So I Just Watched… The Avengers (Paramount/Marvel, 2012)

Sometimes words cannot define how amazing a movie is. The lack of objectivity I have regarding this new Marvel release goes over the fact that I am a big time fan of all these characters. This is a truly amazing movie in every sense of the word, It’s comic book gold. Joss Whedon, a man who loves his comic book characters, having written the X-Men and the continuation of his beloved Buffy The Vampire Slayer in comic form, took Superheroes blockbuster to a whole new level, every scene, every interaction between characters shows the love this guy has for all the comic lore. 

The Avengers is a straight continuation of Thor, since the events of that movie are the one that leads you to this one. Loki is found and rescued by The Chitauri and given great power to go back to earth and get revenge. Fans of Tom Hiddleston rejoice: This guy is here to kick some ass and take some names, he’s even more evil,  resentful and determined than the last time he faced his brother. But alas, as much as I loved his acting this is a Marvel movie where the heroes win and you’ll rejoice watching this guy lose, it’s a guilty pleasure and that’s all I can say.

For the rest of The Avengers there is a moment to shine for everyone of them, Captain America is the man out of time, but not so out of place. He understands  what he left behind, but this new world doesn’t overwhelms him. Tony Stark seems to be more centered and stable, the inclusion of Pepper in this film was a plus for him, he’s been greatly humanized. Thor is after his brother, believing that he has to face Asgardian justice no matter what. The roles as Shield’s operatives of Black Widow and Hawkeye are great, the two top master agents get to hang out with the big boys without losing their cool. Last but no least is The Hulk, I was very skeptical of Mark Ruffalo taking over Ed Norton for this one, but the cast choice fits him like a ring.

Avengers is the product of some heavy work by clever heads at Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios. 5 years ago the company set his sight into making a cohesive universe with their movies, the final product is the single best superhero movie you will see this year, and I’m talking colorful, shiny, costumed superheroes treated seriously. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get pissed, because this movie has everything. This is some of the best times to be a superhero fan and Avengers is a celebration of it. I Hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did!

So I Just watched… Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (20th Century Fox, 2007)

Man why did people hate on this movie so much? I recently bought this one for 10$ and watched it not giving a single fuck, and I found myself pretty amused by this film. Sometimes as fans we hate when a character o a group lose some consistency on sequels (hello people who hate X-Men - The Last Stand!), hell we even hate when somebody is recast (even if the actor coming aboard is pretty good and talented, hello Mark Rufallo!). Fantastic Four managed to keep the original cast intact, hell even the creative team of the first one came aboard for round two!. I will be the first to claim however that Sue Storm could have used a recast, Jessica Alba doesn’t have the strength of character to play Sue Storm. 

OK, on to the main plot: a cosmic disturbance is wrecking havoc on earth, disrupting the signals of every electronic device and opening big holes way down to the earth core, the team is on a rush since Sue and Reed have been trying to get married and they’ve had their wedding botched 3 times already, the military ask Reed to build a device to keep track of the anomaly which he does at the back of Sue, they day of the weeding everything is torn to hell when the Silver Surfer arrives to New York to destroy the device and continue with his work undetected. Reed being the smart cat that he is figure’s out the Surfer’s next location with the help of returning bastard Dr. Troy… I mean Dr. Doom!. they managed to get the Surfer out of the board and learn from the space traveler his true purpose: the earth will buy the farm if the FF doesn’t come up with a plan and stop Dr. Doom from handling the cosmic power.

All in all this movie is not a masterpiece, but it’s not Batman & Robin either, it can be enjoyed with a loose mind or the necessity to kill boredom, if you have both combined, this movie is gonna do wonders for you. It’s a shame that this cast of characters will not return for a third Fantastic Four film, mainly because FOX is about to reboot the franchise before they lose the rights back to Disney/Marvel, let’s hope they do something decent, or have the decency to give them back to Marvel Studios to be integrated into movie continuity!

So I Just Watched… Captain America: The First Avenger (Paramount/Marvel, 2011)

Probably most of you read my rant not so long ago about my inability to watch this movie through legal ways in my country, I still managed to check it out in some very clandestine way, I don’t feel proud of it, but hey, I’m a hardcore comic geek, I had to watch this!

