Category: 2003
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I like Ben Affleck. Even his early phase–the self-aware, “Bruce Willis doing a Harrison Ford” impression thing actually worked out on occasion. It helped he kept the persona between pictures. Of course, Daredevil comes after Affleck decided to do his own thing. He gets an incomplete in Daredevil. You couldn’t hate watch it for his…
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Freddy vs. Jason is terrible, no doubt about it. It’s poorly directed, it’s poorly written, it’s poorly acted. Not even composer Graeme Revell–who’s actually worked on good movies–tries. His most ambitious part of the score is the generic mixing (consecutively cut together) the two separate franchises’s familiar themes. It’s real lazy. One cannot accuse director…
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American Splendor has a little too much going on. Directors Berman and Pulcini seem to want to do something different–Splendor opens as a cross between a docu-comedy and an attempt at time period preciousness (which gets them into trouble later as the film doesn’t progress, visually, out of the eighties). Paul Giamatti plays Harvey Pekar…
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Director Jarecki tries to appear like he’s staying out of Capturing the Friedmans. His voice occasionally appears behind the camera when interviewing but these questions are usually for effect. Jarecki is deliberate in the construction of the documentary; he only lets it get away from him once. Capturing the Friedmans examines a sensational child abuse…
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At some early point during 2 Fast 2 Furious–probably soon after the first car race, it becomes clear the film has two major influences for director Singleton. First, Star Wars. The car races often feel like Singleton is shooting an X-Wing sequence. Second, dumb white cop/black cop eighties movies. In this one, Paul Walker is…
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With the exception of being a Hollywood production (even if it’s a Hollywood production for video), Turbo Charged plays like an amateurish short movie make on an iMac. The kind of thing iMovie was great for back in the late nineties–lots of imaginative transitions, the omnipresent music so there doesn’t need to be any dialogue…
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Here’s the thing I love about Stray Bullets–and it’s been kind of hard to love the comic lately, due to Lapham’s scurry into exploitation (intentionally or not)–even when he’s being cheap, Lapham has created a number of such excellent characters the cheapness can’t hurt the comic. For instance, this issue is a prequel to the…
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There’s something wrong with this issue and I’m having trouble pinpointing it. Maybe how Jones bookends with what he’s doing next, maybe with how he does a talking Hulk going nuts without any explanation. I can’t believe I’m wanting for exposition, but Jones’s keeping the reader way too far away from what’s going on in…
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While it doesn’t make the film any better, one sort of has to have seen the original Mothra to truly appreciate Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.. Why? Because director Tezuka keeps that film’s weird Christian imagery. Pretty sure the living Barbie dolls who deliver messages for a giant moth isn’t Christian, but dang if it isn’t effective…
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Rare Exports Inc. is serious, right? I mean, I get it’s a comedy, but it’s really about Santa Claus haunting and not some weird Most Dangerous Game with homeless guys thing? Here’s the concept if it’s serious–there are these feral Fathers Christmas roaming the Finnish countryside and a corporation hunts them down and trains them…
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For this issue, Hairsine and his inker, Danny Miki, all of a sudden decide they’re doing a comedy. The art is very emotive, comical and sketchy. There’s no slickness to it. It ought to work too, because it’s Peter Parker meets the Ultimates mixed with a little of the Nick Fury and Peter Parker bickering.…
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I remember this issue. It’s the first Marvel comic–with the text recaps–I remember having a spoiler for the end of the issue. Norman’s so nuts he thinks Peter is his son (Peter being the Ultimate Sixth). Shame no editor caught it, because it’s a good little moment at the end. There’s another good moment in…
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I’m not a big Trevor Hairsine fan–his Ultimate Cap is a disaster, for instance, but given Bendis’s writing of Ultimate Thor, I forgive Ultimate Six a lot. It’s an Ultimates series too, not just Ultimate Spidey (which I forgot) and Bendis has a great time writing the Ultimates. He does quite well with the character…
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What’s interesting about Terminator 3-besides the “I’ll be back” references-is the lack of cheap homage to the first two. It’s an all new Terminator movie. It’s crappy, but it’s its own thing. Though sometimes being its own thing just hurts it-Brad Fiedel’s awesome Terminator theme isn’t used at all. It’s also way too short. Running…
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I was looking for something stupid to watch—something mindlessly diverting—so I tried Underworld. Wiseman’s action scenes are fine. It’s when Wiseman tries to direct story he falls apart. And there’s a lot of story in Underworld. Lots of needless scenes, complications, complexities. It’s not a surprise a former stuntman wrote it (Danny McBride—not the actor).…
