7 Days in May | Love vs Fear and the Master of Kung Fu

In a Valley of Violence (2016)



I've been cautiously curious about this one. Both Ethan Hawke and John Travolta are actors that I like in certain roles, but I've also experienced annoyance at some of their roles, so I'm never sure how I'm going to react. And all I knew about director Ti West is that he's made a few horror movies that I had no interest in. By all accounts, In a Valley of Violence was a straight-up Western - not a horror movie in a Western setting - so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Fortunately, it's a pretty good movie. Hawke plays a drifter with secrets and a really cute dog. He's passing through the town of Denton when the local bully picks a fight and Hawke humiliates him. Unfortunately, the bully is also the son of the town marshall (Travolta), so things escalate. It's a familiar plot, but Hawke is good as the troubled soul who just wants to be left alone. And Travolta's character is surprisingly reasonable and not at all at the level of wickedness and corruption that I expected him to be. He's perfectly willing to let Hawke go, but is trapped by his loyalty to his less intelligent son.

Taissa Farmiga is also a highlight as a young woman in town who takes a liking to Hawke's character, but Karen Gillen is less impressive as her sister. I usually like Gillen, and her character had the potential for some complexity since she's in love with the bully, but Gillen plays her without any empathy, which means that she didn't create any for me either. She's pretty much perfect for her boyfriend though, since James Ransone plays the bully with no complexity as well.

Back on the positive side, Burn Gorman shows up as a priest who is fairly complicated. He's just not in the movie enough. So I like some of the characters and the action is pretty compelling. In a Valley of Violence isn't doing anything revolutionary, but it's a good, Saturday afternoon, B-Western.

Gojira (1954)



Some friends of ours know that David is a huge Godzilla fan, but don't know anything about the King of Monsters themselves. So they invited us over last weekend for lunch and an introduction. In hindsight, I don't know if Gojira is the best introduction for everyone, because there are some substantial barriers to entry, depending on how you feel about black-and-white and subtitles (we couldn't bring ourselves to show them the English version with Raymond Burr).

i don't know if it's accurate to say that our friends "enjoyed" it, but they at least had their curiosity satisfied and we spent some time at the end talking about the movie in its historical and cultural context. So the purpose of the viewing was achieved and honestly, I don't know that our friends didn't like it. Or if they didn't, why not. The word "interesting" was used, though, and I never take that as high praise.

I still love it though. There's some goofy stuff, but there's also some truly horrific and powerful imagery and I'm always touched by the film's discussion of science and how it's applied.

The Hollow Crown: Henry V (2013)



Since I rewatched Kenneth Branagh's Henry V a couple of weeks ago, I was ready to move on in the Hollow Crown series and see how it handles the play. Branagh is brilliant and jaw-droppingly inspirational in his version, so it would be foolish for Tom Hiddleston to try to top that. Wisely, he understates his performance, which robs power from key speeches, but makes Hal a more relatable character. It's the right way to go. Hiddleston's version is still inspirational; just in a different way.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)



We've been watching Firefly lately for an upcoming episode of Dragonfly Ripple. If I'm going to talk about something on a podcast, I'll save my thoughts for the show and not write about it here, but I bring up Firefly because seeing Alan Tudyk made me really want to watch Dodgeball again.

I always have fond memories of Dodgeball, mostly because it's ridiculous and has great cameos. And of course: Pirate Steve. But watching it again, I'm reminded of its many problems. Some of them are dated and unfunny jokes, but there's also structural stuff, like having Pirate Steve disappear from the climax for no good reason and then clumsily rejoin the movie for the very end. Or worse, the way that the heroes' victory is glossed over and explained in a way that makes it sound sure even though it's totally not.

Still, a lot of the jokes and visual gags are still hilarious and I like the overarching message about inclusion and not being ashamed of who you are.

Zorro (1957-61)



I finished Season 1 and it was pretty good, if not entirely satisfying. As I said last week, Zorro's victories had been getting smaller as the Eagle grew in power, but the hero upped his game for the finale and pulled out a decisive victory.

However... it's also apparent that Zorro's victory wouldn't have been so decisive if the Eagle hadn't grown impatient and tried to stage a final coup before he was ready. His allies knew it was a bad idea and withdrew, but he insisted on moving ahead alone, which was a bone-headed play and led to his downfall more than Zorro's skill.

Still, it's a strong run of almost 40 episodes, even if it doesn't perfectly stick the landing. I haven't mentioned him before, but one of the MVPs of the series is Don Diamond as a late addition to the cast. He's brought in as a foil for Henry Calvin's Sgt Garcia; someone for Garcia to boss around, but who doesn't follow orders so well. The two of them are hilarious together and bring a needed, lighter touch to the show just as it's starting to look rather grim.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-93)



When the show was originally on TV, I always preferred the older of the two Young Indys (Sean Patrick Flanery). Now I remember why. The younger Young Indy (Corey Carrier) had adventures, but they were generally about his learning how the world works: coming to understand things like art, love, and freedom. Flanery's adventures are about his coming to understand himself.

The first episode I watched this week is a transitional one that has him in Princeton. His mom died three years earlier, so it's just him and Dad. Indy's in high school and dating the daughter of writer/book packager Edward Stratemeyer (The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins, etc.). Trying to borrow an automobile for the prom leads him and his girlfriend on an adventure involving Thomas Edison and some spies, which also calls into question the tactics of people like Stratemeyer and Edison who benefit from the work of their nameless and unthanked employees.

The episode's not preachy about that, but it does open the discussion. So while there's still an educational element, it's more sophisticated than what's going on with the Corey Carrier stories. And since Flanery is better able to run and fight and propel his own adventures, the action is also ramped up.

That's also true of the second episode, which was originally the second half of the series premiere. The two-hour premiere was divided into two parts, one with the Carrier Indy and one with Flanery. Connecting the two parts was a story about a jackal sculpture that was stolen from a dig in Egypt. Since the parts are now separated by the way the DVDs are chronologically packaged, the Carrier half ends on a cliffhanger that isn't resolved until years later by Flanery. I like that and the Flanery half does a good job of reminding viewers of the earlier adventure so that the jackal doesn't just come out of nowhere.

