#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

[adamwatchesmovies]

Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

I applaud Joker: Folie à Deux for its ambition and the way to its choices… but unfortunately for director Todd Phillips, this movie doesn’t really have an audience. For reasons I don't quite understand, a certain demographic related to 2019's version of The Joker. They’re sure to hate how much time Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck/Joker spends as an impotent asylum patient searching for a way back to the real world. Fans of musicals and of co-star Lady Gaga will be let down by the soundtrack, which contains only one original song. Comic book readers will be disappointed to see the character separated even further from his illustrated counterpart. Finally, those who enjoyed the first film will find this follow-up underwhelming. The fact that it makes several unorthodox choices will initially pique your interest, but that enthusiasm is sure to fizzle out.

Two years after the events of the first film, Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) is in custody at Arkham State Hospital, waiting to be tried for the murders he committed. His lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener) plans a defense based around the dissociative identity disorder she believes Arthur developed after an abusive and traumatic childhood. Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) will be seeking the death penalty. When Fleck meets Harleen “Lee” Quinzel during a music therapy session, he finds a kindred spirit. She’s admired him ever since she saw him don his trademark makeup and they fall in love, potentially derailing Stewart’s defense.

Joker: Folie à Deux begins with an animated musical number so right away, you know you’re in for something different. Too different. When Phillips announced this sequel would be a musical, I was intrigued. Fleck is introduced as an inmate of Arkham. All you think about is “When is he getting out?” and only stop wondering when he passes by Lee. “Of course; we’ve got to introduce her before The Joker can be set loose and start building his criminal empire”. You think the show's about to start when Lee and Arthur briefly escape. What you don't know is that Folie à Deux is a courtroom drama.

One of the main issues with the film is Stewart's plan to defend Fleck. She says he’s got dissociative identity a.k.a. multiple personality disorder. We spent the whole first movie getting to know this version of The Joker. We know he doesn’t have a split personality. Any psychological cross-examination isn’t going to tell us anything new. You wonder where that idea is going - not in a good way.

The next issue comes with the courtroom drama element. Fleck is in custody so his time with Lee is limited. Even when they're together, they're often separated by a glass wall or other barriers. You expect the pair to go on a wild crime spree. You keep waiting and waiting until you give up, which leaves you time to look at the story as a whole. You realize you don’t quite understand the uproar and protests surrounding Fleck’s Joker persona. Why are people gathering outside the courthouse? Why are people clamoring for his release? In the first movie, the situation in Gotham was so chaotic you could buy that his violent acts were the spark that lit the fire. This film is begging for a news interview that explains why Fleck is a big deal to all these people. We care because The Joker is one of the great fictional villains. Why do they care?

Speaking of comic book origins, let's talk about how much this film disregards the source material. I enjoyed Joker as a black label/Elseworlds story but seeing this character's journey threatens to sour even the first movie for me. I'm not opposed to this "Batman without Batman" idea but the film's conclusion makes the "Joker" name feel like a gimmick, a label slapped on to sucker people in - the cinematic equivalent of throwing The Joker on an issue of a struggling title to boost sales, whether the Clown Prince of Crime appear in the story or not. The implications during the conclusion and the threads that would link Folie à Deux to a bigger Batman story are cringe-inducing. It kind of makes you glad the film tanked at the box office, guaranteeing this is the end of it.

I don't know if being a great musical could've saved the film, but it couldn't have hurt. Too bad the picture's use of musical cutaways is unimaginative and ultimately, unnecessary. There's nothing in the song and dance numbers you couldn't have deduced from the dialogue and they don't advance the story, meaning they only serve to bloat the running time to 138 minutes.

The second I saw how much money Joker made, I could only think of two things: "I bet you there's going to be a sequel" and "Please, let them take their time with it and not screw it up". Well, I guess they didn't rush this second one out but this? It's not what anyone was hoping for. I think Joker: Folie à Deux might become a film that "lives on" as one of Hollywood's great miscalculations. (December 27, 2024)

[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.

[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

[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)

[jazzymarie1006]

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

[the-watcher-in-the-sky]

[wallpapedits-vvc]

Moodboard wllpprs 🎞️ pt. 8

Like/reblog/comment if you save ✨

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

[thehauntedrocket]

Metropolis

Art by Michael Kaluta

[themousefromfantasyland]

The pro is that we had a lot of variety of comic book properties adapted into film. Who would guess that Captain American, Iron Man, and the freaking Guardians of the Galaxy as a whole would become mainstream names, like Spider-man and Batman?

The biggest con is that after a whole decade of superheroes flicks, the general public is starting to grow an aversion to the whole genre, and if nothing changes, superhero films may become box office poison for foreseeable future.

20th Century Superhero films feel like they were green lit by old people who were like "Well I like it as a kid so modern kids might like it "

21st Century ones are like "FUCK IT ! IF ITS A COMIC GREENLIGHT IT

Both have pros and cons

@ariel-seagull-wings @themousefromfantasyland @the-blue-fairie @minimumheadroom @theancientvaleofsoulmaking