Category: 2004
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Once again, Bendis tries to humanize Ultimate Cap. He gets to close out Ultimate Six with the observation he’s basically a fascist pawn. Bendis doesn’t go so far as to call the United States fascist, but there’s the implication. Sadly, it’s the only interesting thing Bendis comes up with. Oh, he comes up with some…
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More double-paged action crap from Hairsine, though Bendis does eventually come up with a great sequence for the Wasp. It’s in single pages though. I’m still a little confused how Kraven gets taken out. Apparently a random bit of lightning or electricity hits him and he goes down. Meaning Peter doesn’t actually succeed in anything.…
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Just when I thought the Hairsine art couldn’t get any worse, it does. Given a huge action sequence from Bendis, Hairsine flubs it and then he somehow worsens it. There are a lot of double page spreads this issue; Hairsine produces less bad art but on a larger scale. Putting it mildly, this issue of…
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Well, there’s a crappy issue. More of the bad art from Hairsine and Miki and no story from Bendis. The bad guys break in to kidnap Peter from SHIELD at the end, which should be a good action scene, right? Maybe, if Hairsine and Miki weren’t drawing everything silly. And there’s an Ultimates action scene…
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I knew Van Helsing was going to be pretty bad… but nothing could prepare me for it. It’s not even bad in an interesting way. Its components are, simply put, terrible. Richard Roxborough’s performance as Dracula is possibly the worst essaying of the character… ever. The special effects are awful–the CG monster at the beginning…
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Reading this last issue, it’s like Willingham wanted to write himself into a corner so no one would ask for another Thessaly series. He just stops the series, sort of admitting defeat (or disinterest) on the last page. I suppose he foreshadows the ending earlier, when he’s got Thessaly freeing all her minions. These are…
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Okay, I clearly don’t have a clue what Willingham is going for here. The entire story is flashback, but framed by Thessaly telling Fetch her adventures while away from him. She was gone for six years (it seemed like a week to him) researching how she might slay the monster he’s inadvertently sicced on them.…
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It’s clearly an extended Volvo commercial starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Stephen Frears, but I also think The Route V50 is based on an essay someone wrote to accompany a book of photographs (photographed by someone else). A French someone and a French someone else. If that assumption is correct, it should be…
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Willingham and McManus do a lovely talking heads issue. It’s not entirely talking heads—McManus has a very complex two page spread, something he excels at—but it’s mostly a talking heads issue. What’s so strange about the issue is how little Willingham cares about presenting a big narrative, or even the impression of one. A lot…
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Willingham is in very comfortable territory with this issue. It sort of resembles the first series, but with the charm factor increased. It doesn’t hurt the issue is set in Italy and McManus is fabulous at drawing scenery so the whole issue is lovely. And Willingham does come up with a good story for the…
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With Parlov taking over the layouts, all of a sudden it reminds me of Ennis. Well, not really. Morgan does a fine job with Natasha—his brief first person narration works, instead of the usual, lengthy nonsense male writers do when writing first person narration for female characters—but the only other female character in the issue…
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I’ve read this Black Widow series before, but it’s been so long I forgot Bill Sienkiewicz does the art. I remembered it was good, but I didn’t remember why it’s good. So it’s a nice surprise. Richard K. Morgan doesn’t have any Marvel Universe stuff here. It’s just a retired spy story so far—Natasha keeps…
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The issue opens with the first half of this lovely story by Rosa. The writing and art are both full of energy. Just the first page shows Rosa’s abilities as an artist and he maintains this precious quality of art through the whole story. Even with Donald Duck as the protagonist (the dumb jokes only…
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Seriously, someone read Red and wanted to option it for a movie? I just finished reading it and I want to burn the memory from my mind. Ellis gives the comic some big Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ending like anyone cares. I’d forgotten how much I loathe this hipster comic books. This issue…
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Oh, good grief. Well, Kirkman certainly lays on the melodrama here. I love how Rick’s wife’s little dalliance with Shane never comes up again; instead Shane seems like the obsessed psychopath. I’m curious why Kirkman didn’t develop her character, maybe because he realized he could get rid of Shane a lot easier with her being…
