The Five Best Max Fleischer Superman Shorts

“Up in the sky, look! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Superman! Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, this amazing stranger from the planet Krypton, The Man of Steel: Superman! Empowered with X-ray vision, possessing remarkable physical strength, Superman fights a never-ending battle for truth and justice, disguised as a mild-mannered newspaper reporter, Clark Kent.”

Continue reading

Superman vs. The Giant Robot from Outer Space

John Jordan’s short animated experiment is a film that would have pretty much benefited from a longer format, some original voice work, and perhaps better dialog in the end, but for what he serves up in the form of original animation and the public domain cartoons, “Superman vs. The Giant Robot from Outer Space” is a great short for the Super Geeks out there.

Continue reading

Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018) [Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital]

So what do you do when you’re making a killer Shark movie but don’t have the budget for a lot of killer shark carnage? You fill the movie up with a lot of characters talking, and walking around, and talking, and explaining and arguing and pretending there’s some kind of conflict here. Say what you want about “Deep Blue Sea” but it had genuine killer shark carnage that, while silly, still featured killer sharks. “Deep Blue Sea 2,” however, does everything in its power to avoid showing killer sharks–even though they’re the basis for the entire movie.

Continue reading

A Quiet Place (2018)

It’s surprising to see such a terrific horror debut from John Krasinski, a man who I’ve never been much of a fan of. “A Quiet Place” has just about converted me in to a fan, as he manages to deliver a very challenging genre film that relies a lot on the weight of the performances from the cast, rather than explosions, shocks, and cheap thrills. Krasinski’s horror film is poetic in its way and explores how sound means a lot in the medium of cinematic storytelling. Sound, music, it counts for almost everything and can either keep the audience baited for ninety minutes or lose them in the first five.

Continue reading

TV on DVD: Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century (DVD)

Back in the nineties, there was this strange movement to take pulp and serial heroes and revive them for a modern audience. Everything from Flash Gordon to Doc Samson were revived. Some of them, like “Zorro,” were big hits, while a lot of them surprisingly missed with audiences. I’ve always loved the pulp and serial heroes, but a lot of the box office and ratings for movies and television decided that they were best left in their era. One of the bigger movements was to place serial heroes in to the future. So, The Phantom was placed in to a futuristic setting, and Sherlock Holmes was brought back a la “The Demolition Man.”

Continue reading

My Top Five MCU Villains

It’s all been leading up to this! After the end of “Iron Man” where Tony Stark is confronted by Nick Fury about the Avenger Program, here we are about to enter in to the iconic “Infinite Gauntlet.” We fans spent years just hoping for a good Captain America movie, now we’re here optimistically awaiting their third battle for the fate of Earth. While the MCU villains get a bad rap I think they all brought something to the table. Here are five of my absolute favorites from the entire library.

Continue reading