Your enjoyment of “Queen of Plagues” will depend on your love for motion comic books. Shout Factory has shown a love for the format of motion comics in the past, and they continue that trend with adapting Gail Simone’s miniseries from Dynamite! Despite the draw back of animating certain panels that just look awkward in motion, “Queen of Plagues” is an engrossing adventure where we meet Sonja once again in battle. After the noble King Dimath raids and conquers a kingdom in a bloody battle, he enters a dungeon and decides to free the two remaining prisoners and let them go without trial. One of them is Sonja.
Tag Archives: Fantasy
Red Sonja (1985)
I’m not ashamed to admit that “Red Sonja” is a childhood favorite. As a TV junkie, I spent a lot of my childhood watching movies on network TV and I constantly tuned in to “Red Sonja.” It was such a departure from the normal movies I watched as it sported a female heroine, Ernie Reyes Jr. trying his best to kick ass, and an unusual narrative that feels like a mix of “Barbarella” and “Wizard of Oz.” Of course this being 1985, you can sense Dino DiLaurentiis also trying to build his own movie series a la “Star Wars,” even featuring a battle with an underwater monster in a cave. I never caught on to it before, but this is also one of the rare action movies from the eighties where there is a heavily implied sexual affair between heroine Sonja and villainous Queen Gedren.
Realive (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
Marc Jarvis has made a good life for himself, a successful career, a house by the beach, great friends, and the love of his life by his side. That is until he is diagnosed with an incurable disease. He decides to live to the fullest and die on his own terms, then get cryogenically frozen until a time when his disease can be cured. When this day comes, he is put back together like some kind of futuristic Frankenstein’s Monster and brought back to life.
Supergirl: The Complete First Season [Blu-Ray/Digital]
The series “Supergirl” is in a tricky dilemma from episode one. It’s been created by a network like CBS in America that doesn’t quite understand it. CBS has never really embraced the superhero boom of the aughts, and “Supergirl” pretty much was walking on egg shells from episode one. It’s a good bit of fortune it’s been ported over to the CW where it can live and breathe among other superhero fare like “The Flash” and “Arrow.” After swearing off Supergirl for many years, I decided to be a good little super fan boy and check out “Supergirl” and I’m glad that I did. It’s a pretty remarkable and loyal adaptation of the DC Comics character that is so much more Superman than Superman has been in the last sixteen years.
Suicide Squad (2016)
Viola Davis plays a big muckety-muck named Amanda Waller who works for the government. Much like Bruce Wayne, she saw a lot of the carnage inflicted by Superman and Zod in “Man of Steel,” and now that he’s dead, she wants to ensure there’s never another Superman coming to Earth to cause chaos. So naturally, she goes to Belle Reeve prison to assemble a team of super villains, all of whom have already had their asses handed to them by Batman and The Flash. Her reasoning is that the best way to defeat another potential alien menace is by enlisting a group of super villains on a suicide mission including a man crocodile, boomerang throwing maniac, and a Joker fan girl with an obsession with bats and mallets.
Tank 432 (2015) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
A military-trained group wakes up in a forest with no clue how they got there or how to make it out. They venture to a farm where they find dead bodies and live prisoners. Taking the latter with them, they head for a field where they find the titular tank and hole themselves up in it. While looking for a way out of their situation, things go from bad to worse.
Harmony (2015) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
Health and happiness conscious people have found a way to live forever and without despair. In this utopian future, Tuan Kirie is an investigator for the health agency. As she breaks the rules at her outpost position, she is brought back to Japan where a sudden wave of suicides happens as she arrives. Tuan Kirie is dispatched to investigate these and she takes advantage of this to investigate her past as well.