movie the first time, that was the biggest problem for me. Once the antagonist is gone, there's no need to continue things unless you're trying to set up the third movie which Nolan isn't even doing here. I didn't get it. Why the hell does this movie keep going? Watching this a second time, it makes a little more sense. The movie isn't the Joker's story. If it was, we'd be disappointed because there isn't a beginning to the story. And it's not Batman's story either. This is really Harvey Dent's story, his fall from grace, and his eventual demise. And as Harvey Dent's story, that final 30 minutes or so is absolutely necessary. Of course, the problem is that the character who gives this film its fire is gone, and Two-Face, no matter how many times he flips that coin of his, just can't carry that final chunk of movie. It's not Aaron Eckhart's fault; he's fine as this brash character, really another perfect choice for a role in these movies. No, it's all the Joker's fault. So back to that opening. From the get-go, nearly everything Heath Ledger does here is perfect. I even love the way he walks, this swagger that he's got, in the opening scene in the bank. And the music in this opening bit is incredible, building this perfect tension. Since childhood, I was always more attracted to the villains in movies--Boba Fett, Lex Luthor, The Blockheads, the list goes on--and as an adult, Ledger's villain is one you can really sink your teeth in. And although you might not want to completely get on board with what the guy is doing, the Joker's argument does actually make some sense, doesn't it? This isn't really a movie about good vs. evil anyway. It's more a clash of philosophies or ideologies, and that's what really gives it its strength. It definitely gives the most dynamic fifteen-or-so-minutes in the entire trilogy (arguably. . .I might have to reconsider this one) its power. The interrogation, the rush to the buildings where Dent and Maggie are about to be blown to smithereens, the Joker's prison games. Is there a fifteen minute chunk of movie that is as intense as that? There's another powerful scene where the camera circles Maggie Gyllenhaal and the Joker. Intensity. Whenever Ledger's on the screen, this is magical. His disappearing pencil, the dark humor in the dialogue, his greed at the bank, his shenanigans when he meets the mob, the burning pile of money, the dangerous game he plays near the end of the movie. It's all so good, but you know what my favorite Joker moment is? It's when he is leaving the hospital and stops to use the hand sanitizer. Such a beautiful little detail. The rest of the cast? More of the same. They're fine, and Gyllenhaal is an improvement over Tom Cruise's ex-wife. William Fichtner gets a small part as a badass bank manager. The action stuff is fine, thrilling enough and refreshingly filmed with few computer-aided special effects. There's a dopey helicopter crash though. This is a nearly-great movie which is why its flaws are so frustrating. Batman's new voice? The whole sonar cell phone thing? "Have a nice trip? See you next fall." Did that line actually happen in this movie?

I really liked a truck driver's performance in this. I think his name is Jim Wilkey although Jim Wilkey is only credited with stunts. His performance was even better than Heath Ledger's!

Batman Begins Redux

2005 superhero movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: But Batman isn't a superhero, Shane! I know it's a free country and all, but you shouldn't even have the right to type a blog entry about this movie if you think Batman is a superhero. You just don't get Batman. The character is too cerebral for you or something. Why don't you go find some Japanese website that will sell you bootleg dvd's of season one of Plastic Man or something. Or watch Up again and avoid comic book movies altogether. Geez Louise!

A couple questions: Why, if you know your son had a traumatic experience with bats after he fell in a well and frequently has bat-related nightmares, would you take him to a weirdo opera that has bats in it? That's just bad parenting. And how did Liam Neeson get all those bats on that mountain?

