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3:10 to Yuma (2007, James Mangold)
Another remake where they credit the original screenwriter as a contributing writer in order not to call it a remake. Halsted Welles wrote the original 3:10 to Yuma’s screenplay… not sure why Mangold and the producers thought Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, writers of some vapid action movies, would match him. I assume Brandt and… 📖
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Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967, George Lucas)
Okay, why didn’t anyone tell me about Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB? I mean, I knew of it, but no one ever sat me down and told me it was startlingly brilliant. From the opening second, the film is absolutely astounding. The entire film is a chase sequence, though the protagonist (played by Dan Natchsheim,… 📖
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The Mechanic (2011, Simon West)
It would be going far to say The Mechanic almost succeeds. There’s not very much it could succeed at–while a remake, the film could have been another in star Jason Statham’s Transporter franchise; there’s nothing distinctive about it. Except maybe Mark Isham’s awful score. The film opens with some of director West’s worst work. Luckily,… 📖
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Bullet to the Head (2010) #6
Matz does a good job wrapping it up. Not a great job, but a good one. He layers his narrative—going three weeks into the future or something, then two days before that point, so he can keep some suspense going as to the final fate of the protagonists. Wilson has his New York setting again… 📖
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Bullet to the Head (2010) #5
Lots of surprises this issue, little ones, but surprises just the same. Matz’s pacing has been excellent throughout (probably because the French originals are split somehow into manageable American length) but this issue might be the best. He’s established a new status quo for the last two issues—even discussing the establishing of it and still… 📖
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Bullet to the Head (2010) #4
Matz surprised me this issue. He definitely makes some rather unexpected plot changes—by this issue, Bullet to the Head doesn’t seem anything like where the first couple issues were headed. These developments have made the series strong, even if Matz’s dialogue (the cops are back) is as weak as usual. Again, it might not be… 📖
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Bullet to the Head (2010) #3
Besides the goofy, mildly homoerotic last page (a waste of a page too, Wilson does a full page panel), this issue of Bullet to the Head is easily the best so far. The secret—no shock—to Matz turning in a good issue is the cops not being in it very much. About eighty percent of this… 📖
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Bullet to the Head (2010) #2
Well, the dialogue certainly doesn’t get any better. Matz wastes two pages on some repetitive talking heads nonsense. That one can’t be a translation issue because the art’s laid out for it. As for the story, it stinks. The hitmen’s scenes are fine, quite good at times. But with everything else, Matz writes these hackneyed,… 📖
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Bullet to the Head (2010) #1
Dynamite neglects to credit the translator on Bullet to the Head. Based on the cop dialogue, I wonder if they just fed Matz’s original French dialogue into Google Translator. The first half of the issue is two hit men having a very Pulp Fiction-esque conversation about shoes, women and psychotherapy before they kill someone. The… 📖
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Black Widow (2001) #3
Yuck, there’s a lot of design work from Hampton this issue. A painter shouldn’t do eighties advertising style design. It just doesn’t work out. Oddly, nothing works in this comic. Well, except some of Hampton’s skies. He has some beautiful upstate New York blue skies with clouds here. Otherwise, his work is just wrong throughout.… 📖
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Black Widow (2001) #2
Well, the second issue—when Rucka and Grayson reveal the plot (Natasha and S.H.I.E.L.D. are out to discover the blond Black Widow’s boss’s plans to sell weapons to a foreign power)—is a whole lot less compelling than the first. More annoying Daredevil running around. Hampton doesn’t even try not to make him look silly around the… 📖
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Black Widow (2001) #1
Now, I generally like Scott Hampton—well, in theory anyway, I remember he’s done some good Vertigo stuff—but who thought he’d be a good fit on a Black Widow book? All of the art, because he’s not doing fully painted backgrounds, looks way too designed and artificial. There’s zero flow to it. It’s like Marvel hired… 📖
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Supergirl (2005) #57
Thank goodness for the colorist because without him, you wouldn’t be able to tell who Chang was drawing as a Bizarro or as a non-Bizarro. Chang actually manages to draw Supergirl okay (too lanky to be slutty even), but everything else is a bit of a disaster. His art lacks dimension, which messes up his… 📖
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Supergirl (2005) #56
It’s amazing how much I enjoy Supergirl even though the issues read so fast. Gates never leaves the Bizzaro planet this issue either, so there’s no subplot development. It does open a little weak, with Supergirl telling the unconscious Bizarro-Girl helping her will be a cathartic experience (not in those exact words, but close enough).… 📖
