review | the m0vie blog

Geoff Johns’ Run on Green Lantern – Blackest Night, Blackest Night: Green Lantern, Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps & Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Darren

Wow. This is pretty much the climax of Geoff Johns’ five year run on Green Lantern, dating all the way back to Rebirth – where he reintroduced Hal Jordan, the original Silver Age version of the character. Since the very start of his run, he’s been dropping hints about the upcoming “war of light” and the prophecy first articulated in an Alan Moore short story decades ago – the prophecy of “blackest night”. Throughout his tenure on the title (and indeed his role shaping the DC Universe as a whole, as one of its guiding writers in the last decade), he has hinted again and again about big events looming on the horizon. Blackest Night is that event. And, in a way, it’s just as wild and crazy and huge as it should be.

Green Lantern reaches new heights...

Note: I am aware that the excellent Peter J. Tomasi wrote the Green Lantern Corps tie-in, but I thought it best to include it in the write-up here. I’ll actually be including my review of the tie-ins under the “Geoff Johns’ Run on Green Lantern” banner, even though he didn’t write all of them. If you’re looking for an opinion on Tomasi’s writing, it’s excellent and it’s highly recommended. Indeed, all four of these wonderful hardcovers are. Oops, did I just spoil my review?

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: barry allen, black hand, blackest night, blackest night: green lantern, blackest night: green lantern corps, comic book death, comic books, crossover, dark age, dc, dc comics, death, doug mahnke, event, geoff johns, green lantern, green lantern corps, guy gardener, hal jordan, hardcover, ivan reis, john stewart, nekron, patrick gleason, peter j. tomasi, rebirth, red lanterns, review, silver age, sinestro, tales of the corps, the flash, zombies | 9 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Green Mile

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Darren

I never really responded to The Shawshank Redemption. I’ll go into why exactly if I ever get around to writing a review of it, but perhaps the fact that I never really embraced the film as strongly as most film fans (or even just, y’know, people) is the reason that I am somewhat fonder of The Green Mile than most. The Green Mile is admittedly as guilty as Frank Darabont’s early Stephen King adaptation set in a prison when it comes to emotional manipulation of its audience (look at us humanise the prison guards by having the three of them tackle a mouse in a borderline comedic fashion!), but I find it a lot more honest about its inherent darkness than that tale of redemption in Shawshank.

No, it's not a halo, but it's pretty close...

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: barry pepper, david morse, doug hutchinson, film, frank darabont, green mile, james cromwell, michael clarke duncan, Movie, non-review review, review, sam rockwell, stephen king, the green mile, the shawshank redemption, tom hanks | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Futurama – Into the Wild Green Yonder

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Darren

Interesting. It seems that Futurama has somehow (presumably unconsciously) incorporated one of the central features from its key sources, the Star Trek franchise. It’s frequently asserted by fans of that series that the television show spawned a rather inconsistent movies series. Some, such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, could stand tall and be measured along the best movies that science-fiction could offer; while others, notable Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (in which Kirk kills God in a story pitched and directed by William Shatner), were actually terrible. The consensus emerged that the even numbered sequels were great and the odd numbered movies were terrible. This is just a run of thumb, and it’s possible it has been reversed (the tenth movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, was pretty disappointing; the eleventh, Star Trek, was a blast of fresh air) or even completely deconstructed. While none of the four Futurama movies are “terrible” or even “bad”, the distinction between the “okay” and the “great” seems to fall on similar lines. The first and third, Bender’s Big Score and Bender’s Game, weren’t great, while the second and fourth, The Beast With A Billion Backs and Into the Wild Green Yonder, perfectly capture all that was great about the show.

Here we go-go again...

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: films, finale, futurama, futurama: into the wild green yonder, into the wild green yonder, matt groening, Movies, non-review review, review, Television | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Futurama – Bender’s Game

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Darren

You could make the arguement that the first two Futurama movies – Bender’s Big Score and The Beast With A Billion Backs – cast their nets particularly widely in charting the universe the show had been cultivating for four years before it went off the air, perhaps drawing in more threads than it was fair to assume that an hour-and-a-half movie could handle. So Bender’s Game might seem a relief in that regard. It’s a relatively tightly-focused tale, involving a small subset of the show’s many, many characters. However, in doing so, it never really seems to justify why it’s a bigger and longer tale. Indeed, it could just as easily have been two shorter ones.

