19th Level

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is easily my favorite Spider-Man film, one of my top superhero films, and one of my top animated films.  It’s a rare film - one that takes a lot of chances and wins. My younger daughter, aged 13, is a superhero fan, though more in the DC camp, loved it. She chose to see it a second time over an Aquaman viewing.  So what about it is so awesome? I’m going to go into some spoiler territory here, though I’ll try to keep it mild for those who haven’t seen it (go see it).  I’ll start with the animation/style. Into the Spider-Verse feels like a comic book made into a film. It features text captions, comic books, multiple panels on the screen at once, etc. With multiple Spider-beings from different universes, it gives them all their own art styles - Spider-Man Noir, from an alternate 1930s, is in black and white. He literally cannot see color. And where he goes the wind follows. And it smells like rain. Peni Parker and her S...

I've waited a little while to post my thoughts on The Last Jedi  to give a reasonable delay for spoilers. This isn't a review per se as it pretty much assumes you've seen the film. Being a Star Wars geek I've seen it in the theatre three times. My 12-year old Jasmine came along for all those viewings. I think she might be a bit of a geek too (with additional family members at some of those viewings). Overall I liked it a lot - and surprisingly, I found my opinion going up with repeat viewing. My initial thoughts were I found the storyline with the Resistance Fleet being pursued to be a little bit weak and taking too short an amount of time to sync with Rey's story. Repeat viewings made me appreciate it a lot more. The Last Jedi goes for more subtlety than most Star Wars films. The Resistance Fleet storyline nicely exhibited the importance of leadership. If Poe, Rose, and Finn had done nothing, there would have been far fewer casualties. In most stories the h...

I was discussing grittier spy movies with a member of my gaming group and this film was recommended to me. It's one of those movies that I have a vague recollection of - it might be from hearing the basics of the events this film is based on or it might be from catching it on television. Released in 1985 it is based on events that happened in the 1970s (which is when it takes place). Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn play Christopher Boyce and Daulton Lee, young adults who have a friendship going back to childhood back when they were altar boys together. Boyce has just dropped out of the seminary and his father gets him a job at RTX, a government contractor. Despite having only a high school diploma, Boyce is very bright and does well at the company - and having an ex-FBI guy as father helps. He eventually gets assigned to the "Black Vault" stores top secret documents and receives secret transmissions. Boyce becomes very disillusioned as CIA teletype transmissions are occ...

I liked it. I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting to. The reviews and word of mouth for the film adaption of Stephen King's The Dark Tower  were not just bad, they were awful. But King' Dark Tower series is one of my favorite reads of all time - I was going to see it for myself. I was feeling rather under the weather on Saturday, still getting over some nasty head congestion, but with such awful reviews I was a bit concerned the film would be in for a very brief engagement. My 12-year old, Jasmine, was very interested in seeing it. She's just about finished reading The Gunslinger . Of my two daughters, she's the geeky one, the one into comics, the one who has already read some Jack Williamson.  Much to my surprise, I really liked it. Idris Elba made for a great Roland and Matthew McConaughey was a villainous delight as Walter/The Man in Black. It was critical to get someone good for Jake Chambers and Tom Taylor did a fine job. These were not q...

Peter Parker is a high school sophomore in Queens. He's also Spider-Man and has just returned from a trip to Germany, recruited by Tony Stark/Iron Man to help in a superhero conflict against Captain America and his Avengers faction, as seen in Captain America: Civil War . [Note I'll try to steer clear of spoilers in this review but I'll of course have to say something  about the plot to do a review...] This dichotomy, between the big and the little, is at the heart of Homecoming . Peter wants to be an Avenger. However, Tony Stark keeps him at arm's length. One gets the sense that Tony is perhaps rethinking the wisdom of having brought a kid into the super-powered big leagues. While waiting in vain for "the call" Spider-Man is keeping his friendly neighborhood safe. He stops bicycle thieves and carjackers. But he soon discovers some ATM thieves packing some superscience hardware. In parallel to Spider-Man's street level tale we have that of Adrian ...

