In the early seventies, EYG Hall of Famer Steve Gerber created a character for Marvel named Howard the Duck. Howard the Duck’s comic was irreverent, satirical and existential.

Then, producer George Lucas (also an EYG Hall of Famer) got his hands on the property and turned him into a duck from outer space, and he made one of the worst films of all time. The stench of the movie has stained Howard the Duck and potentially ruined any hope for the character to take his place in the MCU.

Yes, Howard the Duck was in the Guardians of the Galaxy (trapped in the Collector’s collection) and even in the final battle in Avengers: Endgame, but no one could consider the chance of a Howard the Duck solo film or Disney + series. That is because of this film.

It is beyond stupid. No one clearly understood what made this character so special.

Howard the Duck (voiced by Chip Zien) gets pulled from his planet Duckworld, by a scientist Dr. Walter Jennings (Jeffrey Jones) during a test of the Spectroscope, a giant laser beam. Howard winds up in Cleveland where he meets musician Beverly Switzler (Lea Thompson) and they bond. Unfortunately, further experiments brought an evil Dark Overlord of the Universe to possess the body of Jennings, sending him on a mission to bring the rest of the Dark Overlords to earth.

Howard the Duck was turned into an action/adventure, campy 80s movie with some of the worst dialogue put to film. Fresh off his iconic role from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Jones was over-the-top as the Dark Overlord-in-Jennings’ body . Tim Robbins was here too playing Phil, a lab tech guy. Lea Thompson is nothing but a screeching damsel in distress, the police were total idiots, and we saw Howard’s little condom in his wallet.

Of course, the effects are terrible and Howard, himself, looks horrendous. The character is written improperly and is nothing more than a silly duck jokes and sexual innuendo.

There is a fun song at the end of the movie.

There are plenty of moments in the film that are so stupid that you can laugh at them. Not the comedic parts, mind you, but the parts that are meant to be exciting and fun. It is such a disappointment when compared to the comic book. The acting is terrible and the writing is juvenile. There is a remarkably racist scene at a restaurant that totally uses every negative stereotype from the 1980s and played for comedy.

It is a joke of a movie.

Next weekend, Warner Brothers will release a new movie version of the classic video game Mortal Kombat, which reboots the series from a movie from 1995 that is considered a fun film by some. I had never seen the film before and I thought it might be a good idea to watch before the new movie next week. In retrospect, I sure hope that next week’s new film is better than this.

Bringing all of the main characters from the video game, Mortal Kombat sets up a mystical tournament that is meant to save the world. That is about it for a plot.

We had Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby), Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson), Liu Kang (Robin Shou) join Lord Raiden (Christopher Lambert) into the battle. The sorcerer Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) was here too on the villainous side.

There is such a bunch of crap here. The dialogue is laughable. The special effects are terrible, even for 1995. The characters are cardboard. There is no basic plot. The action was okay.

Shang Tsung is the mustache-twirling villain with nothing much more than that. Sub-Zero and Scorpion are here, but are way under represented. Goro is ridiculous looking.

I could understand someone liking this if you are hoping for something really stupid just to watch. Really stupid is exactly what this is. Can it be fun? Maybe. I still hope next week’s film is deeper.

I have a hot take on Ghostbusters 2. I thought it before I rewatched today, and the viewing of said movie did not to replace those thoughts in my head.

Ghostbusters 2 is a good movie.

Moreso, the reason that it received as much disappointment and potential vitriol as it did was that it was following the original Ghostbusters, which is a damn near perfect film.

So, while Ghostbusters 2 did not live up to the level of awesomeness that was the original Ghostbusters, it was never going to be able to do so and we, as an audience, approached it with terribly high and practically unreachable expectations for the sequel.

Yes, there were some repeated beats in the follow up film, but most sequels have bits that are repetitive. It is the nature of continuing a successful franchise. Sure, some of the humor did not hit as well as the first film, but that does not mean that there are not funny lines and humorous lines. Just with the returning cast alone, Ghostbusters 2 has an advantage. Bill Murray is just as charming as he is in the first film and his relationship with Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) was completely less stalkery.

I would go as far as to say that had this been the first film and the original became the sequel, people would look upon this with more love in their hearts.

Peter MacNicol is a great addition as the possessed henchman Dr. Janosz Poha of the ultimate bad guy, Vigo (Wilhelm Von Homburg). Yes, Vigo was fairly underwhelming, but MacNicol made up for the lack of Vigo with his own craziness. And the real villain of the piece was the mood slime, which was a cool gimmick.

