Reviews by JxSxPx

Much like Iron Man, which was the first half of the Marvel Action Hour, this animated version of the Fantastic Four was plagued with many of the same problems. The cheap animation lacked fluidity, with characters often looking too bulky or moving awkwardly. Continuity in the animation is a large hurdle to deal with. The less said about the awful writing and vocal work the better.

The first season is actually just redone, slightly modernized (for the 90s anyway), remakes of episodes from their 1960s series. Is the sight of the Human Torch rapping in an episode supposed to be a way to endear the character to a younger demographic, or is it some kind of campy affectation for the Gen X set? It’s very difficult to say. Is this first season supposed to truly be this terrible, or is their a layer of knowing artifice and camp going on? Since everything is played so straight and with gee-whiz kid-gloves, I think that the producers thought that a wholesome approach to the Fantastic Four would be a great approach. And there’s nothing wrong with the idea of that approach, the problem is the execution of it here.

Mercifully, much like Iron Man, the second season didn’t just improve upon the first, it transcended it. It comes close to achieving a sense of overall good-but-not-great-ness, but certain problems from the first season are reoccurring. Dr. Doom’s bombastic and incompetent characterization is irksome. The most fearsome and delicious evil villain in the entire Marvel universe is downgraded to this lisping buffoon? For shame.

At least they dropped Brian Austin Green’s whiny performance as the Human Torch, cleaned up the animation and jettisoned that rejected 80s-style theme song into outer space.

The cameos galore in the second season harkens back to the glory days of Marvel comics in which character crossovers were episodic and not some giant company-wide game-changer. Black Panther, Thor, Hulk, Daredevil and Ghost Rider all pop up briefly, and feature some great guest-vocal work and a sense of fun.

But this show was always clearly aimed at a much younger audience than the other Marvel shows on at the time. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but the piss-poor animation and cheesy, barely recognizable adaptations of the central characters hinders any kind of momentum it would have built.

As the first half of the Marvel Action Hour, Iron Man could be seen as the overall vision of things to come (both during the hour and in the subsequent seasons). The first season is mind-numbingly awful, appropriately devoid of any character development or investing you in any kind of intriguing plot or dynamic storytelling.

In fact, the first season is overloaded with supporting characters that don’t contribute much to the main thrust of the plot. The Hero Works-styled superhero team is both underdeveloped and over-used. Characters like Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch bare little-to-no resemblance to their comic book counterparts, despite looking exactly like them from the time period, and undercooked. Spider-Woman and War Machine fare a tiny bit better, but still don’t do much and never really developed beyond their introductory expositions.

And the first season is also overrune with villains who become a cacophony of outrageously outfitted megalomaniacs who are wildly incompetent. Sure M.O.D.O.K. and the Mandarin are given at least some semblance of a backstory and development, but characters like Grey Gargoyle and Crimson Dynamo drift in and out with little impact. This is to say nothing of the half-baked animation, cringe-inducing and improbable plot twists, hit-or-miss vocal work and distinct lack of direction or scope.

Luckily, the second season corrected many of these problems and provided an actual storyline for the season to wrap its episodes around. The animation greatly improved, many of the unnecessary secondary characters are removed, and we’re finally given some meat and reasons to care about the characters and their predicaments.

While it never really developed into a great or classic animated superhero show, it showed some promise. And it was nice to see a character like Iron Man get some attention after the big guns Spider-Man and X-Men hogged all the glory for years. He deserved better, but at least he wasn’t in Avengers: United They Stand.

The Incredible Hulk is like the Marvel Action Hour played inverse. After a wonderfully rich, dark and complicated first season the show quickly pandered to a more juvenile audience and forced She-Hulk into every episode in an effort to bring in young female viewers. That it was not cancelled after the first season proved that superhero cartoons could transcend juvenilia and go for something far richer in tone.

Sure, Batman: The Animated Series was proof positive that a darker, more adult slant to super heroics could turn out magic, but we’re talking about Marvel here. As much as I love them, and I do, they tend to aim at the hearts and minds of twelve-year-old boys.