What this episode is really about though is the complexity of war. On Spring Break, Indy visits relatives in the southeastern US and accidentally gets caught up in the Mexican Revolution. (There's some weird serendipity working here since I also recently watched 100 Rifles for Hellbent for Letterbox and that also deals with the Revolution, as does The Son, which I'll talk about in just a minute.) Indy joins Pancho Villa's army and is all on board at first (leading me to question how much he was really into Nancy Stratemeyer). He thinks that he's fighting for a good and important cause until he meets an old farmer who sees no difference between the various armies who all claim to be fighting for him, but all steal his chickens in order to do so.

Disillusioned, Indy joins another let-down rebel, a Belgian named Remy Baudouin, in deserting Villa's army to join the fight against Germany overseas. The US hasn't yet entered World War I, but Indy is convinced that there must be a cause worth fighting for and expects that he'll find it in Europe. That's a journey of self-discovery that I'm eager to see.

The Son (2017-present)



A Western TV show starring Pierce Brosnan sounded too good to be true and it turns out that it was. Brosnan plays the patriarch of a cattle family near the Texas-Mexico border. The ranch isn't doing so well, so Brosnan's character wants to convert his land to oil drilling, but he's not sure there actually is any oil and his son who technically runs the ranch is against the idea. It's all family drama; sort of an historical Dallas. Not exactly what I wanted.

And since this part of the show is set in 1915, during the Mexican Revolution, there's also a good supply of timely commentary on modern politics. The white people in Brosnan's community are fearful that the Revolution will spill over to their side of the border, so relations between Anglo and Hispanic neighbors are getting tense. If you don't get enough of that on the news, this may be the show you're looking for.

There's also a more Western part of the show. Interspersed with Brosnan's family drama are scenes from when his character was a boy in the 1840s. His family was attacked by Comanches and he was taken prisoner, so part of the show will be dealing with that. I'd find it more to my taste if I didn't hate the person that kid grows up to be. I don't need to see how he got there. Gonna pass on the rest of the series.

Underground (2016-present)



We started Season 2 of Underground and it's still amazing. It's also still a show that refuses to let me get comfortable with a status quo. Characters die suddenly and shockingly, other characters that I thought were gone make surprising reappearances, and still others go unexpected places and do unexpected things.

What speaks to me most though is the show's consistent theme of sacrifice and compassion; often for people the characters have no prior relationship with. Where The Son is emphasizing the horrible things that people do out of fear, Underground displays the beauty of acting out of love, even when those actions bring suffering. It's not an easy or light show, but it's uplifting all the same.

Shang-Chi: Master of Kung-Fu Omnibus, Vol. 1



I'm 99% sure that my very first Marvel comic was the inappropriately numbered Master of Kung Fu #17. It was only the third appearance of Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu (and son of Fu Manchu), but his first two appearances were in the anthology series Special Marvel Edition starting with #15. When it was clear that he was popular enough for his own series, Marvel just continued the numbering from SME. As far as I knew at the time though, Shang Chi had been around for at least 16 issues before I discovered him.

I wasn't huge into martial arts as a kid, but I very quickly fell in love with Shang Chi. Even more than Batman, he was a relatable hero that I could aspire to be like. I'd never have a Batcave, but I reasoned that if I learned and practiced enough, I could be like Shang Chi.

It wasn't his fighting skill that attracted me most though. It was his cooly stoic demeanor. I wasn't able to fully understand that until reading this omnibus and immersing myself in Shang Chi's personality, but I love him for the same reason that I've always loved Ferdinand the Bull from the children's book. These are both characters who are comfortable in themselves and unshaken by the chaos around them. That's something that I valued a lot as a kid and still do.

I didn't have the ability to keep up with Shang Chi's adventures when I was younger, so it was only in later years that I heard about his globetrotting spy era under the legendary pencils of Paul Gulacy. As a big James Bond fan, I've always wanted to read those stories, so between that and revisting my childhood hero, I was super eager for this series of omnibuses collecting the entire series.

One volume in and I'm not disappointed. Shang Chi is every bit as inspiring as I remember and almost every adventure collected here is a winner. He battles with his father's minions in New York, Florida (hello, Man-Thing!), and the jungles of the Amazon before reaching détente with his dad and joining a team of international spies. It's all beautifully drawn and mesmerizingly written stuff. The one story that didn't work for me is the final, two-part tale in the collection, which is maddeningly surreal and impenetrably enigmatic. That's explicitly the point of it, so I'm not even really faulting it. It was just the single section of the almost 700 pages that didn't work for me on every level. I'm going to take a break and read some Man-Thing (more on the subject of fear) before diving into the next volume, but I already can't wait to get to it.

Batman, Illustrated by Neal Adams, Vol. 1



Neal Adams was a revolutionary get for DC in the late '60s and helped them compete with Marvel's more sophisticated style. It's too bad that the writing was still aimed straight at kids. These stories are all gorgeous, but they're also full of the most ridiculous motivations, coincidences, and plot twists imaginable. That can be fun from a certain point of view, but the childish simplicity of the scripts is jarring next to the innovation and maturity of Adams' art.

Jam of the Week: "Madman" by Sean Rowe

Sean Rowe's deep, baritone voice mixes beautifully with the easy, chill groove in "Madman." And there's hand clapping. I've mentioned before how I like me some hand claps.

6 Movies I Didn't Like from 2016

Today, we start counting down all the 2016 movies I watched from worst to best. Here's the bottom of the barrel.

52. Mechanic: Resurrection



2016 was a year of ill-advised sequels that no one asked for. I managed to avoid a few of those (like Independence Day 2) as well as some that we definitely asked for, but by all reports turned out to be no good (Jason Bourne). A couple of them got me though. Even though I enjoyed the 2011 Mechanic remake, I wasn't exactly clamoring for more, but I like Jason Statham enough that Resurrection got me to the theater. And for a while, I was really impressed.

The film starts in Rio and uses a landmark that brought Moonraker to mind and put me in the mood for a big, fun action movie. A pretty cool fight and a very cool stunt later, and I was hooked. I was still into it when Statham's character went to Thailand to hang out in some very Man With the Golden Gun-looking islands with Michelle Yeoh (reminding me of the best part of Tomorrow Never Dies). Were were still all good.

But then Jessica Alba showed up.

