Phantom Empire (1935) Review

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(More customer reviews)Face it. No serial has ever become more than an 11 year-old boy's greatest fantasy. From buried treasures, to evil cloaked villains, men on Mars, Emperor Ming on the planet Mongo, or an empire beneath the earth's surface, serials engaged pre-teen boys with endless Saturday afternoon escapist fare.
When viewed today, production standards of most serials are ludicrous. And in general, the actors are just as ridiculous and rather painful to listen to. In short, serials are corny, unbelievable, and very very cheap.
But when I saw Gene Autry's 15-episode Phantom Empire in 1949 every Saturday following my swimming session at the Plainfield New Jersey YMCA while eating an egg salad sandwich that crumbled down my shirt, I was transported into another world that has never left me. The sheer idea of a huge city deep under the earth's surface, the beautiful Queen Tika lording over Murania as her evil counselors wreak havoc among the earthlings, Frankie Darro and his Thunder Riders (pail bucket on their heads and all), and hero Gene Autry singing through it all with his wonderful bouncy Oklahoma cowboy singing style, was a feast for my unformed mind and heart.
Each week for 15 weeks I breathlessly waited for another chapter in the unfolding epic. And when the final (so tragic to me then) episode ended it all, I floated home in a reverie that no amount of play could reproduce.
The only other serials that came close were the Flash Gordon series with Buster Crabbe, FG Conquers the Universe being the best. Others included Don Winslow of the Navy, the Bat Man series (Dr. Daka and his hungy crocodile in the Tunnel of Love), Tom Mix, and Rocket Man. There were so many.
I can't make anyone like these things, especially if you are already grown up and missed the serial excitement back in the pre 1950's days, But if you have a great sense of fun, and a wide imagination that can spare the corn from your skeptical overview, this is the one to start with. Glorious fun.

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Thor (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) (2011) Review

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(More customer reviews)Thor is Marvel's best superhero movie yet. It is even better than the first Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk films. It is also the most visually stunning of any Marvel film, with gorgeous fantasy settings, great costumes, and spectacular special effects.
In the same way as Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight worked just as well as a crime drama as a superhero movie, Thor works just as well as a standalone fantasy film. Even if I had not known that I was watching a comic book movie, I would have been just as happy with the story. In fact, I would say that you don't actually need to be familiar with the characters or the comic mythology to enjoy the film.
The story is set half in Asgard, the realm of the gods, and half in our world, Earth. Thor, the son of the king of Asgard, the wise Odin, is a proud and arrogant king-in-waiting. He makes a foolish mistake that brings his world to the brink of war and his father exiles him to our world as punishment, and maybe to teach him how to be a better man. On Earth, Thor makes some new friends and even begins to fall in love with a pretty scientist. Meanwhile, in Asgard, his brother Loki begins to put into motion a plot that may threaten Thor's home.
Two things about the film really stood out to me. The first is the absolutely beautiful settings and solid world-building in the movie. Asgard looks amazing, with settings such as the Rainbow Bridge, a crystal structure with colored lights running through it, spanning a sea that flows into a massive waterfall, cascading down into the open cosmos. Also, great costuming really makes the gods stand out, and adds to the film's epic feel. The second thing was the character of Loki, the film's antagonist. Watching the trailers, I expected a greasy, honorless villain (someone like Wormtongue from the Lord of the Rings). Instead I got the story of a hero, told in reverse. Loki's story mirrors his brother Thor's, but where Thor starts out as an arrogant royal brat and through his time on Earth comes to realize what it means to be a hero, Loki begins the story as a mischievous but honorable man, and over the course of the film turns into a really bad guy. As Thor rises, he falls. And when his final plan is revealed at the end of the film, it totally fits his personality and everything you know about him. In other superhero films, we're used to seeing the bad guy go on some kind of mindless rampage at the end of the film. We saw it in The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, the Spider Man movies, the Fantastic Four...but not here. Loki acts like a man with a purpose. Actually he has two purposes, both very personal to him. One is to do commit a terrible act of destruction, partly out of self-loathing and partly out of a twisted sense of honor toward his father. And the other is simply to beat his brother, proving himself Thor's equal. He is easily the deepest villain of any of the Marvel films so far.
The film is directed by Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh (Gilderoy Lockhart!), who handles the epic material perfectly. More than any Marvel film so far, this one focuses on the hero's journey. Even more than a comic book movie, this is a fantasy film about a hero. Expect father-son drama, palace intrigue in the realm of the gods, and an epic confrontation between two brothers who have been become very different people over the course of the story. There is also plenty of humor, with a few real laugh-out-loud moments. And there is a very sweet, almost cute romance woven into the story. It carries an innocent, young-love kind of feeling. It also takes the two characters, one a god more concerned with war and glory, the other a scientist more concerned with solving the mysteries of the universe, and brings them down to earth in their budding love for one another.
I would recommend Thor to any lover of fantasy films, as well as any fans of comic book movies such as Marvel's Avengers lineup. It is solid fantasy fun with a strong sense of the epic and the heroic. And when you see Thor finally wield his hammer and summon the lightning, you'll want to stand up and cheer.

