Tag Archives: Comic Book

Movie Review – The Lego Batman Movie

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TL;DR – It takes the very best of Batman, adds in some great animation and adds an interesting villain, I highly recommend it

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

The Lego Batman Movie. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

“I’m Batman”, it is a phrase so common I bet you just said it in your head Christian Bale style or indeed Will Arnett style. Batman is one of those unambiguous pop-culture references and touchstones that everyone knows about even if they have never read a comic or seen a movie. So if you are a marketing executive you are loving this exposure, however, the Batman from the Lego films is a parody and an almost one-note parody at that. This is a problem because we have seen over and over again when you take the zany side character and give them their own film it often doesn’t work, see the last Pirates of the Caribbean. So with today’s review, we are going to take a moment to look at what lead to the creation of this film, then look at the animation, story and characters, and see if it holds up.

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Movie Review – Logan

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25

TL;DR – There was a lot of hype for Logan, and it mostly lives up to it, Logan is violent, gory, but also really emotional at times. At the very least this may be the best X-Men universe film they have made so far.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

P.S. There is no after credit scene

Logan. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox

Review –

The X-Men films have been a real scattershot, from great to trash and everything in between, but after Apocalypse fell flat I came into Logan with a bit of trepidation. As well as being the next X-Men film, Logan is also Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart’s last outing, that was a lot of weight to put on a film, and yet they nailed it. Of course one of the things you need to know before going to see Logan is that this is an incredibly violent film, as a movie about a man with knives in his hands probably should be, but unlike previous instalments Logan shows the violence in graphic detail i.e. what would actually happen if you were attacked with someone knives protruding from his hands. One would think the rating would be enough to warn people about this, but from the people around me in the cinema it was a surprise to many, so this is probably not a film to take your kids too. Now I have not read the source comics (Old Man Logan) so I can’t tell you if this is a good adaptation, but what I can tell you is that this is a great film.

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Movie Review – Doctor Strange

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TL;DR – This is visually one of the best Marvel films ever produced, strong cast, overall a great film, though I do have to say these Marvel films are starting to feel a bit safe.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

P.S. There is a mid and end credit sequence

Doctor Strange. Image Credit: Marvel/Disney.

Review –

Well, this Marvel machine keeps on churning, earlier this year we had the fantastic Captain America: Civil War [See Review] which at the time of writing is still on track to be my film of the year, but now Marvel takes a different tack and jumps into the world of the ‘mystical’. In many respects, Doctor Strange is an interesting film because at times it is almost at arms distance from the rest of the cinematic universe, yet also it is almost the most ‘Marvel’ film Marvel has put out.

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Movie Review – Suicide Squad

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TL;DR – Sigh, oh DC, it really looked like you tried on this movie, but boy the best that you can do is an aggressively mediocre outing that adds nothing to the franchise, and as a self-contained film – well you can do a lot worse, but you can also do a lot better.

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

P.S. There is a mid-credits scene

Suicide Squad. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

When it comes to that whole DC v Marvel comics rivalry which seems to permeate the internet these days, for me this was one of those arguments that was never really a factor in my life growing up. This is because we didn’t really get the comics where I lived, but what we did get was the animated series, like X-Men and Batman, and they were not aired in competition with each other, and indeed sometimes aired on the same TV channel. So growing up you were not a DC or Marvel person, it was more “did you see that episode yesterday”, I feel I really need to start with this up front because I really want this Justice League series to work, I really do. However I don’t think Suicide Squad is the film that will do it, and in fact all it does is show that DC/WB just don’t seem to know how to get this movie series off the ground. At best it is average, and at worse it is quite problematic, but in the end it is not really all that engaging and you’ll probably forget most of it within a day of watching it.

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Movie Review – X-Men: Apocalypse

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TL;DR – Ok straight off the bat this is not as good as the last two, but it is still a pretty good outing for the X-Men, and leagues ahead of the Last Stand

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

P.S. there is a post credit scene

X-Men: Apocalypse. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox

Review –

So here we are with the six main film in the X-Men franchise, we’ve had one franchise killer, we’ve had one reboot, and a resurgence, so can Apocalypse continue the strong trend of First Class and Days of Future Past? Well no. Now I’m not saying it is a bad film, honestly it is just a disappointing one at times.

