Tag Archives: Superhero

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CAPSULE: SUPER (2010)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Ellen Page, , Liv Tyler, Nathan Fillion

PLOT: A schlub of a fry cook (Wilson) takes drastic action after his wife (Tyler) leaves him for her drug dealer (Bacon), deciding to become a superhero called “The Crimson Bolt” to win her back. Teaming up with a lively comic store clerk (Page), he experiences the pain and very real violence that isn’t detailed in the comic books he reads.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s yet another “regular guy becomes a superhero” story, equally mixing dark humor and gritty drama while throwing in some comic book action segments. It stands out for its more realistic portrayal of the premise and unexpectedly unsettling moments, but never exceeds “offbeat” on the Weird-o-meter.

COMMENTS: At its core, Super offers nothing new. After a life-changing event, a “normal” loser realizes how easily he can dress up in a funny costume and run around at night surprising “bad guys” with a blunt weapon. Wearing a mask and taking out his frustration with his own bad luck in life makes him feel powerful and gives him a new perspective, etc, but he also learns that being a fake superhero has real-life consequences. It’s only the bleakly comic tone set against hyper-realistic violence that makes the film stand out from an over-slicked, stylized effort like Kick-Ass.

Attempting to balance kooky jokes and drug-fueled shootouts, writer/director James Gunn capriciously changes moods from scene to scene. One moment Rainn Wilson is delivering delightfully deadpan narration, and the next he’s unleashing a crazed fury indicative of a truly unsettled mind.  One moment Ellen Page is excitedly extolling the fun of superhero-dom, and the next she’s purposefully crushing someone’s legs with a car.  Kevin Bacon cracks wise over a strange breakfast of scrambled eggs, and later encourages his seriously drugged-up girlfriend to give herself over to a horny drug lord.  There is a constant tugging at the audience’s emotions and affections, and honestly, my nerves.  I was more often uncomfortable or just turned off by the proceedings, especially when the unnecessary religious angle was added followed by a stupid attempt to give Page and Wilson a romance.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find Super very funny at times, primarily a result of the talented cast.  Wilson has his share of cute, quirky moments, while Nathan Fillion’s all-too-short appearance as a Christian TV superhero is gleefully hammy. Bacon impressed me with an unexpectedly entertaining performance. It’s really Page who stands out though, infusing comic nerd Libby (aka “Boltie”) with as much bubbly enthusiasm as she does unhinged sadism.  Boltie’s more outspoken and petty than the Crimson Bolt, and just as easily incited to violence, serving as whatever the opposite of a “conscience” would be.

Super never finds its footing, resulting in an uneven attempt at a realistic superhero movie, though I’m sure Gunn was aiming for a unique and more in-depth exploration of the concept. It’s primarily a comedy, but the heavy doses of drugs, violence, and relationship drama make for a confusing watch.  Some of the action sequences are exciting, but more often than not they feel out of place.  It’s watchable for the cast (especially the ever-likable Page), but doesn’t excel in any other area, except perhaps for a very cool animated opening credits sequence.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“In the end, this diffuse and off-balance film—one that weirdly combines cardboard characters and emotional urgency, high conceptualism and visceral rawness—does come together, albeit in a strange, and strangely fitting, way.”—Nathan Heller, Slate.com (contemporaneous)

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Saturday Short, Shorts

SATURDAY SHORT: ITALIAN SPIDERMAN TRAILER (2008)

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Since extended to feature length through ten mini-episodes broadcast on YouTube, the “Italian Spiderman” trailer was originally shot as a film school project by Dario Russo. If you’re one of the few who hasn’t experienced the “actione,” “velocita” and “romanza” of “Italian Spiderman” yet, get ready for a treat.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN (1951)

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I suppose I was in the vast minority in 1978 when I still preferred as Superman, and especially as Clark Kent, as opposed to Christopher Reeve.

One could argue this was, perhaps, merely nostalgia since I grew up watching repeats of the Adventures of Superman every Saturday as a young child, but it was more than that.

The Superman I recalled pre-1978 was derived from film noir, rather than science fiction, although there was always latent and simplistic sci-fi elements. The art deco Fleischer cartoons were a resplendent example of this. Superman/Kent might tackle a local mad scientist or robots run amok, but he still had to predominantly deal with diamond stealing gangsters, a feisty Lois Lane, and a cigar chomping news editor boss. In the classic Superman comics he did occasionally have a colorful villain, such as the impish prankster whose name no one can pronounce, Braniac, and Bizarro, but he was not blessed with Batman’s rogue gallery of nemeses, and usually was content battling wits with the dull Lex Luthor.

Still from Superman and the Mole Men (1951)Since the Richard Donner film, the Superman character has completely forsaken its golden age and radio origins, and Superman is a pimply faced superboy, not long past puberty.  George Reeves’ Superman was already pushing forty when he made his debut.  Reeves remained in the monkey suit (as he called it) until his death at forty five. Reeves personified the classic age Superman in that he was every adolescent boy’s idea of a super father figure.  Sure, he wore a padded suit, clearly “flew” on a glass table and ducked when bad guys threw their emptied Continue reading SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN (1951) →

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

BATMAN RETURNS (1992): A SUPERHERO BURLESQUE

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In 1992 some damn silly, so-called Christian organization threw a bullying hissy fit at McDonalds for its Happy Meal deal tie-in with Tim Burton‘s Batman Returns. McDonalds, true to form, prematurely withdrew its merchandising. Rumor has it that McDonalds issued a stern warning to Warner Brothers not to tap Burton for the next Batman film. For whatever reason, Warner Brothers caved into the golden arch and, consequently, put its franchise into a decade long grave with the unwise hiring of director Joel Schumacher.

