Superman/Batman Public Enemies Review

I watched Superman/Batman Public Enemies this weekend and I was surprised to find that the movie was good. I mean, I wasn’t expecting the movie to be bad, I just didn’t expect it to be as good as it was.

Plot

A meteor made of kryptonite is on a crash course towards earth and President Lex Luthor (ehm bad guy) with his infinite wisdom decides to use his own patented missiles to destroy the space rock of doom instead of asking for help from one of the many superheroes who could have easily punched the meteor out of the sky. Superman and Batman, who think Lex’s plan will fail, decide on their own method of saving the planet and inadvertently bruise Luthor's ego. In retaliation to the egregious offense to his pride, Lex implicates Superman of murder and slaps a $1 billion bounty on the Man of Steel. Superman must then team up with Batman, the only person in the world smart enough to know that Superman isn’t a cold blooded killer, if he wants to survive the constant onslaught of foes looking for a little extra cash and friends wanting to bring him to “justice.”

What the Movie did Right

• Fan Service-They definitely crammed a lot of characters into one movie, but it never felt like the abundance of characters were arbitrarily thrown into the movie just because it need bodies. A lot, but certainly not all, of the cameos got a chance to show off their talents as they battled our two heroes.

• Battle Royal-A lot of animated movies try to focus on telling an interesting story with one or two big action scenes and that’s fine...sometimes, but this is a comic book movie and we (the fans) want action and this movie delivered it. I don’t think five minutes passed without someone getting thrown into a building or being pelted with exploding batarangs.
• Good Writing- So what if the plot, “The world will be destroyed unless you save it,” has been done a million times before, it doesn’t mean the writing can’t be good. The dialogue wasn’t drawn out or sappy and none of the lines seemed forced or cliched so kudos to the voice actors. But what I really liked was that several characters brought jokes and friendly banter with them. I couldn't help, but laugh at random comments about Batman’s dreary personality and Power Girl’s accentuated costume.
• This One’s for the Big Kids-Not to say that this film isn’t kid friendly, but the movie was definitely aiming to please teenagers and up instead of the 5-12 year old crowd that most cartoons these days are targeting. Basically, good job creators for targeting the larger demographic of your audience, I’m sure that will equal bigger sales.

Here’s What the Movie did Wrong (I’m just being nit picky)

• Why so Stiff-The animation was stiff and it looked like all the characters couldn’t move properly because their rippling muscles got in the way.

• Special Features-The special features were not interesting, well on disc one anyways. When the special feature says Green Lantern preview I expect to see a clip of the movie or some really good concept art, but all I got was the director telling me Green Lantern's origin and how perfect the voice actors were for their roles. Now there is a second disc with a slew of extras, but unfortunately Redbox doesn’t let you rent the bonus disc. Sad, I know, but I might add onto the review if I ever see the bonus features.

Final Thoughts

Overall the movie was a good, straight forward action packed flick that should make any DC fan happy. I’m giving Superman/Batman Public Enemies 4 batarangs to the face out of 5

Oh hey, in my preview of this movie which you can check out here, I mentioned that all the characters in the movie were ripped and that everyone must belong to a gym as some kind of world mandate. I’m here to go on the record and say that I was wrong. My new theory is that everyone had liposuction and the doctors didn’t know what to do with all the extra fat so they put it in her.

See that rather large androgynous looking woman with no neck making out with Lex Luthor...it looks like she's sucking out all the fat from lex's body. I bet you can't think of a better way to perform lipo, can you?

The Incredible Hulk Review

I’ve wanted to write this review for two weeks now, but unfortunately due to several factors such as work, lack of internet, and me being incredibly cheap I haven’t gotten the chance to watch the movie until now. Let me explain my frugality. I recently discovered that my public library has as massive DVD collection which means free movies (hurray!). Unfortunately it also means everyone else has access to these free movies. I’ve been having trouble getting the movie because of people who swooped in and rented the movie before I got off work. Also, for whatever reason my library doesn’t believe in holding movies so I’ve been stalking this movie for about a week. But the joke is on me because the Hulk is now overdue negating the whole point of renting it from the library.


Even though this is a DVD review (because I’m assuming that a lot of people have already watched the Hulk, but haven’t bought the DVD) I must admit that I hadn’t seen the movie until I rented it. As comic book movies go this was pretty good. What kept me from scrambling to see the Hulk in the theaters was my terrible memory of the first Hulk movie in 2003. A better telling of the love story between Bruce and Betty Ross and the creator’s choice to humanize the green behemoth made this movie a lot easier to watch. There is enough fan service to keep the nerds entertained like the Captain America reference and an appearance by Lou Ferrigno, yet enough story to pull new fans to the Hulk. I’ll admit that before I watched this movie I didn’t like the Hulk, but now that I’ve seen the movie I’ve been reading the Hulk’s Wikipedia page and I’m excited to see what direction the next movie will go in.