I'd promised to give these movies another shot and figured that the week prior to the release of the last movie was a good enough time to make it happen. I've seen them all now and liked these first two a little better than I did the first go-around. First thing I notice is how perfect the casting is. I've trashed Christian Bale many times on this blog, but that was only because he looks like a guy who started yelling at me (for no good reason!) at a shopping mall once, right in front of The Gap. Who knows--maybe it actually was Christian Bale? But still, that's no reason to hate him as an actor, and he's a really good Batman, at least in this one before his voice changes. He is a lot more believable as an actual human being during scenes where he's not required to think or show any emotion though. Tom Wilkinson as Falcone is really good, just the perfect accent for the part he's playing. Ken Watanabe gets to stand around. Gary Oldman is just about as good as it gets here; he adds a depth to this character who, from my limited comic book and Batman experience, always seemed like a fairly generic character. Liam Neeson is his usual awesome self with his "Death does not wait" and other trash talk. Morgan Freeman plays himself, but he plays that part really well. And what the hell? Mark Boone Junior is haunting me or something. Dude actually showed up in my dream the other night, did this little juggling fiery bowling balls trick while saying, "Got my eyes locked on you, buddy--I'm doing this instinctively!" The dream ended with the whole world on fire. One criticism that I had about this movie the first time was a villain that I couldn't get too excited about, but the Scarecrow character--played in a kind of silly way by Cillian Murphy, a guy with a silly first name--is fascinating. Weaponized hallucinogenics? The weak spots are Gus Lewis as young Christian Bale and Linus Roache as Batman's dad, both not on the screen enough to really matter. Batman's dad should have been Gary Sinese or--and I might be stretching things a bit here--Denzel Washington. On the screen more than enough to matter is Katie Holmes who is just not a very good actress. The action sequences don't always thrill me. An early one in prison is so choppy and quickly edited that I actually got a little dizzy. I could have watched a lot more of those old-school kung-fu-ish training sequences with Liam throwing out all these little Yoda-esque nuggets of wisdom. The destruction of the League of Shadows pad was fine if you suspend your disbelief enough, but that slide down the mountain to save Liam Neeson looked ridiculous. Once Batman pops into the movie, the action works better. A brawl at the dock, one that played on the whole idea of fear as a weapon really nicely and showed off Batman's ninja skills, was great, all swooping black and peek-a-boos. There are a couple big action scenes where things happen just in the nick of time, all too typical of big big action movies. It takes away some of the realism and reminds me too much of the television series in those moments. And it's all set to this giant movie music from Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard which really fits but almost cheapens things. Things are poured on really thick in the end with a Bruce Wayne and Gordon love subplot. Throw in a bunch of scenes with a badass bat tank with thankfully only a few dopey jokes to interrupt the proceedings, and you've got a very good first act for this trilogy, one that never really feels like it needs to find its feet at all.

Oh, I forgot to mention Michael Caine. Did it surprise anybody at all that he's perfect for the role of Alfred?

Thor

2011 religious movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Odin's titular kid is too cocky and stirs up too much trouble, so he's sent from Asgard to earth where he falls in love with Natalie Portman and saves humanity from some bad guy from Asgard who is up to evil things that I never quite understand because I'm too bored to pay attention.