This is why it was so nice to see Bruce Banner actively engage with Betty Ross in numerous episodes, and to see Betty Ross be something other than the damsel-in-distress forcibly shoved off to the sidelines and trotted out as proof of Banner’s heterosexuality. Superheroes have a way of coming off as eunuchs in brightly colored spandex in several cartoons and films.

The intro to The Incredible Hulk was dark and disturbing enough to let you know that we’re dealing with a show that aims to explore its characters scarred and eternally broken psyche. Once we get into the second season we deal with episodes involving She-Hulk wearing a bikini and fighting bad guys at an amateur model fundraiser. It makes as much sense as that sentence did. If only the tone and artistic sensibility had been fostered for the subsequent season maybe it would have lasted longer. Another case of studio interference killing a show before it had the full chance to flower.

Less an actual hand-drawn animated series and more of a really high quality motion-comic, Black Panther still offers up something unique and engaging for a viewer with little-to-no experience with the character or the Marvel universe.

Chief among its virtues is a storyline that propels itself forward at a breakneck speed which still manages to fully develop our hero and invest us in his mythology. We see glimpses of his troubled youth, his wanderlust days in his late-teens, his ascension to the throne and his fight to keep his country from imploding from wars rooted both from without and within. It’s a lot of ground to cover in the short twenty minute episodes, but they typically strike a perfect balance between character development and action sequences.

But there’s more than one problem which becomes glaring obvious as the series progresses. Did the main writers themselves not fact-check a few things before putting them into the script? One of the most obvious of examples is Storm using Cerebro. Since when does she possess telepathic powers? Or the way that Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Cyclops all seem to be drooling horny teenagers over her. The problems with the writing extend out into areas beyond fanboy pickiness. The President and many of the white characters come across as buffoonish and hopelessly idiotic. Why? What is the point of that? Occasional attempts at humor are strained and forced.

And the animation, while incredibly fluid and dynamic for a motion comic, distinctly lacks the full rage and emotion of traditional cell-animation. Many times the movements are stiff and jerky, giving the impression of paper dolls being forced to bend and emote.

Problems with the animation can be looked over once you pay attention to the top-notch vocal work being done by a gifted group of actors. Djimon Honsou as the titular character is a brilliant piece of casting, even if it’s only his voice. And Jill Scott delivers a serene, regal, Earth Mother Storm. Finally a medium got her characterization down correctly.

Black Panther is not the greatest of the Marvel animated projects, but it strives for a more adult-orientated tone and generally succeeds with aplomb despite numerous faults. If nothing else, it proves that a black superhero can have a successful translation from the page to the screen. Now, here’s hoping we can get a live action Black Panther movie soon, or that he’ll be put in the eventual Avengers sequel.

There was a time when talking meant more to the movies than gargantuan special effects and oppressive sound design, the awkward fantasias that occur in a twelve-year-old boy’s head and what hasn’t been sequelized into a bloated and diminished franchise. That doesn’t mean that every play or novel got a great translation to the big screen, but they usually turned out a little bit better than the creaky, outdated The Country Girl.

Perhaps the biggest impediment I had in this film were the two central performances. Grace Kelly, so wonderful in light comedy or in the three Hitchcock films she made, is a wooden bore. Movies like High Noon and this prove that drama wasn’t her strongest acting skill. She must have won that Oscar because she forgoes glamorous makeup, plays a character that allows herself to be viewed as unlikeable throughout much of the film, and indulges the long-suffering housewife trope to Bing Crosby’s alcoholic entertainer. I said it in my review of [Link removed - login to see], and I’ll say it here again: Judy Garland’s career-defining performance was so much more deserving than this pedestrian dramatic work (and the films contained more than a few similarities in story beats). Not that Bing Crosby fares much better turning in a sleepy performance that’s more overacted than grounded in true alcoholic desperation and hellish neediness and self-destruction. Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend was a more fully realized performance of an alcoholic-artist. The interior angst and deceit of these two characters is never truly explored. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? delivers a far more realistic and better performed portrait of alcoholic martial co-dependence and destruction.