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Supergirl (2005) #55
Another very fast read, but it goes very smoothly. Gates resolves his cliffhanger pretty quickly—all while developing the Bizzaro-Girl character into a sympathetic character (some via flashbacks to her origin on the Bizzaro planet). Supergirl, of course, is the only one who can see her as a misunderstood creature and not a monster.But Gates also… 📖
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Supergirl (2005) #54
Besides one glaring problem (implying there’s a supernatural pedophile out there posing as a Metropolis cop and kidnapping kids), this issue of Supergirl is a great read. It’s a fast read too—really fast, but it all works. Well, wait… more Cat Grant lameness as she discovers Supergirl and Lana’s relationship/ DC’s unable to produce good… 📖
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Supergirl (2005) #53
It’s an issue of Supergirl without a bunch of crossover stuff? I mean, there’s still some crossover stuff (and apparently they’re keeping Lucy Lane alive because Superwoman’s just a great villain… eye-roll) but it’s mostly just Lana and Kara talking. Wait, Linda. She wants to be Linda Lang now. I had to go read up… 📖
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Supergirl (2005) #52
I didn’t read the previous issue in the crossover—even though the notice tells the reader to stop and go read it first (I figured that issue would instruct me to read something else and I can only handle so much of this inane crossover). Let’s see… from here I can tell all three villains from… 📖
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Supergirl (2005) #51
Poor, poor Supergirl. Once again, trapped in a crossover she didn’t make, she takes a back seat to Mon-El, the Legion of Super-Heroes (wait, Mon-El’s in the Legion, right… well, he’s not with them this issue), her mother, General Zod and some cute little Kryptonian girl. Igle gets to do an action issue, which he… 📖
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Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton (2010) #1
Does DC have any ideas? I mean, any whatsoever? Reading this comic, it seems like the last three crises were just used—as far as Superman is concerned—to reboot Zod as a villain. I mean, he’s a psycho bad guy again here. It’s so incredibly tired at this point, who do they think cares? Even when… 📖
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Locke & Key (2008) #6
Hmm. Right after I say something nice about Rodriguez, this issue happens. Actually, it’s not Rodriguez’s fault. Hill gives him something impossible to draw as static images (a transformation) and it just flops. As for the rest of the issue, Hill does a pretty good job wrapping up some of the story and laying the… 📖
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Locke & Key (2008) #5
I think this issue is Hill’s first without any narration. It opens with the psycho—Sam—then flip-flops between him and Bode. Bode’s got his friend in the well, who reveals she’s not a friend this issue. Hill and Rodriguez get gratuitously violent when Sam attacks the daughter (still don’t remember her name), to the point it’s… 📖
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Locke & Key (2008) #4
Hill really goes all out this issue; it’s a wholly unlikable issue and probably the series’s best in terms of writing. Hill’s not concerned with writing likable characters or even really developing the big mystery behind Locke & Key. Instead, he focuses mostly on the psychotic murderer who’s out to get the family again—there’s some… 📖
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Locke & Key (2008) #3
And now Hill dedicated a whole issue to the girl. Again, I like his approach, but it’s just not believable. He’s got the little brother, Bode, I think, showing the sister his out of body experience and the sister thinks he’s playing. Maybe if they were regular kids, but not after the trauma they’d been… 📖
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O.S.S. (1946, Irving Pichel)
Pichel does such a good job with the majority of O.S.S., it’s a surprise how ineptly he handles the jingoistic last scene. It’s a WWII patriotism picture (is there a proper term for this genre?), so that last scene is requisite, but Pichel could have at least made it work. Instead, he hangs the film… 📖
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Locke & Key (2008) #2
Hill tells most of the issue from the perspective of a ten year-old. Maybe ten. He might even be younger. Hill’s not particularly good at writing the character, because his vocabulary is way too mature. Still, it’s a likable character (maybe it would work if he were thirteen… or if Hill had established him as… 📖
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Locke & Key (2008) #1
Hill sells some of Locke & Key in the first few pages, when it becomes clear something awful is going to happen and he isn’t going to shy away from it. Then the awful thing does happen and Hill and Rodriguez handle to very well. Once the event has occurred though, Hill has to set… 📖
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Winston (1987, Steven Soderbergh)
Watching Soderbergh’s first film, Winston, it’s interesting to see what he continued developing and what didn’t exactly make it. There’s some lovely ambient music here, as Soderbergh opens the film gently, with his two protagonists on the steps of some building at a university. Most of the film is shot around an unnamed university and… 📖
