#Comic Book Films

[cinematicendevaourz]

As far comic book films go, there isn't many where you'll get curb stomping violence and the gripping of thong covered mulatto cheeks by caucazoid hands set to a soundtrack that has Depeche Mode in the tracklist.

Nah, usually to achieve that I'd have to read a Crow comic book, throw on a Depeche Mode album and watch Team Skeet after a re-viewing of "American History X" to achieve such gravitas.

That's all in a day's work. James O' Barr was able to achieve that in one script that Rupert Sanders has captured in the gritty dankness of the 2024 iteration of "The Crow".

Yet again FKA Twigs portrays a bedwench, but at least she gets a larger role than her efforts in Shia La Beouf's "Honey Boy".

She's sexy here, but then those teeth? A UK thing at best.

Danny Huston is a familiarly villainous face in cinema and delivers as the sniveling, elitist villain, Roeg.

Watching Skarsgard's Eric get vengeance on him was a joy, and that leaves me with Skarsgard who plays the relatable love-stricken Romeo who would do anything to save his lover.

It all checks out here : girl falls for bad boy, girl has a checkered past, they get killed over it. Boy comes back from the dead and trades his soul to become immortal and resurrect his dead lover after killing their would-be murderers.

Worked for me.

Fairly simple plot with sexy scenes from jump starting with Twigs and Isabella Wei in torso-bearing crop tops to Twigs having a bag put over her head and getting asphyxiated to death, all the way to the end with Twigs being resuciated with her nipples visible under her dress in the river.

So no, the film's sexiness doesn't just serve teenage girls into six pack abs and gang tattoos.

But that's there too, and with the majority of the film being a love story, this is the best romance movie of 2024.

Perfect cannon fodder for those still attending the movie theater for date night. And yes, that still happens, I've seen it - though less of it now as the U.S. economy continues to worsen.

What better film than "The Crow" to mirror what hell the Westernized world has turned the idea of romantic love into?

I like how Skarsgard was able to follow up his performance in "Boy Kills World" by turning up the angst with every painful bullet he took in "The Crow".

Skarsgard could give Hugh Jackman a run for his money with displaying the pain of being immortal, and Jackman has made a silver screen career out of that with silver claws.

Twigs is still sexy, Huston is still devious, and Lionsgate still makes comic book movies better than Disney can. Not every comic book film needs to break the mold, but breaking faces and breaking hearts can go a long way in entertaining cinema.

-

C.V.R. The Bard

25th/Aug. 2k24

[headlesssamurai]

 ‘‘We’ll all fly away together   One last time   Into the forever   And beautiful sky…’’ 

  //guardians_of_the_galaxy_volume_3/    //dir_james_gunn/05_05_2023/

[adamwatchesmovies]

Constantine (2005)

Constantine comes from the era of comic book film adaptation when we were just happy to get ANYTHING. This allowed writers, directors and executives to do whatever they wanted to make the stories and characters more accessible and bankable without mobs coming to their doors with pitchforks and torches. Unfortunately, this often resulted in generic, forgettable films. The less familiar you are with the Hellblazer comics, the more likely you are to appreciate this less-than-faithful take on the character. I enjoyed it just enough to give it a mild recommendation while hoping a better adaptation will someday leave this one in the dust.

In LA, cynical occultist John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) is surprised to find a demon attempting to enter our world through its possessed host, rather than simply puppeteering her the way demons usually do. Meanwhile, Detective Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) is shocked when her twin sister, Isabel, commits suicide. Isabel knew this mortal sin would condemn her to Hell, which prompts Angela to suspect she was actually murdered. These strange events are somehow linked to a strange spearhead discovered in a ruined church in Mexico that possesses a man (Jesse Ramirez) while granting him near-invincibility.