“Your love keeps lifting me higher….”

With Godzilla vs. Kong opening worldwide this weekend and stomping into theaters and onto HBO Max this coming Wednesday, it was time to take a look at the past of the creatures. I had recently watched Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla so I thought that it was time to revisit King Kong. It had been decades since I had seen the original 1933 version so I decided to watch that over the 1976 or 2005 versions.

Of course, the fact that this is 1933 has to be taken into consideration with the movie. There is no fair way to compare the special effects, done here with stop motion animation, to anything more recent. I can only imagine what the people of 1933 thought of what they were seeing.

The classic story appears here of a film crew heading to Skull Island in an attempt to catch the images of the mighty myth Kong, only to have the lead actress Ann Darrow(Fay Wray) kidnapped by the island natives and given to Kong for a bride. The massive Kong is taken by Ann and fights off the monsters of Skull Island that want her for dinner. When she is rescued by John Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), Kong chases them back to their ship, where the giant gorilla is felled by bombs. Making an extremely greedy choice, film director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) decides to return to the States with the captured Kong to create a stage show with him. When Kong escapes on opening night, he grabs Ann and climbs to the top of the Empire State Building.

The scene at the end of the movie is as iconic of a scene as you are going to find in a monster movie. In more recent films, in an attempt to make Kong the hero of his films, the Ann role has connected with Kong more, seeing that the giant gorilla is very gentle and kind-hearted when comes to the blonde actress. There is none of that here as Fay Wray spends most of the second half of the movie screaming her lungs out. It is very understandable and males a lot of sense. Again, King Kong is the monster here, where as in more recent films, he plays like the misunderstood hero. The tragedy of the ending is less so here as he falls to his death from the Empire State Building.

I was surprised how violent the film is as we see several crew members being devoured by the dinosaurs on the way to Kong and we see Kong chewing up villagers as well. Kong dropped one woman from out of a building that he had thought was Ann as she fell to her death. Kong dumped a makeshift bridge of people to their deaths as well back on Skull Island. I guess I did not expect a 1933 movie to show as much carnage as this did.

Some of the parts of the film are dated (such as the depiction of the island natives), but the film is timeless and the story is iconic. King Kong is the first of the cavalcade of films for Kong and Godzilla and I am excited to see the pair of them come to blows next week.

Back in 2015, the consensus of thought was that Mad Max: Fury Road was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Everybody loved the movie and claimed it was the most epic of all films. Then, there was me. When I saw the movie, I thought it was fine, had some cool practical stunts and was good enough. However, it was anything but a rave review for me. If memory serves me, it fell into the 20s range on the Best of 2015 movies list. I still liked it, just not as much as everybody else.

The last few months I have wanted to revisit the movie to see if it was better than I remembered. With an open evening and HBO Max, I decided tonight was a perfect opportunity to see how 2021 Doc felt about the fourth Mad Max film of the franchise.

I do believe that I enjoyed this more than I did back then, but I can still see the issues that I had with the film at the time.

One of the issues was not the stunt work. The action and the designs of this is utterly brilliant. Director George Miller created most of the stunts with practical effects and they are breath-taking, better than I remember. I was quite juiced up with these action scenes as the movie continued. Putting this much into action sequences shows the dedication to this project from Miller and everyone involved.

Though Tom Hardy does a fine job in taking over the role of Mad Max from Mel Gibson, the obvious star of this movie was Charlize Theron as Furiosa. She was utterly amazing in this role and set herself up as a huge action star from this point on.

One of the issue I did have back in 2015 that has not changed is that the story is fairly thin. The characters try to escape, head out, get chased, get away, and then goes back and gets chased. That might be too much of a simplification of the plot, but there is a lot of pieces that did not mean as much to me.

The look of the movie is just amazing. These characters are weird and designed beautifully. Some of the other characters are a little under developed, though I did enjoy the use of Nicholas Hoult as Nux.

So I think I liked Mad Max: Fury Road more this time around than I did in 2015, but I would stop short of claiming it as the best movie of that year. Definitely a great movie.

My memory of Footloose from the 1980s was that I loved the movie and that it was a load of fun, full of dancing and music. I was about halfway through the film this morning and I was surprised to find that it was not how I remembered. It still had its music and dancing, but there was not a lot more beisdes.