If I'm going to eventually watch The Avengers, apparently the greatest movie ever made, I have to do my homework and watch these other movies. I've got Hulk and Iron Man covered, so it's just this and Captain America. I'm not exactly a comic book or superhero expert, but when the most interesting character in the whole movie is "Pet Store Clerk" played by some guy named Isaac Kappy, you probably have a sucky superhero movie. Isaac Kappy's had a great start to a very promising career, by the way. No, he doesn't have his picture on imdb.com yet, but he does have three message board posts on his page and only one of them is his. He just hasn't had the right role yet because his work as "Pet Store Clerk" in this is fantastic. He's played Rowdy Prisoner, Stoner Dude, Geek, Buzter Pie (in Klown Kamp Massacre), and Hustler, but I'm willing to bet his best work is still to come. But back to Thor since this is his movie, unfortunately for him. This is the least fun I've had watching a superhero movie with the exception of Spiderman 3, but Spiderman 3 did at least have a great scene where James Franco is enjoying pie. It's all so stiff and lifeless and the scenes on Asgard taste a lot like the inside of a computer. So many grand swooping fake camera movements over shiny castles. Look at the scene where, accompanied by giant omnipresent predictable music, Thor and his peeps ride horses on a iridescent bridge after these big fake doors open. It just made me wish that I was watching a Western with real people riding real horses. Then, they go to a yellow-eyed guy who watches over the bridge. He turns out to be important, and if more people read this blog, some comic book nerd (Kent?) would tell me what his name was and make fun of me for not knowing it. I could stop all that from happening by just looking it up, but my eyes still hurt a little bit from all the Asgard glossiness. I really hated the action scenes in this. It didn't take long for me to be convinced that this whole movie was just part of a conspiracy to sell plastic hammers to children. But the action scenes confused me, especially the one where they loudly fight in the land of the ice people. There's a lot of swooshing and a lot of crumbling things, but it was mostly too dark for me to figure out exactly what was happening. Or maybe it was my television. I'm too lazy to Google "Guy with yellow eyes on the shiny gay bridge in Thor," so it's not hard to believe that I'd be too lazy to adjust the brightness on my television. Things improve slightly once Thor hits earth, and this part of the movie really could have worked as an entry in the whole stranger-in-a-strange-land genre if ("What realm is this?") it just didn't take itself so seriously. I did chortle when Thor smashed a glass in a diner. I might have enjoyed that part of the movie more, but I was confused about how a taser could take a superhero out, probably because I didn't watch this with a comic book nerd (Kent?) who would have explained it all to me. And what's with all the tilted camera angles in this? Was it the cinematographer's ingenious way of showing that Thor's world had become askew? Was it an homage to the comics? The dialogue in this is very awkward, and that might explain why the acting is almost universally bad (Pet Shop Clerks excepted), especially Natalie Portman who is quickly becoming a sort of pet peeve for me. She needs to stop before she loses all credibility. And speaking of credibility, why is Kenneth Branagh directing stuff like this? Did he run out of Shakespeare plays? Did somebody convince him that this was a Shakespeare play? Another question--isn't the whole Thor-as-a-Christ-figure thing a bit odd? Or is the whole father/son story (that's how Netflix categorized this for me, by the way) an archetype? Anyway, back to the movie. Eventually, Thor magically--and by that, I mean stupidly--gets his hammer back and fights a giant metal man in a tornado. And that's not even the big dumb climactic fight scene that all of these superhero movies seem to end with. No, that pits the sort-of good against the ambiguously evil in a special effects laden bunch of hurls and clashes that succeeded in making me wish I had gone to bed instead of watching this. And it was four in the afternoon!

This is fairly verbose, so let me simplify things for you: Watch this with a comic book nerd (Kent?), give your comic book nerd instructions to wake you up in time to see the scene in the pet store, fall asleep before the movie starts, watch Isaac Kappy's genius, and leave to buy an ice cream cone. You can thank me later.

Italian Spiderman

2007 parody

Rating: n/r

Plot: The evil Captain Maximum is trying to get his hands on an asteroid that has cloning power, and it's up to Italian Spiderman to save the day. Italian Spiderman is chubby.

And then I reached the point in my life where I was watching Italian Spiderman. This sentence will end a chapter in my unauthorized autobiography, and if anybody gets that far in the book (it will be very poorly written, probably with way too many parenthetical asides), they will know that the next chapter will be a major turning point in my life. This is a choppy but really pretty clever parody of foreign films that nab Western superheros or action stars for use in their own movies. Yeah, they're looking at you here, Turkey. Apparently, there were a lot of these types of movies--a few Spidermans, a handful of Supermans. I've seen clips, and those seem like parodies themselves. Some of this, just as you'd expect from a parody of something that is already stupid, gets too stupid. There's a scene where Italian Spiderman and Captain Maximum have a surfing competition, for example. Still, Italian Spiderman is quite a bit of fun and surprisingly clever. The titular superhero doesn't seem to have superpowers. He's overweight, he womanizes, and he smokes, so I'm not sure he's the best role model for the youth of Italy. He does tell you to respect women though. Of course, that is during a scene in which he is punching one, but still. After some cool old-school 70's opening credits featuring women with machine guns, you get a fastly-paced story that in no way takes itself or anything else seriously. Obvious dummies, over-goofed expressions, a fight between the hero and a crocodile (maybe an alligator) man, bad guys in Mexican wrestling masks. It's sleazy psychedelica. It's all very episodic, likely because this was released in installments over the Internet, but that only adds to the charm. And the confusion. I enjoyed the product placement--Il Gallo cigarettes which apparently come from a squeezed chicken. Speaking of chickens, check out this scene:

See? I told you he was chubby. That's right after the fight with the alligator (or crocodile) man. The costume for that villain was probably made by the same guy who made the tiger man costume in Bruce Lee's posthumous Game of Death II. Here's another scene featuring the main villain, the evil surfing Captain Maximum. I'm only showing you this because I want you to see what my life has become. Consider it some kind of warning.

