The Video Game/Movie Review Blog

As the first animated film based on the DC comics line that I am reviewing for this block, there was a lot riding on this movie to be good. Thankfully, this movie turned out to be a pretty interesting watch. The story is about Superman, voiced by Adam Baldwin, who has to protect the city of Metropolis from a psychotic alien supersoldier called Doomsday, uncovered accidentally in an illegal mining operation run by Lex Luthor, voiced by James Marsters. Unfortunately, although Superman succeeds in destroying Doomsday, he ends up dying from his wounds, to the sadness of the public, especially Lois Lane, voiced by Anne Heche. I really liked how they showed how the world completely falls apart without Superman, but things go off the rails when Superman seemingly returns out of nowhere. The animation style was pretty great, feeling like something out of the animated superhero TV shows from the 90s, which makes sense since Bruce Timm, someone who worked on those shows, was one of the directors...

I don't know what it is about superhero movies surprising me more than most other movies, but this is another instance where that happened. I felt this was much more of a solid superhero movie compared to its predecessor, and that the first movie should have been more like this. The story follows the Fantastic Four, played by Ioan Gruffudd, Michael Chiklis, Jessica Alba, and Chris Evans, as they deal with the threat of the mysterious Silver Surfer, voiced by Laurence Fishburne, and the rise of old villain Doctor Doom, played once again by Julian McMahon. Where the first movie felt like a slog in which nothing much happened, there was a lot happening in this movie that I really enjoyed. The action was a lot better and there were less useless scenes, where everything felt it was building toward something. I specifically liked the Human Torch's character arc where he learns to be a team player, and I also liked learning the backstory and motivations of the Silver Surfer, which alm...

This is definitely a complicated movie for me to talk about. Of the original Spider-Man films, it is the most divisive without a doubt. I do enjoy this movie a lot, and on this watchthrough, it was no different, but there is always bad to counteract the good and this...definitely has more bad than the other two films did. The story is kind of crazy, since there are multiple threads going on throughout the movie. There's Spider-Man, played by Tobey Maguire, being attacked by Harry Osborn, played by James Franco, in response to the death of his father, the Green Goblin. There's the admittedly still terribly written romance subplot between Peter and Mary Jane, played by Kirsten Dunst. There's the threat of the Sandman, played by Thomas Haden Church, and the fact he has personal connections to a traumatic incident in Peter's past. And then there's Venom, which, along with the aforementioned romance plot, felt shoehorned in and made this movie way too crowded. I'd ar...

This definitely was an interesting movie to revist, because I remember it being very cheesy and hammy. I have to say that on a rewatch...yeah, it was still cheesy and hammy but I had fun the whole time all the same. The story is about Johnny Blaze, played by Nicolas Cage, who makes a deal with the devil, played by Peter Fonda, that ends up leading to Blaze becoming the devil's personal bounty hunter, known as the Ghost Rider. When the fallen angel, Blackheart, played by Wes Bentley, comes to the mortal world to search for a powerful contract, the Ghost Rider is the one who must stop him and his posse of demons. The acting was honestly pretty out there, with Cage turning in an absolutely bonkers performance as Johnny Blaze, especially whenever he transforms into the Ghost Rider, where he looks like he's having the time of his life. In fact, I'd argue that even Wes Bentley was hamming it up the whole time, which was especially entertaining to watch at the climax of the film. ...

This was another surprising one for me, since I was not much of a fan of the Christopher Reeve Superman films, which meant well, but I felt were a too cartoony to where I couldn't care about the story of those films. This one, on the other hand, felt like a much more realistic take on the Reeve based Superman story and I was very invested in where it was going. The plot is about Superman, played by Brandon Routh, coming back to Earth after leaving it for five years to search for the remains of Krypton. When he returns, he reconnects with Lois Lane, played by Kate Bosworth, who is now engaged and has a young son, and he once again has to contend with the evil machinations of Lex Luthor, played by Kevin Spacey. This film was more about the character moments and how Christopher Reeve's Superman would translate to today's world, or, well, the world of 2006, I guess. The action scenes were amazing, full of spectacle and danger and I was on the edge of my seat, especially when Su...

First off, I want to say that I actually really like this movie, despite the fact a lot of people don't like it, but this movie is still far from perfect, but what it does right, it does very good. On the other hand, what it does wrong, those parts are probably the weakest parts of the whole movie. This was intended to be the end of the X-Men film series, because trilogies were kind of the big thing at the time. The story follows the Cure storyline, where they have supposedly found a cure for being a mutant and this brings conflict between Professor X's X-Men and Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants, and it leads to an all out war between them. Also, the Dark Phoenix storyline, where Jean Grey becomes evil, happens as well. It was thrown in to appease the fans but they forgot to make it fit the story so it's kind of inconsequential overall. I'd say the action of this film, especially the final battle at Alcatraz, and the progression of the Cure storyline, is pretty comp...