Beaumont is little town where the fiery town preacher (John Lithgow), whose son had died years before in an auto accident, had led the town in abolishing dancing and other perceived debaucheries. The arrival of newcomer Ren McCormick (Kevin Bacon) shook up the status quo and energized the senior class.

Footloose was a series of music videos connected by some surface level teenage melodrama and the cheese that goes with it. It is amazing how many of these kids were unbelievable dancers, especially since they have not been allowed to dance for five years. I guess that is just the power of Kenny Loggins.

Yes, Kenny Loggins’ theme song is catchy, but it is used three times in the film. There are some other good songs here, including Bonnie Tyler’s anthem, Holding Out for a Hero and the Denice Williams’ Let’s Hear it for the Boy.

However, the film does not age well. There are several scenes where we see moments that might have been okay in the 1980s but have not been acceptable since. Several scenes are left dangling and really never properly addressed. One in particular, where Ariel (Lori Singer), the daughter of Rev. Moore, breaks up with her boyfriend and he beats her up. There was no consequence of that scene and there was no effect of it either.

Kevin Bacon puts himself on the map here, helping kick off a career where he becomes a party game (Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon). He is fine here and he moves well.

There is a story arc involving the death of Rev. Moore’s son and how Ariel is responding to that memory, but it goes away without any real significance because they can now dance. There are two scenes that showed how downright careless Ariel is with her life and this is just cured with dancing.

Montages tied together with teen drama. I was quite surprised when I found myself not as impressed as I was when I was younger.

Short Circuit was one of my favorite movies when I was younger. I would have been in high school when it came out and I loved the tale of No. 5 and how he came to life. So I was excited to rent the film on Vudu today.

Sadly, I found the movie less than entertaining this time.

Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) worked for Nova creating weapons in the form of robots. One day, robot Number 5 (Tim Blaney) was struck by lightning and was suddenly alive. He escaped the facility and met up with Stephanie (Ally Sheedy), a lady who he befriended and helped avoid the army and the Nova forces.

The beginning of Short Circuit was surprisingly disappointing. The set up and the characters were uninspiring and seemed more like something that should be for a 10 year old. Steve Guttenberg is likable, but hardly a standout actors and Fisher Stevens’s Ben Jabituya was an Indian stereotype that bordered on racist.

The story was basically a lesser version of E.T. the Extra Terrestrial with a robot and Ally Sheedy playing Eliot.

However, the only reason this film worked at all was the charisma of the robot Number 5. He was cute and had some definite moments of humor. The end of the movie was decent. I remember being emotional when I first saw the movie despite the obvious set up for what Number 5 was going to do.

Sgt. Rizzo from MASH (also Captain Harris from Police Academy), G.W. Bailey played security leader Skroeder, a one note villain who was just out to destroy Number 5 because that is what he was supposed to do.

I did not hate the second half of this movie, but getting there was painful and made me wonder why I loved this so much as a kid (not to mention, I wasn’t that much of a kid even. I was in high school). Short Circuit was nowhere near what I remembered.

Show the kids. That is the level this might be good for.

As a huge Spider-Man fan, I generally come out of these films with a rosy-colored vision of what I just saw. I had strong positive feelings about Spider-Man 3 when I first saw it, but with subsequent viewings, the truth came forth. It is not a good movie.

Thing is Spider-Man 3 does have some positives to it. It is not as God awful as some have made it out to be. Yes, the negatives overwhelm what is good here, but there are some examples.

Specifically, the action scenes are inventive and strong, with CGI that is still decent, especially those effects dealing with the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church). The final battle in the third act was emotional and filled with dramatic images.

I think all three villains involved here were done well. Not only Sandman, but Eddie Brock aka Venom (Topher Grace) and Harry Osborn aka New Goblin (James Franco). However, there really was not enough room for all three in this film. I could only imagine that Venom alone would have been enough for the film. Or maybe they could have still used New Goblin as they did to set up his redemption for his past mistakes while focusing on Venom more.

The inclusion of Sandman, while visually impressive, was narratively weak. I did not like tying Sandman to the death of Uncle Ben and that whole plot felt tacked on and did not deliver the emotional wallop that it could have. The Sandman was a wildly inconsistent character as well. He went from criminal just trying to steal money to help his daughter to murderous, rampaging monster out for blood to empathic anti-hero sorry for his involvement in Ben’s death. Anything positive from before went out the window when Sandman joined up with Venom to kill Spider-Man. It made no sense in the thematic tale they had been telling.