And then there's this:

Italian Spiderman! He's not your dad's Spiderman! He's not friendly, and I don't think you'd want him anywhere near your neighborhood. Unless a crocodile (alligator?) man or thugs in luche libre masks were harrassing you and your neighbors.

Superheroes

2011 documentary

Rating: 14/20 (Mark: 10/20)

Plot: A look at real life superheroes who wander the streets of numerous cities at night to protect ordinary regularly-dressed citizens who also don't have superpowers. Some of them also help homeless people.

There's some nonsense at play here with at least one staged shot with the biggest nut of the bunch. Still, I was entertained by this and appreciated the intentions of most of these real-life superheroes. It's an objective expose about these characters, some who wish to remain as anonymous as Clark Kent, and the documentarians are only heard once when they ask one of the superheroes about whether or not he actually has a girlfriend that he's talking about.

But enough about the movie. I'd like to put a superhero league together to fight crime on the streets of Indianapolis. Let me know if you're interested and let me know what you'd like your superhero name to be, what special qualities or skills you have that will come in handy, and what crime-fighting experience you might have. Experience, however, isn't necessary.

Spiderman

2002 superhero movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Young Peter Parker deals with puberty and tries, despite having a "grandmother with benefits" relationship with his grandma, to get it on with the neighbor girl. He has an affair with a spider and begins developing some superhuman abilities, like the ability to beat up Randy "the Macho Man" Savage. Meanwhile, his best friend's dad keeps turning into Metallic Elf Man and tries to kill everybody. A whole bunch of characters get the chance to say "With great power comes great responsibility." And the audience wishes they were watching the one with the tentacle guy instead.

And the Academy Award for Best Use of a Retired Wrestler in an Action Movie goes to. . .Randy "Macho Man" Savage. Actually, I'd give him best actor, best actress, best picture, whatever the guy wanted. Yes, best picture because Randy "Macho Man" Savage is Spiderman. Out of the 12 points I'm giving this movie, the late wrastler represents 11.5 of them.

Time hasn't treated Spiderman very well. The story, the Spiderman-origin story, is tired anyway, and although I liked some of the human element in the story and thought Tom Cruise made a pretty good Spiderman, I would much rather read the comic book or watch the old cartoon version of this. But those special effects! They look awful, just so cartoony, especially when Spiderman or the green guy are doing there thing in broad daylight. The darkness of the city covers up the limitations of the special effects, but Spiderman's floppiness (he suffers a bit from Superman Leg Syndrome) just looks silly when the sun's out. Speaking of Superman, this is an obvious attempt to capture some of the magic of that superhero movie, but it just doesn't work and the novelty of seeing Spiderman dicking around with his new gifts early in the film wears off about as fast as Tom Cruise's lone facial expression in this movie.

Question of the Day: Who do you think would win in a fight--Macho Man or El Santo? Wait! Don't answer that. Either way, you're going to make yourself a powerful enemy.

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo

1966 superhero B-movie

Rating: 5/20 (Mark: 11/20)

Plot: After twenty-two years, Mark and Shane get to sit down and watch a movie they had only dreamed of seeing. Rat Pfink a Boo Boo! Shane decides that he likes technology after all, stops lamenting the death of the video store and even mom 'n' pop record stores, and declares that he is no longer a luddite. He agrees to be a guinea pig for the latest movie technology involving microchips implanted into the hypothalamus but passes away during the surgery. Fortunately, he died the happiest of men because he got to see Rat Pfink a Boo Boo before he died. His life flashes before his eyes, but he realizes it's not his life at all because he never stood up in the sidecar of a moving motorcycle driven by his sidekick, a mentally-challenged groundskeeper. He would never have been able to point with that kind of superheroic enthusiasm.