Once it seems like the entire film is going to be about the backstage melodrama between a co-dependent married couple who live in a hell of their own making, Kelly and William Holden, as the acid-tongued playwright who has hired Crosby to star in his Oklahoma!-like musical, share a passionate kiss. Then the film quickly descends into a dull love-triangle and a third act that revels in tossing skeletons out of closets. The whole thing is bloated with stagey and overtly mannered emotionality and little to no true knowledge over alcoholism, and addiction, as a disease.

The entire time while watching this movie I kept thinking of better movies, before its release and since, that explored aspects or the overall themes and tropes in more highly detailed and artistic ways, probing into their characters psychologies with more insight and offering up better performances. Skip The Country Girl and rent any of the movies that I’ve mentioned inside of this review instead.

It feels incredibly unfair that books more worthy of great film adaptations are left squander in lackluster Oscar bait, while a trashy, sudsy novel gets the A-list screen treatment. The Bridges of Madison County didn’t deserve such a good movie, but it got one. With the unlikely choice of Clint Eastwood as producer, director and star, The Bridges of Madison County manages to steer clear of overtly sentimentalized schmaltz and becomes one of the best women’s pictures/weepies since the days of Bette Davis. But no matter how hard Eastwood and Meryl Streep (as an Italian housewife married to an American), even their magnetic screen charisma, talent and erotic charge can’t save the implausibility and silliness of the general thrust the storyline takes. But the emotional starkness and ability for the actors to turn literary sap into an elegiac love story is something truly wondrous to behold.

Dolly Parton is one of those living icons who's reached such a level of success and been there for so long that it almost doesn't matter what she does, or even if what she does is of any quality. People will buy it, like it, and she'll continue to be applauded and worshiped. With 1999's The Grass Is Blue Dolly dared to abandon the pure-pop and country-pop success that she had courted and won throughout the 80s and early 90s. And it was a rousing success both artistically and commercially. But, The Grass Is Blue was just the first punch in a one-two-three knockout trio of bluegrass albums she cut in the early 2000s. And my favorite in the trio is Little Sparrow, which as the somber and reflective cover suggests is the more serious and emotionally fragile of the three.

Little Sparrow reminded me of the first time that I heard Coat of Many Colors. I had always known of Dolly Parton, but I grew up post-"9 to 5", Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias. So when I thought of Dolly Parton, I thought of the hilarious little spit-fire who was famous for being tacky, having big boobs and giant blonde hair, and was an all around entertainer. I always liked her, but I had little to no idea just how immensely talented she was. It took me a while to realize that the Vegas-showgirl-by-way-of-Appalachia was the same woman who wrote "Jolene," "I Will Always Love You," "Coat of Many Colors" and so many other wonderful songs.

When I first heard Coat of Many Colors I was blown away by how much of a genius she was in her way of crafting a song. It wasn't just that she was a talented songwriter, which she is, or a remarkable vocalist, which she also is, but it was the amount of instruments that she could play, the fact that she was so instrumental in crafting every piece from the ground-up. It was how she could explore so many different facets of her imagination, personal life and memories to create songs that really touched you.

Little Sparrow is almost as perfect as Coat of Many Colors. There's a haunted, sad aura around much of the record, and given that it's dedicated to her late father, that doesn't come as a surprise. What does come as a surprise is the way that she takes her song "My Blue Tears" from Coat of Many Colors and transforms it from a 70s Nashville country song into a mountain-folk bluegrass hymnal. Or the way that she takes "Little Sparrow," a folk song from the Appalachian mountains, and delivers it with a combination of vocal strength and quavering emotion. And "Down From Dover" sees a Gaelic group called Altan help her turn her own song into a song that sounds like it's always been a mournful Irish ditty ("My Blues Tears" and "Dover" are the two songs that she has rerecorded for this album).

But, since this is Dolly Parton we're talking about and one of her greatest strengths is in her ability to always try and stay positive and hopeful, there are moments of pure levity. The Grass Is Blue laid the groundwork for the trio of albums - a combination of originals, hymnals and folk-songs, with a dash of pop songs reinterpreted as bluegrass numbers. Grass had Billy Joel's "Travelin' Prayer," but Little Sparrow sees Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You" get the banjo-and-fiddle treatment. But most shockingly, and effectively, is hearing Collective Soul's "Shine" being turned into a bluegrass-gospel hybrid complete with a banjo line and one of Parton's finest vocal performances in quite some time. Truth be told, Sparrow could have used a few more moments of levity and the pure joy that Parton does so well.