And, of course, one of the worst scenes in all of comic book movies was dancing Peter, over taken by the anger of the black suit, takes Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) out to a jazz club to rub it in the nose of Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), who had just broken up with Peter. The piano playing, dancing Peter Parker was just such a weird choice that it devastated the reasonably powerful ending of the scene where Peter realizes that he had lost control of himself because of the black suit.

The relationship between Peter and Mary Jane, which was a strength in the first two Spider-Man movies, was a total flop here. Neither of them were honest with each other. They were both selfish and needlessly jealous. There was no sign of the love that we had gotten from before. It was an annoying addition to the plot and, of course, MJ turned into nothing more than a damsel in distress and someone to be kidnapped by the villains.

J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) was wasted, used strictly now for a few stray laughs. James Cromwell played Captain Stacy, Gwen’s father and police chief, but I had honestly forgotten he was in this movie since Captain Stacy does nothing in this movie. I am not sure if he was being set up for a further role in the potential future of the series, but this could have been played by anyone.

While I have seen worse Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man 3 was a huge step down from one of the best Spider-Man movies ever, Spider-Man 2. Sam Raimi’s direction did not feel as tight as it had been in the previous two films and One could only wonder if the film was supposed to feature all of the characters that it did.

Hopefully, Sam Raimi will have more success dealing with a large cast in next summer’s Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

Spider-Man 3 was a financial success, but has found its place among the weaker of the Spider-Man flicks. What gems here are clouded by too much excess and unneeded garbage.

I was flipping around the streaming services looking for something to watch when I headed to Amazon Prime. On the banner above Prime was Honest Thief. I was shocked. I was just as surprised seeing this listed as a 2020 film, released in October. I remember seeing it on Cinemark’s attraction page thinking that it was not the kind of film I would risk going to the theater to see. However, even better, it was now available for free on Prime. That price was right.

I have enjoyed Liam Neeson’s work historically. Most of his “Taken”-esques films are usually dumb but entertaining so I loaded up Prime and watched the movie.

Liam Neeson played Tom, a thief the FBI have dubbed “The In and Out Bandit” because of his ability to get into a bank without trouble. He had been extremely successful. Then, as he was renting a storage unit to keep the money he had stolen, he met Annie (Kate Walsh) and he was immediately stricken. After a year of dating, Tom was ready to move in with her and confess to her his secret life.

However, fate intervened and so Tom called the FBI. Agent Baker (Robert Patrick) took the call, apparently not the first In and Out Bandit confession he had heard. Baker’s partner, Agent Meyers (Jeffrey Donovan), sent another pair of FBI agents to go check on the story.

When the new pair, Agent Nivens (Jai Courtney) and Agent Hall (Anthony Ramos) arrived, they realized the opportunity that they had before them. Namely, have Tom tell them where the money was, take it, and frame him for a murder.

Of course, these type of Liam Neeson as a lone vigilante movies are all fairly repetitive, but they all scratch that revenge flick itch. Honest Thief is one of the better ones. I really liked the relationship with Tom and Annie and Tom with his typical bad ass manner was fun.

The movie is nicely paced and at a 1 hour and 39 minute run time, this is a investment that does not ask much of the viewer. I enjoyed the quickness of the story and the realistic action scenes.

I enjoyed these characters. I thought the little character trait for Agent Meyers about his dog that he got in his divorce was a neat bit.

Yes, there is nothing really new about this but I liked what I watched. It was a fun time and a good way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon.

With the immanent release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League (aka the Snyder Cut) next week on HBO Max and the recent success and enjoyment I have had watching Superman and Lois on the CW, I figured that this was a perfect time to revisit the DC movie, Man of Steel, Zack Snyder’s first and, arguably, best DC film to date.

I had some major issues with Man of Steel when I first saw it in the theaters, but it is definitely better than Batman v. Superman or The Justice League. I had been meaning to give it a rewatch over the last few months, but this was the best time.

The film reimagines the origin of Superman (Henry Cavill), bringing a more grounded and dark/moody tone to the character. Produced by Christopher Nolan, DC was anxious to give Superman the same big screen treatment as they gave Batman in the Dark Knight series of films. Man of Steel is one of the first true divisive films with some calling it a mess and others deeming it a masterpiece.

Even after the rewatch, I fall in-between of these extremes. There are several moments of wonder in the movie and it provides some of the best Superman action around. I still do not believe though that the film ever really got the character of Superman correct, choosing for more of an angsty Batman-like character.

