Friday, 27 April 2018

#59 - Frequencies (OXV: The Manual)

Now, not many people have heard of this one but I F*CKING HATE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH! I also hate the kind of response on IMDb


“Most Intelligent Philosophical Sci-Fi I Have Seen This Millennium”

That and a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is enough for this review, I have a compulsion to tear this thing to shreds just for that quote. No, this movie is not intelligent, Philosophical maybe. Want to prove this movie isn’t intelligent. The concept – human beings operate at different frequencies that determine how lucky they are. THAT’S NOT WHAT FREQUENCY MEANS! Frequency is a measure of the speed of oscillation, generally associated with sound and/or vibrations. It has nothing to do with luck. I’ll get to what the consequences of being different ‘frequencies’ is but in the review.

So went straight to DVD, made some money I’m sure, minimal budget and a work of some Darren Paul Fisher. He did Inbetweeners, but not the one you’re thinking of, and a movie called Popcorn which was slammed by the 3 critics that watched it.

Let’s get on with this, shall we

Saturday, 21 April 2018

4 issue test #44 - Marvel 2 in One


Want to talk about Marvel Legacy? No? It’s barely relevant any more anyway? There’s another f*cking relaunch happening at Marvel? OK, this is the last year I’m doing 4 issue tests, they were supposed to be a steady stream of titles throughout the year, these days every time I’m done with relaunch there’s another one ready to bite.

Let’s talk about Marvel Legacy, it’s a prelude to Marvel’s next event, less than a year after the end of Secret Empire (colour me shocked there) it brought back Wolverine and it offered a tease that the Fantastic 4 would reunite for the first time since Secret Wars.

At the end of Secret Wars, Reed basically remade the multiverse and he, his wife and kids are off exploring it. The Human Torch was a character in Uncanny Avengers as for the Thing? He briefly joined the Guardians of the Galaxy before being recruited into S.H.I.E.L.D. by Maria Hill, the same Maria Hill who had been relieved of her position in S.H.I.E.L.D. because of her amoral super villain prison. He was investigating Victor Von Doom, who came out of Secret Wars and for some reason decided to become Iron Man… yeah, I don’t get it either but I’m not reading his title so maybe there’s an explanation there.

On the writing duties for this… strangely named title is… Chip Zdarsky. You may remember him way back for being the writer of Jughead, I hated Jughead… but then his run on Spider-man has been well received so maybe it’s a sign I’ll like it.

Tuesday, 17 April 2018

Mini Review - Blade

We’ll be taking a break from the Superman reviews for the time being because Kevin Spacey is a…

  
As I was saying, time to wind down with another superhero franchise, and what a topical time. At time of writing Black Panther just came out and celebrates the first superhero movie and probably first big budget blockbuster in general to have a predominately black cast of characters, but NOT as some people try to claim, the first Superhero movie with a black lead. That honour goes to… I’m not actually sure, but Blade sure as hell is one of them.



Blade came out in 1998, and it was sure as hell an adult movie, R rated in the US, rated 18 (the equivalent of NC-17) in the UK. It didn’t have blockbuster budget, only $45m and didn’t get blockbuster returns, $131m. It was just successful enough that a sequel was greenlit. It wasn’t exactly a critical smash either, rated 54% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 5.7/10. Here are my thoughts

Wednesday, 11 April 2018

Sequel Baiting #7 - Crank vs Crank: High Voltage



So, time to talk about the highest age-rated movies I’ve ever covered. You remember Jason Statham? He played the extreme character in SPY? He’s also in the Fast and Furious franchise for bit and we’ll be getting to that soon. But this is the movie where he takes the spotlight. And its hardcore action with softcore pornography… Better send the kids to bed before reading this one, folks. In fact, here’s a pre-requisite trigger warning

This review will discuss rape. If this makes you uncomfortable, click away from this review

Interestingly, these movies were distributed by 2 different studios, the first was handled by Universal, the second by Lionsgate, who had a hand in the production of the first, the first made a small profit, making $42m on a $12m budget, but the second was less successful, $34m on a $20m budget. But which is the better movie, I’m gonna judge it over 6 categories, as per usual, there’s a bonus point where one significantly outshines the other

Wednesday, 4 April 2018

Mini Review - The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

I'm away this weekend so only 2 reviews this week, this is the first one

Time to talk about another spy comedy.


Yes, I know I only talked about Spy a couple of months ago, but this movie was not a financial success, barely scraping past $100m on an $80m budget. Chances are high that the studio lost money in this production, and yet it was not critically panned, it holds a 66% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and we know far worse movies have made more


Such as that piece of sh*t. So, what was it about the Man from UNCLE that failed to connect with audiences? Well, I’m gonna take a look and see if I can work it out.