Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Superheroes, Spies, Sci-Fi and Other Tasty Summer Smacks!

Seems like summer is the time for super-hero sequels.  That was true last summer, of course, but this summer has shown that when they work, they really work!

Spring fizzled with the often-dismissed fourth "Indiana Jones" film but then sizzled with the outstanding "Iron Man" franchise starter.

Now, of course, we're in the middle of "Dark Knight" mania.  We know that here at Movie Smackdown on a DNA-level because so far the film has sparked four of our critics to Smack it up against different films.

Hulk, Hellboy & Hancock.  Plus, Iron Man & Batman.  Indiana Jones and even Wesley Gibbons.  What a summer!  Throw in Zohan and Maxwell Smart for "comic relief"...

In case you've missed some of these great fights with these outsized characters and ideas, here they are in one list because, well, we just care:

• The Dark Knight (2008) -vs- Batman Begins (2005)
• The Dark Knight (2008) -vs- Spider-Man 2 (2004) [* poll included]
• The Dark Knight (2008) -vs- Batman (1989) [* poll included]
• Hancock (2008) -vs- I Am Legend (2007)
• Hellboy II (2008) -vs- Hancock (2008) [* poll included]
• Iron Man (2008) -vs- Batman Begins (2005)
• The Incredible Hulk (2008) -vs- Hulk (2003)
• Wanted (2008) -vs- Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
• Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) -vs- Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
• Wall-E (2008) -vs- Toy Story (1995)
• The Happening (2008) -vs- The Sixth Sense (1999)
• You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008) -vs- Semi-Pro (2008)
• Get Smart (2008) -vs- The Nude Bomb (1980)
• Get Smart (2008) -vs- Johnny English (2003)

Check 'em out. Sometimes, especially in the cases of the, shall we say, "less inspiring" films, our reviews are more fun than the trip to the theater.  Several of them have polls going if you're the "poll-type."  And, in any case, feel free to leave comments and let us know how you see things!

Also, don't forget to check out our new all-pictures and all-captions site: Movie Smackdown Comix!

Gotta run... thanks for dropping by... tell your friends...

The Wackness (2008) -vs- Running with Scissors (2006)

Therapists Who Need Therapists

The Smackdown.  Hollywood loves to write about therapists who are more screwed up than their patients.  Maybe that's because most Hollywood writers and directors are in therapy and want to feel better about themselves, I don't know.  Anyway, both of these films from Sony Pictures and from writer/directors put their coming-of-age male leads in therapy with people who are, shall we say, practicing "out of the box."  In "The Wackness," Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) trades marijuana for shrink sessions in New York in 1994 and in "Running with Scissors," Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross) moves in with his family’s therapist in the 1970s.  Have these movies pushed the boundaries of therapy too far to seem believable?  If therapy was this messed up in the recent past, how bad is it now?  And our Smackdown question:  If you have to see a shrink, do you want a referral from someone who runs drugs or runs with scissors?

The Challenger. The title of the film comes from a line that "Juno" darling, Olivia Thirlby, says to Josh Peck, “You’re the wackness and I’m the dopeness,” which is basically an overly cool way to say that Peck's a pessimist.  (Not as much as the film's cinematographer, who lit the film like he couldn't afford a lighting package.)  Anyway, "The Wackness" gives us Luke Shapiro in the summer before he goes away to college who has a lot to be pessimistic about.  In this film, writer/director Jonathan Levine lingers of the fact that he's masturbating seven times a day dreaming about real sex and dealing drugs out of an ice cream cart in New York City to make some coin.  Oh, yeah, he's looking for love, too. Shapiro is trying to get a grip on life because his parents are fighting over losing their apartment and he never made any friends in high school. Shapiro finds solace in his pot client and therapist, Doctor Squires (Ben Kingsley), who gives a string of unusual advice that probably goes beyond the Hippocratic Oath.  In any case, Shapiro follows Squires' advice about losing his virginity, only does it with Dr. Squires' step-daughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby). Kingsley and Peck give stellar performances as men with no coping skills to deal with the matters of life and love besides escaping through drug use.  It might even be enlightening if it hadn't been shot so damned dark.

Encounters at the End of the World (2008) -vs- March of the Penguins (2005)

Life on the Ice

The Smackdown.  In the last few years, the documentary world has given us a couple of projects about living in Antarctica that play out against a backdrop of global warming.  "Encounters at the End of the World" and "March of the Penguins" want to be seen as important because they're being offered to us at a time when the ice caps are shrinking into less-and-less of their former selves.  At the same time, though, the filmmakers want to distract us from the education by making us feel entertained with either quirky characters or Morgan Freeman voice-over.  Americans have the biggest base down there at the South Pole -- McMurdo -- but, apparently, that's where the commitment stops:  both of these films were done, originally, by Europeans.  So, here we go:  penguins versus humans, in a frozen world that's so damn cold your spit can freeze before it even hits the ground.

