So what was going on at the End of Doctor Strange?

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR DOCTOR STRANGE & ALL CURRENT MARVEL FILMS

Now that's better.

Last time I did one of these, I was starting to wonder if Marvel was getting lazy as they didn't really tease or set anything up. Doctor Strange is thankfully a return to form, with both stingers being more traditional sequel teases. Nothing out of the box, but exciting nonetheless.

Last warning for spoilers,

Climbing the Dark Tower: Um...The Dark Tower

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW

Yeah, real creative titling there King. Naming the last book in your series with the same name as the whole series. That's not confusing. That aside, this last volume encapsulates the entire series. Both its best & worst qualities. King delivers on the promise of the quest and brings us to a controversial ending...

Climbing the Dark Tower: Song of Susannah

SPOILERS FOLLOW

This is probably going to be a short one. Which is fitting because Song of Susannah is a pretty short book, especially compared to some of the others in this series. But that's the problem with big multi-book series like this. If you go past about four books, the penultimate chapter is only going to be so much running in place and setting things up for the finale. Not that nothing important doesn't happen, indeed some very important things do happen here, but as we near the end (and the Tower) they either get dealt with quickly or are left hanging for the finish. But let's look over what Song of Susannah does give us...

Climbing the Dark Tower: Wolves of the Calla

SPOILERS BELOW

The back-half of the quest begins with a riff on a classic western. Yeah, King is pretty upfront and blatant about this book, the fifth in the series, being a post-apocalyptic sci-fi version of The Magnificent Seven. But I don't begrudge him. The whole series has been built on Western archetypes and iconography. Plus, enough new plot threads are introduced and spread throughout to build a much richer experience as the Tower itself starts to come into view...

Climbing the Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass

SPOILERS BELOW

After a brief hiatus, we return to our journey toward the Dark Tower. Sort of. Roland and his Ka-tet do get closer to their destination in this volume, but the majority of the novel is given over to an extended flashback to Roland's youth. But that tale is so engrossing, and reveals so much about the gunslinger's character, that I found myself not really caring...

Suicide Squad: A Review

Let's just get the backhanded compliment out of the way first. Yes, Suicide Squad is better than Batman vs Superman. But that doesn't mean much. Getting a white hot railroad spike driven directly into your asshole by a pneumatic drill would be better than Batman vs Superman.

Actually watching Suicide Squad, it's not very surprising that the critical reception is one of disappointment. With Batman vs Superman being a gigantic dumpster fire that immediately tarnished Warner Bros. DC Comics brand at the movies, Suicide Squad was put into a position it wasn't meant for. What was originally supposed to be a sleazy, anti-hero side project was instead made to be a redemption for the enterprise. So while it mostly lives up to being the gonzo spin-off it was meant as, it doesn't work as an indication that the DC Cinematic Universe is going to work. No wonder it didn't really warm to critics. But not helping is the fact that it isn't really a very good movie in its own right.

Trailer Park: Doctor Strange

I still dig it.

Climbing the Dark Tower: The Waste Lands

SPOILERS BELOW

Our gunslinger has drawn his companions and is on the Path of the Beam toward the Dark Tower. If only the path was less hazardous...

Climbing the Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three

SPOILERS BELOW

All right, now it feels like our quest is actually getting started. Having caught the man in black last time, our gunslinger learned what he must do to reach the tower. But he won't be doing it alone...

X-Men: Apocalypse: A Review

MINOR SPOILERS BELOW

I was not as over the moon for X-Men: Days of Future Past as other people seemed to be. I didn't think it was bad, and it was cool to see the original cast for one last hurrah, but it wasn't particularly spectacular. That film didn't even live up to the potential of its predecessor, X-Men: First Class, which was an amazing reboot of the franchise which could have gone in some interesting directions. But Days of Future Past seemed to squander that potential for something more familiar and less ambitious. And I'm sorry to say X-Men: Apocalypse continues the series in that direction.

To describe Apocalypse in one word, I would have to choose cluttered. There are so many different subplots going on in this film, it sometimes feels like an entire season of a television series crammed into two & a half hours. The catalyst of everything is En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac), a supremely powerful mutant from Ancient Egypt who has reawakened in the 1980s (Apocalypse carries on the period piece tradition started by First Class) and has decided to destroy civilization and rebuild it with himself as a god-king. To do this, he travels around the world and recruits several other powerful mutants to act as his henchmen. This includes Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who has been living in secret and raising a family in Communist Poland since the previous film. But life likes shitting on Magneto, so his family dies and En Sabah Nur convinces him to turn evil again. All this world traveling catches the attention of both Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and forces them to reconcile their relationship after the hardship of the previous films. If that plot synopsis sound complicated, the movie only makes it slightly more coherent.

Climbing the Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

SPOILERS BELOW

Much like the titular gunslinger himself, we begin our long journey to the Dark Tower with the first book in the series. It was a strange introduction to a strange world but it promises to be an interesting journey. More in depth thoughts after the jump...

Trying something...

Little something new I'm trying. Included below is a script I wrote for a potential comic book series. Kind of a pilot episode, for lack of a better word. Click on the link below for the pdf and don't be afraid to tell me what you think.

Experience the Power of the Mind!

Announcing: Climbing the Dark Tower

Art by Alex Rodway.