Some of the real positives of the film include the initial “learn to fly” moment where Kal-El begins to learn what he is capable of and takes to the skies for the first time. This is as hopeful of a moment as the film has and really should have been the tone overall of the movie.

Henry Cavill does a fine job as Superman, albeit that he may not be as deep of an actor as there is, he is the perfect physical specimen for the role. The look of the film is wonderful, with some amazing special effects and the Superman suit itself in all its glory.

Amy Adams playing Lois Lane smart and figuring out who Superman really was almost immediately is a great adjustment to decades worth of stories where we, as readers, have to believe that an award-worthy reporter cannot figure out that Clark Kent is Superman just because he put on a pair of glasses and combs his hair differently. We start out with a smart and capable journalist in Lois Lane.

Michael Shannon created a great villain in Zod and the moments on Krypton were some of the best of the movie. General Zod had a motivation that could be understood and related to despite his path taking him on a way of cruelty. Shannon is always good in his roles and this is one more example.

Unfortunately, I still think the drawbacks to the movie outweigh the positives. First massive mistake this movie makes is the entire Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner) in the tornado scene. Exactly who thought this was a good idea? It is totally free of sense and was an insult to the character. I can understand having Clark watch his father die. It is an important moment in his development, showing Clark that he does not have the power to save everybody, but he did have the power to save his father here and he just chose not to. It is an entirely different message and it just does not work at all.

Second big error is the relationship between Clark and Lois. I never believed it in this movie. It felt very forced and I had a hard time buying that they were as connected as they turned out to be. Sure, we all know that Superman and Lois Lane are an iconic couple, but this does not show that. Then, Amy Adams, the smart and capable reporter, does become nothing more than a damsel in distress in the second part of the film.

The biggest issue I had in the theaters is still the biggest issue I have with the film is the final act battle between Zod and Superman. It went too long, creating a sort of fight fatigue (much like the Obi-Wan-Anakin fight in Revenge of the Sith) and the film never had Superman do anything but crash through buildings and destroy property. I maintain that all it would have taken to create more empathy for Superman was show him saving some bystanders during the fight instead of leaving what had to be thousands of people to die. A couple of scenes where Superman has to pull someone to safety before they are crushed by falling debris would have helped this tremendously. He does it earlier in the film, so why not here where it was desperately needed?

When I speak of the third act problems, I am not actually speaking about Superman breaking Zod’s neck. I did not have an issue with that, outside of the fact that I think there were multiple ways he could have stopped Zod from using his heat vision to kill that family rather than breaking his neck. I also had a hard time thinking that this random family was important for Superman to break Zod’s neck because we hadn’t seen Superman save anyone else in the battle.

In the end, my thoughts on Man of Steel remain the same as they did back in 2013. It has some parts that I really liked, but too many areas where the creators just did not grasp the understanding of their main hero. A film more interested in its excesses than in its heart. A watchable movie, but not a classic and, when people say it is the best Superman movie since 1978 Superman: The Movie, well, that is not a bar too high set.

Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, died just a few weeks ago. I remember following his “career” when I was in high school. I was always fascinated by the eccentric behavior displayed by the publisher.

With his death, I decided to revisit the biopic from 1996, The People vs. Larry Flynt starring Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love and Edward Norton.

This role was one of the earliest efforts of Woody Harrelson to break away from the Cheers sitcom world. Coming off the Natural Born Killers, this movie placed Harrelson into a new stratosphere of his career. Harrelson was nominated for his first Academy Award for this biopic.

The controversial publisher’s life is examined in this biopic, focusing on his rise to the top of the nudie magazine world and his constant court battles against those looking to bring him down. It is odd to buy, but Larry Flynt was always a proponent of the First Amendment of the Constitution. Wrapping himself in the Constitution, Flynt acted the fool to bring the contempt for his opposition.

Not only is Harrelson tremendous, so was Courtney Love. Courtney Love, playing Flynt’s wife Althea, transformed herself from stripper to eventual victim of AIDS. Althea and Flynt had a complicated relationship but the film does a great job of presenting how much they loved each other. The chemistry between Harrelson and Love was obvious every second they shared the screen.

It was weird to see James Carville, well known Democratic political strategist, appearing as the prosecutor Simon Leis who worked on Flynt’s first trial. Looking at his list of credits on IMDB, he has spent the most of his acting career playing James Carville (he was also in the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford).

The People vs. Larry Flynt was an impressive biopic and truly does have something to say.

RIP Larry.