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Captain Carey, U.S.A. (1950, Mitchell Leisen)
Either Alan Ladd was in a bunch of makeup or he’d just had his eyes done because the way his eyebrows don’t move is disturbing. There are a few scenes where Liesen, presumably in an attempt to keep down the expository dialogue, has Ladd try to communicate with his eyes. They fail. Those scenes, and… 📖
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Batman Confidential (2007) #54
It ends with a quote from the Bible. And Batman joining the Justice League. His powers were only temporary back in China—those dastardly Chinese turned opium into a superpower elixir! What’s so funny—besides laughing at Guggenheim’s writing, his dialogue, his narration—is Guggenheim’s plotting. He never lets Batman uncover the mystery he’s been pursuing the last… 📖
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Batman Confidential (2007) #53
Guggenheim implies he’s going to give Batman superpowers. Let me explain—in China, the superheroes Bruce Wayne runs into tell him they source of superpowers is the totem (or logo). There’s an atrocious bit where Batman’s later calling the Justice League’s logos their totems. Anyway, it turns out the Chinese are lying to Batman and you… 📖
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Batman Confidential (2007) #52
Oh, wow. So this arc is actually about Batman’s first meeting with the Justice League. Now, I’m not up on my DC continuity—and is Miller’s All-Star Batman continuity now—but I’m pretty sure Batman had met Superman by year three. This story is set in year three. But no, Batman hasn’t met Superman (or Super-Man as… 📖
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Very Nice, Very Nice (1961, Arthur Lipsett)
Very Nice, Very Nice is a collage of sound clips and photographs where Lipsett discusses the vapidity of an uninformed, disinterested populace. Of course, Lipsett made the film in 1961 and in Canada, but it’s just as relevant today as it was then… in fact, it’s probably timeless. As an artifact, it goes to show… 📖
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Batman Confidential (2007) #51
Bingham spends so much time on the flashback art—I think it’s colored ink washes—it’s like he doesn’t have the enthusiasm for the present day stuff. Especially not since Guggenheim has him matching it all, sometimes splitting the panel between past and present down the center. Both stories, past and present, are more action oriented this… 📖
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Batman Confidential (2007) #50
I wanted to read this issue because it features the return of Jerry Bingham, who did some great work in the eighties. He does some good work here too, just not on the present action of the issue. There’s a flashback portion, with something approximating painted art, and it looks good. The modern stuff looks… 📖
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Cinder and Ashe (1988) #4
Conway partially succeeds at getting a good finish for the series. He tries really hard and some of that trying hurts the issue. He does these alternating first person narration boxes; they’re well-intentioned and I have no idea another way he could have played the scene, but they don’t work. Luckily, he’s got Garcia-Lopez on… 📖
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Cinder and Ashe (1988) #3
It’s the first issue where nothing incredibly awful happens. Or maybe Conway’s just numbed the reader at this point. It’s also the first where the dialect is presented as a language. There’s no more painful translating from French to English. Garcia-Lopez also gets in his best art of the series so far. He’s had the… 📖
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The Haunting (1963, Robert Wise)
What makes The Haunting so good–besides Wise’s wondrous Panavision composition–is the characters. Yes, it succeeds as a horror film, with great internal dialogue (Julie Harris’s character’s thoughts drive the first twenty minutes alone and the device never feels awkward), but those successes are nothing compared to the character interactions. The Haunting chooses to be both… 📖
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Cinder and Ashe (1988) #2
Conway and Garcia-Lopez definitely get an “A” for effort. They both are very deliberate on Cinder and Ashe but Conway tells the story in alternating first person narration and it just isn’t going to work with this kind of thing. As awful as the events in this issue—and there are two or three really rough… 📖
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Cinder and Ashe (1988) #1
Conway uses a lot of dialect in Cinder and Ashe for his Cajun character. I understand why he uses it—and for a Cajun accent, it makes more sense than for something else, I suppose—but it’s still… dialect. The issue starts off as an action book, not a private investigator book (the characters are troubleshooters, think… 📖
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Atlas (2010) #5
So, either Parker wanted the story to go six issues or eight. It’s hard to tell. I imagine if it had gone at least six, he wouldn’t have needed the three pages of text he uses in this one to move the story along. As a prose writer… Parker should stick to comic scripting. As… 📖
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Atlas (2010) #4
Poor Bob. This issue reveals he’s really a lot more alien than he’s let anyone know, keeping his appearance hidden. Parker hinted at it in the Gorilla-Man series, but it didn’t make sense until this issue. But that revelation is just another reason to love Agents of Atlas. Parker does a beautiful job on the… 📖