After a number of tries, I think the DC Universe films have finally managed to release a film firing on all cylinders. I think Man of Steel had a lot of good points but I think it was a missed opportunity, not showing just how good  Superman is. Batman v. Superman  was in my mind an improvement but I think it would have benefited from some tightening - the distrust of Superman seemed forced, the incident that caused the Congressional Inquiry was a bit confusing, and it really packed an awful lot into it. On the plus side, Ben Afleck made for a fantastic aged Batman and Gal Gadot's debut as Wonder Woman was a highlight. Suicide Squad  seemed primarily to suffer from not knowing what kind of movie it wanted to be, though my younger daughter Jasmine loved it - Harley Quinn is her favorite comic book character. Jasmine and I saw Wonder Woman today and while Harley remains her favorite character, she definitely liked Wonder Woman better than Suicide Squad or any of the DC m...

This post is loaded with spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars story.  Having had some time to digest Rogue One I've discovered it ranks up there among the top tier of Star Wars films. I'd rank it up there with Empire Strikes Back and would say it simply a great movie. I have to confess my expectations weren't terribly high when I saw it - I thought it would be an enjoyable movie and I did take the whole family opening night (actually a 7 PM "midnight showing" the night before it opened). What is it that worked so well? First and foremost, it was a movie that told a story. It wasn't trying to build a cinematic universe or making certain it had hooks for sequels. I think, for example, that Amazing Spider-Man 2  was so focused on building a franchise it neglected its first priority in making a great movie. As a result, Rogue One was able to focus on delivering a great movie. It was able to be brave and let the characters sacrifice their lives for the Rebe...

I've a 14-year old daughter who has been lobbying me to write about Moana on my blog so Vicki, this is for you. My family saw Moana  on Christmas night and I was lobbied for a follow-up viewing on the afternoon of New Year's Day. While the image at the top of this post indicates it is from the creators of Zootopia and Frozen , much of the creative team worked on Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and The Princess and the Frog.  I can safely put it in the top tier of Disney animated films. Moana  tells the story of a girl, Moana, who lives on an island ruled by her father. She is heir to his role of chief. The island is a paradise, providing everything they need. Moana is a dreamer, being called to the sea. However, going out beyond the reefs around the island is considered dangerous and forbidden - and as a result her father, who is overall supportive of her and very loving, constantly discourages her urges to go out to sea. Her paternal grandmother, "the village c...

"I guess he's going to Queens - he's going to be the third scariest thing on that train." I'm not certain why but the reboot of Ghostbusters  is a bit of a target for people who like using terms like "feminist SJW". So I'll air my own prejudices - I'm probably what most people who hate "social justice warriors" would consider a "social justice warrior". With that out of the way, how was the film? I'll put it in the category of a lot of fun but not a masterpiece. It has some tough competition - the 1984 Ghostbusters is a comic masterpiece and it is difficult to conceive of a picture standing up to it. Overall, the original clearly remains superior but I don't feel the new film has anything to be ashamed of. The basic plot is similar to that of the original - straight-laced physic professor Erin Gilbert is up for tenure when a ghost book she cowrote years ago with her childhood friend, Abby Yates, gets p...

Katniss and Sansa's big adventure? I'm probably an interesting viewer for X-Men: Apocalypse. While I followed the X-Men and related titles throughout the 1980s, by the 1990s doing so became rather difficult, with a few gazillion interconnected X-books. I'd pretty much stopped trying to follow the X-books by the time Apocalypse became a major character. I'd witnessed him in the early issues of X-Factor but that was about it. With that background, my wife and I saw X-Men: Apocalypse this evening. Though I could certainly nitpick, in broad strokes we both enjoyed it. It takes place in 1963, twenty years after the events of X-Men: First Class and ten years after the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past. I must say the protagonists are aging extremely gracefully. The world has generally been aware of mutants for about a decade. Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters is in full operation, a school teaching mutants how to control their powers - but there is no X-M...

One of my issues with Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice   was it was so damn grim.  Captain America: Civil War  deals with a similar idea - superheroes finding themselves on opposing sides. I think Civil War handled it better - partly because these were characters we've come to know and partly because Civil War  was able to mix some light-hearted moments in among all the gloom. I'm not planning on any massive spoilers but I will be discussing the plot in general terms, so be warned if you plan on seeing it totally unspoiled. At its core, Civil War deals with the Avengers finding themselves on opposing sides. World governments have become concerned about the Avengers, what with cities getting devastated when they come to town. Tony Stark/Iron Man leads those Avengers who feel being regulated by the UN is a good thing while Steve Rogers/Captain America does not. It's an interesting to see the sides the two are on. Tony has always seemed to be more the rebel ...