I don't dislike Alba as an actor; it's the script's problem. Up until her appearance, the movie is about Jason Statham's staying one step ahead of his enemy and refusing to get back into the assassination business. But then Alba reveals that she's been recruited (seemingly at random out of literally everyone on the planet; there's no compelling reason for the villain to have picked her in particular) to seduce Statham so that when she's later "kidnapped" by the bad guy, he'll have leverage over Statham.

Even knowing this, Statham falls in love with her anyway because of a wedding dance and the rest of the movie plays out exactly as Alba predicted it would. You don't even have to have seen an action movie before to know what's coming. Her character literally tells you in the first act. From there, I was just bored.

51. Assassin’s Creed



This is a good-looking movie with great actors who are doing and saying ridiculous nonsense. There are some good action sequences in some cool period settings, but they're completely undercut by constant visual reminders that what's happening isn't real and that there are no stakes.

50. The Young Messiah



A fan fiction prequel to Jesus' story that promises to explore his coming to terms with his role as the Messiah. Sadly, it doesn't actually deliver that. Really it's just his learning the facts around his birth, so that he discovers that he is the Messiah, and then there's a bit of voiceover monologue at the end where he explains what he thinks that's about. I was hoping for something more thoughtful.

Excellent performances all around though and I especially like the character arc given to Sean Bean's centurion. The set up for that story is kind of ridiculous and very contrived: Herod the Great's mad son orders Bean to seek out and murder the legendary child who escaped the massacre of infants seven years ago in Bethlehem. But having Bean's character be one of the soldiers who was in Bethlehem that night makes for a compelling story as he wrestles with his past and has to decide if he's going to repeat it.

49. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2



I was surprised and completely charmed by the first movie in 2002, so this was a sequel I was actually looking forward to, regardless of what the critics had to say (and they didn't say nice things). Besides, there was at least one of other widely maligned comedy sequel in 2016 that I enjoyed quite a bit. Revisiting the original in preparation for this, though, I was concerned by how some of my fondness for it had expired.

The original is still very sweet and often funny, but I think a lot of its surprise was because of how it stood out among other romantic comedies of the early 2000s. Watching it today, when almost all romantic comedies are quirky and low-budget, it doesn't feel as fresh. I still quite like it though.

The sequel, on the other hand, tries to do too much. The first one knows exactly what story it's trying to tell and has no problem focusing on it. This one is sort of about Toula's relationship with her daughter, sort of about her daughter's relationship with the rest of her family, sort of about Toula's relationship with her family and how that affects her relationship with her husband, and sort of about her parents' relationship with each other. As much as I enjoyed seeing these characters again, the movie should have picked one - or maybe two - of those plots.

48. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising



Pretty funny, but the first one had the advantage of surprising me with an actual story. This one tries to do some of the same stuff - to be about something - but isn't as deep (if "deep" is the word I even want to use for the first one). The first one dealt with Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne's crisis about growing older and uncool. The sequel deals with their fears about being bad parents. But the thing is, they really are horrible parents, so I don't care to see them make their peace with that. I'd rather see them learn to become good parents.

I do like the girl power angle of the story though and I found it easy to root for both sides of the war.

47. Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice



Speaking of wars, this was better than I expected, but that's a really low bar. It's built on the very shaky foundation of Man of Steel, which presented a brooding, selfish Superman. Because of that, the citizens of this world can apparently only react to him in one of two ways: god or monster. One character in Batman v Superman pays lip service to a third option: that he's just a man doing the best he can. But that's not really explored.

In order to get the fight of the title in, Batman is forced to see Superman as a monster, but in an unconvincing way that makes Batman seem pretty dumb. So most of the movie is a bunch of people acting really shallowly or stupidly. Lex has an interesting point of view - that Superman is a god and therefore must be treated as a monster - but Lex is so clearly insane that it's hard to take him seriously either. He's basically the Joker Lite.

Without anyone to care about, there are no stakes and most of the film is pretty dull. That changes somewhat once Lex's plan finally becomes active though. There's suddenly something to lose (in a contrived and cliche way, but still) and some of the action scenes are pretty cool, if not particularly thrilling.

Affleck makes a fine Batman and I'm interested in seeing a solo film with him as long as Snyder and Goyer aren't creating it. Almost as interested as I am in the Wonder Woman film. BvS only teases what the character will be like, but so far so good (and the trailers give me even more hope). I'm also hopeful about Aquaman's movie, but will need convincing about the Flash and Cyborg.

7 Days in May | Batman v Superman, more Buster Keaton, and gothic romance

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)



I'd strongly considered skipping this in the theaters, but my movie buddy (and fellow Mystery Movie Night podcast host) Dave helped me remember that we see bad movies all the time. So, with the idea in mind that I was treating BvS no differently than an Uwe Boll movie, off we went.

And it was better than I expected, though that's a really low bar. It's built on the very shaky foundation of Man of Steel, which notoriously presented a brooding, selfish Superman. Because of that, the citizens of Superman's world can apparently react to him in only one of two ways: a god to be worshipped or a monster to be destroyed. One character pays lip service to a third option - that he's just a man doing the best he can - but that's not really explored.

In order to get the fight of the title in, Batman is forced to see Superman as a monster, but in an unconvincing way that makes Batman seem pretty dumb. So most of the movie is a bunch of people acting shallowly or stupidly. Lex has an interesting point of view - that Superman is a god and therefore must be destroyed - but Lex is so clearly insane that it's hard to take him seriously either. He's basically the Joker Lite.

Without anyone to care about, there are no stakes and most of the film is pretty dull. That changes somewhat once Lex's plan finally becomes active though. There's suddenly something to lose (in a contrived and cliché way, but still) and some of the action scenes are pretty cool, if not particularly thrilling. I even like where the relationship between the main characters ends up. It's just boring to watch them get there.

Affleck makes a fine Batman and I'm interested in seeing a solo film with him as long as Snyder and Goyer aren't creating it. Almost as interested as I am in the Wonder Woman film. BvS only teases what the character will be like, but so far so good. I'm hopeful about her and Aquaman's movies, but will need convincing about the Flash and Cyborg.