I really feel bad about giving this movie a 5/20 because a) I really really enjoyed watching it, and b) it's a borderline classic for a movie made for twenty dollars. In fact, despite the lowest production values you're ever likely to see (just check out those superhero costumes constructed of various articles of clothing garnered at Sears), completely inept filmmaking, and the worst comedy writing ever (admittedly, I did chuckle when Rat Pfink reminded Boo Boo what their one weakness is), you do get what I'd call some iconic moments. I want a poster of Rat Pfink and Boo Boo on the Pfinkmobile, Rat Pfink standing like Batman or Superman wouldn't have to balls to stand and pointing straight ahead. I'd probably stare at it for hours a day and never get any work done though. The story's completely schizophrenic. For the first forty minutes, there's not a single clue that this is even a superhero movie. It's barely a story even, a psychological non-thriller about some punks (one who likes to hide out in just the right trash can) crank-calling the girlfriend of a pop singer in order to later kidnap her and demand a ransom. Then, boom. Superheroes and comedy. There's an endless fight scene in a what I assume is Ray Dennis Steckler's (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies) backyard followed by an endless car chase. Then, boom. A killer gorilla. So Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (the title, by the way, was a mistake, but Steckler couldn't afford to fix it) has a little bit of everything unless you're looking for a plot. It doesn't have much of one of those. Mark enjoyed the "colorful" black and white and the gnarley go-go music.

Our heroes:

Despicable Me

2010 cartoon

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 16/20; Dylan: 14/20; Emma: 16/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Oddly-shaped supervillain Gru is losing his touch. He's finding it increasingly difficult to get funding through the Bank of Evil for his evil-doings, and the neophyte criminal mastermind Vector, a guy who managed to steal the a pyramid of Giza, is stealing his thunder. Gru decides to use a shrink ray gun to shrink and then steal the moon. Unfortunately, Vector snags his shrink gun and Gru is having a difficult time retrieving it. When he finds out that his nemesis has a weakness for cookies sold by a triad of orphans, he decides to adopt the children and use them to get his shrink gun back.

Newcomer Illumination Studios combines a hilarious script, some wonderful visual humor, lovable characters, great voice talents, and some good old-fashioned cartoony funk to create a very good first full-length feature. It's strange because I really didn't think I was enjoying this very much, but the characters and story grew on me quickly. I wasn't sure what Steve Carell was doing with his voice, but that grew on me, too. Without the central character working, this wouldn't have succeeded at all, but Gru has the right combination of dim-witted and criminal genius, submerged emotional stuff and genuine mean-spiritedness. I enjoyed watching him do his evil thang throughout the story and bought his predictable transformation. The narrative is paced well with the right amounts of action, humor, and emotion, but there were some moments that seemed extraneous and unnecessary. The music's a little hit or miss, too. My biggest gripe would be with the Minions, the yellow pill-shaped guys. They're there, I suppose, to add to the cuteness and general hilarity, but a lot of the time, they're just kind of obnoxious. Overall, however, this is some fun animation, and everybody in my family enjoyed it. Their exact words, when asked:

Jen: It was fun.
Emma: It was fun.
Abbey: It was funny.
Dylan: It was fun.

They're helpful.

The Incredibles

2004 superhero cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Bob and Helen Incredible, out-of-work superheroes, try to adjust to normal-person life after saving the world's been outlawed. Helen takes care of their three children while Bob works in a cubicle he barely fits into. On the side, Bob secretly meets with his friend Samuel L. Jackson to park and listen to police scanners and catch some motherfucking criminals. One day, he's contacted by a mysterious woman with a job offer involving the travel to an island and destroy a robot ball. Since Bob just lost his job, he eagerly takes the job but soon discovers that he might be in for more than he bargained for.

See, these are the characters the Pixar folk should be working to bring back to the screen. Those cars and those monsters were fine, but there are so many stories that these characters could be used to tell. Not that this is my favorite Pixar movie. It's not. But it is an exciting story, cool in a James Bond sort of way, and animated with a great attention to detail. The island scenery is realistic, and there's a depth to the animation, especially during scenes where the little fast guy is zipping around where it's impossible to see everything regardless of how much you slow things down. In 2004, it didn't seem like the CGI magicians had quite worked out making people or their movements realistic. Watching this on the big screen, I was impressed with the movements of the human characters, not just because of the semi-realism but because they moved, gesticulated, and grimaced with personality. I especially liked flamboyant Buddy (Jason Lee) and sarcastic and smirking Helen (Holly Hunter). There are still some moments where things just don't look quite right. Helen's butt looks weird in some shots (yeah, I looked), but that might be because I don't understand the physics of an elastic posterior. My favorite two characters are a pair of minor characters, both of diminutive stature. I love every hilarious moment Edna Mode's on the screen, and the fact that director Brad Bird actually does her voice is awesome. And the always-wonderful Wallace Shawn voices Bob's boss, a perfect depiction of Napoleon Complex. The narrative's exciting, tossing you around with some twists and turns, and the music is just as incredible as the titular Incredibles. As with all of Pixar's movies (now they really are all on the blog), there's a lot here for both big people and their kiddies to enjoy. Maybe the big people just a little bit more though.

