Fourth time’s a charm for Marvel who have finally stopped trying to retrofit their banner first tier character Captain America and just outright accepted that for better or for worse their most iconic superhero is meant for his time period, a time during world war II where Cap Am could mostly come to use to bring down the Nazis and the evil Hydra. Who better to bring this retro character to the big screen than Joe Johnston, a man who successfully brought us “The Rocketeer” in the early nineties? Much of that same child-like enthusiasm and movie serial aura is carried over in to this new version of Captain America where Marvel finally gets it right.
Tag Archives: Action
I Am Number Four (2011)
Flawed and by no means a masterpiece, I sense “I Am Number Four” is a film that will become one of my favorites that I’ll be defending for years to come. I won’t sit here and claim this is a flawless piece of science fiction action cinema, but for what it promises in the beginning, it works wonders in delivering what’s essentially a teen oriented action film. “I Am Number Four” touches on my weak points in fiction concerning teens realizing their destinies and aliens from another world battling it out on mid-west suburbia confronting each other in a war that neither of us can fathom.
The Fantastic Four (1994)
Say whatever you want about 1994’s guilty pleasure “The Fantastic Four” but I’ll take it any day over the god awful big budget films released in 2005 by director Tim Story. There may not be much of a budget to draw on, but at least there’s Dr. Doom in all of his glory and much of what made the comics so readable back in the early nineties. Plus, while much of it is generally in line with the kid friendly tone of the big budget films, director Oley Sassone opts for a darker tone that works much more than the big budget successors in the next decade.
Batman: Year One (2011) [Blu-Ray]
Frank Miller basically re-thought how we look at Batman today. Everyone from Bruce Timm to Christopher Nolan has taken a cue from the master writer who completely re-worked Batman for the modern era where the camp was no longer present and the grim takes on morality and justice became ever present in what we know as the character so well. “Batman: Year One” attempts to take the original Frank Miller graphic novel and transform it in to a small film that does its job in telling the tale of two forces of good that would walk in to Gotham City almost at the same time and become a true force of nature in changing the law and transforming the seedy underworld in to a haven for cowards and thugs.
S: A Superman Fan Film (2011)
Director Johnny K. Wu thankfully doesn’t try to re-invent the wheel when it comes to “S: A Superman Fan Film.” Essentially it’s an homage to the classic tropes of the Superman mythos that tells its story under thirty minutes and uses its array of dazzling green screen effects and top notch costumes to get the job done in conveying a simplistic and rather meat and potatoes Superman tale. While at times a bit campier than I would have liked, “S: A Superman Fan Film” is a loyal and rather entertaining Superman fan film that pits the man of steel against his two greatest nemeses.
Zombie Apocalypse (2011)
The Asylum never met a trend they didn’t hop on to for all the moolah in the world. Since zombies are all the rage and have become something of a culture in the world, The Asylum naturally jumps on the bandwagon to offer up their own view of what the world would look like under the rule of the walking dead. Or “zombies” as the characters call them. This time around director Nick Lyon is at the helm and brings us a movie that is not so much an original film so much as it is a pastiche of better sub-genre offerings.
Drive (2011)
Director Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 masterpiece may be one of the most misunderstood gems of the year. Rather than opting for a simple take off on the Ryan O’Neal classic heist film, he instead focuses in on the consequences of the choices made by criminals and the deeply meditative state of life that can ultimately be a reflection of the crimes we commit throughout our years. “Drive” feels almost like that lost jewel of the late seventies and early eighties, a film that focuses solely on the aftermath of crime rather than the crime itself and zeroes in on a sole individual whose own choices have come back to haunt him and ultimately put him in a position where he must seek redemption before the evil corrupts the only good in his life.