Category: 2014
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Even though The First Wave is about zombies–and not just zombies, but zombies who can be cured–the most unbelievable thing in the short film is the doctor. So a young woman wakes up in a hospital. Jane McGrath plays her; she does rather a good job with no dialogue, just haunted gazes. Director Freyne opens…
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Justice League: War raises the “interesting” question of whether or not superheroes are any fun to watch when they’re vain, selfish bullies. It sort of leaves the answer unresolved, though it’s definitely a lot more entertaining when Alan Tudyk’s Superman leaves for a while. Tudyk’s performance isn’t any good but it’s probably not his fault.…
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In Beauty, director Tagliafierro takes classical paintings and makes them move through computer graphics and 3D modeling. He starts slow, with landscapes–moving through them, bringing lakes to life, maybe hinting a tree is moving. Then he moves on to people. Some of how Beauty works is by taking a very familiar painting, something the viewer…
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I wanted this issue to be better. It’s decent, but Brubaker is moving things along quickly. He’s changing the narrative structure up, which is a little confusing, and Epting doesn’t really have any indicators to make it a seventies setting. I forgot it didn’t take place in the present until a line about Soviet Russia.…
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It’s a fast issue. Only after I finished it did I realize all the pseudo-science takes up a lot of space–not just in the issue, but in the reader’s imagination. Dingess doesn’t spend any time trying to provoke the reader to consider this issue, not until the end and then it’s only for a pay-off.…
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There’s something off about this issue, like Aguirre-Sacasa didn’t have a big event planned for it so he went with three smaller ones. Or two smaller ones, it’s hard to determine whether Archie’s jaunt around apocalyptic Rivertown will be a subplot or the main plot. But the smaller events are a couple regular cast members…
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The craziest part of Afterlife with Archie isn’t the idea of “Archie with zombies” but how Aguirre-Sacasa’s writing makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be reading Archie on a regular basis. He does a fantastic job with the characters when they’re dealing with the non-zombie related scenes. Aguirre-Sacasa tells the issue in flashback–with a couple…
The Stop Button 