Tag Archives: Marvel Universe(s)

Movies, Reviews

The Punisher (1989)

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I guess Frank picked up some silver smithing skills in between bouts of punishing the guilty.
I guess Frank picked up some silver smithing skills in between bouts of punishing the guilty.

Like Ghost Rider before him, the Punisher is one of those breakout characters from early ’70s that seemed dark and edgy in his time, only to be surpassed by any given action movie hero on any given weekend of any given summer. Vengeful murder became a novelty in American comic books after the Moral Panic of the mid-1950s sanitized everything. The 60s and 70s were sad times, and they produced some sad sack characters, but at least the wave began to roll back towards a grim, more gruesomely violent place. That’s something, right? Sure as hell makes things more marketable.

But since I don’t do what so many do and confuse marketable levels of violence for “realism” I’ve never been able to take the Punisher all that seriously. He would’ve been yet another one-off Spider-Man villain in an age that already overflowed with them, were it not for the fact he shared Parker’s tendency to monologue like a Spalding Gray robot and constantly question the merit of his own actions…even as he murders bad guys by the mansion-full. The contrast can be hilarious, depending on how overwrought the prose turns out, and so obvious even Marvel’s realized it on occasion. Continue reading The Punisher (1989) →

Movies, Reviews

Thor (2011)

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If I had a hammer...I'd...oh, wait. I already used that joke for Drive. What is it with 2011 and hammers?
If I had a hammer…I’d…oh, wait. I already used that joke for Drive. What is it with 2011 and hammers?

I feel the same way about Thor I imagine most people feel about Superman. After all, Thor’s the Norse god of thunder and, as such, he’s ridiculously over-powered and quite a bit alien depending on the personal taste of who’s writing him at the time. Over a fifty year history as convoluted as any other comic book superhero’s, Thor’s been a god trapped in a man’s bod, a man driven insane by a magic hammer, and more or less everything in between. Now he’s a movie star and I say, Good for you, Odinson. Maybe you can tell me why your movie isn’t better?

Except he doesn’t have to because I know the answer. You don’t exactly need to sacrifice one of your eyes to know the problem with all these post-Iron Man Marvel movies: as soon as the internet began harping about the post-credit scene of Stark’s first film, these movies stopped being movies and started contenting themselves being prequels to The Avengers. It’s become evident Marvel approaches all their films with a giant check-list of shit they’ll have to introduce before an Avengers movie even begins to make sense. Continue reading Thor (2011) →

Movies, Reviews

X-Men: First Class (2011)

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Well, this is embarrassing. I purposefully avoided X-Men: First Class for a variety of reasons I hope I’ve explained in past X-reviews. Come to find out, not only is it better than it has any right to be, not only is it easily the best X-Men movie of the series…for me, it’s also the best superhero movie of Summer 2011.

But after eleven years and four increasingly crappy movies, can you blame me for being skittish? No. Of course you can’t. Even the so-called “good” X-movies are lousy with basic plot and story problems everyone ignored at the time because we were too busy being happy they existed in the first place. Along comes First Class, a film that feels like its makers kept one eye on a gargantuan check-list of those problems…and the other on the clock. It still has the multitudinous problems of a Superhero Team Movie, and especially a superhero Team Movie made by Fox, but unlike every other superhero movie of Summer 2011, First Class feels like an actual film. Continue reading X-Men: First Class (2011) →

Movies, Reviews, Videos

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

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It’s been a long, strange trip, reviewing all these Captain America films. So, with a heavy heart, I laid my seven bucks down and sat through the sixth one I’ve seen this year: Captain America: The First Avenger. How was it? Ask the hideous talking head below what he thought.

Movies, Reviews

Captain America (1990)

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Hey, at least they ditched those damn motorcycle helmets.
So you see this picture and you think, “Alright, most of the movie’ll be like this.” But it won’t.

So, after reviewing four other films, we finally get to this Captain America. Thanks to its director’s reputation among internet-savvy Bad Movie aficionados, this movie arguably “enjoys” the highest profile of any pre-2011 Captain America production. That’s unfortunate because it’s a terribly flawed film that nevertheless remains faithful to its source material in ways no superhero movie would even try match until the turn of the millennium.