The Son of Tarzan (1920)

The first Tarzan serial starts off strong as it presents Tarzan, Jane, and their son living as the Greystones (ugh) in England, then works on getting Jack separated from his parents and off to Africa. Once he hits the jungle though, the story becomes repetitive for many, many chapters, with the same two or three people continually escaping from and getting recaptured by the same two or three other people. It picks up slightly at the end when Tarzan finally also returns to Africa and some new things start to happen. But even then a lot of the characters are still going through their usual and repetitive paces.

The print I watched was pretty murky, but the action would be hard to follow even on a clearer print, because the editing is super choppy.

On the positive side, it looks like the actor who played the adult Korak had a nice rapport with the elephant who played Tantor. Those characters made a great team and there seems to be some actual chemistry between them as they roam through the jungle together.

The Haunted House (1921)



Basically a harbinger of Scooby Doo with Buster Keaton (on the run after being framed for a bank robbery) and the cast of Faust simultaneously try to hideout in a house that's haunted by a gang of counterfeiters. Some great gags as usual, but also some truly spooky imagery.

Hard Luck (1921)

All over the place without much story to tie it together. Opens with down-on-his-luck Buster Keaton trying to kill himself in various ways, then turns to a brief adventure of his getting hired to hunt an armadillo, but that quickly becomes a fishing gag that finally leads to escapades at a country club.

There's about three minutes of missing footage, so that might explain some of the disjointedness, but as entertaining as Keaton films always are to me, this isn't one that I'll revisit a lot.

The Haunted Castle (1921)

No relation to The Haunted House. I watched this because someone described it to me as a gothic romance, but the building this takes place in is neither haunted (unless we're talking about the metaphorical sense) nor a castle. The Troubled Mansion doesn't have the same ring to it, I guess.

It isn't a horror picture at all, but a murder mystery that takes place a few years after the commission of the crime. Director FW Murnau's style isn't as developed as it would become in Nosferatu the following year, so except for some awesome black makeup around the lead actress' eyes, it's not even that visually interesting. Fortunately, it's only an hour long. I didn't enjoy it much.

The High Sign (1921)

Cute and very funny short in which Buster Keaton fakes his credentials to work at a shooting gallery. His alleged marksmanship gets him offered jobs to simultaneously murder and protect a millionaire and his daughter. One of my favorite Keaton films.

The Goat (1921)

Hilarious comedy-of-errors about Keaton's being mistaken for an escaped criminal. Lots of slapstick chases with some ingenious surprises.

The Three Musketeers (1921)



Excellent adaptation that doesn't try to cover up the intricacies of Dumas' plot. Milady de Winter's role is simplified by ignoring her backstory, but there's still lots of maneuvering and intrigue to go with the swashbuckling. And Douglas Fairbanks is tops when it comes to swashbuckling, of course. His D'Artagnan can be annoying, but that's as Dumas wrote him.

The Play House (1921)

Sometimes, silent films can lead to some uncomfortable places, like this Keaton short that includes a minstrel show and the star in blackface. That's a quick bit though and the rest of the film is a lot of fun. It starts with a fantasy sequence in which Keaton plays every performer in a vaudeville show plus the entire audience, then goes into shenanigans behind the scenes of the real thing. A big highlight is when he accidentally frees a trained ape and has to perform as its substitute in the act.

The Boat (1921)

Sybil Seely is back! I love her team-ups with Keaton. This one has them as a couple who - with their two young children - attempt to launch a homemade boat. I prefer The Navigator when it comes to nautical Keaton, but still plenty of laughs here. And did I mention Sybil Seely is in it?

The Sheik (1921)

I've always wanted to see this Rudolph Valentino classic, but I didn't finish it. Agnes Ayres plays a spoiled bigot, but she doesn't deserve to be kidnapped and held indefinitely by Valentino's even more unpleasant character. Once they began to inexplicably fall in love, I checked out.

The Castle of Wolfenbach: A German Story by Eliza Parsons



On to some reading, I'm a fan of gothic romances and seeing Crimson Peak last year got me in the mood to read some. I love Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein, and Dracula, though I had a hard time getting through The Mysteries of Udolpho. Jane Austen may have called them "horrid novels," but I have a fondness for the twisty, coincidence-filled plots about guileless maidens and the wicked counts who try to control them.

Castle of Wolfenbach is a good one. It's full of the problems these kinds of books have: everyone is one-dimensional and there are so many counts and countesses that I literally lost track of them all. But as an oasis from more complicated literature, I enjoy the absolute goodness of the heroes in Wolfenbach and seeing the villains get their comeuppance.

Also, in addition to haunted rooms and secret passages, this one's got pirates.

The Octopi and the Ocean by Dan R James

This graphic novel has a cool idea to make humans pawns in the war between the octopi and the sharks. And James' whimsically surreal art makes it even more fun. It can be hard to decipher in places, especially toward the end where the story takes a creepy, darker turn, but it's a great concept and I love looking at it.

The Odyssey (All-Action Classics #3) by Homer, Tim Mucci, Ben Caldwell, and Emanuel Tenderini

The Odyssey isn't one of my favorite stories (Homer's classic is more episodic than I like), but if I'm going to read it, Ben Caldwell's All-Action Classics version is how I want it.

The All-Action series is excellent. It emphasizes the best parts of any book, but in a way that flows beautifully as a story and retains the spirit of the original work. There have been many attempts to adapt classic literature for kids - or just for people who don't think they like classic literature - but All-Action Classics is the best. Caldwell's art is exciting and fun to look at and he's working with writers like Tim Mucci who deeply understand the source material and what makes it great.

7 Days in May | Tomorrowlands and Tesseracts

Tomorrowland (2015)



Brad Bird's latest film is getting mixed reviews and I understand why. It has great ideas and I love the way it encourages not only optimism, but doing something with optimism. Really it's about action more than it is about how much water there is in a glass. The problem with the world isn't cynicism; it's laziness. I can imagine a way that cynicism can also spur people to action, but Tomorrowland decidedly picks optimism and inspiration as the best way and I subscribe to that belief. If nothing else, I love the conversations that Tomorrowland is creating.

Not that its ideas are all that the movie has going for it. It has terrific actors and a few great set pieces. And there are moments when it's as affecting as I hoped for it to be. Not as many as I wanted, but some.