As origin stories go, Captain America has to be one of the most fast-paced solid stories I’ve ever seen based on a comic book character in cinema, this movie exudes greatness all over the place; it begins with the multiple attempts of meek and frail Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) to serve his country by trying to be recruited multiples times in the army just to be turn down every time, he find his chance when Dr. Abraham Erskine (Bill Tucci) notices him and proves that being built like a hero doesn’t necessarily makes you one, on the other side of the world a mad man named Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) is working alongside a scientific genius called Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) to build Hydra, a force that will depose the Third Reich using a fusion of magic and technology, after having his future put on hold with the death of Dr. Erskine, Steve gets a chance to prove himself worth of the name given to him by the army as a motivational figure, Captain America lives on when he alone rescues a long force of his countrymen and acquires the technology used by Hydra to catch up to them; when his true enemy is revealed Cap will do anything in his hands to bring him down until his last breath.

I gotta admit that this one was worth every minute of the hype it received, Captain America: The First Avenger is along Thor one of the best movies out this year in the superhero gender, with solid casting, dialog and acting, and a masterful direction by “The Rocketeer” helmer Joe Johnston; this makes me think that this year belongs to Marvel, and that alone makes me very happy, but at the same time it makes me wonder: what is DC doing wrong? they have some of the greatest heroes in their ranks! why Green Lantern sucked so much? why we only listen about projects regarding Superman or Batman? I’m sure as hell that Warner Brothers could learn a thing or two about movie continuity from Paramount!

Go see this one, you are lucky enough to get to pay your ticket and watch it in a big screen so you’ll enjoy this one a thousand times more than me, until I get it in Blu-Ray that is! oh! a final hint: the color pallet of this film is one of the greatest! so forget about 3D on this one!

So I Just Watched… Game Of Thrones (HBO/2011)

Just the Tagline catches your attention: “Winter is coming…”, there are some of us that are already accustomed to expect just quality from HBO’s original productions and rightfully so, since they have delivered some of the best television series in years, from “The Sopranos”, to “Boardwalk Empire”, unappreciated gems like “Rome” doesn’t go under the radar without leaving some kind of mark, this new effort coming from development hell was well worth the wait.

Games of Thrones is based on a series of books called “A Song Of Ice and Fire” written by novelist George R. R. Martin, it started pre-production in 2009 and has gone through multiple castings and rewrites to please both the production company and the vision of the author, the adaption has been handled by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and although it stars with a fierce cast of characters, as the plot advances you realize that nobody in this tangled web it’s indispensable to make the story flow, the series is heavy on drama and situations unfolding, as revelations are made about the multiple manipulations of some very deceiving characters, the headstrong correct figure of them all, of course is Ned stark, Lord of Winterfall and The North, played brilliantly by Sean Bane, to say this man gives some of his best acting work in this series would be a understatement to what he’s done.

Trying to keep this short as I always do, there’s very little I can say about “Game of Thrones” that you probably don’t already know if you’ve seen the series, but if you haven’t I encourage you to do so, the 10 chapters are full of charm, with characters that bears their own weight to a heavy story, it was something that was difficult to make and it shows in his quality, the solid casting for each and every single character is one of the key elements that makes this series so damn good, Go for it, you will not regret it!

So I Just Watched… X-Men: First Class (20th Century Fox/Marvel, 2011)

Taking the name of a successful prequel series based on the early days of the X-Men, 20th Century Fox bring us X-Men: First Class as the story of the origin of the team, mixing up a series of classic characters with new ones; first of all lets be clear on something: the only thing X-Men first Class has related to the comic series of the same name it’s just that: the name, this is a total different tale linking the stories of characters like Sebastian Shaw with Erik Lensherr, the man who would become Magneto and how him and Charles Xavier at one point believed they could work together to make mutantkind live in peace in a world raging with nuclear paranoia.

I have to admit, that since I started to see the first few attempts of Fox to market this movie I was sorely dissapointed, I though this was going to suck for the worst, not even the high profile name of Matthew Vaughn directing did anything for me, not even the solid casting of James McAvoy as Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender as Magneto got me excited about this movie, so my expectations were VERY low; man was I surprised by this one! the main center of the story revolves around the beginning and the fall from grace of Charles and Erik’s bromance, both actors do incredible jobs portraying these characters and not even for a minute they seem out of place or awkward in their characterizations, the rest of the casting even if it’s solid like Rose Byrne as Moira Mctaggert or Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique sometimes feels a lot like filler (January Jones playing the very same character she portrays in Mad Men as Emma Frost just doesn’t cut it) the highlight of the unknowns? I just loved Banshee, Caleb Landry Jones was a great kid to portray this character!.