"He has the power to wipe out the entire human race and if we believe there is even a one percent chance that he is our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty." - Bruce Wayne I'm going to do my best to avoid any big spoilers in this review though I'm sure a little will slip through. I've a tough time deciding how I felt about Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (henceforth referred to as BvS). I think the thing that keeps coming to mind is I don't think Zack Snyder really gets the appeal of Superman. In the comic books Superman is clearly a force for good. Despite his vast powers you get the feeling that most people trust him. Christopher Reeve's portrayal Superman in the 1970s and 1980s deserves a large amount of credit for that. He is a man of the people. Henry Cavill's Superman is not a man of the people. You sense he'd like to be but he is always a god above them. I keep coming back to the way that the Christopher Reeve ...

"Houston, be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely-eyed missile man." Last December I read Andy Weir's The Martian . My blogging frequency was pretty low back then, so alas, no review was ever written. Last Friday my group at work went on an outing to see film version of The Martian  at one of those funky luxury theaters with reclining seats and everything. Must talk with the wife about securing such a setup at home... Like any good geek, I love space. I knew everything there was to know about the Apollo missions, all but two of the moon landings happening before my birth, and the space shuttle, which I eagerly awaited the first flight of (and was disappointed by countless delays). I had my Space Shuttle Operator's Manual as well as the fictional Mars One Crew Manual . I've also devoured The Case For Mars . I'd like to point out I'm massively disappointed no human has walked on Mars. I'm 44 years old folks, I'd really like to live long enough...

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. Image from The Princess Bride Ltd . site. I didn't see The Princess Bride when it came out in theaters in 1987. Not many people did. Pulling up IMDB, the movies that I saw in 1987 when they did come out were Spaceballs , Can't Buy Me Love , A Nightmare On Elm Street 3 , Superman IV, and Teen Wolf Too . I turned 16 that year so I really shouldn't have been able to see Elm Street without an adult but this was the 80s where the way to get into an R movie as a teenager was to buy a ticket to that movie. I can safely say that The Princess Bride blows all of them away. I first saw it in the early 90s while at UConn. I don't remember if a friend had it or someone rented it but a bunch of us watched it in my dorm room on my VCR, attached to an extremely tiny TV. It's pretty much obligatory viewing for those in gaming, if for no other reason than to get all the references other players will be ma...

New York actor Roger Hill passed away about a week ago according to the New York Daily News . He was best known for playing Cyrus from the 1979 film "The Warriors". I first encountered "The Warriors"on television in the 1980s. It was a perfect movie for me. By this time I was settled in Connecticut but still had a healthy love for my native city of New York and still went back there quite often to visit and stay with family. I have prints of old maps of New York City in my house here in Massachusetts - one of Colonial-era New York and another of the 1970s New York City Subway map. What got my attention as I was channel surfing was the frequent scenes taking place in the subway.  "The Warriors" tells the tale of a gang (named the Warriors oddly enough) that travels from their home turf in Coney Island to a meeting of gangs in the Bronx. They have been assembled under a flag of truce by Cyrus, leader of the biggest gang in the city. Cyrus has ...

Yesterday, the day after Thanksgiving I took my youngest daughter, Jasmine, to see "Frozen" in the movie theater. This was actually her second viewing, also seeing it on Wednesday with her mom and older sister (poor dad was working from home). Obviously Jasmine was a fan. Immediately after seeing it with me she asked "Can I see it again?" So it's got the little one's endorsement. What about dad's? I liked it a lot. I'm a fan of well-done animation and this is one of Disney's greatest, ranking up there with "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast" - indeed I'd view it as superior as many of the Pixar efforts. The story is set in one of those fairy tale kingdoms in that nebulous pre-modern fairy tale period. It is a tale of two sisters, the eldest, Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell). They are princesses in the kingdom. They are very close but Elsa has a power - the ability to control tempera...