It does have some big problems though, and it's probably my least favorite Brad Bird film so far. There's no need for a human villain in a movie like this, but we get one and his motivations make no sense. And the community that gives the movie its name never quite lives up to its role as a source of encouragement. I don't think I want to spoil anything by saying more, but we can get into that in the comments if you want to.

Overall, Tomorrowland is trying to do more than it's capable of and that's disappointing. But I'm glad it tried.

Thor (2011)



The Marvel re-watch continues and watching them in chronological order I realized that the pre-Avengers films end the way they began: with the Norse gods. The earliest thing we see in one of these movies is the Red Skull's invading a Norse temple and stealing an artifact. The last thing we do before getting to The Avengers is explore the gods in more detail and see that artifact reenter the plot. It's a nice bookend.

I often hear Thor listed as people's least-favorite Marvel movie, but I love it. That undoubtedly has a lot to do with my dual crushes on Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman, but I'm also a sucker for the character arc that Thor goes through. It's very similar to the one Tony Stark experiences in Iron Man (and maybe that's why people don't go for it), but I'm not one to dismiss a story just because I've seen something similar. As long as both are done well, there's room for both. And Thor is done really well. It's main character may go through a similar journey to Tony Stark, but he does it surrounded by different people. His father, his friends, and especially his brother all make Thor a significantly different experience from Iron Man.

Or maybe it's just how dreamy Hemsworth and Portman are.

The Avengers (2012)



So the Tesseract makes another appearance as the focus of an adventure. In First Avenger, Hydra was primarily interested in it as an energy source and The Avengers reveals that that's what SHIELD wants it for, too. But of course - as we saw in First Avenger when Red Skull touched it - it also has the ability to open a hole in space.

One of my main reasons for doing this re-watch is to track the Infinity Stones through the series. As of The Avengers, they still haven't been mentioned by that name even though two of them actually appear in the movie. I'm trying to avoid talking too much about them before I get to the movies that reveal those details, but it's useful to track that the Tesseract and Loki's Scepter are powered by Stones.

The Tesseract obviously has power over space, so that one's easy to figure out. Loki's scepter, given to him by Thanos, is a little more difficult since it seems to have multiple abilities in The Avengers. In addition to their primary abilities, both the Tesseract and the Scepter simply give off enormous amounts of power. It's easy to focus on that as Hydra and SHIELD have been doing, so when Loki uses the Scepter, a lot of times he's just using it as a generator for destructive power. The Scepter's true purpose though is what he uses it for when he touches someone with it and takes over their mind.

That didn't become obvious to me until Age of Ultron, but I should point out that I have zero prior knowledge of the Infinity Stones and what they do. I've been aware that there was something called the Infinity Gauntlet and that Thanos wanted to control it, but I'm playing catch up on the details and doing that is a lot of what's fun to me about the Marvel movies. I'm enjoying watching this story unfold without a clear vision of where it's going.

There's so much more to talk about with these movies, but I feel like these capsule reviews aren't really the place. I kind of want to do a longer series at some point that tracks the individual characters and sees what makes them tick. Black Widow is especially a favorite, but there's a lot to say about all of them. One day.

Batman (1943)



Having finished the Captain America serial, I started the first Batman one. I've seen this one a few times and it's one of my favorites. It was one of the first serials I ever watched, come to think of it.

Filmed and released in the middle of the US' involvement in WWII, it has Batman working for the government and fighting fifth columnists in Gotham City. The bad guys are a bunch of disgraced and disgruntled industrialists led by a Japanese mastermind named Daka, who's working on behalf of his nation to undermine ours. And let me tell you, it's super racist. The characters, including the heroes, use every slur I've ever heard against the Japanese and several new ones. There's even a point where the narrator talks about how the "wise government" rounded up all the citizens of Gotham's Little Tokyo district and got them out of there, creating a ghost neighborhood.

Because the serial was created during wartime and is expressing anger towards an enemy nation (though in a very misplaced way, no doubt), I'm largely able to compartmentalize my feelings about that from my enjoyment of the mad science (it's filled with ray guns and mechanical zombies) and the portrayal of Golden Age Batman driving around in his normal sedan and trying to keep his fiance in the dark about his secret identity. It's weird and fun.

I also immensely enjoy the character of Captain Arnold, who sort of sits in for Commissioner Gordon. Gordon's not in the serial, so Arnold is the head cop and he has a cool attitude towards Batman. He's envious of Batman's ability to bring crooks in, but also cynically good-natured about it. If he can't have Batman on the force, he's content to just take credit for Batman's work. And he's very open about doing that. He's a delight and one of my favorite things about the serial every time I watch it.

My Top 10 Movies of 2014

10. X-Men: Days of Future Past



I don't know if I like it more for continuing the story of the First Class cast or for rescuing the original cast from the sourness I associated them with after Last Stand. I don't think I like DoFP as much as First Class, but it's a worthy sequel when it could have been an enormous mess. That's faint praise, I know, but I really love both generations of these characters and it was great to see them all treated well. And that Quicksilver scene alone earns it a spot in my Top 10.

9. Noah



I grew up with this story and I know it very well, so I'm extremely impressed and appreciative that Darren Aronofsky was able to make me think about it in a new way. And not just because he threw in some Ents. I wrote a full review of it, but to sum up: the movie makes powerful statements and asks deep questions about the relationship between humanity and nature, the inscrutability of God, and the perils of thinking you've got him all figured out. It has flaws, to be sure, but it moved and provoked me more than any other movie last year.

8. Begin Again



Wow, Keira Knightley had a good year. This is my favorite thing she did though. It looks and smells like a romantic comedy, but it's not. For one thing, though it's funny, it's not really a comedy. For another, though it'll try to fool you a couple of times, romance between the leads isn't the point. The point is about music: both the creation and the business of it. It's only 20% about the music industry though and 80% about what music is and what it means to us. There's a beautiful scene early on - really two different interpretations of the same scene - where Knightley performs a song live and we experience it first from her point of view as the nervous, insecure musician, and then from Mark Ruffalo's point of view as a music producer in the audience. It shows in a powerful way how the same song can give different experiences to different people. There's another moment later on that nails the feeling of putting on headphones in public and letting music change your perception of the world. With such wonderful groundwork laid about what music is, the movie's then able to comment on the way it's commercialized. And it does all this with some great and likable characters, including Knightley and Ruffalo's, but not limited to them.