After years & years of development hell, it was announced last year that Stephen King's legendary Dark Tower fantasy series would finally be adapted to film. The Dark Tower is the nexus around which so many of King's novels revolve, with connections to everything from The Stand and 'Salem's Lot to Hearts in Atlantis and The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon. It's a series that's been on my to-read list forever. The reason I haven't gotten around to it until now? Probably the fact that you could beat a man to death with any of the last three books in the series.

But hey, the movie's coming out in February so now's as good a time as ever to dive into King's unique blend of horror, high fantasy, and spaghetti western. And I'm taking you, Dear Reader, along the journey with me. I'll be writing a review of each book in the series leading up to the movie, chronicling my impressions, favorite characters and elements, and indulging in some light speculation. So check back in a couple of weeks for my review of The Gunslinger, the first book, and every month after that for the next one. It's a long road to the Tower folks, and I hope you'll join me as I follow the Gunslinger.

So what was going on at the End of Civil War?

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR

You know I'm starting to think Marvel is getting lazy.

Seriously, Civil War follows Ant-Man's lead by having its post-credits stinger mostly wrap things up from the actual movie instead of teasing things from the next ones. If you saw the movie, there isn't really much for me to explain. It's almost like I don't have to do these anymore.

But whatever. A little clarity never hurt anyone so I will explain the nods to the comics in the stingers. And I'll draw on my own extensive comics knowledge to give you an idea of where things in the Marvel Cinematic Universe might go.

Last warning for spoilers and here we go...

Trailer Park: Doctor Strange teaser

We've had Iron Men, aliens, & Inhumans. Time to get really weird...



I can dig it.

Batman vs. Superman: A Review

MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW

Let's not waste time, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

After two hours of adolescent bullshit, DC Comics' three biggest, most well-known iconic heroes team up to do battle with a rampaging monster. Theoretically, this would be an amazing moment. The first time all three of these characters, one of whom is making her cinematic debut, have appeared together on the big screen. It should be uplifting to the audience and gratifying to long-time fans of these characters. But's it not. Because the previous two hours have not given any kind of logical reason for this to happen and the moment is immediately ruined by Zack Snyder's shooting the film as though it was a disaster movie and not, you know, a fucking superhero movie. So the following battle is a disorienting mish-mash of explosions, lightning bolts, and Wonder Woman being tossed around like a rag doll by an utterly generic grey CG monster. It's boring, nonsensical, and not worthy of the portentous Hans Zimmer score blaring over it, the dingleberry-cherry atop this shit sundae.

And it's not like this was a hard concept to fuck up either. Putting aside the merits of doing a superhero versus movie, decades of comics have given the filmmakers a road map to follow to make this thing work. We've got two heroes, they don't like each other. Batman doesn't like Superman because he's nearly all-powerful and answers to no one. Superman doesn't like Batman because he takes the law into his own hands and beats up poor people. They start out merely exchanging threats until they're egged on by a super villain (Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor in this case) to distract the two heroes from his evil plan. The two heroes come to blows, neither winning, until the villain's plan comes to fruition and they decide to put aside their differences to save the day. Wonder Woman shows up to help, day is saved, villain defeated, and grudging respect is earned. Shake hands and see you in Justice League. And while Snyder's film follows some of those points, it diverts from this simple route into a convoluted mess and can't manage to establish any kind of coherent reasoning for anything that happens.

The Witch: A Review

Normally I would put this under my "31 (or so) Days of Terror" label, but that's exclusively for horror movies and I'm not sure The Witch is a horror movie. It has many horrific elements but the execution makes me reconsider that distinction. Its plot certainly sounds like something a more artistically inclined horror director would make, a family of Puritans in 17th Century New England find their isolated farm under siege from the titular witch and they eventually turn on each other, and director Robert Eggers delivers on that premise though in a way far more abstract than is typical or expected. And while I can appreciate the artistry and effort he & his crew put into the film, the end result didn't entirely jive for me the way it seems to for other critics.

31 (or so) Days of Terror: Hardware

The other night I had the pleasure of watching an excellent documentary on Netflix about the infamous 1996 Island of Dr. Moreau film and the incredibly troubled production that spawned it. It was called Lost Soul and its central figure was Moreau's original director Richard Stanley. Stanley is an odd guy, one of those visionary British creatives with a lot of esoteric interests. Ok, he's South African but the point stands. Stanley became fascinating to me, especially since he's only made a few shorts since the Moreau debacle, so I was curious about his earlier work that was only briefly mentioned in the doc. Which brings us to his first film that unsurprisingly put him on the map, Hardware. And guys, it's the real deal.

The setup is pretty basic for horror sci-fi. Inspired by a 2000AD comic strip, Dylan McDermott is a post-apocalyptic scavenger scrounging the radioactive wasteland for anything of value. He stumbles across the head of a robot and brings it back to his girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis) in a crumbling cyberpunk city. Jill is an artist, welding bits of metal into avant-garde sculptures, and incorporates the robot head into her latest piece. Unfortunately, the robot isn't dead. In fact it's a deadly new weapons droid capable of repairing itself from whatever's handy. You see where this is going. The robot repairs itself and proceeds to go on a rampage, menacing Jill and brutally murdering her neighbors. Like I said, pretty standard. But it's in Stanley's execution that Hardware comes alive and becomes fiercely original.