HeroMachine Comics Blog » Movies

Captain America poster

Jeff Hebert — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:20:57 +0000

OK, via the corporate overlords at UGO, this is cool:

If the purpose of promotional posters like this is to give you a raging geek-on, I judge this one a success.

“Despicable Me” review

Jeff Hebert — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:36:39 +0000

Short Version: A thoroughly enjoyable, light, animated summer family story that doesn’t break any new ground, but does provide an amusing hour and a half of harmless diversion.

Long(er) Version (spoilers ahead!): “Despicable Me” doesn’t do anything terribly new, but what it does, it does reasonably well. The animation is very good, the characters are sufficient to carry the (admittedly rehashed) story, and the production is top-notch. All of which would be a long-winded way of saying “boring, average movie” if it weren’t for the presence of the Minions, those goofy little yellow guys with the infectious giggle that provide the movie’s best moments. In fact, if we could have an entire movie, or series of animated shorts, just about those little fellows I think we’d have a real winner on our hands.

As it is, the human characters are all about what you’d expect, from the three stereotypical orphaned girls (the grown up one, the rebellious grumpy one, and the adorably cute young one) to the Grinch whose heart grows three sizes that night. But it’s all couched in fun super-villain tropes that should be comfortable and familiar to all of us geeky types. Some of the throwaway gags in particular are a hoot, like the “piranha shooting gun” that hearkens right back to the good old days of Foxbat in the Champions universe (only not as effective).

The story is about what you’d expect, heartwarming and predictable. But Gru, the main character, is well voice-acted by Steve Carell and has a lot of charm thanks to the occasional flashbacks to his childhood. I mean, who among us hasn’t stared up at the moon as a young boy and wanted to shrink it down to pocket size? The accent sounded a little like maybe Carell had swallowed Ensign Chekov from the original Star Trek series, but still was engaging.

The three girls were, as I said, pretty stereotypical and all too predictable, but they served their functions fine.

But bottom line, the Minions are why you should see this movie. They’re funny and charming and riveting to both watch and listen to, almost like they’re escapees from a Pixar movie. Sadly, they did not bring the Pixar script writers with them, but they’re still fun to see. And see it you should, albeit you might want to take it in at the matinee or wait for it to come to the dollar cinema. We saw it in 3D, which was cool, but it’s not really a “must” 3D movie — 2D would be just fine, I’d think.

Definite thumbs-up from me and my wife, worth the time (particularly on a hot day when the theater will be nice and air conditioned!).

Green Lantern preview

Jeff Hebert — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:08:48 +0000

If you haven’t seen it yet, Entertainment Weekly features a still of Ryan Reynolds (?!) in the Green Lantern costume from the upcoming movie:

Can’t say I’m a huge fan of the glowing muscle ligature in the design, but as always you have to see it in action first. And that looks more like a Photoshopped head on a CGI body rather than an actual photograph, but what do I know — not only did I not know Ryan Reynolds had been cast, I didn’t even know there was a movie coming up. Ignorance is bliss, I reckon.

Thoughts?

New Thor image

Jeff Hebert — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:11:40 +0000

Via BleedingCool, Marvel has released a photo from the upcoming Thor movie featuring the God of Thunder, his father Odin, and his evil brother Loki:

What do you think?

Cap and Thor concept art

Jeff Hebert — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 12:14:37 +0000

Via AintItCool, check out the latest sneak peek design sketches from the upcoming “Captain America” and “Thor” movies. What do you guys think of the costumes? If you’re having trouble getting to the site, I’ll re-link to the images after the jump:

Iron Man 2 review

Jeff Hebert — Sun, 23 May 2010 23:59:11 +0000

Short Review: A thoroughly satisfying and entertaining comic book super-hero movie.

Medium Review: “Iron Man 2″ bucks the trend of super-hero sequels bettering their original installments, but remains a fun, satisfying experience. Director Jon Favreau manages to work in multiple heroes and villains without making the movie feel crowded or silly, and brings back most of the elements that made the first movie such a treat. Still, it doesn’t quite hit the emotional or adrenaline highs previously seen, and in spots felt like it meandered a bit. Overall, though, an excellent super hero comic book movie that’s well worth a full price admission.

Long Review: Since I consider “Iron Man” possibly the best super-hero movie ever made, it’s not surprising that I wouldn’t think the sequel is better — that would be a tall order indeed. But it is very good, giving us what we want: Lots and lots of things blowing up, accompanied by Robert Downey Junior’s excellent Tony Stark attitude. I’d rank it with movies like the original “Batman”, the most recent “Hulk”, and the original “X-Men”, as a movie that does a great job translating the spirit and fun of the source material into a new medium.

The special effects are all excellent again, as you’d expect.

I enjoyed all the acting performances, although Downey Jr. doesn’t quite hit the highs he did in the first film. I said at the time that he was the catalyst transforming that movie from just very good to exceptional, and this time around he felt at times like he was going through the motions a bit. Gwyneth Paltrow remains the best female lead in any super hero movie series, although again she wasn’t quite as “on” this time around.

I tend to run hot and cold with Scarlett Johansson, and the same was true with this performance. Sometimes she seemed to be zombie-walking through her scenes, and at others you got flashes of that hot, saucy vibrancy that forces you to watch. I think her “walk of pain” down the long white corridor in the last act was probably the highlight of the movie, for instance. On the other hand, those classic Black Widow wrist thingies were horrible, I couldn’t take my eyes off them either, but not in a good way. They looked clunky and awkward, like some kind of Cold War relic next to all the shiny, spiffy gadgets from Stark Industries.

