“A Joker’s Card” is possibly one of the more ambitious DC fan films I’ve come across in years. As a comic geek, I’ve admittedly seen very little fan films, but this one was surprisingly good. I wasn’t expecting much in terms of quality, but director Wu takes what he has and turns it in to a very colorful off-beat fan film that spoofs Batman’s rogues gallery. Imagine the villains and heroes off-spring attempting to create their own crimes and chaos. Dick Grayson’s son Nick has a bondage fetish, the Joker’s and Mr. Freeze’s sons are working together to kill Gotham’s off-spring of heroes to inflict their own crimes but are met with obstacles when Wonder Woman’s daughter decides to save the day.
Tag Archives: Adventure
Before Sunset (2004)
It’s like they never left us. It really is. It’s as rare as a meteor to watch an engrossing romance that’s also very intellectually stimulating, but wouldn’t you know it, with Richard Linklater once again taking reigns of his film, you get what you expect, and I ultimately got what I expected, a fascinating, charming, and beautifully written romance drama starring two people who just have incomparable chemistry. All my fears were put to rest thirty minutes within the film as that magnetic chemistry between Delpy and Hawke becomes all the more volatile on-screen two fold. They have it here, and it works so well, I was just breath taken. This is a movie that could have easily been mishandled, and botched, but it ultimately works so well as a standalone and as a sequel. Only Linklater could commit such a feat.
Elf (2003)
What ultimately turns “Elf” from an okay movie to a good movie, is Will Ferrell. Will Ferrell gives such a good performance here and is both laugh out loud funny and endearing presenting such a conviction with his role and commits to this character giving a wide eyed exuberance throughout the entirety of the film, even when facing adversity and hardship. What “Elf” essentially has going for it in the long run is its sense of innocence approaching family and Buddy approaching the real world. The film, while a story about an man who thinks he’s an elf discovering the real world, it’s also about losing ones innocence and grasp on their inner-child.
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
The ultimate question one has to ask with this film is, was Riddick popular enough to base a franchise around? A cool character from an obscure forgettable science fiction film? The only memorable character whom many people refer to as “That cool guy from Pitch Black”? Did they do testing to see if people would respond to Riddick? Not likely, but my more realistic idea is that Diesel needed a hit so he went with his career making character as Stallone and Schwarzenneger are doing to re-claim their popularity.
Garfield: The Movie (2004)
I’m a Garfield fan. Yes sir, I love that orange fat cat. The comic books were pure innocent humor for adults and kids, and the animated series is classic, so I was expecting a lot of fun with the live action movie despite my surprise. In its own unusual way, “Garfield: The Movie” can be fun; it’s a guilty pleasure and has a lot of the usual innocent fun and Garfield is Garfield here. From the lasagna addiction, the laziness, his teddy bear Pooky, and his snide attitude and smug persona that makes him the fat cat I knew. And voicing him really well is the always talented Bill Murray, who sounds like he’s having a lot of fun doing Garfield. He’s a great successor to Lorenzo Music, who was the definitive voice of Garfield.
Star Wars, Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
I am a hardcore “Star Wars” fan, I love the lore, the amazing mythology and It’s taken hours before I could summon the emotions I took from this last installment in the “Star Wars” franchise and somehow manifest it in to words, and surely this last “Star Wars” movie was an emotional experience for me. When I stepped in to the theaters and watched the theme blast from the speakers I felt a swell of emotion build up in my chest–maybe it was gas, who knows?–but regardless, this was quite possibly the biggest experience I’ve had in theaters in years. I liked the “Star Wars” prequels, I thought they were okay, but they still just did not add up to the original trilogy and Lucas did a poor job of displaying Anakin Skywalker’s descent in to the dark side.
America's Heart and Soul (2004)
To say this is not a politically charged film is to ignore the elephant in the room. Disney, a strongly conservative company refused to release “Fahrenheit 911” and once that film went to another company and raked in the big bucks there was immense controversy over Moore’s views (big surprise) and then came this. To anyone who denies this is a rebuttal to Moore’s documentary, they obviously can’t read between the lines. Disney stated publicly this was a positive portrait (so to speak) in response to Moore’s documentary plain and simple and wanted to portray America as a positive place aside from Moore’s more truthful portrait. After watching this in the two longest hours of my life, I wasn’t sure whether to put this under documentary or comedy, because if the makers of this film think this is what America is like, well then they’re grossly mis-informed and completely ignorant, and if they expect American audiences to believe this fairytale, then they’re grossly under-estimating the intelligence of American audiences.