You know when a movie is so useless that it doesn't have a need to exist? Yeah, this is one of those movies. The whole time I was trying to figure out the point of the movie and...yeah there wasn't one. The story is about a team of astronauts consisting of Reed Richards, played by Ioan Gruffudd, Ben Grimm, played by Michael Chiklis, Susan Storm, played by Jessica Alba, Johnny Storm, played by Chris Evans, and Victor Von Doom, played by Julian McMahon, who end up getting affected by a spacial anomaly that gives them superpowers. While the first four of these become the superhero team known as the Fantastic Four, Victor Von Doom becomes a supervillain for...some reason. Yeah, most of this movie is just things happening for vague reasons. The acting wasn't anything to write home about either with everything about this film coming off as not all that impressive and overall kind of boring. The best part was the final battle between the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom, but even th...

I will fully admit that this has always been one of my favorite movies. The Christopher Nolan directed Batman films were, until recently, my favorite take on the Batman mythos and my favorite superhero films of all time, so I have a lot of good to say about it. The story follows Bruce Wayne, played by Christian Bale, as he goes from a vengeful and angry man to someone who desires true justice in the crime ridden city of Gotham. Along the way, he encounters the League of Shadows, who, under the tutelage of Henri Ducard, played by Liam Neeson, teaches Bruce many of the tricks to help make a difference and become the vigilante known as Batman. When he returns to Gotham, he must team up with sergeant James Gordon, played by Gary Oldman, and district attorney Rachel Dawes, played by Katie Holmes, to stop the Scarecrow, played by Cillian Murphy, from releasing a dangerous poison in the city that unlocks your deepest fears. This is a pretty solid story, and the acting is mostly good, with Bal...

Huh. This was a movie. I didn't hate this movie, but that hardly means it was good. The best thing I could say about this movie is it was wasted potential. The plot involves Elektra, played again by Jennifer Garner, who is somehow resurrected and is an assassin for hire, who ends up being hired to assassinate a father and his daughter for unknown reasons. Refusing to do so, she ends up learning that there is more to these two than it seems. Now that seems like a good plot. Here's the issue: The movie is an hour and a half long and it rushes way too much to where you don't really care about the plot too much. I'd say the action was good but a motivation behind it would make it even better. None of the acting was amazing, although I give props for not hating Elektra this time around, so there's that. I can't exactly recommend this movie because it does have lots of issues with characterization and pacing, but I didn't mind it. It just needed more time. The ing...

This...this was a movie. Someone out there thought that this should have been made. I just am amazed that this actually got the green light. What was the plot? Something about addictive skin cream or something and Halle Berry dies and comes back to life as Catwoman and stops Sharon Stone from distributing the evil skin cream. If you can't tell, this movie is really dumb. The acting is bad to where the only solid performance in the movie was Benjamin Bratt as the police officer Catwoman has a relationship with. The rest of the movie was pointless, and this is a Catwoman movie in name only. If you know literally anything about Catwoman, this movie has nothing to do with that character at all. Overall, this movie is bad. Don't watch it. Why DC thought to make a Catwoman movie but instead make an original character, Patience Phillips, Catwoman instead of the one we know and love, Selina Kyle, is beyond me. Halle Berry won a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actress for this movie and her ...

Watching this movie has always been a good experience for me, and I feel, after watching the Hulk movie previously, this film does a similar thing to that one, in that it dives into our lead character's psyche, but this one focuses more on the strains that being a superhero has on his everyday life. The story obviously has Spider-Man, played again by Tobey Maguire, trying to balance his life between being a superhero and being a civilian, and a lot of the movie actually focuses on that. But every superhero movie needs a supervillain, and we get an amazing one in the character of Doctor Octopus, played by Alfred Molina. There are also sequences about his relationships with Mary Jane Watson, played again by Kirsten Dunst, and Harry Osborn, played again by James Franco. I'd say that, in a change from the first movie, it's more about the human drama than the action sequences. That's not to say the action sequences are bad, in fact, they're quite good and have a lot of s...

I'm surprised at how my impressions of this movie went. I remember not liking this movie when I first saw it, and I wasn't expecting to see anything special when I watched it this time. Imagine my surprise when this film turned out to be actually very thought provoking yet action packed at the same time. The plot has a lot of threads in it, so I'll try to sum it up the best I can. It deals with Dr. Bruce Banner, played by Eric Bana, who, after being hit with gamma radiation, becomes the big green rage monster known as the Hulk, and his relationship with his insane father David, played by Nick Nolte, as well as his relationship with fellow scientist Betty Ross, played by Jennifer Connelly. I think the most surprising thing is how much it deals with the concept of repressed memories and childhood trauma, which brings a whole other layer to the story and made it a much darker tale than I remembered. The performances were great, with Bana playing Bruce as a tortured man haunted...

Of the first three X-Men films, this is the one considered to be the best of them, as I can definitely see why. It feels like the writers were more comfortable telling a story than they were with the first one, and the acting and fight sequences are on point. The plot focuses on the X-Men, led by Wolverine, played again by Hugh Jackman, who must team up with Magneto, played again by Ian McKellen, in an unlikely alliance to save Professor X, played by Patrick Stewart, from the xenophobic William Stryker, played brilliantly by Brian Cox. As far as the storyline goes, it felt a lot tighter and better put together than the first film, and there were some amazing action sequences, the standout being Wolverine vs. Lady Deathstrike, a mutant with similar powers to his. The acting was probably some of the best in the series up to this point, with Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, and Hugh Jackman all turning in great performances as usual, with more layers being added onto Magneto's character...

