Working our way through the back archive of the Adult Siblings Versus...continues. This episode, we looked at the the 2002 Spider-Man film and discuss the singe greatest portrayal of a superhero character in film:
J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson.
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| "Get me pictures...PICTURES OF SUPERMAN!" ".....I mean 'Spider-Man'. Sorry everyone." |
More details after the jump.
As I continue to dump out the old episodes form the past quarter, today we look at the episode of Adult Siblings Versus...where we looked at the fourth most famous movie by 90s rap duo Kid ‘n Play; Cass Act, where in at no point does a house party occur.
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| Their movie career is like a dark, alternative universe path that Will Smith avoided |
More details after the jump.
Today marks fourteen years since my first bog post on Beta is Dead. As has been the custom, I will celebrate by sharing my To Ten Movie list of the past year, in this case 2023.
As usual, take in mind that this is my personal list of favorite
movies, not an objective “Top Films of the Year” list, since I didn’t watch
every single movie. This is just my personal opinion and, frankly, I’d be interested
to hear your favorite movies of the year in the comment section.
Some quick notes about some honorable mentions: I really enjoyed
The Marvels and Blue Beetle (especially Blue Beetle) but neither appears on the
list because there were just way too many better flicks this year. I still want
to make a special note that they were both good and should have done better at
the Box Office. Also, Barbie just barely got edged off of the list, and I
struggled with this quite a bit. I think it was great, and on any other year it
would have made it on here easily. However don’t be surprised if you see the
other half of Barbenheimer shortly.
Full Top Ten after the jump.
Happy New Year. I'm trying to catch up on past episodes of Adult Siblings Versus before it goes completely off-the-rails. For Christmas, we revisited Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and were pleasantly surprised how unique it was.
Just kidding; that shit was trash.
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| Do the exact same thing as before and you'll make all the money |
More details after the jump.
Unfortunately, I'm a little late with this one, but Adult Siblings Versus...recently dropped an episode on the classic anime Trigun, a show so imbedded in my own history as an anime fan that I never dared review it on this blog.
Until now!
Well, kind of. It snot really here, it's on the podcast. But you can listen to it here!
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| Classic cartoon or overrated nostalgia bait? You decide! |
More details after the jump.
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| Robin is having a bad time |
It's not hard to see why it’s a difficult assignment. It is taking content 1) from one medium and making it work in a different one, 2) trying to pitch it to Americans when the original was aimed for a Japanese audience, and 3) trying
to squeeze the correct amount of content into whatever limitations the new
medium has. Trying to fit tens of manga chapters into one film is hard enough, especially
when you have try trick Joe Schmo America into ponying up 14 bucks to watch it.
Netflix, the streaming giant who always seems to be one strong breeze away from
falling over in a pile up of massive debt and investor tears, has made several
attempts to buck the trend and so far they have not been received that warmly.
The most recent attempt, a live action TV adaptation of Cowboy Bebop, ended up
being very divisive among fans (as in, some fans thought it was fine but not at
all Cowboy Bebop and other fans thought it was an abomination against God).
So when Netflix announce they were creating a live action TV
adaptation of massively popular (but interestingly not particularly popular in
the United States) manga and anime One Piece, there was a lot of skepticism.
That manga creator Eiichiro Oda supposedly had some involvement didn’t really
make it easier to swallow. From my perspective, it was tough because on the one
hand I LOVE the One Piece comic and have been collecting it since 2003 (even
though I’m embarrassed to admit I only own 61 volumes out of the, as of this
writing, currently available 106 volumes). On the other hand, I actually don’t
like the anime, ever since I saw it shortly after reading the first
volume and deicide it was unable to capture the best qualities that made the
comic so good. So if I’m too much of a snob for the high successful One Piece anime how the hell
can I get into Netflix Presents One Piece, especially after the disappointment
of Netflix Presents Cowboy Bebop?
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| I meant to review this when it came out Short Version: Just go watch the anime instead |
Full review after the jump.
Adult Siblings Versus...is back with the final film of the controversial Star Wars prequal trilogy, Revenge of the Sith. It's the "good one" so long as you ignore of the parts of it that are genuinely awful.
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| What are the Sith getting revenge for? Unclear. |
More details after the jump.