In terms of visuals this movie has some very powerful moments to back up the solid script, the sequences of recruitment and training are specially good, with a crazy canuck making the most unexpected cameo and a very powerful moment between Charles and an struggling Erik who wants to have a better control of his powers; the final confrontation is pure cinematic gold and something to behold, the trailer did a pretty good job at keeping some of the greatest parts of the films in secret, the final reveal is an expected one, but truly worth it, can someone on FOX hurry up and star production on a sequel to this one? I think some of us wants to see Michael Fassbender as Magneto in at least two more films!.

So I Just Watched… Iron Man 2 (Paramount/Marvel, 2008)

Long before I had this blog I still consumed every comic book movie they put out, even the bad ones (hello Blade 3!) I admit that sometimes being a fan and trying to be objective is very hard, however usually is really easy for me to say when a movie just plain sucks, It has come to my attention how a very vocal group of people state that this movie sucked balls, this of course had me shocked and very confused, so I decided to pop the movie in my player and give it a second view, why? because I needed the best damn proof I could get, which is of course to remember if I can stand to see the movie multiples times, and let me tell you my friends that I loved Iron Man 2 in every sense of the word.

Iron Man 2 takes place one year later after the events of the first movie, it features the return of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, a cast made in heaven if I may add, since I believe this man must have the same personality of Marvel’s most prolific drunken/superhero/industrialist, familiar faces show up as well: Gwyneth Paltrow as “Pepper” Pots, Jon Favreau as “Happy” Hogan (and also directing the whole damn thing) and we get some new faces too like Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer, Scarlet Johanson as The Black Widow and Mikey Rourke as Anton Vanko/Wiplash, plotwise the movie is a straightforward sequel, with a couple of subplots about Tony dying from palladium poisoning, his refusal to cooperate with US government regarding the Iron Man tecnology and the quest for revenge of Anton Vanko wich brings Justin Hammer as the second antagonist into the equation.

Most of the reviews I’ve read say that the movie juggles way too many characters, while I believe this to be true, I also believe that this is done with a purpose and in a  very good way plotwise, everyone has time to shine in this movie, even Nick Fury even more so when one has the chance to remember that this is a Marvel movie that’s part of a bigger project, it also has three very defined acts and a very fulfilling resolution and the easter egg ties directly into Thor; I fail to see what’s wrong with Iron Man 2, maybe I’m more easily entertained, maybe I don’t have the biggest standards in the book regarding the way I enjoy my superhero films but this film is as great as the original, watch it with a cool head, you’ll enjoy the hell out of it!

So I Just Watched… The Smallville Series Finale (CW Network/Warner Brothers, 2011)

(SPOILERS AHEAD!) I’m gonna star by saying that in a decade long run, this series was very on and off for me, I found the first two seasons to be really good and with a lot of entertainment value, I know that most of these series tend to take part of the mythos that compose the particular universe, in this case the DC universe, to make their stories work, but some of them where very off putting for me (like the kid Flash thing or Oliver Queen taking a place that should have been for Bruce Wayne), still this managed to be as entertaining as it could for me over the years.

The series builds up to the moment everyone knew it was coming: Clark Kent becomes Superman, but first he had to overcome a series of self doubts that holds him back from becoming the true hero he’s supposed to be, for the casual spectator this may look really great (a man with god-like powers like Superman having doubts about his mission? WOW!) but for a comic fan this is really chicle to say the least, you get to see Lionel Luthor make his last move and get his ass handed to him, we see a lot of references to Apokolips and Darkseid, but they pay off very little in the end, we get to see Clark embrace his destiny and become the Man of Steel, but you never actually get to “see him” as a fully suited Superman (only tiny blurs), we get to see Lex Luthor return and have his last scene with Clark before they become mortal enemies, I’ll admit that was a threat, Michael Rosenbaun was always a good actor, however the resolution given to his character is really lame even if it plays conveniently into what is necessary to make Superman and Lex work as enemies.

All in all, I think the show had a very good resolution for the casual viewer, but it was not strong enough for a comic fan, it’s nice to see such a good effort have a good resolution though, I hope that the legacy left by Smallville encourages another networks to do more TV series based on comic characters!