It's always wonderful to see a legend continue to produce something of high quality when they're encroaching into nearly half a century of fame, and it's also incredibly rare. So what song to pick from Little Sparrow to recommend for your listening enjoyment? When an album feels like one solid, complete piece it's always hard to pick one standout moment. But I'll give it my best shot. DOWNLOAD: "Little Sparrow"

After the studio set a release date for the third film in the franchise, X-Men: The Last Stand, without any director or screenwriter in place, they finally hired Matthew Vaughn who wisely got the hell out of dodge. When the screenplay details were finally revealed, X-Men: The Last Stand reeked of studio interference, and after the film premiered the stories came confirming that, yes indeed, the studio demanded certain characters, storylines, deaths be included. And by the time X-Men Origins: Wolverine came about it, with its director who came from an arthouse background and had never made a big budget film before, the very trailer left the bitter aftertaste of studio tinkering, reshoots, cuts and forced in storylines and characters. So, you’ll forgive me if I went into X-Men First Class with the greatest amounts of dread and misgivings. X-Men: First Class mercifully atones for the studio’s two previous missteps in the X-Men franchise. It’s better than Thor, but still fails to reach the heights of X2: X-Men United or Iron Man.

Continuity has always been a major problem with the film translations of the X-Men. We had three different Kitty Prydes, two different Jubilees, two Pyros, and those are just the casting continuity errors. In X-Men we were clearly told that Cyclops, Jean Grey and Storm were among the first students under Xaiver, and that Magneto helped Xaiver build Cerebro. So when I heard that Cyclops, Jean Grey and Storm weren’t going to be in this film, I might have face-palmed. Instead we’re given a team of B and C-list characters. For the most part, this actually works in the films favor. Havok, Banshee and Darwin have translated beautifully, even if Havok and Banshee barely resemble their comic book counterparts. Mystique’s revision to essentially be the movie-verse’s variation on Juggernaut is only mildly successful. Chalk that one up to Jennifer Lawrence’s only so-so performance. Whereas Rebecca Romijn left an inedible impression with a few words and a weighty presence, a combination of modelesque fighter and venomous reptile, Lawrence is mopey more than anything else. The choice of Angel, better known as Tempest in the comics, in the film is a giant “What the fuck?” And Zoe Kravitz does little but pout and dance around in the role. Angel II was a dumb character in the comics, and she never translates. Sure, it’s great to show a character who proves that not all mutations are as cool as telepathy, weather control, or energy beams from your eyes, but there’s better characters to choose from if that was the intention.

To my surprise since he’s so hilariously miscast, Nicolas Hoult’s performance as a young Beast is a true highlight. The character is perfectly written, and Hoult’s great performance only adds to the tragedy when his experiment turns him into a giant blue fuzzy fighting machine. The makeup choice of the more feline-looking Beast turns out to be much better than the Kelsey Grammar version of the character. I miss the big blue monkey look, but this version translated beautifully. And once he finally becomes blue and furry, Hoult’s pretty-boy good looks don’t distract from the fact that Beast has always been a short, stocky, brick wall of a person, even before he changed into a furry, blue monkey.

But the X-Men cannot ban together and learn to comingle in a vacuum. They need a villain, or a group of villains, to fight against. And we’re given a very loose interpretation of the Hellfire Club. Still led by Sebastian Shaw, played by Kevin Bacon as an old school Bond villain whose a combination of pure malice and camp, with a second-in-command Emma Frost, written correctively but January Jones turns in easily the worst performance in the film, they plot to start the war that played in the original trilogy by making the Cuban Missile Crisis happen. Azazel and Riptide being shoe-horned in originally gave me some gripes since they’re either fairly new additions or just plain stupid characters. Azazel turned out pretty cool after being given a spooky and intimidating scene in which he single handedly takes out a group of CIA officials. Riptide doesn’t do much, and could have easily been written as any other character and we all would have been better off.