In the latest episode of Adult Siblings Versus..., we continue our look at the Star Wars prequel trilogy with possibly the most divisive film of the franchise; Attack of the Clones. Yes, that is what they decided to name it.
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| Jedi shall not know love, or compelling dialogue |
New episode of Adults Siblings Versus....has dropped, and this time we look back at one of the most controversial films in all of nerdom; Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Are the prequal apologists right and this is an underrated classics, or is this a barely watchable pile of garbage?
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| Pretty cool poster Too bad about the rest of the film... |
More details after the jump.
Past Lives is the feature film debut of director Celine Song,
a playwright turned screenwriter who also happens to be a Korean Canadian immigrant.
Seeing as this movie is about a Korean Canadian immigrant coming to terms with
their past and the idea of “what if”, it’s probably fair to assume we’re seeing some autobiographical
storytelling here. This movie stars Greta Lee who, after years of being in the
supporting cast, is getting an overdue shot at a lead role.
Here we are seeing another example of East Asian filming
making an impact, as despite it essentially being a foreign language film it is
still an American made one rather than a movie imported from overseas. I really
feel that, ever since Crazy Rich Asians, producers/distributors/Hollywood have
been taking more chances with potentially similar projects. While focusing on a
different culture, my enjoyment of The Farewell is what spurred me to try to
movie out.
I’ve said this since the earliest days of this blog and it’s
still true: I am not always the correct audience for independent films and I
find it often to be a crapshoot over whether I leave the theater feeling
satisfied. This being the work of a first-time director, does this movie show
promise of a new career or should the director maybe stick with writing plays?
Full review after the jump.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the sequel to the
2018 surprise hit Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. When I say “surprise hit”
I don’t mean that it was a giant box office hit (it did quite well, though it
started slow) but that it was a game changing animated film. Since then both Hollywood
and Japan have been chasing the style dragon Spider-Verse made famous (Puss in
Boots: The Last Wish, being the most recent example that I can think of). I did
not review the first film, but I did name it #2 of my Favorite Films of 2018.
At the time I said I it was probably the best Spider-Man movie, but
with the benefit of hindsight I think you can make a strong argument for it being
the best superhero movie and the best animated film ever made (even though I
liked Black Panther more at the time).
The original film did well enough that a sequel was
announced soon afterwards. In fact, it was eventually announced it would have
two sequels, making it a trilogy. Unfortunately, it was another Hollywood victim
of the pandemic and delayed by quite a few years, no longer able to strike
while the iron was hot. Even so, with how much it had influenced the movie industry
since its debut, the hype train for the follow-up was still quite strong.
This film was again written by the hitmaker duo of Phil Lord
and Christopher Miller, who also produced the flick, along with Dave Callaham.
This time it was directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K.
Thompson.
Again, this is one of two greenlit sequel with the second,
Beyond the Sider-Verse, being produced alongside this one. The idea of a mostly
standalone film getting two sequels pushed ahead at the same time is reminiscent
of other film trilogies such as Star Wars, Back to the Future, and The Matrix. After five years of waiting, does the Spider-Verse
manage to live up to is predecessor, ala The Empire Strikes Back, or is it a giant
wet fart that should have stayed in the production truck, ala The Matrix
Reloaded?
Full review after the jump.
This movie has been a long time coming, as it should have
come out some time ago, striking while the iron from Avengers: Endgame was still
hot. The short version as to why it took so long stems from the public firing
and re-hiring of writer/director James Gunn. I plan on writing a blog about the
DC Comics movie woes and wins very soon and I imagine I’ll go into greater
details then, but to keep this blog as short as possible, Gunn was fired when tweets
from a decade prior resurfaced of him making many terrible, offensive, and tasteless jokes leading to a backlash from
some fans but apparently mostly far-right conservatives and Russian bots (this
all happened after months of Gunn publicly shaming then-president Donald Trump,
but I’m sure that’s a coincidence). Gunn was then nearly immediately hired by
Warner Bros. to direct The Suicide Squad. Around that time Disney, now dealing with
a much larger and less bot driven backlash from fans and actors about their knee
jerk decision, offered him his job back which he accepted but as he agreed to do
Suicide Squad that had to come first. This fiasco directly led to Gunn becoming
the one of heads of DC’s film studio, but we’ll talk on that more another day.