Sam Rockwell made the movie from an acting perspective, at least for me. I expected to really hate the performance for some reason, but he really nailed it, bringing an odd and engaging sense of character to what could have been a very stereotypical and flat role.

Mickey Rourke was appropriately menacing and thuggish, although I frankly have to wonder sometimes if his face isn’t entirely computer generated, because he honestly doesn’t look human sometimes.

What I liked most about the movie (beyond the aforementioned explosions) was how Favreau managed to fit in two villains and two new heroes while making it all seem very natural. Whenever one of these super-hero comic book movies comes out with multiple characters, I always wonder if we’re in for another episode of “Schumagasm”, as when Joel Schumacher tried to jam the entire contents of “Who’s Who In the DC B-List Villain World” into his latest Bat-nipple-festooned travesty. But Favreau managed it exceptionally well, I can’t imagine Whiplash without Hammer, or War Machine without being piloted by Stark’s friend Rhodey.

I do feel, though, that it all felt a bit like “What, this again?” at times, particularly in the big fight at the end, specifically when Whiplash lands in yet another suit of armor (speaking of which, where the hell did that come from!?), and pops the mask open yet again to leer and posture. I halfway expected Jeff Bridges to be in there. Next time around I think we need some non-armoured people running around just to relieve the sameness of it all.

Having said that, I still enjoyed it very much, and can highly recommend it. It doesn’t reach the heights of the original, or even the best of the classic super-hero comic book sequel movies like “Dark Knight” or “X-Men 2″ or “Spider-Man 2″, but it’s still a thoroughly engaging and entertaining experience that’s well worth your time.

Lazy Teenage Superheroes

Jeff Hebert — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 13:00:39 +0000

Mike Ashton sent me a link to a trailer for a short film he made for under $300, and it’s pretty amazing. Take a look at “Lazy Teenage Superheroes“:

Good luck with the film, Mike!

Iron Man 2: O. M. G.

Jeff Hebert — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:41:01 +0000

Star Re-Trekkin’

Jeff Hebert — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:14:50 +0000

I just watched JJ Abrams’ “Star Trek” for the second time, and here is my very informed and erudite opinion:

That was a good movie!

I’m all tingled up with geeky goodness now. A great job, in what has to go down as one of the greatest retcons in history. Well done, Mr. Abrams!

Feel free to use the comments to tell me how I’m an idiot.

Avatarocious

Jeff Hebert — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:45:03 +0000

The light posting today was due to my taking time to go see the new movie “Avatar”, the computer-generated sci-fi flick from James Cameron. Here’s my review:

It sucks.

Fuller commentary — AND SPOILERS! — after the jump. So don’t read on if you haven’t seen it yet and are planning to because I will totally ruin it just like that good-looking jerk ruined your prom by dancing with your date, then taking her home while you had to hang out with Billy from band camp.

Not that there’s anything wrong with band camp. Or Billy for that matter.

On the other hand, there is something wrong with “Avatar” and simply put, it’s that somewhere along the line, James Cameron forgot he was supposed to be telling an entertaining story.

As my buddy Dave said, when you have an animated movie (whether animated by hand or computer), you have to make the script even better than it would be with live action, because you have an additional hurdle of believability to overcome. With actual human actors and settings, you’ve got the benefit of the audience buying in at a fundamental level as to what they’re seeing. But with animation, you have to not only make what are fundamentally non-real images seem real, but to make what is happening to them seem real as well (at least within the confines of the world you’ve created).

Cameron forgot that step in “Avatar”. The dialog is as bad as has been reported elsewhere, particularly with The Colonel bad guy character, who chews up more scenery than a hungry Doberman. He’s so over the top and stereotypical, he completely ruined every scene he was in, from his intro beneath a hulking weight set to his absurd personal fire extinguishing later in the film.

I don’t know why they bothered animating all the big blue cat people with computers when they were going to use cardboard stand-ins for the human actors. Maybe it was a budget thing.

I’ll say this, the film looks beautiful. But even there, I didn’t see anything that I’d have been shocked to find in a top-end video game. Less so, in some cases.

The worst thing about this movie was that I never felt immersed. I never lost the sense that I was watching a movie, that I was seeing computer animated figures, nice as they looked. That’s because a stupid story is stupid no matter how many millions of dollars you throw at it to dress it up.

And this, my friends, was a stupid story.

SPOILER ALERT: Look, no matter how bad the defeat of the first outpost was, no company or nation or world is going to give up a substance fetching twenty million dollars a kilo on the open market. Not gonna happen. They’d be back in bigger, more ferocious, nastier vehicles. They’d firebomb the entire surface. They’d nuke it from orbit and scoop out the ore when the fires died down.

Speaking of which, why the hell did they need to load a shuttle full of explosives to bomb the tree? Lob a few missiles at it. If targeting systems are a problem due to Flux, drop some asteroids on it from orbit. Problem solved. No need to get your tilt-rotor flying assault choppers dirty.

I was barely holding on to some sense of “Just let it be stupid fun” until the end when the Colonel bad guy pulls a giant knife out of his mechanical fighting suit. W. T. F. Are you telling me they strap f***king KNIVES to these things? That’s just silly. I couldn’t help it, I laughed out loud. And that’s not the reaction they were going for, I feel sure.

Look, if you want to spend a couple of hours looking at gorgeous scenery to the tune of six bucks a head, go for it. But you’d be better served watching the Sunrise HD channel on cable. It would make more sense and you wouldn’t have to put up with a bad story and bad acting in the service of James Cameron’s wet dream over his latest technological toy.