7. How to Train Your Dragon 2



The first How to Train Your Dragon is one of my favorite animated movies of all time. It's funny, exciting, and emotionally stirring. I had no hope at all that the sequel would top it. And it didn't. But what it did do was go in a whole new direction: an epic fantasy that opened up the world of the first film and raised the stakes. It's a more serious, less joyful film, which means that I didn't enjoy it as much as the first one, but it's just as awe-inspiring in its own way.

6. The Lego Movie



When I was on the Nerd Lunch podcast last year talking about the 75th anniversary of Batman, one of the topics that came up was our favorite Batman movies. I'll never understand how I forgot to rank The Lego Movie just behind Mask of the Phantasm. In fact, since The Lego Movie is actually a Batman/Star Wars crossover, I may have to rethink that number 2 position.

5. Maleficent



I had to see this one twice to appreciate it as much as I do. There are some serious problems with Maleficent, starting with Sharlto Copley's unbelievable character and including some awful CG with Aurora's fairy guardians. That stuff really distracted me on first viewing, but what still stood out was Angelina Jolie's performance as a woman who has been hurt to the point of deeply wanting to hurt back, but hasn't yet lost all capacity to love. It's a powerful struggle and she shows it beautifully and movingly. Meanwhile, Elle Fanning grounds the movie perfectly as the tether that holds Maleficent to... well, "humanity" may not be the right word, but you know what I mean. Anyway, my second time watching it, those are the things I focused on and I loved it.

4. Guardians of the Galaxy



I'd want to call it the Star Wars for this generation if we weren't getting a new Star Wars movie next year. And besides, it's not really the same tone as Star Wars, is it? It's much more snarky and irreverent, but it balances that out with moments of humor, wonder, and just plain coolness. Even though it shares a basic plot structure with many of the other Marvel movies, it does so in its own, joyful way.

3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier



Speaking of plot, that's the reason Winter Soldier nudges ahead of Guardians of the Galaxy on this list. Winter Soldier takes some brave chances, not only by changing the status quo of the Marvel Universe, but also by not being about a bunch of people trying to get the same, all-powerful, cosmic object. Instead, it's a conspiracy thriller and a dang good one. I also love Anthony Mackie and that no one tried to force Cap and Black Widow into a romantic relationship. Boys and girls can be friends! Who knew?

2. Godzilla



I had this at number one for quite a while. It was easily the best time I had at a movie theater last year. A lot of that was manufactured by me and David though. We undertook a massive Godzillathon in the months leading up to May 16, filling in as many holes in our viewing as we had access to. We even made it to a local screening of the 1954 original. When it came time to watch the new one, we had a boys' night out (Diane had a previous commitment) at our favorite theater with the cushy lounge chairs, the Dolby Atmos, and the 30' x 70' screen. We were primed. And the movie didn't let us down. We loved the slow build to the final battle and the epic moments in that battle. When Ken Watanabe says, "Let them fight," we were screaming and whooping and we - and the rest of our audience - just got louder and more excited as the movie went on. The only thing that bumped it down to number two was Aaron Taylor-Johnson. I don't think he's bad in the movie, but he's certainly the only thing about it that I didn't find completely exciting. And that's a bit of a problem when he's the lead actor.

1. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes



A perfect sequel. It continues the story of the first movie, expands on it, raises the stakes, and does all that in a way that's just as emotionally powerful if not more so. Incredibly, it met and exceeded my impossibly high hopes for it. I don't have one bad thing to say about it and that's why it's Number 1.

Gothic Gotham [Guest Post]

As promised, occasional guest-Adventureblogger GW Thomas is back. He's actually sent in a couple of posts that I wanted to have up before now, but needed to figure out how to fit in with Countdown to Halloween. Not tone-wise, but just schedule-wise. Having to post a couple of times a day for the last couple of days helped me figure that out though, so this morning we have GW on the importance and influence of gothic literature (very timely for the season!). Then this evening I'll talk about another horror movie. Enjoy! And thanks to GW for the great piece! -- Michael

In 1764, a bored English peer, no longer active in politics, builder of a fairy tale castle in the middle of Twickenham, came up with a strange idea for a book. He wanted to tell a modern story but with elements of days gone-by. You know the kind of thing: ghosts, violent sword-fights, secret doors, family curses, desperate adventures. The only problem was he lived in the Age of Reason. Nobody wrote that kind of silliness anymore. Man had Intellect. He had Science. Books were for instruction, logic and improvement. Why would anyone want to read such an anomaly, such an anachronism?

But he wrote it anyway. And published it under a pseudonym. It was a bestseller. For the second edition, he revealed his authorship and some felt it was a cheat. For he had presented it as an old manuscript, not a new story. Others didn't care and wrote more stories just like it. The book was called The Castle of Otranto (published in 1765). It was the first Gothic novel and it's importance (or perhaps more importantly the Gothic's importance) is only now being truly revealed. Horace Walpole's tale of lost heirs, gigantic armour, family curses, fleeing through tunnels, improbable plot twists and operatic dialogue seems quaint by today's standards, but its legacy drives all the most popular media of today.

The Gothic is the fountainhead from which all genre fiction springs. Its inspiration of the Horror genre is pretty easy to see. It's not that far from Otranto to Dracula. From the dreams of a young woman, Mary Shelley, it became Science Fiction. From there it sprang, through the genius of Gothic master, Edgar Allan Poe, into the Mystery and Detective genre. The mainstream toyed with the Gothic for a while, taking in and then kicking it out again, but not before such writers as the Bronte Sisters, Sir Walter Scott and Henry James borrowed from it for "serious" novels. From these it became the less serious Gothic Romance. Blending with mythology and fairy tales, it became Sword-and-Sorcery and Modern Fantasy. The daring-do of the Gothic inspired flamboyant heroes as far apart as the Scarlet Pimpernel, Captain Blood and Allan Quatermain. It was the Pimpernel that would grandfather Jimmy Dale, the Gray Seal, (by Frank L. Packard) the first of the Masked Avengers, siring the Pulp heroes from the Shadow to Phantom Detective. And it was only a very short bus ride from there to the Comics.

