Comic Book Archives - Page 3 of 6

Eat Pray Love -vs- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Eat Pray Love (2010) -vs- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

August 14, 2010 Sherry Coben 5

I am not a thirteen year old boy. I do not read comics. Sorry. Graphic novels. I do not play video games. I am a dinosaur. Still, faced on Friday with a couple of hours to kill and choice of watching Scott Pilgrim vs. the World or Eat Pray Love, I reflexively embraced my inner middle-schooler and turned my back on Oprah’s minions, setting the estrogen fest aside for a Saturday matinee.

Summer strikes me as the perfect time for stylish twaddle, and I enjoy defying expectations. (Not enough that I’d entertain the thought of seeing the meathead offering The Expendables.) I know that I’m the target for a movie about a middle-aged woman on a quest. Hell, I’m the effing bullseye on the target. Plus Julia Roberts is a bona fide movie star, and I love looking at that divine face on the big screen every chance I get.

On the other hand, Michael Cera is a guy who gets to star in movies, lots and lots of them, for reasons that don’t quite resonate for me. A little of Cera goes a mighty long way, and a lot of him wears super duper thin. One-trick ponies amuse and even delight the first few times they go through their paces, but eventually, the audience clamors for more. […]

Inception (2010) -vs- The Dark Knight (2008)

July 16, 2010 Beau DeMayo 14

Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight. That’s all about you need to know when it comes to how Inception has been marketed, a film whose title could easily be mistaken as “From The Director of The Dark Knight” as its actual title.

Inception and The Dark Knight are two movies that are so radically different, yet so fundamentally the same. Both films strive to do something radically different with their genres, turning the typical tropes on their heads and challenging audiences to keep up.

Now we put what many consider to already be Nolan’s masterpiece up against his newest film. Another masterpiece or just another movie? […]

Surrogates (2009) -vs- Gamer (2009)

June 28, 2010 Rodney Twelftree 0

Would humanity be better off if we all plugged into an artificial reality where our dreams, nightmares and fantasies can come true? In a strange way, both “Surrogates” and “Gamer” attempt to explore that question. With vague flashes of “Minority Report,” “The Matrix” and “I, Robot,” “Surrogates” plugs us into a bizarre world lived through robotic versions of ourselves, while “Gamer” answers the new-age-old question of what life would be like if we could live inside a video game vicariously, through actual people. Both films question our belief that fantasy would be better than reality, but which one does it more successfully?
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Kick-Ass (2010) -vs- Mystery Men (1999)

April 21, 2010 Sherry Coben 8

â€œKick-Assâ€ features winning and well-drawn characters engrossed in a complicated narrative full of revenge schemes, garden-variety venality, and grandiose dreams. The suspense gets punctuated with bursts of shocking violence and world-class movie-action, and somehow the high school domestic story somehow remains center stage. Kick-Ass keeps his high-school-nobody day job, and his friends, colleagues, and even his burgeoning romance all ring blissfully true. Itâ€™s a subtle mix set in a not-altogether convincing metropolis.
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Superman -vs- Clark Kent

March 13, 2010 Bryce Zabel 2

How clueless do you have to be to not realize that Superman and Clark Kent look exactly alike?

That’s the question for the ages â€” something that has haunted every version of Superman since he debuted as a comic book character in 1938. His was one of the original “secret identities” and the concept involved the Man of Steel being accepted by everyone as an alien visitor (who looks human) known as Superman. Even so, no problem there. Part two got tricky…

When he put on a pair of glasses and a business suit and acted a little differently in order to pass as Clark Kent, however, it seemed that nobody realized they were the same person. As comic book films have gotten more and more realistic, the cognitive dissonance we experience in enjoying the character has grown greater and greater.