But the true heart of the film, and the thing that elevates it from mediocre sub-Connery-era Bond-wannabe to revisionist comic book entertainment, is the central relationship between Xaiver and Magneto as played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. Without these two in the lead roles, X-Men: First Class would not have worked let alone been as enthralling and engaging as it turned out to be. While the revisionist origin story of Magneto did slightly make my comic book nerd have an eye-twitch fit, it does eventually pay off and makes logical sense within the film. (It could have been more interesting and true to character if they had used Mr. Sinister as the main villain with his group of mutates, but here’s hoping he’ll pop up in a sequel.) In fact, the first half truly belongs to Fassbender and McAvoy as they lay out the decisions and workings of their characters that eventually led to the original trilogy.

Fassbender’s Magneto grows up to be a Nazi hunter, looking for one in particular who has haunted his nightmares and waking life. These early sections play out like he’s auditioning to take over the Bond franchise whenever Daniel Craig decides to retire the title. His performance oscillates wildly between a wild animal fighting for freedom and a raw exposed nerve. While McAvoy’s Xaiver is in swinging 60s London, going for his doctorate in human mutations, living with his adopted sister Mystique and hitting on anything in a skirt that crosses his eyeline. But there’s also a stillness and grounded presence about him. It isn’t hard to see how he will eventually become the fatherly Xaiver. And when they finally do start to form a friendship, it harkens back to the best moments from the comics. Often, literally, feeling like passages and scenes from the comics have been translated verbatim even if they actually haven’t.

X-Men: First Class is a very entertaining prequel in the franchise and finally sets it back on track, but poor character choices, fast-and-loose continuity shifts from the established films, a few bad performances and wasted opportunities keep it from being a truly great comic book film. But practically every major summer movie has been lackluster this year, and in a year that sees four comic book films fighting for prominence, just being good and entertaining isn’t going to cut it anymore. The Dark Knight proved that audiences wanted smartly written, fully developed comic movies and would eat them up. Not every movie has to be that dark, but it would be nice if more comic book movies were left in the hands of competent writers and directors and the studios took a more hands-off approach. So far, X-Men: First Class is the best of bunch. But let’s see what Captain America and Green Lantern have to offer.

Sometimes I think that most studios think comic book nerds just want really cool action sequences with only the most tenuous of connective tissue to tie it all together. As a comic book fan, I find that continually insulting. Hulk Vs both insulted me and gave me what I always want in these films. I don’t mind action sequences, but the best comic storylines known something that a lot of these films don’t: in order for one to be truly dazzled and care about what is going on, we must be given characters that we care about. It’s also helpful to know what’s going on in a frame at any given moment and to be able to distinctly make out who is where and doing what.

Hulk Vs offers up two short films of comparable length (about six minutes difference between them). In one Hulk throws down with Thor in Asgard, and in the other Wolverine and Hulk fight in the Canadian wilderness and throughout the Weapon X program. The Thor segment was the more entertaining and engaging of two since it offered up a coherent story, complicated character dynamics and more filmic animation. But I have learned that I am in the minority on preferring this one. Turns out that since things required you to pay attention to dialogue and be at least briefly familiar with either the comics or Norse mythology; people complained that there were too many characters with little to no explanation given as to who they were and how they related to each other.

Allow me to summarize this segment: Loki, Thor’s half-brother and main adversary, and the Enchantress, Thor’s love-hate villainess, conspire to bring Bruce Banner to Asgard during Odin’s period of rest. Every year Odin rests for a week, and during this week a great battle rages as Asgard’s various political enemies attack en masse. Thor, Odin’s son and the god of thunder, protects the realm. The Enchantress crafts a spell in which she separates the Hulk from Banner and allows for Loki to control the Hulk. During one of the battles, Thor manages to briefly defeat the Hulk and break the spell. So now we’ve got Banner and the Hulk separated, a loose Hulk tearing through Asgard, Loki forced to team-up with Thor to stop the Hulk, a trip through Hell so that the goddess of the dead can reunite the two fragments of Banner’s soul. See? Not that complicated. Sure, I’ve left out that the Warriors Three, Sif, and a few other characters pop-up, but you get the general idea. It’s an exploration of Banner’s psyche, and it feels more properly balanced as a whole.

