Reel Film Chronicles – Page 14

Daredevil

February 14, 2003: what better day to release a superhero film about a blind, masked vigilante upon the masses, and indeed, what better day for myself and two friends to line up an hour before the box office opens to secure our tickets? I swear, I didn’t have to blackmail them or anything, they just played along! While I’m sure there was some coercion involved, the fact of that matter is that there would be no pity party involved on this Valentine’s Day, and all that would remain is unabashed excitement for the latest Marvel superhero film. Well, from myself at least, probably not so much the other guys. Following hot on the heels of Spider-Man in 2002 and X-Men the year before, it’s easy to see how anyone with a familiarity with these characters would be excited for any of the Marvel films at this time: around the corner we were getting X2 and Hulk, all in one year! Unfortunately, that excitement was quickly dashed, as the three of us walked out of the theatre quietly, at which point a wall of…

Iron Man

What better way to start a new series of posts about Marvel movies than the film that launched an entire cinematic universe and arguably changed the landscape of the modern blockbuster. That film is 2008’s Iron Man, starring a pretty stellar cast led by Robert Downey Jr, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrance Howard all directed by Jon Favreau in one of the best superhero origin films we’ve ever seen. While you can credit the film for launching the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the film doesn’t focus on that future groundwork and is stronger for it. I can’t imagine that idea being anything but a dream at that point with just a tiny sprinkling of this universe building present in the movie (and of course the juicy post-credits scene). Instead, the film excels because it’s so tightly focused on giving us a grounded origin of an iconic, interesting character and utilizing the talented crew and actors to provide a film with broad appeal that executes blending together an incredible concoction of action, humour and drama. It’s impossible to revisit Iron Man twelve years…

Starship Troopers

Starship Troopers seems to be a somewhat divisive film, equally hated and loved with people falling onto one side or the other on their acceptance that the film is satirical in nature, and yes, it’s supposed to be a bit cheesy. I went to see this film with a group of friends in high school and fell in love immediately. The over-the-top and fascist imagery was not lost on me at the time, but I certainly appreciated the b-movie aspects of the film on a literal level as I watched the mobile infantry battle larger than life bugs in true sci-fi fashion. Backed with a large budget and competent directing from Paul Verhoeven, Starship Troopers wowed me with its depictions of a supposed perfect society that features gender equality but is also knee deep in military rule. Seven years after Starship Troopers hit the theatres, it received two live-action, direct to home video sequel. Hero of the Federation was directed by Phil Tippett (famous for his groundbreaking special effects in film) and Marauder was directed by Ed Neumeier (who wrote the all the movies to date).…

Predestination

If you’re a fan of time travel in film, there are certain movies that are required viewing; Predestination is one of those movies. Watching Predestination for the first time a couple years back, it was the cinematic equivalent of love at first sight. As a testament to how much I love this film, this will be one of the rare articles I write that is completely spoiler free, because this is one of those movies that I hope people are able to experience as clean as possible the first time. It’s not that I think that spoilers “ruin” movies per se, but some movies definitely benefit more from going in with fresh eyes, and Predestination definitely falls into this category. I knew that this was going to be one of those go-to movies when I was in the mood for a film about time travel. Based on a short story from 1959 called “All You Zombies” by Robert A. Heinlein, Predestination is a perfectly constructed, tightly-paced movie that has one of the best implementations of time travel that has ever been put to film. Time travel is a hard thing to get…

Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 has never really stood up as a particularly great film for me, so I approach revisiting the sequel with some trepidation, but also a glimmer of hope that I missed something in the theatrical run, or maybe going in with the knowledge of the entire Infinity Saga would somehow unlock some clever quality of the movie that I had missed before. That’s not the case here, unfortunately. Tony Stark’s second standalone film is somehow worse when I revisit it this time – and I’m guessing this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen the film. Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash certainly has some potential to be an interesting villain, but is absolutely squandered: after his flashy introduction, he’s relegated to spending the entire film hidden in a lab, squabbling with Justin Hammer (played by Sam Rockwell) and doesn’t even make his appearance known to the hero of the film until the very final moments. Hammer is an interesting adversary for Tony Stark, but not necessarily Iron Man, and I do wish that they would utilize the character more so. Rockwell…