Megamind

2010 Dreamworks movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The titular big-blue-headed supervillain, after a life living in the shadow of his heroic arch-nemesis Metro Man, finally defeats his foe and wins control over Metro City. But the criminal mastermind, despite also sort of getting the girl, soon gets bored without the yin to his yang and creates a new superhero to fight against. When the new superhero turns out to be corrupt, Megamind, for the first time, has to try to save the city instead of destroy it.

I never look forward to animated features from the Dreamworks people and wasn't all that excited when somebody at school picked this for our students to watch on their party day. However, the onslaught of pop culture references and terrible modern music [Why can't the Dreamworks people just hire themselves a Randy Newman?] didn't distract too much from a cute little story that turned superhero/supervillain conventions on their heads and toyed with some of the genre's cliches. I liked the characters and thought the voice talents brought some vibrancy to them. I'm not Will Ferrell's biggest fan, but he's good with this sort of thing and shows some voice versatility as the dynamic protagonist runs through a range of emotions and takes some time to poke fun at Marlon Brando. I liked Jonah Hill and David Cross, too, although the former's got that voice that makes me think, "Who is that guy? I know that voice!" without really knowing that voice and the latter just makes me wish he was making Arrested Development instead of messing around with this kind of thing. Tina Fey is also in this, and you know that Tina Fey wouldn't waste her time with something that wasn't intelligently written. I do like the premise, and although it doesn't quite pack an emotional punch, the adult humor works pretty well without ever being nasty. And I liked the whole good-needing-evil thematic thing and the change our "hero" undergoes, something that wouldn't have worked if his character wasn't so well drawn out. I was most impressed with the animation. The people aren't animated in a way that improves on what Pixar did with The Incredibles years ago, but there's a lot of neat, creative details in the settings. The animators were really showing off with textures and reflections in this one, and I liked how they used color motifs for the central characters. This isn't a movie I'd care to watch over and over again, but I'm actually kind of glad I did see it once.

Still, it amazes me that the people at my school aren't asking for my opinion on what movies the youth of America should be watching. I have my own blog! But for whatever reason, when I bring up classic 1920's comedies that the students would enjoy, I'm ignored. Maybe it's because they know I gave Beauty and the Beast a 14/20. I wonder if it would help if replaced the soundtracks to the silent comedies with some Lady Gogol or Justin Beamer hits?

The Toxic Avenger

1984 superhero movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: 90-pound weakling Melvin works as a janitor at a health club, and he's endlessly teased and terrorized by the beefier and more attractive clientele. One day, they pull the ultimate practical joke--throwing Melvin in a barrel of toxic waste. It's hilarious. When he emerges, he's transformed into the titular superhero and starts mopping up crime all over town.

When I was a kid, Anonymous and I ate these kind of movies up on USA's Up All Night program with hosts Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear. And that other woman who was there before Rhonda Shear. Actually, very late at night is the only time this kind of movie would be appropriate. It's only late at night (very very late) when this kind of trash is funny. And this is the lowest form of trash, from the (intentionally?) awful acting to the gross-out effects to the cringeworthy attempts to be humorous. Anonymous and I missed out on some of the more gruesome effects since the USA Network apparently doesn't think there's a time late enough to show watermelons with wigs on them being run over by a car. I liked the low-budget effects; it's a good mix of bizarre and just plain icky. Nobody will accuse The Toxic Avenger or its makers of being intelligent, but there are times when you've watched too many dark and slow Hungarian movies or Czech Holocaust comedies and need something that's just the right amount of stupid. And The Toxic Avenger has that.