Misfits (2009)

Arguably the best tv show to come out of England in a looooooong time.

A group of delinquents doing community service are zapped by lightening in a strange storm and get super powers. This is no ‘Heros’ type deal, the characters are obnoxious and the show is laugh out loud funny but also dramery. The unlikely mix of delinquents include Nathan (Robert Sheehan) an Irish wiseass, Curtis (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) an athelete , Kelly (Lauren Socha) a chav , Alisha (Antonia Thomas) a flirt and Simon (Iwan Rheon) who’s just weird. Will these delinquents use their powers for good or better still for robbing banks. This show just gets better, the plot is clever and interesting and it doesn’t get old. It doesn’t play to any of the superhero cliches.

Season one is great and season two is even better!

They embraced viral marketing using Facebook and Twitter with Simon and Kelly tweeting during the initial transmission of each episode, content of the tweets was written by Sam Liefer and Ben Edwards. They also used YouTube video clips and an online game (based on the show).

Defendor (2010)

Arthur Poppington (Woody Harrelson) is a guy with, well problems but by night he’s Defendor a self styled superhero fighting crime with his unusual choice of weapons including marbles and a swarm of angry bees.

It claims to be an action-comedy-drama so clearly they thought it was too hard to label. There are funny moments and comical ideas but as such this is not a comedy. An action-comedy is Rush Hour, its the genre you can watch with your mum, she gets some laughs you get some action and everyone’s happy. This is essentially a drama with action in it.

Harrelson is perfect as Poppington, he brings depth, strength and vulnerability to the character. He befriends Kat (Kat Dennings) a young prostitute and tries to improve her life. Sandra Oh is excellent as Dr. Park Arthur’s psychiatrist.

There are lots of serious issues here that are grazed over. Its dramery, its heavy and its well, a bit depressing.

Kick Ass (2010)

Kick Ass is based on the comic book of the same name. Vaughn and Mark Millar met at the premier of Stardust and Millar pitched the comic book concept to Vaughn.

They hit it off, Vaughn bought the film rights and then Vaughn worked on the script while Millar worked on the comic. Vaughn directed and then co-produced it with Brad Pitt.

Vaughn shopped the script around but couldn’t get a studio to touch it, without changes namely ‘make the characters older’.

The Characters in true Superhero Order:

Chloë Moretz plays Mindi aka Hit Girl an 11 year old trained to kill, her opening line “Okay you c***s, let’s see what you can do now,” was enough to make the studios pass forcing Vaughn to finance the film himself. He then shopped it around as a finished film. Mindi is what Mathilda Lando (Natalie Portman) from The Professional would have grown up to be. Super props to Moretz those fight scenes were awesome!

Nicholas Cage is her caring dad Damon Mcready bent on revenge but at the same time a loving parent. Mindi shares his enthusiasm for killing and cool weapons. Cage is brilliant as the loving dad, and hilarious as Big Daddy his voice modulation when he’s in his superhero get up is so funny, I laughed till I couldn’t breath. Cage a comic book fan really portrays the character so well!

Kick Ass or Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a superhero by choice, admittedly he has no skills, or talents, or gadgets, or really anything superhero like. But the decision is made and after buying a scuba suit on ebay Kickass is ready for fighting crime… kinda.

The Superhero Wannabe

Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) as Red Mist,
sure he’s got the cool hair, the props, the car and the better costume than Kick Ass but, well, he’s just not nice!

The film is hilarious, it feels a bit Fight Club or Shoot Em Up in some scenes. The fight scene choreography is excellent, its interesting to see Mindi in action, they really used Moretz’s height to their advantage. It was awesome to see Yancy Butler (Witch Blade) in it as well! I was stoked to see Clark Duke as Morty, I think this is going to be another guy we should keep our eyes on.

My fave Line
‘What’s the difference between Spiderman and Peter Parker? Spiderman gets the girl’.

Classic Scenes
Red Mist and Kick Ass chilling to Gnarls Barkley ‘Crazy’ in the Mist Mobile.

Hit Girl assasinating a room full of drug dealers, but don’t panic parents – Big Daddys got her back with a sniper rifle.

The second fight scene where Kick Ass is fighting / getting the crap beaten out of him and the attackers give up. The nerds in the store are hilarious carefully lined up filming for you tube.

Watchmen (2009)

Sooooo, let me start by saying I thought this movie bit the big one. It got to the point where I made the decision to go to sleep in the cinema rather then watch the rest of the film. Upon waking up I asked my comrades, “So did it get any better”? To which they immediately replied, “No”.

So what was wrong with it…

Plot: hmmm?
Still wondering what the plot was about as the film seemed to have a fairly obvious beginning, eg a retired superhero is murdered – makes sense the story line would then follow other retired superheros pondering the conumdrum of 1) Who did it and 2) Am I on the hit list and 3) Lets find who did and kill em. Instead it gets muddy, convulated and has no point at all, it just drags on.

Things that sucked the most:
Massive amount of violence against women eg rape scenes, ‘superhero’ shooting a women at point blank range whose pregnant with his child, to name a few.

Massive amount of blue wang. One friend when asked which movie he saw said, “The one with the naked blue guy”. Which says it all, the guy was blue and naked all the time to no effect, it was pointless and irritating.