Only the fundamentalist mindset can associate Big Macs with a certain brand of morality. Looking at Batman Returns (1992), one wonders what the Christian organization was bitching about. The Bible is all throughout the film and, actually the good book itself has far more sex and violence than Batman, Tim Burton, Warner Brothers and McDonalds combined.

Regardless, Batman Returns remains the greatest cinematic comic book movie to date and one of Tim Burton’s most uniquely accomplished films. Admittedly, I am not a fan of comic book movies, even if I did read comics some when I was kid, but then most kids I knew did. I was in the minority in preferring DC to Marvel, and I guess I am sort of looking forward to the new Green Lantern movie, mainly because the Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic was a favorite when I was a wee lad in the 1960s and 1970s. That was a comic that was delightfully of its time, a bit like Star Trek in espousing an ultra-liberal message with all the subtlety of a pair of brass knuckles. Even though Green Lantern himself was a bit too righteous and bland, I liked that he was obsessed with the color green and was rendered impotent by the color yellow. There was something surreal in that, and I find the insistence of realism in comics to be a huge oxymoron. Perhaps that’s why the dark surrealism of Batman Returns did not bother me like it did mainstream audiences, comic book geeks, and militant pseudo-Christian organizations.

Still from Batman Returns (1992)Even though I will acknowledge that Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight (2008) was well crafted, it would not have worked without Ledger’s performance holding it together. Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne, however, pales compared to ‘s much more intense, internalized, subtle and complex Wayne. Finally, Nolan’s film feels like it has one subplot too many. Comparatively, Tim Burton’s Batman Returns is a Continue reading BATMAN RETURNS (1992): A SUPERHERO BURLESQUE →

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE ADVENTURES OF SHARKBOY AND LAVAGIRL IN 3-D (2005)

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DIRECTED BY: Robert Rodriguez

FEATURING: George Lopez, Cayden Boyd, Taylor Lautner, Taylor Dooley

PLOT:  Dreamy young Max invents the imaginary superheroes Sharkboy and Lavagirl from Planet Drool to brighten his dull existence; when his dream journal is stolen by a schoolyard bully, Planet Drool is taken over by tyrants and his imaginary friends whisk him away to his disintegrating dream world to set things right.

Still from The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D (2005)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: The childishly imaginative The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D shows all the evidence of having been taken out of the hands of the original scenarist, 7 year old Racer Max Rodriguez, and script-doctored to fit into a kiddie film format that would be more comfortable for adults. The tale heads off in weird directions, obliterating the line between fantasy and reality as it meanders down a stream-of-consciousness style from superheroes to roller coasters to electrical plug villains to omniscient floating head robots. It’s a near-perfect exhibition of the hyperactive schizophrenia of a typical seven-year old. So far, so good; but then, someone—my money is on director Robert Rodriguez—imposed a standard three-act structure on the story, smoothed out the non-sequiturs, and tossed in a moral about realizing your dreams to placate stern, rational adults. Had they stuck to Racer’s original vision, Sharkboy and Lavagirl, as the first script actually written by a seven year old, might have turned out as one of the weirdest movies ever made.

COMMENTS: Sharks are not weird. Pomegranates are weird. I base this conclusion on the fact that the Armenian director Sergei Parajanov once chose to make a weird movie about pomegranates, but no one has ever made a weird movie about sharks. Sharks are b-movie heavies, excuses for bad special effects and senseless gratuitous violence. They serve the same cinematic purpose as other non-weird bad guy archetypes like giant spiders, psychotic killers in hockey-masks, and Paris Hilton.

Mega-sharks, on the other hand, may be weird, but I thought of them too late.

Robert Rodriguez, who alternates making weirdish adult cult movies like Grindhouse and Sin City with wacky children’s movies like the Spy Kids series, loves sharks, a love affair that began when Steven Spielberg’s Jaws premiered on his 7th birthday. For recreation, he goes scuba diving in shark-infested waters in a steel cage. He’s passed down his obsession with sharks to his son Racer, who, between the ages of six and seven, made up the character of Sharkboy in stories he told to amuse himself. In an attempt to recapture the spirit of youth and create a movie that would appeal to directly to kids with as little adult intervention as possible, the elder Rodriguez took Racer’s ideas, dialogue and plot sketches (as verbatim as he could while still making a reasonably coherent movie), cast professional talent in the key roles, and directed his son’s daydreams in front state of the art green-screen special effects as The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl.
Sharkathalon!
I say this to explain why a weird movie website is covering a semi-weird, shark-lite, non-horror movie for the b-movie roundtable SHARKATHALON!, “week-long tribute to everything that has to do with sharks and horror films” scheduled to coincide with the 35th anniversary of the release of Jaws. Fans of the toothy marine predators looking for tales of blood in the water, prepare for something completely different.

With those flimsy justifications out of the way, let’s jump into Racer’s kiddie shark pool, where the chum floating in the water isn’t chunks off a great white’s latest victim, but shreds of childhood dreams.

First off, forget 3-D. Part of the reason this film was originally panned is because the 3-D effects, which came along at the very tail end of the red-blue glasses era and just before the contemporary polarized glasses became standard, just didn’t measure up. The DVD comes with red-blue glasses and offers viewers the chance to torture themselves with them should they so wish, but most will be happy to stick to the standard flat-viewing experience.

The adventures begin with Sharkboy’s origin story: son of a marine biologist, separated from his father and lost in a CGI sea after a storm, adopted by talking sharks; naturally, his exposure to the sharky lifestyle results in him growing gills, fangs and fins  Lavagirl, the affirmative-action superheroine added to tap into the lucrative girl market, doesn’t get an origin story; she Continue reading CAPSULE: THE ADVENTURES OF SHARKBOY AND LAVAGIRL IN 3-D (2005) →