We’re really spoiled in this post-X-Men/post-Spider-Man era. These days, budgets are high, actors are enthusiastic, and corporate shills are rubbing their hands together in barely-sublimated glee as each new superhero movie edges toward opening weekend. Back in the late-80s, the opposite was true. Batman might’ve hit big after a year of full-tilt marketing but, previous to that, the last big budget superhero production in America’s conscious memory was…Superman IV…a cataclysmic failure that undid pretty much all its 1979 prequel’s hard work and turned the entire genre’s Campiness Clock back to 1968. Continue reading Captain America (1990) →

Movies, Reviews

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

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Oh crap. I put in a Twilight movie by mistake.
Oh crap. I put in a Twilight movie by mistake.

Doc Psy’s Journal: May 26, 2006. Shitty movie in theaters this morning. Finger pints of meddling executives all over the remains. This entertainment industry is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. Its corporate boardrooms are blood-stained abattoirs where good ideas go to die, tortured by bean counters and business school graduates even more cynical than I am. If that’s possible.

The hatred I feel now’s been a long time coming. For two movies, I watched as fanboys and -girls the world over sang the praises of X-Men. They jumped for joy when X2 managed to avoid outright sucking. And then it happened. Bryan Singer jumped ship to do Superman Returns. Wouldn’t you? Yes, you would. You would abandon the franchise you’d spent half a decade building for the chance to do Superman. I don’t blame Singer for taking the opportunity to make that film. I blame him for the crappy film he eventually made . The rest of the blame is fitted for the shoulders of 20th Century Fox, the movie company that can’t pass a shark without jumping it. Continue reading X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) →

Movies, Reviews

Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1979)

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A portrait in the park? $10 The look on your face when Captain America rescues your purse? Priceless.
A portrait in the park? $10 The look on your face when Captain America rescues your purse? Priceless.

So Captain America II (no subtitle in the opening credits) opens with a standard TV credit sequence: a slide show of the main cast, punctuated by a shot from later of Cap popping a wheelie on his rocket bike. Once the four leads are given their due the rest of the credits play out atop…aww crap! It’s the same driving footage that opened the first film! NoooOOOOOOO! Already I’m having flashbacks! Somebody make it stop!

Once the deja vu subsides we catch up to Steve Rogers (still Reb Brown) drawing portraits in an L.A. park as black men in short shorts roller skate through the background carrying ghetto blasters. Steve’s current client is an old woman, Mrs. Shaw (Susan French) who tells him about how the local muggers are making trouble for the local pensioners every time they cash their checks…because this is still the 70s, when (for all their Evil) corporations still paid pensioners on an actually-regular basis. Steve tells her to go cash her check and, when the thugs descend, Captain America is there to lay a re-introductory action sequence down on their candied asses. (So much for that secret identity, huh?) Continue reading Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1979) →

Movies, Reviews

Captain America (1979)

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Yeah, that's right! Hide your face in shame!
Yeah, that's right! Hide your face in shame!

Time for me to come clean and admit I never really liked Captain America. I don’t hate him, no matter how many times I joke about him being a fascist propaganda tool…or a rampaging national id who only exists to spout jingoistic platitudes and win Marvel some gratuitous Patriot Points. Beneath all that I really do understand his appeal.

But come on. Really, what’s so special about Steve Rogers? Line him up with all the other great heroes of the early 40s and compare. Doc Savage is a memory. The Shadow‘s a hallow catch phrase. The Phantom had a movie, but that starred Billy Zane and took fifty years to make. Yet here’s this blond hunk of apple pie, no matter how long you leave him frozen in ice he’ll always pop right off the operating table, ready to kick ass and take names… in America! Or anywhere else S.H.E.I.L.D. needs him.

Ah, but once…back in the Golden Age of Superhero Movies…Marvel tried to update good ol’ Steve for the Masses. Make him hip and relevant for a broader, TV audience that had ignored comic books entirely until Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman and Lou Ferrigno’s Incredible Hulk smashed their way onto CBS in 1975 and ’77, respectively. Heck, even though it’s 2011, I’m still technically this TV movie’s target audience, so why not, eh? Continue reading Captain America (1979) →