Badmouth » comic book

Animated Spider-Man Is Simply Spectacular

Patti Marcotte — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:18:41 +0000

Returning the character to his roots pays big dividends in new series. Related posts:

Watchmen

Brian McDonough — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:17:02 +0000

[rating:3.5] Director: Zack Snyder Starring: Malin Ackerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley Watchmen, the holy grail of comic book movies. Not only have reverent fans of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons opus either passionately longed for or absolutely dreaded a film adaptation, it also seems to be of high interest to the general public. Weekend box office will tell that tale). but this seems to be the first comic book movie to make a real general-public splash that’s not based on a household-name character. Maybe it’s just that from the trailers alone — hell, from the posters alone — you can tell it’s not going to suck as much as Ghost Rider. Also, it’s dark, moody, urban and sexy. That’s not a failing formula. But is the damn thing — all two hours and forty minutes of it, any good? Related posts:

Fantastic Four

Ed Brubaker: Criminal Mastermind

Brian McDonough — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:30:36 +0000

Ed Brubaker is a big star in the relatively small world of comics. No related posts.

Wonder Woman

Brian McDonough — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:42:33 +0000

[rating:3] Director: Lauren Montgomery Starring: Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Virginia Madsen, Rosario Dawson Wondercon offered an opportunity to do the roundtable interview thing with the makers of the Wonder Woman DVD hitting stores today. The Q&A sessions came a couple hours before the new movie was screened for convention attendees, so the assembled web writers hadn't seen the production yet. Fortunately, the obsessiveness with which the animation of comic icons is tracked online meant that my fellow interrogators knew to ask about the violence. The movie starts with brutal war in ancient Greece, and the whole film contains enough violence, and a few sexually risque lines, to have earned the movie an R in its initial cut. Yeah, think about that for a minute: A Wonder Woman cartoon scoring an R. No, I don't know what the hell is wrong with the world, either. What the hell is wrong with the world, after the jump. Related posts:

Five Graphic Novels Worth The Name (And Your Time)

Brian McDonough — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:04:17 +0000

With Wondercon just around the corner here in the Bay Area, Badmouth’s thoughts are turning toward comics. All right, easily a third of Badmouth’s regular thoughts are about comics, but nonetheless, we’re going to try to get some fresh comics content posted in the runup to the con. In addition to reviewing all the summer [...] Related posts:

The Dark Knight

Brian McDonough — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:26:23 +0000

[rating:4.5] Director: Christopher Nolan Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal Yes, Heath Ledger really is amazing as the Joker. And good lord, does Christopher Nolan deliver a film worthy of the performance. From the start, The Dark Knight is as intense as a war zone, and while it has more noticeable imperfections than Iron Man and less charm and vision than Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight has brains and ambition and yes indeed, a hell of an effects budget. The action is spectacular, if sometimes confusing, and the film looks magnificent, especially in IMAX. Related posts:

A Beginners’ Guide to Hellboy

Brian McDonough — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:20:47 +0000

PART ONE: Volumes 1-4 With a new, higher-profile Hellboy movie in theaters today, it seems like a great time to consider the series of graphic novels that inspired Guillermo Del Toro’s productions. In part one, we look at the four collecting material published before the first Hellboy film, which debuted in 2004. Mike Mignola’s Hellboy [...] Related posts:

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Brian McDonough — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:02:27 +0000

[rating:4] Director: Guillermo del Toro Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones In the summer of intense comic-book violence (see Wanted and The Incredible Hulk. Or don't.), writer-director Guillermo Del Toro certainly holds up his end. The first half of Hellboy II: The Golden Army moves like you've accidentally sat on the fast forward button. Mystery, horror, whimsy, action, character moments all come at triple speed, almost always in imaginative settings with a dozen things going on in the background, and it's to the film's detriment that the audience rarely has enough time to actually process and enjoy any given scene. If we refer to key story moments as “beats,” then the first hour or so of this movie is a relentless drumroll. The result is that the audience has a harder time connecting to the story and the characters. It's like we're watching scenery whip past from the sterile interior of a bullet train, when what we want is to be out there walking with the characters, breathing the same air. Still, even at high speed, the scenery is amazing. Del Toro creates an unforgettably gruesome twist on the Tooth Fairy in a demon-infested auction house, choreographing his fight scene with inventive brilliance that is just shy of too violent and too intense. The second Hellboy movie, much moreso than the first, is clearly from the same mind that created the brilliant Pan's Labyrinth. Hellboy II is Pan's Labyrinth on a case and a half of Red Bull. Related posts:

Wanted

Brian McDonough — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:26:08 +0000

[rating:3.5] Director: Timur Bekmambetov Starring: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman Wanted has been designed as a delivery system for intense, repeated brutality presented in a creative and nonsensical manner probably meant to prevent you from thinking too heavily about the really unconscionable nature of the story and characters, or about how much you're thrilling to artful sadism and a fetishization of bloodshed. And yet, I didn't hate it. One hippie-ish biddy sighed and moaned repeatedly in protest of the jackhammer violence, but a lot of other people—including my companion, who'd say she's no fan of the action genre—liked Wanted despite itself. Ten days after the screening, I'm still trying to figure out why. Related posts:

The Incredible Hulk

Brian McDonough — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:00:13 +0000

[rating:3] Director: Louis Leterrier Starring: Edward Norton, Tim Roth, Liv Tyler, William Hurt, Tim Blake Nelson You know how everyone complained that there wasn't enough action in Ang Lee's Hulk movie? The folks behind this new not-quite-sequel have made damned sure that no one's gonna be saying that this time. The Incredible Hulk has so much fast, intense violence that its PG-13 rating is pretty decisive proof of the arbitrary nature of these ratings. The violence is going to be the main attraction, or repellant, with this film. The storyline itself, in which a hunted Edward Norton goes back to scientist-girlfriend Liv Tyler (who is really strange looking, even moreso than Norton) and ends up having to fight a runaway version of the Hulk (embodied by the strange-looking Tim Roth; this is just a movie full of weirdos, isn't it?) is no great shakes. There's nothing compelling in the script or the performances to hang a movie on. It all comes down to literal cartoon violence—the computer-generated Hulk is going to fight the computer-generated Abomination (a bigger, meaner, less-human Hulk) and pretty much destroy Manhattan in the process. If you'd like to see a fast and furious battle in which, say, a giant green man tears a police car in two and uses the halves as boxing gloves, then this here is your movie. If monsters beating up helicopters is not your thing, well, wherever this film is showing, the multiplex probably still has Sex and the City on four screens. Related posts: