I’m still not sure what to make of “Return of the Caped Crusaders” even hours after it’s ended. It wants to be both a love letter to Adam West’s “Batman,” and a spoof of it, so the movie sometimes celebrates the show’s inherent absurdities. The next moment it’s not just mocking the series’ idiocy, but also most of the Batman franchise. After “The Killing Joke” we definitely need a lighter Batman with some entertainment value, but “Return of the Caped Crusaders” is so confused about its intent I was never sure whether I was supposed to laugh with it or at it.
Tag Archives: Fantasy
Trolls (2016)
“Trolls” certainly is a movie. It has a beginning, and an end, and it has merchandise potential, as well as franchise potential. It has a lot of really marketable broad characters, and ugly villains, and a pop soundtrack that can be sold in Wal-Mart and Itunes. One character poops cupcakes, another spews glitter so the action figures sell themselves. The cast is popular, the characters are lovable enough for birthday parties, and the plot is simple enough to where it audience only has to be required to remember the songs that are sung by each character. Plus the characters never stop talking, despite journeying through a vast and unusual fantasy land, because if they keep talking, it keeps the kids in the audience alert and out of their popcorn and bags of candy.
Doctor Strange (2016)
I freely admit that I was skeptical until the very end that comic book fans would ever get a good or respectable movie about “Doctor Strange.” Some comics just don’t translate at all to the cinematic medium. Thankfully, director Scott Derrickson proves me wrong, providing a cinematic adaptation of “Doctor Strange” that’s very much its own superhero tale while also embedding itself as a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Marvel spirit is in full force here, but the movie does take the source material seriously while subtly injecting a sense of whimsy here and there. “Doctor Strange” comes during a good time where movie audiences like some magic with their adventures, and Doctor Strange is that kind of fantasy movie for comic book fans that they’ve always wanted.
Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell (2016)
You can’t get anymore Halloween than teaming up Marvel’s monstrous Hulk alongside the Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange. On Halloween Night, demons begin wreaking havoc in New York City, prompting Doctor Strange to do everything he can to slay them and bring them in to his holding cell in his temple. Thankfully he calls upon the Incredible Hulk to help him, and Hulk is more than happy to oblige in stomping some demons. Little does Hulk know that the demons are manifestations of human victims that are being held hostage by the villainous Nightmare who has kept them held in their own dream plains. Strange ventures in to the dream dimension to save Bruce Banner when Nightmare begins using the Hulk to hurt Strange.
Dr. Strange (1978) (DVD)
The 1978 TV movie “Dr. Strange” is one of the many failed pilots for a potential series based on a Marvel comic. This is yet another of the many seventies pilot movies that didn’t just misunderstand the source material, but didn’t have enough of a budget to realize the concept of its characters. Dr. Strange is a man who battles demons and monsters, and uses his will to use magic. “Dr. Strange” looks like a supernatural version of “Quincy M.E,” following a Dr. Stephen Strange as he focuses his efforts on troubled patients in his hospital while accidentally entering in to the magical arts. The movie even goes so far as setting up the entire series with the beautiful Jessica Walter as the series’ primary antagonist, but the storyline is a big hint at a sequel that would never come. It’s probably a good thing since the pilot movie is ninety minutes and we only get to see Dr. Strange in full garb in the final half hour.
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005)
I respect Tim Burton’s legacy a lot and I admire what he was going for with “The Corpse Bride.” Not a lot of mainstream directors aspire to deliver movies that are more bent toward the Gothic sensibility with homages to folks like Edward Gory. Burton is a man who clearly has a love for the style, and I love it as well. Sadly, “The Corpse Bride” is a weaker approach toward the stop motion animation that Burton was mostly known for with “The Nightmare Before Christmas” for a long time. The aforementioned film is so much more charismatic and entertaining than “The Corpse Bride” in the end. Granted it’s not an awful movie, but it just feels like Burton is trying to recapture the brilliance of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
The Book of Life (2014)
“The Day of the Dead” is such a fascinating holiday filled with so much interesting lore, that there’s a lot more material left for five more animated films of this ilk. Jorge Gutierrez has spent a long time trying to expose audiences to Latin and Hispanic heroes and complex characters, and with “The Book of Life” he succeeds yet again. “The Book of Life” is a wonderful animated romance in the vein of the classic Disney films, but it’s also a respectful tale set amidst the backdrop of the Day of the Dead. A group of rowdy grade schoolers are in for a unique field trip when they’re taken in to a museum by a mysterious tour guide who relays to them an epic story of love, life, and death. Set in the Mexican town of San Angel, we meet three childhood friends Manolo, Maria, and Joaquin, all of whom have spent enormous amounts of time together and are facing adulthood with pressures to grow up and realize their potential.