Audio
The audio is good. The background music was crisp and did not seem to overpower the movie. Also, the music wasn’t overly repetitive and complemented the scenes very nicely.

Video
Picture was sharp and the Hulk didn’t look like a computer-generated image (CGI) mess when he was interacting with non CGI elements. Some of the visual effects are cool like bullet time in the fight scenes, but it’s been done before. At least the director didn’t use the special effects like a gimmick to hide the movie’s flaws.

Special Features
The Hulk is a two disc DVD with most of the special features on the second bonus disc. The main reason I wanted to do a DVD review was because I thought the alternate opening would give a new twist to the movie. I was wrong. It’s really short and not that interesting, but that isn’t to say the other features aren’t good. With special features like audio commentary from the cast and crew, anatomy of a Hulk Out, deleted scenes, and comic book vignettes there’s certainly some good extra content.

So what do I say?
I really liked the movie. I got a lot of complaints that Bruce’s back story wasn’t fleshed out, but I argue that he doesn’t have a complicated origin story. Bruce falls in love with Betty Ross; accidently turns himself into the Hulk; the Hulk rampages through the city, that’s about it. What I didn’t like was the characterization of Betty Ross. Now I don’t know if it was poor acting on Liv Tyler’s part or if it was the writers who decided to water down the character, but I just found her annoying in some of the scenes. On the same note I found Tim Blake Nelson acting terrible. He played the super excitable Dr. Samuel Sterns and I couldn’t wait for him to get off the screen. The other actors: Edward Norton (the peaceful Bruce Banner), Tim Roth (the psychotic villain Emil Blonsky), and William Hurt (the stubborn General Ross) played their roles perfectly.

I’m giving the Incredible Hulk a 4 Hulk Smash out of 5.


(you wouldn't like me when I'm angry)

Confessions of a Superhero

So it’s Halloween (Happy Halloween!) and I’ve been racking my brain about what I should write about on this special day where you can dress up like your favorite comic book or videogame character without looking like a total doof. It finally dawned on me to write a review of Mathew Ogens’ Confessions of a Superhero which shows the lives of four people who dress up like superheroes for a living.


Confessions of a Superhero directed by Matthew Ogens show the lives of four actors who have come to Hollywood to make their acting dreams come true. Unfortunately life is tough and broken dreams can’t pay the rent. The four actors dawn the mantle of their favorite Superheroes and panhandle in front of the Grumman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd.

The movie mainly focuses on the Christopher Dennis who seems to have been enveloped by the Superman lore and has lost touch with reality (seriously, it’s a little scary how far this man goes to become Superman). Next in line for screen time is Maxwell Allen who portrays Batman. Maxwell also has his share of problems such as his uncontrollable anger and a failing marriage. It doesn’t help that Maxwell’s constant exposure to Christopher seems to have altered his thinking. The last two actors Jennifer Grant as Wonder Woman and Joe McQueen as The Hulk are not featured as much as the other two, especially Joe who is only used to highlight points that the other actors have made. Both Jennifer and Joe understand that their alter egos are a temporary fix and are seen going to casting calls while Christopher and Maxwell roam the streets hoping for money.

The documentary shows how four individuals with similar dreams can vary in the execution of their goals. From the Fantastic claims of Christopher to the down to earth wisdom of Joe, each hero finds their own way in the world.


Audio

Nothing special here. You can hear everyone speaking just fine. Sadly, the background music isn’t memorable or existent in some of the scenes.

Video

Not bad either. It has your standard documentary feel with still photographs of our heroes out on the streets thrown into the mix.

Special Features

You mean the not so special features (ooooo I’m so witty). There were a lot of deleted scenes in the special features area, but when I started watching them I understood why they were cut….. they’re not interesting so don’t even bother with them.

So What Do I Say?

This was certainly not the whimsical movie I thought it would be when I was looking for movies to watch over the weekend. This was a serious film that took an in-depth look at human strife. At times the movie was frightening depressing because I could see a lot of myself in each of the characters, yet Ogens still adds some funny moments like Elmo getting arrested to keep the film's tone from being too melancholy. All in all I enjoyed the film and I’ll give the overall package a 3 I’ll Save the Days out of 5

(That means it got a 3 out of 5 if you don’t get my humor)