With his American accent and black hair, this Constantine feels a lot more like a traditional cynical hero than the blonde from Liverpool you'll find in the pages of DC/Vertigo's comics. There are worse things your movie could do, but it doesn’t help make the story memorable. There's got a mystery that leads to a big threat, which is a good spine to build your skeleton upon. We’re introduced to several rules about the world. Turns out that God and the Devil (Peter Stormare) are competing for mankind’s souls and that neither demons nor angels can directly interfere; they only “influence” people. “Half-breed” angels and demons can walk around doing what they want, however, and when they go too far, Constantine puts them back in their place. He’s doing this to win himself a spot in Heaven. Our favorite exorcist has terminal lung cancer - that’s what you get for smoking non-stop. Maybe this case will be the one to get him his golden ticket. I dunno. Doesn’t it feel like more could be done with this? When you boil it down, Constantine isn’t much deeper than End of Days with Arnold Schwarzenegger and is that really where we want to be?

It’s the details of the world that wind up interesting us in the end. The visions of Hell we see are unique. It’s like a perpetual nuclear sandstorm ripping apart a parallel Earth, with damned souls squirming in agony below while demons prowl about. Getting there requires you to perform simple but convincing-looking rituals, which is one of the standout moments. Rachel Weisz and Keanu Reeves have some pretty good chemistry, even if it would be a cliché for her to fall for a man who didn’t even hold the elevator door open for her the first time they met. Pruitt Taylor Vince as Father Hennessy has an inventive encounter with a demon. Shia LaBeouf plays Chas Kramer, Constantine’s driver and apprentice but he’s gone for such large chunks of the movie you wonder why he was even included. Tilda Swinton has a memorable but small role as the Archangel Gabriel. At this point, I feel like I’m just going through a list of things about the movie, which anyone could do… but maybe that’s all there is to say. How does the movie make you feel? Excited while Constantine is shooting demons with his cross-shaped gun or punching them with holy brass knuckles, I guess. Intrigued when we’re piecing together the clues behind Isabel’s death, I guess. Not exactly a rousing endorsement but the film is not boring. It moves, you want to see what’s coming next and once it’s over, it’s out of your mind.   Could it be that I’m nostalgic for Constantine? I do remember seeing it when it was released on DVD. In fact, I specifically remember buying it. I went to HMV looking for V for Vendetta. This was going to mark my official transition from VHS to discs and when I got to the store, I saw they had an exclusive 2-pack that included Constantine for free. Maybe that’s what's tipping me over the scale; the fact that I didn’t have to pay anything to see this film. If you decide to check it out, stay all the way to the end of the credits for a bonus scene. (August 16, 2022)

[ruleof3bobby]

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) Grade: B+

Impossible not to like if you even get half the references, if you get all, then you will be heaven. It will be nitpicking to say anything to negative. Kept true to chars, funny, good action.

[earth-1218designate]

[lumisentertainment]

Batman Beyond: Year One - Teaser Soon

Trailer for #BatmanBeyondYearOne soon.

[theomenmedia]

Venom: The Last Dance Tracking For A $70M Domestic Opening Weekend

Venom's final bow aims for a $70M opening! Will "The Last Dance" be a hit or a miss?

Link to the full story: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/venom-the-last-dance-set-to-sway-at-the-box-office-with-70m-opening

[superectojazzmage]

Deadpool and Wolverine is the single best portrayal of Wolverine in live action so far because it's the only one that really understands how best to depict him; a grouchy trainwreck of an extremely divorced dad who loves his dysfunctional shitshow of a family but also can't fucking stand them and is THIS close to driving the station wagon off a cliff during the drive to Sunday church with everyone inside in a fit of alcohol-fueled manic depression.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Wanted (2008)

If Wanted is your favorite film, it might be because you’re the kind of person who dreams of shooting up a school. You think I’m exaggerating. “Come on Adam; sure this film might glorify violence and gunplay, but don’t most action movies?” Yes, but Wanted takes it a step further. The film has such a hard-on for firearms and is so mean-spirited its nastiness will be obvious to everyone. Or it would be if it weren’t drowned out by an idiotic plot with no identity of its own, Maxim Magazine-like titillation, and admittedly dynamic action scenes.

Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is a nobody loser. He has no money, no future or aspirations and worst of all, no will to do anything about it. Everything changes when he crosses paths with Fox (Angelina Jolie). She reveals to him his identity as a member of The Fraternity and the son of the world’s greatest assassin. His crippling panic attacks are actually superhuman killer instincts trying to break out. Daddy’s been murdered and only Wesley can avenge him. Leaving his cheating bitch of a girlfriend, his crummy job and the boss he hates behind, he begins training and prepares to take his revenge.