A Knight to Remember...

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: bender's game, dungeons & dragons, dungeons and dragons, film, futurama, futurama: bender's game, Movies, non-review review, review, Television | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Superman

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Darren

Tell me your heart doesn’t skip a beat when you hear the familiar brass of John Williams’ iconic score. Or that you can resist a smile as a small child introduces the movie by opening a comic book and reading aloud. Or that the opening shot of the crystal canyons of Krypton doesn’t make your spine tingle just a bit. Richard Donner’s Superman is perhaps correctly regarded as the father of the whole superhero genre, and deservedly so, but it’s also a stunningly well put together film in its own right. You could argue that this film predates the whole “superhero” genre in Hollywood, and – as such- more deserves classification as a “fantasy” film. And it can certainly stand with the very best of them.

Don't worry, he's trained for this sort of emergency...

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, batman begins, christopher reeves, film, films, gene hackman, John Williams, jor-el, lex luthor, marlon brando, Movie, non-review review, review, richard donner, Smallville, superheroes, superman, superman ii: the richard donner cut, Warner Brothers | 13 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Incredibles

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Darren

I think Pixar’s The Incredibles must stand as one of their best productions – alongside Finding Nemo, perhaps. It’s certainly one of their more conventional entries in the Pixar stable, in that it’s offered in the blockbuster format of the decade (superhero adventure), but – like the very best of their work – it’s so much more. A whole host of Pixar’s films – Toy Story and Finding Nemo chief among them – deal with the notion of paternal abandonment (though perhaps more fond of addressing the story of parents abandoned by kids, rather than kids abandoned by adults), but The Incredibles is perhaps the one which best deals with the challenges that managing a ‘functioning’ family.

That's one incredible family...

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: craig t. nelson, disney, films, holly hunter, incredibles, jason lee, Movies, non-review review, pixar, review, samuel l. jackson, superheroes, the incredibles, watchmen | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: A Serious Man

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Darren

I can’t help but feel like I’m missing something with A Serious Man. I mean, I get it, it’s all pointless and we’re meant to be as unable to make sense of it all as the dentist who finds words on his goy‘s teeth or Larry Gopnik himself, but there’s something ultimately uncomfortable about the film’s reflexiveness. After all, the story filters tales through tales through tales, with a rabbi sharing a pointless story with Larry as he waits there for the rabbi to instill it with meaning, but can’t. The movie’s central thesis is that – assuming he exists – God is a sadistic and horrible creature for the way he arranges the world without meaning and seemingly to punish a man “trying to be a serious man”. Of course, whether or not God exists is a question for each individual to come to themselves, but the film draws attention to its nature as a narrative rather than a documentary – first through a random introductory film and then through a-story-within-a-story – which makes it clear that while the real world may or may not have an omnipotent creator, Larry’s world does. And you can’t help but feel, at the end of it, that the Coens are really just dicks.

Is it wrong that I was a little board?

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: a serious man, ethan coen, films, joel coen, Movies, non-review review, review, the coen brothers | 11 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Memento

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Darren

I figured, what with Inception coming out and all, it was the perfect time in introduce my better half to the rather impressive (and amazingly consistent – indeed, only one of his films did not make my “top 50 films of the decade”) director Christopher Nolan. I discover that she had yet to see Memento, Nolan’s first major American release. We immediately decided to rectify the situation.

Picture perfect...

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: amnesia, carrie-anne moss, Christopher Nolan, classic, film, guy pierce, joe pantoliano, leonard shelby, memento, memory, modern noir, Movie, noir, non-review review, review, short term memory | 7 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Toy Story 3

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Darren

At this stage of my life, I’ve figured out that Pixar are like an old friend you see but once a year. You almost take them for granted until you meet up with them – and they’re filled with amazing stories of adventure, fun and whimsy. Somehow they always have the most exciting tales and wonderful way of spinning their yarns, but they’re also strangely intimate – perhaps it’s because you feel almost like you’ve grown up with them. And then they make you cry. Possibly like a little girl. Who am I to judge, my eyes are still red. And you leave knowing that you’ll see them again around about the same time next year, to share more wonderful fantasies and stories – but you can never hear the same story twice.