Resident Evil

I was roughly fifteen years old when the first Resident Evil game appeared on the Playstation and feeding off the hype of a heavy diet of gaming magazines, I was quick to run out and rent the title to see what the fuss was all about. This wasn’t my introduction to survival horror – that had come in Alone in the Dark on the PC – but it was a giant leap forward and ultimately, not a game that I could really get into. I ignored the first three games but absolutely fell in love with the fourth title, which served as a retooling of the series with the advent of an entirely new gameplay structure and embracing more of the shooter aspect of survival horror. With that being said, I can’t pretend to know anything about the series, including any of the characters or the lore of the world that’s been built up for so long. I approach these films as a bit of an outsider, but my gamer roots and knowledge are not entirely forgotten. Resident Evil has…

Battle Royale

Battle Royale is perhaps the best film about teenagers killing each other for sport ever made. Granted, that’s a pretty small pool of movies. Or at least, I hope it is. Normally, I would do a Google search for this kind of thing, but with my browser history the way it is, searching for “movies about children killing each other” might just be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back and earns me an impromptu visit from the FBI in the middle of the night. Originally released in 2000, it would take another twelve years for Battle Royale to be released in North America, likely owing more to discussions over film rights than the more romantic notion of the film being banned because it was so provocative and powerful. Battle Royale is both provocative and powerful, but it definitely did not unite world governments to spend any amount of time and effort to actively ban its distribution en masse. This decision is much to their own detriment, however, as Battle Royale is also a truly subversive film, calling into question the shifting nature of the relationship societies have with…

Man of Steel

Sometimes, things in life have a way of working out, but not without a little dedication and investment. Nearly a decade ago, I began tracking every movie I watched, and although I was reluctant to give the films a proper rating, I did so anyway. Just before DC released Man of Steel, I created an account on IMDb (then shortly afterward on Letterboxd) and started tracking these films, giving them a basic rating – which is, and maybe always has been, a gut-reaction number I assign the film twenty-four hours after seeing it – and went on my merry way. Seeing my watch history of Man of Steel makes me curious if it was one of the first films that spurred me to record the films I watch and realize my long-thought-of goal to analyze any particular movie to see if it gets better, or worse, with time. This was a project that I had played around with before, but I was able to fully realize it with the tracking capabilities of Letterboxd. Indeed, I can click on Man of Steel and see that it’s been logged (i.e.,…

The Wizard

Being eight years old upon initial release in 1989, The Wizard would meld together a love of video games and movies to prove itself as a tent pole film of my youth. While you could dismiss the film as a generic, maybe slightly messy, road-trip family drama whose purpose was to exist as an advertising vehicle for both Nintendo’s games and hardware and Universal Studio’s theme park, it was certainly lost on us as children, and more importantly, it didn’t matter. We’re talking about an age where video games were often regarded as a waste of time for children and any degree of validation in the form of popular culture was going to be embraced and met with a high level of excitement. What an amazing experience it would have been to see your favourite games showing up on the big screen, being played by actors you recognize, only to have the climax of the film reveal what would become the biggest game of the era (Super Mario Bros. 3). Yet, I don’t recall seeing this in theatres in ‘89 but I…

Outbreak

{field 2} | dir: {field 3} | {field 4}m In light of the ongoing global pandemic, the likes of which the (post)modern world has never seen, I, like many other viewers, have also begun to watch movies and TV shows with similar subject matter. There are a couple of titles that tend to top most lists of pandemic-relevant films, and since I’d just happened to watch Contagion a short while before all of this craziness started in earnest, I found myself stuck with sitting down to watch Outbreak, a staple of schlocky ’90s blockbusters. Despite living through those turbulent times and thriving on a steady diet of cinema from that decade, I had somehow never actually watched this sucker before. It did, of course, garner a certain reputation, and I had often seen compared with Contagion, and not favourably. Unfortunately, that reputation and those comparisons turned out to be true. Outbreak is bloated and unrefined in all of the ways that Contagion is focused and polished. If Contagion is the valedictorian turned brain surgeon of the family, then Outbreak is the sibling still sleeping on their parents’ couch waiting for his career as a YouTube star…