I am not a fan of the comic book that inspired Wanted. While I admire writer Mark Millar’s vision of a world secretly ruled by supervillains - actual supervillains who gleefully indulge in crimes even the most evil and demented monsters our history has ever produced could dream of - six issues about a rapist who does nothing but shoot innocent people in the face and then laugh about it loses its appeal pretty quickly. In theory, this means I should like the softened-up movie more than the mini-series… but I don’t. Gone are the costumes, the references to well-known works and the amorality of the protagonist. This film has so little in common with its progenitor it’s almost unrecognizable. Instead, it’s a rather by-the-book leather-clad gun-wielding assassin movie… until it becomes so dumb you can’t believe it was written by adults.

To its credit, the film firmly establishes itself as taking place in a world that's not ours. Guns can shoot around their targets if the wielder swings their arm the right way. The chases and stunts prove Wesley and the other members of The Fraternity are indeed the world’s greatest killers. The climax is an orgy of mayhem and bullet holes so well done it makes you forget everything you hated about this movie, if only briefly. Say what you will about Wanted, but it's not boring.

While Wanted may seem like nothing but harmless escapist fantasy, certain aspects make it more than a little distressing. When we meet Wesley, his life belongs at the bottom of the trash can. His girlfriend is having an affair with his best friend so he’s got no friends and no sex life. His boss, an overweight woman (Lorna Scott) has no redeeming qualities (they couldn’t make her just overweight or unbearable, she had to be both). His mother is unimportant and Wesley doesn't know his father. Everything changes when he picks up a gun. Suddenly, Wesley’s looking up Angelina Jolie’s skirt, he’s got millions in the bank, he’s respected, and he’s saving the world… by killing people in ways no one else could. The better he gets at killing, the more fortunes are heaped onto his lap. Even when he loses everything, he has learned to kill and that makes his existence better than ours. He breaks the fourth wall to tell us so.

Perhaps I’m looking too deeply into the importance of the gun in Wanted. I’m sure you’ll nonetheless grant me that this whole Fraternity thing is pretty dumb. Mr. Sloan (Morgan Freeman) interprets the “Loom of Fate”, which weaves a fabric that - once in a while - contains errors. If a strand is misplaced in this way, it’s a 0. In another way, it’s a 1. Through this binary system, the Fraternity has been finding targets for 1,000 years. You read that correctly. At some point in history, some bored weaver looked at a piece of cloth through a microscope, decided - for yucks - to write down the errors in the fabric and realized it could tell us who would turn out to be evil. Wesley just accepts this without batting an eye. Now, when Mr. Sloan is revealed to be corrupt and we learn he’s been lying to our protagonist the whole time, you might think the whole thing’s been made up, but no. In fact, he’s something that’ll bake your noodle: At one point, Fox is assigned to kill Wesley because he will cause the death of thousands… and he does. In his quest for vengeance, Wesley causes a train full of innocent people to derail and fall down the deepest canyon you’ve ever seen. Every single person on that train except for him and Fox dies. Of course, our lead character is too self-obsessed to even think about that tragedy.

Wanted might have some stylish elements in that “curving the bullet" thing and this might also make it memorable in a way, but once you start thinking about this movie, it becomes more than a little uncomfortable. Not helping is the supremely unlikable protagonist. Wanted barely even makes an attempt to emulate the work that inspired it. Some people might say that's a bad thing. Some might not. It just means any way you look at it, this film is dreadful. (June 24, 2022)

[marisaonfilm]

watched hulk (2003) for the first time tonight and yeah, eric bana is that bitch... but can i be his bitch?

[jordanbolton]

To The Cashier Who Asked How I Am Today - Jordan Bolton

My first book ‘Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car’ is now available to pre-order! Get it here - https://smarturl.it/BlueSky

[the-watcher-in-the-sky]

[thehauntedrocket]

Metropolis

Art by Michael Kaluta

[jazzymarie1006]

I'd say I'm normal about these two, but that would be a lie.

[wallpapedits-vvc]

Moodboard wllpprs 🎞️ pt. 8

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Edits by me. Credits of the original photos to their respective owners.