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Movie Review – Captain America: Civil War

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TL;DR – This is without a doubt the Marvel film so far, it gets the action right, the story right, the characters right, it is a fantastic film that I highly recommend.

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

P.S. There is a mid and end credits sequence

Captain America: Civil War. Image Credit: Marvel/Disney.

Review –

Ok wow, what a film and so far the best film for 2016 and indeed the only one so far to get a 5/5 score. After the recent poor outing of Batman v Superman, I was wondering if Marvel could actually pull this off. Can they contrive a plausible reason these characters would be fighting, actually manage all the characters in a movie that is totally not Avengers 3, but let’s be honest, this is totally Avengers 3. However, I needn’t have been concerned, the Russo Brothers are masters of their craft and they show it here in spades. Ok to lay out how this review will go, the first part will just give a general spoiler-free analysis, and then in the second part we will be going full spoilers, there will be a warning so you can skip it if you have not seen the film.

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TV Review – Daredevil Season 2 Full Review

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TL;DR – A solid season of TV, a little stodgy in the middle but it does pick up into the great end because of the amazing character and fantastic action sequences.

Score – 4 out of 5 Stars

Review –

So we are at the end of the second season and besides getting used to the fact that a whole season of a show just dropped at once, and given what we have seen, it is time to reflect on the full season of Daredevil, did it hold up over the full run? Well yes, mostly. Now of course since we will be discussing the whole season the only practical way to do that is with full Spoilers engaged, so warning Spoilers ahead, it is advised that you don’t read this until you have watched the full season.

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Movie Review – Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

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TL;DR – An utter mess of a film, disjointed, nonsensical, and a very poor foundation for DC to build their Justice League series on

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

You know I wanted to be surprised by Batman v Superman, it looked rushed, it looked like they had not given enough thought before rushing ahead with their Avengers competition, it looked like they were making all the same mistakes Sony made with Spiderman, but still, I wanted to like it, but alas this is an incoherent mess of a film with only momentary glimpses of being any good. To get us started, Batman v Superman starts with us experiencing the climax of the last film from Bruce Wayne’s (Ben Affleck) perspective, we then jump forward to two years later where a bat vigilante is attacking criminals in Gotham across the bay from Metropolis, Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is in Africa being the damsel in distress (a role she will be stuck in for this film) and everyone else is politely pretending that Clark Kent and Superman (Henry Cavill) are not the same person.

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TV Review – Daredevil Season 2 (Ep. 1, 2, and 3)

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TL;DR – A solid opening, but not quite catching my excitement yet, but that could just be because of a slow burn.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Daredevil. Image Credit: Marvel/Netflix.

Review –

Season 1 of Daredevil was an exciting surprize, after the mediocre effort that was the Ben Affleck/ Jennifer Garner 2003 movie, the writers found the perfect tone in which to reinvigorate the franchise and reintroduce it to the viewing masses. The story was fascinating, the action was some of the best ever produced for the TV (or whatever we classify Netflix as these days), and Vincent D’Onofrio was the best villain I have seen in quite a while. The series was so successful that Netflix immediately greenlighted a second season. So here we are, let’s see how the first three episodes of Daredevil’s sophomore season went.

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Movie Review – Deadpool

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TL;DR – Is it as good as its marketing campaign, no, that was pure genius, but it is still pretty darn good and a fun film to watch, though so so so so so not for kids.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

P.S. yes there is something after the credits

Deadpool. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Review –

This is a really interesting film for a number of reasons, firstly most (if not all) comic book movies stick hard and fast to the American PG-13 rating, it’s safe and opens it up to a wider audience, instead, Deadpool went for its American R rating with gusto. It’s also a film that has to fit in the X-Men universe, but then it also has to stay true to the source which has a unique style that destroys the 4th wall at times. It has Ryan Reynolds as its lead, and unfortunately he doesn’t have many more chances left to be a headliner (after The Green Lantern, which to be fair was not his fault), it is also a film that has been in development hell since the early 2000s, taking a ‘leaked’ proof of concept trailer for people to greenlight the film. So here we are after a simply brilliant advertising campaign, what kind of film do we have? A pretty good one, but also a very adult film, I mean a very adult film, like seriously the whole 9 yards, like how did they get away with that, adult film.

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