The Wolverine segment starts off just fine, but then we’re forced to endure the umpteenth reinterpretation of his origin story, in a short film which is entitled Hulk vs. Wolverine, I don’t want to see Wolverine’s origin story unless it immediately correlates to the reason for their battling. This doesn’t. Sure, Weapon X turns out to be the main group of baddies, but Wolverine’s origin is unnecessary and proves that this segment distinctly lacks the proper connective tissue between battle scenes. Lady Deathstrike, Deadpool and Omega Red feature great character designs, but the fact that they can constantly regenerate their hacked-off limbs grows old after a few fight scenes. And this has got to be the worst looking Sabretooth I have ever seen in an animated property.

I appreciate how each short film takes its own look at Banner and the Hulk’s complicated psychological bond. In the Thor segment Hulk represents a pure, vengeful id. The wrath, venom, violence and anger that Banner so frequently represses in his day-to-day life come screaming out once they’ve been separated from each other. It’s Banner’s desire to remain calm that makes the Hulk disappear. When separated nothing can stop them but forcing them back together as a whole. And in Wolverine’s segment, the Hulk is a wild and angry toddler. He’s Banner’s demon-child run amok, and only gains more power and energy the more and more they harm him or try to fight.

The animation in both of them is very nice, but Thor’s is more lush. Wolverine’s, at times, looks too Saturday-morning-cartoon. And the vocal work is solid across the board, but special kudos should go to Fred Tatasciore as Hulk, Steve Blum as Wolverine, Graham McTavish as Loki, and Nolan North as Deadpool (who easily steals the entire show whenever he’s onscreen).

All in all, Hulk Vs isn’t a bad offering from the Marvel direct-to-DVD series, but it’s uneven nature plays to both the best and the worst of comic book adaptations.

It could be very easy to say that Don’t Bother to Knock was a piece of autobiography about Marilyn Monroe before anyone quite knew how doomed and tragic she really was. But that would be a retroactive and shoddy viewing of the film. Don’t Bother to Knock is a taunt psychological drama with a knockout central performance by Monroe.

The only true problem that the film has is the title which suggests an overheated 50s melodramatic thriller that might have starred Joan Crawford in her career resurgence post-Mildred Pierce. Sure, Richard Widmark’s character undergoes a fairly abrupt about face as a character, but at only 76 minutes long, there isn’t much room for character development outside of Monroe’s unstable Nell.

You see, Nell is fresh from a stay at a mental institution and has come to visit her uncle who works in a hotel. He says that he has a job for her, if she can handle it. At first Nell seems to be fine, maybe a little shaky and timid, but like she could easily handle a babysitting job for just one night. Most of the story revolves around Nell and her slow descent back into madness. But how does she slowly go crazy over the course of the night?

Richard Widmark is staying at the hotel, and he’s recently broken up with his girlfriend (Anne Bancroft in her screen debut). Bancroft works in the hotel as the lounge singer, and Widmark wants to get back together with her. But she finds him cold and distant. Rebuffed and looking for a good time, Widmark spots Monroe across the courtyard and tries to set up a one night stand with her.

In their face-to-face meeting Monroe slowly starts to mistake him for her long-dead fiancé. And slowly the giggly sex appeal of Monroe starts to be chipped away as she allows us to see the naked, vulnerable, damaged core. And by the end, when she is tear-stained and threatening to kill herself with a razor blade, Monroe proves what a great dramatic actress she could have been if given the chance. But Fox only saw her as a sexy cash cow to milk by churning out disposable movies that capitalized on her physicality. Let’s add Don’t Bother to Knock to the list of dramatic performances that showcased Monroe’s versatility. It’ll go right next to Bus Stop, The Misfits, Niagara, and [Link removed - login to see].

Smallness of the sets and the closeness of the camera help immeasurably in making Knock an enjoyable and effective psychological drama. By trapping us in hotel rooms and other tight spaces, we’re effectively trapped inside of the hothouse paranoia growing within Nell. Poor, sweet, breakable Nell.