Back in 1994, I got a chance to wrestle with that conundrum for a while when I was supervising producer of the first season of ABC’s Lois & Clark. Now it looks like it’s Christopher Nolan’s turn since he’s been tapped as the Chosen One for the latest Superman feature reboot. He’s probably already obsessing on this and many other issues and, maybe, just maybe, he’s going to take the license to fix this one. I think he can â€” even while keeping the original conceit â€” and we’ll get to that in a minute… […]

Bryceâ€™s Ten Best Films of the Past Ten Years

December 15, 2009 Bryce Zabel 9

Everybody seems to be out with their Top Ten. This year it’s a two-fer. You can go with “Top Ten of 2009” or “Top Ten of the Decade.” I say go for the Top Ten […]

The SuperMerger! Disney -vs- Marvel!

September 29, 2009 Stephen Bell 4

A Smackdown so big it takes two Smackrefs to write it! Written by Beau DeMayo and Stephen Bell The Smackdown. Disney owns Marvel (or soon will)! Once complete, this means that Disney, responsible for […]

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -vs- Transformers

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) -vs- Transformers (2007)

June 20, 2009 Beau DeMayo 8

Both “Transformers” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” brim with elaborate action set-pieces, campy humor, and hyper-sexuality. Industrial Light and Magic struggles in both films to design the Transformers in such a way that we can distinguish one from the other. Whenever a fight erupts between Autobot and Decepticon, the on-screen action tumbles into a jumbled mess of flopping, indistinguishable mechanical parts. Sure, I appreciate the high level of detail, but not at the cost of coherent action scenes. “Transformers: RotF” especially suffers from ILM’s designs as Bay introduces a whole slew of new Transformers that simply blend together. It’s hard to appreciate large-scale action sequences when I can’t tell the good from the bad guys and thus, can’t tell who’s winning.
Now both films embrace Bay’s typical low-brow humor. Again, “Transformers: RotF” probably suffers most in this category. Gags like Sam’s mom lolly-gagging around on a college campus after eating pot-brownies or the dangling wrecking ball testicles on a construction Decepticon aren’t just dumb, they’re insulting to the audiences’ intelligence. “Transformers” had some corny moments, many centered around the Autobots fitting into Sam’s suburban life. However, none proved as gregarious and useless as those in Transformers: RotF” where the jokes simply exist onto themselves and are cracked in the most inappropriate moments.
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X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) -vs- Iron Man (2008)

May 3, 2009 Beau DeMayo 11

Marvel Studios and Fox continue expanding its X-Men film universe with the addition of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the first in a series of Origins spin-offs designed to focus on specific characters from the X-Men franchise. With the movie already proving to be a box office blast, I’m sure we’ll get all the way to X-Men Origins: Xavier’s Wheelchair before this franchise runs out of steam. So what other film hero could possibly best the Wolverine? How about another team member who goes solo on film? Yes, another “man of metal”…Iron Man, founder of The Avengers (due out in 2011…you’re welcome, Marvel)! So today, sparks fly, metal on metal, adamantium and iron clashing to determine which of hero can hold his own alone?
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X-Men (2000) -vs- X2: X-Men United (2003) -vs- X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

May 2, 2009 Beau DeMayo 0

Bryan Singer’s X-Men took a little bit of Matrix and a whole lot of Marvel and jam-packed it all into an intense 90-minute film that was surprisingly more thriller than action film. This isn’t a surprise since Singer has always seemed most comfortable in thrillers, The Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil being the merits that earned him X-Men’s directorial helm. In X-Men, Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine, an amnesiac mutant with indestructible claws, is found by the X-Men, a group of highly-trained mutants who moonlight as teachers at a school for young mutants. The school’s headmaster, Charles Xavier, dreams of creating a world where human and mutants co-exist. Opposing Xavier and his X-Men is Magneto, Xavier’s former best friend and militant leader of the anti-human Brotherhood of Mutants. This is a movie made by its casting since the plot is rather slim and predictable. Watching Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan wax philisophical as comic book versions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X makes for a riveting thriller. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine was risky, but amazing, casting. The visual style and look of X-Men is something to appreciate, as Singer and his production design crew throw away blind fidelity to comic book gratuity and instead adapt the comic to our real world. Gone is yellow spandex, bright purple/red costumes, eight-foot tall mutants, and Gucci-wearing shapeshifters. Everything is understated, making the film’s themes of prejudice and alienation all the more real for a modern audience.
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