Iron Man 3 (2013)

iron-man-3Director Shane Black loves Christmas. Hell, the finale to “Iron Man 3” is a loving tribute to the classic “March of the Wooden Soldiers,” but in the end what makes “Iron Man 3” is not the finer Shane Black touches, but the purely intelligent and utterly volatile commentary on terrorism and the American government that really plants this final entry as the most mature of the “Iron Man” films by far. While “Iron Man” is the most entertaining, “Iron Man 3” has a lot to say about the war on terrorism.

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Invasion Roswell (2013)

invasion_roswellThe aliens didn’t land on Roswell, we landed on the aliens, and now they’re back with a vengeance. After the Roswell crash in 1947, the government built a group of five specially trained enforcers to raid alien bunkers and strong holds and take them down. But after years of inactivity, the team was retired, and they disbanded, becoming US citizens in search of another direction.

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Independence Daysaster (2013)

daysaster“Independence Daysaster” is the perfect alien invasion film if you enjoy watching people do nothing but type on computers for ninety minutes. To compensate the lack of special effects, most of our alien invasion is implied, while the rest of it is merely watched from afar from other characters, all of whom can mysteriously see everything that’s going on from their vantage point. They even see a dog fight in the sky without fail.

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The Incredible Melting Man [Blu-ray] (1977)

Neither a Man nor Incredible. He’s barely a “The,” director William Sachs’ science fiction horror doubles also as a melodrama featuring characters you really don’t care about. How many times can character Ted Nelson mention his wife having a baby, or his efforts to have a baby, or his aspirations to father a baby? What importance does it have to the overall premise of “The Incredible Melting Man”? Nothing, really. It’s an effort to garner sympathy for a series of lifeless characters.

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Fangoria Presents: Inhuman Resources (2013)

gWqZNAUAfter “Saw,” you could basically build an entire sub-genre around horror movies involving a group of strangers whom wake up in an abandoned location and endure a painful series of trials that teach them some lesson and reveal secrets. Thankfully, director Daniel Krige’s film “Inhuman Resources” (once known as “Redd, Inc”) works because it’s not only unique in its delivery of the premise, but darkly funny, too.

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Independence Day (1996)

Independence_Day

Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day” is one quarter of a very decent albeit cliche alien invasion film, and three quarters an unwatchable adventure film. What opens with looming shadows and hovering space ships devolves in to a buddy comedy with catchy one-liners and plot twists much too convenient to buy. Even for a science fiction film about huge alien space ships. Apparently the government can see asteroids coming from miles away and predict when one will pass, but they can’t see space ships the size of two continents enter the atmosphere.

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Marvel One-Shot: Item 47 (2012)

The Marvel one shot short film “Item 47” is a movie set in the universe of the Avengers, that woks as an epilogue to “The Avengers” and a prologue to “Agents of Shield.” I’m sure this movie was created to test the waters by Marvel for a potential SHIELD TV series, and what with fans demanding more from this scenario, Marvel now has the upcoming SHIELD show to give fans more of the Marvel Live action universe.

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