Massive amount of violence – I love violent action movies, I love gun fights, punch ups, martial arts, I love Tarantino films etc. But there was something off about this film. The violence was too real, too defined, too graphic and too detailed. It was also 90% of the time no necessary to the story line or plot, hey we just killed a bunch of bystanders just for the sake of it. Whatever!

The Real Kicker:
So its a comic book movie and we instantly lower our expectations! We don’t expect a great plot, great script, great acting, we expect a bit more cheese and a lot of CG as filler. What do we expect at the very least from a comic book movie? An hour and a half of entertaininment. And that is the kicker for this film – Its just not entertaining.

The costumes were impressive and it was well cast but without a plot clever casting was not enough to redeem it. I personally felt on the way out that I should have bought the poster and stuck with that, avoiding the film altogether.

Iron Man

Robert Downey Jr is fantastic as Tony Stark, Gwyneth Paltrow struggles with her flat eye candy role of his assistant Pepper Potts (a good name for a stripper) and wears the same look on her face for the whole film.  The CG is good and looks realistic so although you feel you are watching a comic book movie, it still has that feeling of realness about it.  Its a good comic book action flick, its solid but not great.

Be Warned:  The final scene after the movie has finished features a cameo with Samuel L. Jackson that wrecked the movie, taking it from something you could take seriously to a joke. The scene could have worked but Samuel L. Jackson in an eye patch with a leather jacket offering up SHIELD a superheroes club was lame. If he was in a suit smoking a cigar, taking himself seriously (he looked like he knew he was the punchline) it could have worked. I think people who leave before this scene will enjoy the film.

Spiderman 3

Oh how embarrasment, I admit it  I hired this piece of crap!  Okay people lets take a look at where they went so horribly wrong.

5 Reasons why this is the most shit comic book movie I’ve ever seen!

One – It takes more then an hour – (61 minutes precisely) before the black crap (later to become venom) actually does anything.

Two – The love story is boring, uninteresting and gagworthy less then ten minutes into the film.

Three – It takes 100 minutes (Oh yes more then an hour and a half) for the villain to arrive!

Four – Its hard to sustain any interest in any of the characters much less want any of them to live.

Five – It was like watching a soap opera, they achieved the trifecta with the bad acting, terrible direction (and I’m being generous here suggesting there was some!) and no coherent plot or storyline.

So in summary this film is a fantastic guide for what not to do when trying to make a film worth watching.  I didn’t the second one cos I thought it would be crap and I wish I’d ignore all those people who said it was good (were they high or paid?).  If you are a desperate fan, watch it from 100 minutes in, you wont miss a thing!  Chnaftooles has spoken.

Honourable mention to Bryce Dallas Howard and Topher Grace, they needed the roles to bolster their careers and they both did well with what they had.

Dr Horrible

Joss Whedons brainchild Dr Horrible was a glimmer in his eye when the writers strike in the US was going strong.  He wanted to prove that you could write, create and distribute something for free over the internet and be successful without any studio interference.  He was proved right whenthe release of Dr Horrible had so many downloads (at one point 200, 000 hits per hour) their site crashed
several times.  It was the number one downloaded tv season
for three weeks running. 

When Nathan Filion (Firefly) got the call from Joss his immediate answer was “Yes, whatever it is yes”, and so began his journey as Captain Hammer the super cheesy superhero.  Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother) stepped into the boots of Dr Horrible, an ambitious bad guy with no time for posers in parkers who longs to become a member of the evil league of evil.  Felicia Day (Buffy TV show, The Guild) is superb as Penny the beautiful girl with a heart for good. 

This is by far the best musical i’ve seen in a long time.  It’s brilliant.  You will be singing the songs in your head for weeks.  Its since been released on dvd.

Cutey Honey

She’s a sushi eating superhero!  Honey Kisiragi is armed with a love heart choker which transforms her into superhero Cutey Honey.  She can transform into a range of disguises.  The character likes pink, all things cute, eating sushi and is played by Japans number one swimsuit model Eriko Sato.  It’s cheesy, garish, outrageous, but surprisingly enjoyable.  Based on an animation series from the 70’s.  It’s a good laugh.

Hancock

Hancock is by far the best ‘Superhero’ film i’ve ever seen.  It starts out a little left of the norm as far as conventional superhero flicks go and morphs into something really different with unique twists you won’t see coming.  A lot of folks complained about this, they didn’t like where it went – their problem as diagnosed by Eskimo is that they wanted predictable but they got fresh.  I for one am not complaining, thank god someone finally broke with tradition and made a superhero movie worth watching.  Something with reality, depth, something you can think about, questions posed to the viewer remain unanswered leaving the viewer something to think about.  Hancock goes somewhere new and different, it injects freshness, fun and soul into the genre.  This film is far superior to the flood of predictable, stereotypical ‘superhero’ films that follow the well trodden formulaic path.

With Will Smith and Charlize Theron you expect solid performances but I was surprised by Theron.  She delivers an amazing powerful, forceful and emotionally raw performance.  Jason Bateman is great as Ray Embrey the PR guy who gives Hancock an image makeover.  Writers Vincent Ngo who’s written for tv up till this and Vince Gilligan writer of ‘Home Fries’ and ‘Wilder Napalm’ have done themselves proud.  I’ll be interested to see where this film takes them.  Unlike ‘The Dark Knight’ this film does not disappoint.