So I Just Watched… Thor (Paramount/Marvel, 2011)

One thing I proposed to myself when the studios started to release all these superhero movies was to try to avoid building expectations; I love so much the superhero genre, so to see a studio fuck up a character that I love would give me a massive case of migraine and a lot of dissapointment… and believe me I do NOT like being disappointed. I did the same with Thor and let me tell you guys… I was greatly surprised, this movie is a very solid interpretation of the character, told in a way that gives balance to what has made Thor a wonderful read over the years, we get to see a lot of Asgard, but also get to see Thor build up as a character that has to win his father’s favor by learning humility, a very big fuzz was made when Marvel handed this project to Kenneth Branagh, but he has done a fine job with this movie, it didn’t hurt that Marvel writer and recent chronicler of Thor’s adventures J. Michael Straczynski was involved in the project.

Regarding the casting I have no complaints, everyone wants to see A-list actors playing these characters, but sometime going with a talented unknow will pay off for the better, Chris Hemsworth as Thor really works, this guy made his homework to play this character, he’s cocky and arrogant at first and eventually he learns the hard way what it means to use the head and not let your impulses take the better of you, Anthony Hopkins is grand and royal as Odin, this guy must be in his mid 70’s and he’s still in shape, he’s a great actor who commands authority as the Allfather, Natalie Portman does a pretty solid job as Jane Foster, however, this is by far the best role she has landed; last but by no means least is Tom Hiddleston as Loki, who is this guy? where does he come from? that’s all I could think about this guy when I left the theater, he’s such a good actor, this guy was born to play this role, he’ll transmit you his every feeling through the story, you’ll feel his anger, his rage, his sense of betrayal, is really hard not to feel sympathetic for the guy, even though he’s the bad guy, is acting is that good; I really look forward to see him as the main villain in The Avengers film next year, Idris Elba as Heimdall was a great adittion I must say!.

All in all this a great film, is full with references to the Thor mythos that have been told over the years in the comics, The Destroyer is a particular good plot point, now fork over that petty cash and go to a cinema to see this, you will not regret it!

I gotta say, what a great TV show, I don’t see a lot of TV these days and I assure you, this is one of those times when a show achieves greatness by merits, Mad Men started with a cast virtually unknown (until this series hit of course), the acting is solid, it’s very well written, and of course it shows the acting chops of one of the most greatest talents I’ve seen in these last years: Jon Hamm as Don Draper

I usually don’t let an award list dictate what I see, but in this case all Emmy and Golden Globe nominations (and wins!) this series has achieved are well worth it, I’m anxious to see what happens in season 4! I highly recommend it!

The Flash (Live Action Series, Warner Brothers, 1990)

A Superhero TV series was an exercise of camp since their inception, don’t get me wrong!, that was the natural perception in the early 90’s, when superheroes wanted the respect they deserved as icons on Hollywood they better went straight to cinema as Batman and Superman had done in those days and no Marvel Character dared to cross that line since they didn’t have the all powerful Time-Warner backing them up (or Disney as they do now), but then that all changed, another DC hero would step up to the challenge and erase all the memories of campy series like The Batman of Adam West, The Flash made his debut on North America television on September 20 of 1990.

The pilot, a two hour long episode featured then unknown actor John Wesley Shipp as Barry Allen (DC’s second Flash) a police scientist who studied evidence to help police officers solve crimes (predating any CSI show!) in classic comic fashion Barry suffers a freak accident when lighting strikes a stand of chemicals in front of him, the incident accelerates his body speed and his metabolism, this Flash didn’t rely on speed force or at least it was never mentioned on the 22 episodes of the show, despite the shows success, idiotic executives at the WB decided to change the time slot constantly until the production costs were to high to renew for a new season.

The Flash was one of the first serious attempts to create an actual good and solid live action show based on a comic book, it featured some of the best acting of the time and stellar guest stars (Mark Hamill guest-started two times as The Trickster), the show had an atemporal feel, showing both the technology of present and old times so it couldn’t be directly related to modern times or past ones, it featured some really neat CGI, a killer wardrobe for the hero and a splendid score created by Danny Elfman, you can get the whole show for a bargain at Amazon.com or wherever they sell movies. 

Sources: IMDB, Wiki