This was definitely an interesting movie for me to watch. Going in, I had heard that this movie wasn't very good, and I can see why people would say that. It felt like they were trying to balance the silly comic book style with gritty realistic action and it...well, it definitely turned out to be a movie. The story is about Matt Murdock, played by Ben Affleck, who, after being blinded and witnessing his father's murder at the hands of the Kingpin, played by Michael Clarke Duncan, he grows up to become the brutal vigilante Daredevil. Along the way, he also crosses paths with the mysterious Elektra, played by Jennifer Garner, who he eventually falls in love with. As far as the execution, things felt a little choppy at times, where things were just happening but there wasn't too much motivation behind a lot of the character moments, and it just moves from one scene to another. The action was actually fairly good, though, and grittier than anything that had come previously, whi...

So many people have called this film a classic of superhero cinema, and, looking back on it, there is definitely a lot to love while watching. The film is fun and action packed, although a little uneven at times. The story focuses on the origins of Spider-Man, also known as Peter Parker, played by Tobey Maguire, his relationship with Mary Jane Watson, played by Kirsten Dunst, and his battles against the evil Green Goblin, played by Willem Dafoe. The story was paced quite well, jumping into him getting bitten by the spider very early on, yet still giving a good amount of time to build his character before he officially becomes the Spider-Man we know and love. I would say that the first reveal of his full costume was a little messy because of weird editing, but that was one of the only times the story didn't run smoothly. The acting, on the other hand, was actually mostly whatever for me. The only performances I really enjoyed were Tobey Maguire's earnest, awkward and nerdy take ...

There was a time when superheroes were only meant to be in comic books, and the few movies that were made of them were good, but eventually fizzled out in 1997. In 2000, though, the genre was revived, and this movie played a big part in that revival. Even now, I'd say that this film still mostly holds up 22 years later. The story introduces us to the mutants Rogue, played by Anna Paquin, and Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, who end up getting involved with Professor X, played by Patrick Stewart, and his team of superpowered mutants, known as the X-Men, who are fighting a war for mutant rights against the extremist Magneto, played by Ian McKellen. It's a lot to unpack storywise, but I feel that it ends up making that concept easy to digest all the same. I particularly think the best performances in the film come from Patrick Stewart, who plays Professor X as a wise, yet kind and loving figure who just wants peace for both humans and mutants alike, Ian McKellen, who gives Magne...

I am very surprised. I went into this movie expecting to dislike it, and I ended up enjoying myself very much with it. Now, this movie isn't amazing, by any stretch, but I still liked it for what it was. The film's plot is pretty standard, with an ex-military man named John Henry Irons, played by Shaquille O'Neal, ends up becoming a superhero called Steel after weapons he designed in the army were given to criminals by a disgruntled fellow soldier, played by Judd Nelson, who was discharged after Irons revealed he had committed sabotage on a weapon and injured Sparks, another fellow soldier. Now, the acting was okay at best, and a lot of the characters were super over the top, especially Judd Nelson's character, who seemed to be there just to be an unlikable scumbag. Shaq honestly did alright as Steel, and the supporting cast around him was pretty good and I actually felt they played the characters fairly well. The characters weren't realistic by any means, but they ...

This movie...what is this movie? It certainly isn't the level of bad that Supergirl was, but...there was so much I just couldn't get right with it. There is a reason it's my least favorite Batman movie, and rewatching just confirmed it. The story follows Batman, played this time by George Clooney, and Robin, played once again by Chris O'Donnell, as they go up against Mr. Freeze, played for some reason by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Poison Ivy, played by Uma Thurman. The story is just a mess and a lot of things just felt lazy as a result to where I was just hoping the movie would end sooner. As for the characters themselves, Batman is a jerk, Robin is a whiner, Poison Ivy is a femme fatale except Catwoman from Batman Returns did it way better, and Mr. Freeze has an obsession with telling ice puns and watching The Year Without a Santa Claus for some reason. The best plot beat involves Alfred dying from an incurable disease and somehow Michael Gough's acting is the best ...

This movie always has been one of the odd ducks of the Batman movies for me. On one hand, it has some great dark sequences and serious character moments, but on the other, it's loud, campy, and over the top. So, it's definitely a unique film to look at. The film is about Batman, played now by Val Kilmer, and his battles to stop Two-Face, played by Tommy Lee Jones, and the Riddler, played by Jim Carrey, while also finding a new partner in Robin, played by Chris O'Donnell. There is definitely a lot going on here, but a lot of it is about the origins of the Riddler and his evil plans. As far as characters go, they were definitely a mixed bag. Val Kilmer gave a really good performance as a Bruce Wayne who is still trying to reconcile the murder of his parents, and his Batman is always played seriously, even in this bizarre world with zany villains. His backstory scenes were excellent and definitely the highlight of the movie for me. I also liked a lot of Jim Carrey's Riddle...