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I think I’m going to start giving these issues “Friends” episodes titles (they fit, though they do get a little long). This one could be called “The One Where Gwen Moves in With the Parkers, Then Peter Tries to Talk Logically to Mary Jane and She Dumps Him.” She doesn’t just dump him over Gwen,…
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Big issue. Well, not really. Well… sort of. It’s one of those times Bendis lets the pacing get away from him and he ends up spending too little time on something important because he’s got to have the payoff scene. Captain Stacy dies this issue, the Wasp guest stars and… wait, no. Those two events…
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How many references can Bendis fit into one comic? And well. I’m not suggesting they aren’t good references. Let’s see… “Batman: Year One,” Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Bullit. Lots of Bagley big eyes on Mary this issue. They look like they’re going to take over her head. Bendis resolves last issue’s hard cliffhanger, but…
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Dorkin continues to get better this issue and Haspiel nicely evens out. It’d be hard to get much worse than last issue, so at least he arrested the art decline. It doesn’t become clear what Dorkin’s really doing with Yancy Street until the last few pages and, once it is clear, well… It’s unfortunate. For…
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It’s really too bad, but as Dorkin’s writing gets better, Haspiel’s art continues to get worse. This issue is frequently hideous, what with the Sandman having an all new costume. It looks like a cross between a jester’s outfit and something from the sixties “Batman” TV show. Dorkin’s trying—finally—to bring some authentic New York flavor…
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Dorkin’s pacing is still excellent this issue, maybe even more than in the last one. And I guess this issue is somewhat better, even if Haspiel’s artwork fails to impress (he does a lot of superhero stuff in the second half and most of it falls flat). What’s troubling is Dorkin’s characterization of Ben. The…
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I’m not particularly literate in Fantastic Four, but even I have read this comic before. It’s Ben Grimm all upset about being the Thing so he hoofs it back to Yancy Street so he feels better about himself. It’s pretty much every Thing comic stereotype thrown into an issue, with the possible exception of a…
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Ah, I misremembered. I thought this issue ended with an insanely graphic scene. It doesn’t, it’s all implied… which means on the second reading (or whatever) it’s a lot less intense. There are three or four double-page spreads here, so I guess Burrows does get to do some work. It’s good he gets to do…
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Not having read Alan Moore’s original short story… I have to wonder if Antony Johnston added all the racial slurs to make The Courtyard seem more “authentic.” I’ve read the comic before (so I remember the big reveal)—I did not remember, however, the titular courtyard doesn’t even show up until the second issue—but it was…
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Because I’m a cynic, I have to point out the following–in order to revive the Western, that most American of genres (sort of), Costner had to film Open Range in Canada. It’s hard to think of a more traditional Western than Open Range. But the way Costner films it, it’s nouveau-Technicolor–the sky impossibly blue, the…
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Did Ellis really spend an entire issue on quickly killing four assassins and a couple conversations? Now I remember why I avoid most of Ellis’s work–his pacing is absolutely atrocious. He has an idea here with Red–what if the CIA reactivated their best assassin and he came after them. But Ellis doesn’t have any more…
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I’m curious what Warren Ellis’s script for this issue looks like… it must be really short. Maybe he draws on the pages, thumbnails, sketches, something. Because he can’t be writing much on them. This issue has almost no dialogue after the first five or six pages. So it’s all up to Cully Hammer and he…
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I think it might be me. I think I might not be suited for Walking Dead. I mean, it’s all very competently done and it’s sort of interesting if wholly unoriginal (the best friend really after Rick’s wife was no surprise, Moore’s art gave the character that body language from his first panel)–I just don’t…
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Wow, talk about cutting back on the drama quotient. This issue is mostly spent on expository dialogue explaining the zombie plague to Rick. It shocks him a little but it’s all okay because he finds his family at the end. Unfortunately, as much as I love the celebratory emotional scene, Kirkman didn’t really make it…
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I’ve been hearing about Walking Dead for a long time and have always meant to read it. Not sure what pressed me this time (possibly the impending television show). My initial reaction? I’ve seen most of all this before. The opening, either from Day of the Triffids or 28 Days Later, is something I’ve seen.…
The Stop Button 