Let's skip ahead 174 year after Otranto to 1939. A young artist named Bob Kane teams up with writer Bill Finger to produce a new, stranger kind of detective to stand out from the crowd of Superman wannabes. Masked (of course) but winged as well, he was Batman (first appearance Detective Comics #27, May 1939). Not since Superman started leaping tall buildings in a single bound had a character caught the public's fancy so strongly. But unlike the Man of Steel, Batman is dark, creepy and utterly Gothic. Where Superman is an alien from another planet, Batman is just a man tortured by loss, the Heathcliff of superheroes. Where Superman gained powers given him by his birthright, Batman has to rely on his own inventiveness to create new gadgets. Superman faces forces from outer space, while Batman deals with insane criminals of a more earthly nature.

I was struck by all this recently while watching the pilot of the new Gotham series. Even though the detectives mentioned things like DNA and used computers, the feel of Gotham is so close to Bill Finger and Bob Kane's original dark vision. The fun of the show for some is the old "Year One" effect. In other words, let's see where all these heroes and villains came from. And in this way I did enjoy it too. But it was actually the Gothic effect that really made me watch. The driving force of Gothic is the past trying to destroy the future. The death of Bruce Wayne's parents begins a course of action that will lead to everything that will happen to Batman. Like a good Noir novel (a very Gothic enterprise, indeed), the tragedy that makes Bruce Wayne the Batman pulls in two directions. It makes him a superhero, more than an ordinary man, but it also consumes him, robbing him of any kind of ordinary happiness. It is this conflict that makes Batman so enduring. It is this frisson that keeps us watching even when the plot lines get convoluted and (let's be honest) so improbable that we could not possibly buy it if presented any other way. The Castle of Otranto has this same goofy logic that has earned it the hatred of the Reasoners, those scientific Rationalist who poo-pooed the Gothic back in the 1700s (Jane Austen's Northhanger Abbey hinges on this contempt and the idea that reading Gothics ruined young women's minds.) It was the same hatred that Fredric Wertham presents in Seduction of the Innocent (1954) and for the Senate Committee on Juvenile Deliquency (and I would extend that even to the vitriol heaped upon Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s. I have almost forgiven Tom Hanks for being in Mazes and Monsters (1982). Almost.)

I have often thought humanity divides pretty easily here. Let's call it the Otranto Line. For some the world of facts, ledgers, evening news, sports, DIY and all things seeable, proveable. On the other side: Walpole's camp, are the dreamers, the LARPers, the fanboys, those who stood in line for hours to see The Lord of the Rings first, who see that this season we have Arrow plus three other DC shows and cry tears of joy. These are my people. They are the Children of the Gothic. Those who dwell upon the unseeable, the unproved. Who felt a little chill the first time Michael Keaton said "I'm Batman!" Long live the Gothic!

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Nerd Lunch and 75 Years of Batman

It was about this time last year that I joined the Nerd Lunch fellas and Thom Holbrook for a discussion of all things Superman in celebration of the Man of Tomorrow's 75th anniversary. That was so much fun and I was thrilled when they asked me back this year to talk through Batman's 75th with them and Batfan Extraordinaire, Jay from the Sexy Armpit.

It's a massive discussion covering the Caped Crusader's appearances across various media. We talked favorite comics stories, artists, writers, villains, actors, TV shows, movies... pretty much everything. Pax did an awesome job leading the discussion and guiding us through Batman's lengthy history. Gasp while CT and I explain why Batman and Robin is a better movie than Batman Returns. Thrill as Jay helps me extol the virtues of the underrated The Batman cartoon from the mid 2000s. Wonder to the sound of me and Pax grooving on Jim Aparo. It was a really fun conversation and you should totally check it out.

Nerd Lunch is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Feedburner, or you can just settle back and listen to the episode right here.

It wasn't Robin who changed Batman

In addition to Batman's letting the Cat go in the third story in Batman #1, something else weird happened. While fighting a second gang of jewel thieves, Batman pauses to make the strange statement above. It's odd because he's alone on a boat with just the crooks and Robin.

Obviously, Batman's breaking the fourth wall here and he does it even more directly after Robin wipes the floor with the bad guys.



I thought that was interesting, but not as much as the Bat/Cat relationship, so I wasn't going to mention it until I got to the fourth and final story in Batman #1 (again by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson). It's a second Joker story that picks up two days after the first one and doesn't shed any new light on the Joker or his motivations, but it does have this extra panel at the very end.



This was 14 years before Seduction of the Innocent was published, but clearly DC was not only aware of their young audience, but also catering directly to them. It wasn't that Robin toned down Batman's grimness, it was that Robin and the lighter tone were both inspired by younger readers.

That's not nearly as much fun to think about as possible in-story explanations, but when Batman's directly addressing the children in the audience, it's not possible to ignore.

Bat meets Cat

The third story in Batman #1 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson) features Batman letting Robin fly on his own solo mission, at least for a while. Batman reads about a yacht party where a famous emerald necklace will likely tempt criminals, but he has "another job to do first" and sends Robin ahead to work undercover as a steward. Batman promises to catch up later.

Robin discovers a note that suggests the Cat, a famous thief is after the necklace, but he doesn't make much headway in his investigation before Batman shows up. It's Batman who uncovers the Cat's disguise and reveals her to be a beautiful, nameless woman.

Of course in hindsight we know that her name is Selina Kyle (and her nom de guerre will eventually morph into something more familiar), but she's still a mystery in this story. One thing that's already present though is the sexual tension between her and Batman. She comes on to him as soon as he catches her, but he rebuffs her because they work on different sides of the law. It's probably right to assume that she was just playing him, but if that's so, her plan - shockingly - works!

As Batman and Robin carry her towards shore in Batman's speedboat (it's not pimped out enough to call it the Batboat just yet), the Cat leaps overboard to escape. Robin tries to jump in after her, but Batman foils the attempt by pretending to clumsily bump into the kid. Robin isn't fooled and Batman barely tries to cover it up. The story ends with Batman mooning over the Cat, trying to remind himself that he's engaged to the woman from Detective Comics 31 and 32. I don't know how Bruce Wayne eventually breaks up with Julie, or even if it's shown in the comics, but it's interesting to think that Selina Kyle may have had something to do with it.