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I figured out my lack of enthusiasm. Well, except for noticing the unoriginal parts. It’s because of Crossed. This issue they all sit down and talk about their lives before–Shane has a moment it’s clear he’s thinking about getting jiggy with Lori on the road while Rick was comatose (maybe Moore’s best quality is his…
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Ah ha, now we’re getting somewhere. Rick’s wife got busy with the evil friend–Shane–while Rick was laid out in a hospital bed in a coma. Unfortunately, Rick’s just going to forgive her without any drama, but hopefully Kirkman will give her the chance to do it again. Can you tell I don’t like Rick’s wife?…
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Kong has definitely seen Apocalypse Now–to the point he pays homage–and Full Metal Jacket–to the point he doesn’t really pay homage, but kind of just lifts moments and shots. I guess a horror movie set during the Vietnam War’s a good idea. I mean, there’s a lot of history, a lot of possibilities for ghosts–one…
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Ah, so the only other film Raimi directed Panavision was the unwatchable For Love of the Game. His Panavision composition here–with Bill Pope shooting it–is exquisite. Raimi and Pope correct, from the first scene in the film, the problem Raimi had with the original–Spider-Man 2 takes place in New York City. When a bunch of…
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So all Millar needs is a double issue and he’ll take time? Well, he doesn’t exactly take time. He writes an epilogue… lots of epilogues. It’s a decent issue, a good popcorn read… though, wouldn’t eating popcorn while reading a comic book get your fingers greasy and damage the comic, reducing the value. The positives…
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I’m not sure when everyone in New York being an actor became general knowledge, but The Definition of Insanity might be the first film I’ve seen to explore it… or pretend to explore it. But why I say pretend to explore it is because the film’s got some major problems. It’s really amusing for a…
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The last time I tried watching Starship Troopers 2, I turned it off. I have no idea how I made it past that point this time, but I’m almost glad I did. The big problem with the first act is Brenda Strong, who it centers around. Strong’s acting “style” fit in the first film, but…
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Avatar was charging three bucks for twelve pages of story? When’s Marvel going to get on that bandwagon? Amusingly enough, Killing Machine‘s about the best Robocop story I’ve read from them. It’s just a simple adventure of Robocop. It establishes its ground situation, it aggravates the situation, it just works. More, there’s even some actual…
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So there’s that scene in Unforgiven where Clint Eastwood shoots the unarmed man and comments he should have armed himself, which is something like what happened about twenty-five years earlier in Hombre, but whatever. This issue has Robocop killing a bad guy in a torturous manner. Apparently, Miller thought having government employees torture people was…
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I can’t even tell anymore. Is this issue better than the last or is it the same or is it worse? I mean, there’s a lot of television stuff, a lot of stupid future post-nuclear war stuff–and a big fight scene between Robocop and Robocop 2 I couldn’t follow (Ryp is not given to comprehendible…
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And, almost magically, it goes to crap again. Not total crap–even though Ryp has got Lewis sexualized to the point she’s got less content than a swimsuit model (there’s nothing like realizing mainstream action movie misogyny has absolutely nothing on comic book misogyny, whether in Miller’s late eighties movie script or Grant’s early 2000s comic…
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Want to see an amazing, can’t-believe-I-haven’t-heard-of-him performance by Eion Bailey? See Mindhunters. Want to see a goofy, affable Val Kilmer performance (maybe the first of its kind since Real Genius)? See Mindhunters. Want to see Christian Slater’s possibly best performance since Pump Up the Volume? See Mindhunters. Want to see a terrible Jonny Lee Miller…
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So, people told me Shaun of the Dead was good, but they kept describing it as something akin to Hot Fuzz and whatnot. It’s not a spoof of a zombie movie though. It’s a zombie movie with a couple losers discovering their skill sets make them good at surviving a zombie holocaust, if not excelling…
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I tried. I really did try. It’s absurd, in a lot of ways, to even give Layer Cake any kind of chance at all. It’s one of these hipster British crime movies. I don’t remember why I thought it might be all right–there was no empirical evidence to influence that thinking. The direction is CG…
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Considering Dolph Lundgren got famous playing a blond Russian and can definitely act better than Kevin Nash, who doesn’t even have any lines and is terrible, it’s telling Jonathan Hensleigh didn’t bring him back for a small role, an acknowledgment of the far superior 1989 Punisher adaptation. Whereas that film–and to some extent, the one…
The Stop Button 