The Challenger.  Director and writer Warner Herzog also narrates his film about life in Antarctica and, I have to say, listening to his accented voice-over reminds me that it was the Germans who called Antaractica "Neuschwabenland" before World War II and were reputed (in UFO circles anyway) to have repaired there after the end to build flying saucers at secret bases tunneled under the ice.  Okay, you've been warned.  If Herzog has another agenda, you heard it here first...

The film he's made is great example of the idea that you can go to the literal ends of the Earth to get away from it all, and still be where you started.  People are still people, and they need to connect as much as ever.  I probably know as much about life in the US Antarctica base at McMurdo as any living human can without actually having lived there.  A few years ago, I wrote a TV series pilot for DreamWorks TV called, yes, "McMurdo" and read books, websites and talked to all manner of iceheads.

Herzog's poetic film doesn't really tell a story.  Rather it chronicles his visit to McMurdo and the access he was granted once he got there.  There's a meandering quality to his "encounters," giving it a very experiental feeling, but if you're looking for dramatic arc or point-of-view going in, stick with Michael Moore or Al Gore.  For me, it vindicated almost every single choice I'd made in that DreamWorks pilot:  the characters I wrote that seemed too weird or strange, seemed like they'd fit in perfectly.  The danger felt real.  And the stakes remain enormous for the people... and the planet.

The Dark Knight (2008) -vs- Batman Begins (2005)

When Is a Sequel Not a Sequel?

The Smackdown.  Batman's back.  Unless you live in an isolated third world village, you knew this already and, frankly, even if that's where you live you probably know it anyway.  In 2005, Christopher Nolan reintroduced the world to the infamous Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy by day, caped crusader by night. His film, "Batman Begins," reinvented the iconic hero for a new generation, discarding the camp and flash of the previous films and introducing a hero that strayed very far from the classic Boy Scouts we'd come to associate superhero films with.  He took a 16 year old franchise and wiped the mud off, breaking IMAX records and pumping life into a movie hero that had been M.I.A. since a Mr. Clooney pulled on the cowl (shudder).

Now, Nolan has returned with his follow-up to "Batman Begins," the aptly titled "The Dark Knight."  Surrounded by the haunting death and supposed Oscar-worthy performance of Heath Ledger as the maniacal Joker, "The Dark Knight" has garnered more hype than any film EVER.  It has received praise unheard of for a comic book movie, prompting boasts of "greatest of all time" and shattering the record for biggest opening weekend in cinema history.  But when all the talk dies down, does "The Dark Knight" really trump its predecessor, the one that paved the way, that reimagined the Batman for the 21st century? It's time to find out, as we pit one angry-voiced Batman against an even-more-angry-voiced Dark Knight!

The Challenger.  It is official. "The Dark Knight" has set the world on fire. Picking up where "Batman Begins" left off, we follow Bruce Wayne/Batman as he attempts to remove Gotham's worst from their position of power and pass the mantle off to a new hero, D.A. Harvey Dent, played by veteran star Aaron Eckhart. Since the conclusion of "Begins," Batman has been successful in striking fear in the hearts of Gotham's villains and it appears that he might actually see the light at the end of the tunnel in his fight against crime. Unfortunately for Batman, that light happens to be an oncoming train, embodied by none other than the most notorious of the vigilante's nemeses, The Joker. As you've no doubt already heard, this is not Jacky's Joker from the 1980's. This is Heath Ledger unleashed, a rabid dog of such unspeakable evil that nothing is left untainted in his wake. The Joker's mission is simple - bring chaos to Gotham. As he moves through the city like a maelstrom, it is up to Batman, Dent, Gordon (again played by Gary Oldman) and the rest of Batman's allies to save the city from the Joker and his corruption.

Something New from the Smack!

We get mail.  And some of you seem to really like the less-than-reverent way we treat the publicity stills that the studios put out to promote their films. 

Armed only with an iMac, some Comic Life Magiq software, and a serious authority issue, we've been giving them the treatment for a few months now.

The idea is to take these common photos and spin the hell out of them so they make their own artistic statement independent of the reviews.  We want to present them in a way that you can't get anywhere else.  And we want to make movie stars and the characters they play say what we want them to say for a change, okay?

So now we've collected our first batch all in one place where you can look at them full-screen, download them or -- and this is the hot tip -- even play them as a slide-show (the button's right underneath the banner). Click on the photo to the left or the link below and see for yourself.  The actual Comix take a few seconds to load because they're high res (like we said, it's art, baby)... but it's worth it...

http://www.moviesmackdown.tv