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X-Men: First Class (2011) Review

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(More customer reviews)The X-Men films are kind of a huge letdown as a whole, aren't they? The first two are pretty good, but everything good they had going for them was completely destroyed once The Last Stand came to fruition. Thank you, Brett Ratner. And X-Men Origins: Wolverine just drove the franchise even further into the ground; kudos, Gavin Hood. So there probably isn't any reason to get excited over a new X-Men film even if it is a prequel to the X-Men films people actually enjoy. Why would we want to see another comic book movie with limitless potential only to drop the ball yet again? Not only does X-Men: First Class take that ball and run with it but it uses it in all the right ways and reminds you why you loved the X-Men in the first place.
The cast is way better than it has any right to be. Everyone fits their character incredibly well and works fantastically as a cohesive unit. Kevin Bacon seems like a bit of an odd choice for Sebastian Shaw at first, but any doubt you may have is washed away once you finally see him absorb energy. His role as the main villain may be significantly smaller than you may imagine, but his more than qualified acting chops make nearly every scene he's a part of memorable (nothing really tops his first scene with young Magneto though). James McAvoy does an excellent job handling Charles Xavier. He's gentle, kind, and really seems to care about helping his fellow mutants. Michael Fassbender as Magneto manages to have the strongest on-screen presence. He's intense, powerful, and emotional; the best-rounded character of the film.
It was gratifying to see McAvoy and Fassbender make the roles of Professor X and Magneto their own without completely rehashing what Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan established the first time around. That is often a problem when it comes to prequels; these younger actors wind up focusing on mimicking the older version of who they're meant to portray without putting their own spin on it. Luckily, that wasn't an issue here.
No expense was made when it comes to the special effects either; Azazel is a perfect example. By the end of the film, you still won't know anything about the character other than the fact that he can teleport like Nightcrawler and is a master swordsman. His teleporting ability is just as fun to watch as Nightcrawler's was in X2 and his fight sequences (especially the one with a particular blue mutant) are always quite engaging. Most of Magneto's scenes involve some pretty hefty CG and it's pulled off rather well. The metal fillings scene is a personal favorite along with the Argentina bar scene (pay particular attention to the slow building yet unnerving music used during that scene along with the weapon used at the table). Then there's the obvious scene of Magneto reversing the missles that's being shown in nearly every advertisement these days. Beast is probably a high point of the special effects. Nicholas Hoult portrays Hank McCoy rather flawlessly (other than one scene that I won't spoil); brainy, shy, not sure of himself, and ashamed of his mutation. Beast's transformation is one of the best scenes in the film though. It gave me flashes of An American Werewolf in London. It's a shame we didn't get to see more of him as Beast because the one good long scene we see of him is really impressive.
One of the things that make X-Men: First Class so good is that we get to see how these characters grow into the superheroes and super villains that we know and love today. And again, while the film loosely follows the comics it still manages to blossom and mature into something exceptional on its own while also planting the appropriate seeds to line up with the Bryan Singer X-Men films.
So by now you have an idea of how good the film is, but is there anything bad about it? Some characters feel really underdeveloped; Riptide, Darwin, and Angel come to mind, but the biggest disappointment is Havok. There are no connections that he's actually the brother of Cyclops and many will be upset about that. Plus his character doesn't really feel very useful in comparison to both Beast and Banshee who at least put their powers to good use on several occasions throughout the film. Other than a few minor gripes about certain characters, which could surely be rectified in future installments; there really isn't much to complain about with X-Men: First Class.
Do not let other 20th Century Fox comic book related films put you off, X-Men: First Class deserves to be held in the highest regard right next to Marvel's best. The cast is practically overflowing with talent, the storyline is both sharp and absorbing, the special effects are probably the best they've ever been in any X-Men film, and the appropriate connections are made to the best parts of the original films. X-Men: First Class should be the standard for all X-Men films from here on out. It's intelligent, engrossing, and spectacular. It's easily the best X-Men film yet.

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X-Men: First Class is the thrilling, eye-opening chapter you've been waiting for...Witness the beginning of the X-Men Universe. Before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their superhuman powers for the first time, working together in a desperate attempt to stop the Hellfire Club and a global nuclear war.

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