Add the COVID-19 shutdown into to equation and today’s movie is many years later
than it should have been.
[Also note that Gunn also directed a TV/streaming Holiday
Special starring the cast which acts as a brief prologue to this move but
luckily it’s not that crucial if you want to skip.]
With Gunn already waist deep in building out the next phase
of a competing studio, this movie is, and frankly always was going to be, the
final GotG film with him in charge and possibly at all, as several actors have mentioned
that they plan on this being their final performance. But with all the waiting for
this final chapter the question remains: is it any good, or were all the Zack Snyder
fans on Twitter correct when they said everything he does is “mid.”
Full review after the jump.
Honestly D&D likely requires its own article to explain
the full details and nutty history, but for the purposes of this review note
that it’s been popular since its inception in 1974 and over the decades has produced
a large amount of world expanding material from novels (lots of novels) to
video games to Saturday morning cartoons. By now there’s a lot of officially licensed
material tied to the D&D IP, so it seemed like a movie would inevitable.
And it already happened in the year 2000. And it bombed big
time. It still got a pair of straight-to-home media sequels that I’m not
certain how or if they’re related, but I know that they were also not all that
well received. Because of this most folks have not held up hopes for another go
with a film adaptation. However, the brand is now owned by Hasbro, the creators
of Transformers, and because they want all the money it was just a matter of
time before they made another attempt.
Which brings us to today’s review, Dungeons & Dragons:
Honor Among Thieves was directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.
The trailers had made this flick out to not only have a much lighter and
comedic tone than past efforts but also made a point of making very obvious references
to various aspects of the game (seeing an owlbear in the original trailer made
me drop the drink I was holding when I first saw it). Still, an awesome trailer
that promises good fun means absolutely nothing in this day and age (See: Suicide
Squad) so we are still left with the question of whether or not this reboot is
any good.
Full review after the jump.
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. Let’s see if I remember how it goes.
Because I’m not going to the movies as much as I used to (partly due to new fatherhood and partly due to the pandemic that is still happening goddamnit) I wasn’t able to see a ton of movies in 2022, and a lot of the ones on this list I ended up catching on streaming or renting them. It’s all very deflating. So, there were loads of good movies I didn’t get to see that probably would have made the list if I had. No point in getting all mad at me.
Also note that that this is not a “Best of 2022” list but rather a “My Favorites of 2022” list, meaning it’s just one dude giving his opinion. Feel free to share your favorite movies in the comments.
Quick note: while they did not make the list, I’d still like to make special mention of Downton Abbey: A New Era, as of writing the final installment of the British TV/movie series that my wife and started watching at the beginning of 2022, and Do Revenge, which was a fun but flawed dark teen comedy. I think Maya Hawke has the tools to be a pretty big deal in Hollywood.
Full Top Ten after the jump.
My therapist has been telling me that I should go back to writing my blog. So, let’s talk about Black Adam.
Back Adam is a comic book supervillain and sometimes antihero created in 1945 by Otto Binder and C. C. Beck for Fawcett Comics as an antagonist for Captain Marvel. When DC Comics acquired Captain Marvel in 1972 Black Adam came along as well, but it wasn’t until the early 21st Century that the character become a prominent player in the DC continuity, becoming both a reluctant hero associated with the Justice Society of America or a world spanning threat, depending on what the story needed. These days he is considered one of DC’s big villains on a similar level to the likes of Lex Luthor and the Joker.
Meanwhile in the real world, legend has it that Warner Bros. were able to get increasingly popular Dwayne Johnson to agree to star in a DC superhero movie. Apparently, they pitched Captain Marvel to him but Johnson instead requested Black Adam. It took many years before things came together for a movie to begin production properly and even then it ended up being heavily tied to the DC Expanded Universe line of movies, specifically to the 2019 film Shazam! Then it got delayed some more due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But finally, after years of it lingering in the depth of Warner Bros.’ backlots, Black Adam starring Dwayne Johnson has finally hit theaters. But after such a long gestation period, not to mention the enormous baggage from the so-called DC Expanded Universe, did this flick turn out to be any good?
Full review after the jump.
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| Also, the whole thing was a convoluted way to end the Spider-Marriage Comics books are ridiculous |