What to make of his letting her go though? She didn't actually hurt anyone, so that somewhat excuses his giving vengeance a break, but what kind of example is he setting for Robin? I've speculated that Robin's presence has made Batman question how violently he attacks criminals, but there's a huge leap from that to just letting them go. Batman's clearly thinking with a different part of his body from his brain.

Much as Batman hates to take human life...

A couple of things about this Man Monsters story from Batman #1 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson):

First, it was originally intended as a Detective Comics story. At the end of Detective 37, a panel showed Batman facing a couple of giants and declared that "Next month, huge, terrifying Man-Monsters stalk the streets." What next month actually brought, however, was the Sensational Character Find of 1940: Robin, the Boy Wonder. DC bumped the Man Monsters story, so it ended up in Batman #1, which - like the Superman solo series - was an anthology comic in its early days. The Man Monsters story also featured the return of Hugo Strange, who created the beasts to use as a distraction while his henchmen robbed banks.

The second thing worth pointing out in the Man Monsters story is this:



First of all, Batman has never shown any reluctance for taking human life in his stories so far. In fact, he punches Hugo Strange out of a tower window less than an hour before this scene takes place and follows it up by lassoing one of the Man Monsters around its neck and hanging it from the Batwing.

Secondly, if Batman did hate killing, why mount a machine gun on the Batwing? Clearly Batman has no issues at all with taking human life, but he apparently feels the need to justify it to himself. Which makes me wonder some more about Robin's influence on him.

This story was obviously written before Robin's introduction, but its publication after Robin adds an interesting element. Is Batman starting to feel remorse over killing so many bad guys? Does the responsibility of raising Robin make him rethink his tactics? It hasn't changed his behavior yet, but this may be the first step in that direction.

The grim jester called... The Joker!

When people talk about whether or not Batman should ever kill, the discussion inevitably comes around to the Joker, a homicidal maniac who continually breaks out of custody to murder again and again. The government is helpless to stop him, so the only way for someone to end his terror is to end his life.

Batman seems tailor-made for the job. He's outside the law, has a supposedly unquenchable thirst for vengeance, and has experienced in very close, personal ways the Joker's capacity for murder. He knows without doubt that this is an unrepentant person incapable of rehabilitation who will only be stopped by being killed. That Batman's "code" prevents him from doing what needs to be done is frankly a massive impediment to suspending disbelief about the dark knight and his world.

One way of relieving this untenable tension is to ease off on the Joker's murderous impulses. I like the Silver Age Joker who was more interested in pulling off capers with panache than spreading terror, but that's not exactly true to the character's Golden Age roots. As presented in Batman #1 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson), the Joker is definitely interested in showing off, but he's just as into murder. The original Joker isn't a fun character, he's a horrifying madman.

He's also a massive hit and his creators seem to know it. He appears in two stories in Batman #1; jailed at the end of the first one and... well, we'll look later at what happens in the next. But I'm curious to see how the Golden Age storytellers kept the Joker around before Batman's "code" created an easy, ridiculous out.

Batman, Robin, and 'the path of righteousness'

Detective Comics #38 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson) is famous for being the first appearance of Robin, the Boy Wonder. Young Dick Grayson is usually credited with having a lightening effect on Batman's grim quest for vengeance against all criminals, and there's evidence from this issue that the boy's impact was immediate, though very limited at first.

After Batman agrees to train the boy, the two of them take a crime-fighting oath that includes the words, "never to swerve from the path of righteousness." That feels like an important addition to Batman's mission. It's not enough just to make criminals pay for their misdeeds, Batman also begins to see the importance of maintaining a personal code. He doesn't define "righteousness," but that he even includes it as a concept may be significant.



Eventually, "righteousness" may include a prohibition on taking lives, but not right away. In fact, Batman and Robin's ultimate plan for avenging the death of Robin's parents involves entrapping the main bad guy and photographing him as he murders one of his men. Not only do Batman and Robin not try to save the henchman (Batman implies that the thug is the one directly responsible for the Graysons' deaths, but presents no evidence of it), they manipulate the mob boss in order to make sure that the henchman is killed.

Batman may see the need to raise Dick more morally than the way Bruce Wayne developed, but it's not an easy or quick transition.

Shadow of the Bat

I was tempted to use the first panel of Detective Comics #37 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson) in which Batman gets lost in the country and stops at a farmhouse for directions. It's pretty funny, but it's not fair to the rest of the story, which is a really good mystery.

Batman uses intelligence and good detective work to uncover a gang of spies, then his physical skills and fearsome presence to bring them down. The panel above is a great example of how spooky and intimidating Batman can be when he wants to.

Batman, Hero of the People

Batman may still be wanted by the police, but public perception of him changes after he defeats Hugo Strange in Detective Comics #36 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and introducing Jerry Robinson to the series).

A couple of notes: The Monk from Detective 31 and 32 may be Batman's first supervillain, but Hugo Strange is the earliest who lasted and became a permanent part of Batman's rogue gallery. Strange was designed to be a major bad guy from the get go. Batman already knows who he is in this story and refers to him as "the most dangerous man" and "the greatest organizer of crime in the world." Clearly he was meant to be Moriarty to Batman's Sherlock Holmes.

Strange's infamy works in Batman's favor when word spreads that he defeated the villain. The people of Gotham are now on Batman's side and I have to imagine that some of the cops' views on him have likely changed as well.

The problem is that - legally speaking - Batman's still a murderer. I haven't kept a strict count, but I'm pretty sure that he's either directly killed or allowed someone to die in every story since his first appearance. It this one, he's found standing over a dead body and the police assume he's the killer. That - and Batman's having to clear his name by bringing in Strange - is a standard mystery trope, but it's especially appropriate in this series given Batman's past actions.

Still, nice to see that his reputation is changing a little and that the citizens of Gotham at least appreciate what he's trying to do. I can feel my own attitude about him start to change as well. He may have started his mission in a selfish place - and his methods may not be as effective as Superman's - but he's still a force for positive change and it's impossible to dislike that.

Batmobile, Mark II

In Detective Comics #35 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Sheldon Moldoff), Batman has finally quit driving around his bright red sedan and appears to have bought a model that's more fitting for his nightly activities. No special modifications yet, but he's on the right track.