American Splendor

American Splendor, the comic, was based on the life and experiences of Harvey Pekar, a lonely curmudgeon from Cleveland. American Splendor, the movie, is a biopic of sorts about Harvey Pekar and the American Splendor comics, starring Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar. The actual real-life Harvey Pekar also appears in the movie, narrating parts of the story and commenting on the film itself. On paper, it sounds like it shouldn't work but it does. It's a charming comedic drama that occasionally breaks the fourth wall with documentary-style moments featuring the real people being depicted in the film. Paul Giamatti, in an early leading role, gives a memorable performance.

Rating: 80%

(Image from Wikipedia)

A Christmas Quacker

It's Christmastime in Transylvania. As the residents of Castle Duckula wait for the arrival of Santa Claus, their adversaries draw ever closer. The Crow Brothers, a quartet of dimwitted thieves, are once again attempting to scale the castle walls. While Dr. Von Goosewing, the bumbling vampire hunter, stumbles through the castle eager to use his latest invention against Count Duckula. The Count needn't worry though, his enemies (much like his staff) are not very good at what they do. "A Christmas Quacker" starts and ends very Christmas oriented, but there's a chunk in the middle where Duckula gets lost in a pulpy comic book. It's a bit disjointed, much like the series in general.

Rating: Books%

Santa Jaws

This past October, I went searching through Amazon Prime Video for Bruno Mattei's notorious Jaws rip-off Cruel Jaws. It wasn't available at the time but, in my efforts to find that movie, I discovered the streaming service had a movie called Santa Jaws in its library. Which I ended up watching based, almost exclusively, on the teaser image. Knowing full well that Santa Jaws couldn't possibly be very good, I went in with low expectations. It ended up being even worse than I thought it could be. In the movie, a teen receives a magical pen that brings his comic book creation, a killer shark named Santa Jaws, to life. Santa Jaws then begins picking off the teen's family and friends one by one. Does the magical pen hold the key to defeating Santa Jaws or has it all just been a nightmare? I'm not even sure the filmmakers could tell you because the ending seems to play it both ways.

Rating: 41%

(Image from Amazon)

Creepshow 2

Creepshow 1, or as it's usually called, Creepshow, is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's shot in a way that mimics the old EC Comics style, and combines the talents George Romero and Stephen King like some kind of horror movie Voltron. This one is just kind of lame. Romero and King return, but instead of acting as director and writer, they return as scripter and inspiration, respectively. I like the last segment in this, "The Hitchhiker," but only a little bit.

RATING: 44%

She-Hulk's Sexual Attractiveness

She sports a superiorly toned body complete with a flawless pair of chichis. Her long hair sweeps around her gorgeous face. Definitely pretty enough to look past green skin.


But really I think what may turn a lot of fellas off is sheer intimidation as she could hurl you through a wall and is so smart and successful and probably not the type of lady to let a little flirting with your co-workers slide.

Rating: 77%

Kick-Ass

I find it hilarious that they can put out a movie with the word "ass" in the title. That said, I'm not sure who Kick-Ass was made for. Fanboys are a notoriously fickle bunch and internet hype rarely results in box office success. And with an R rating there was no way that Kick-Ass was going to make the kind of money that comic book movies like The Dark Knight or Iron Man have made. It's also hard to ignore that, despite a running time of nearly two hours, the movie feels rushed, constantly glossing over characters and plot points. Not even the violence, which seems to be the major selling point here, is enough to fully redeem this film.

Rating: 73%

(Image from iwatchstuff.com)

Perry Bible Fellowship

Perry Bible Fellowship is a online comic strip which has little, if anything, to do with the Bible. The comic can more or less be explained as like, the Far Side on acid, man. Using a variety of subject matter and artistic styles, Nicholas Gurewitch (the author/artist) has created a uniquely morbid and subversive comic. Though no longer actively updated, two collections have been published and an extensive archive of the comics remains available online.

Rating: Not Always Safe For Work%

(Image from warren-peace.blogspot.com)

Blade II

Blade II is the story of a vampire-hating half-vampire named Blade, who spends most of his time mercilessly killing any vampire he can find. Basically Blade is a super badass type who has all the powers of vampires except he can actually go out in the sun and eat pizza with garlic sauce. Anyway, in this movie the vampires ask Blade for help because there is a new, more evil breed of vampires out there with SIDEWAYS MOUTHS! Yikes! It sounds dumb and is dumb, but it's also a lot of fun and the action scenes are pretty good, so I think this goes in the top half of Marvel comic movie adaptations.

RATING: 66%

Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison is a comic book author and is responsible for Batman: RIP, The Filth, the metafiction-palooza of Animal Man, The Invisibles, Xorn/Magneto blowing up New York, and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. He's sort of like Alan Moore, only not.

Strengths: Wildly imaginative, densely intellectual, fetishy, and really really occult. He claims that the character King Mob in The Invisibles was a sigil, a magical symbol that manifests spells, and that the things that happened to the character would happen to him shortly afterward.

Major Weakness: He's crazy, and his stories are often disjointed, nonsensical, and rife with semi-important plot points happening off-panel that are explained in asides afterward.

Rating: Who put this treacle in my hat that's actually a microcosm of our own universe?% (73%)

Image courtesy of Galleycat on Media Bistro

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

A fine homage to Tolkien and Rowling, but not without its problems. Bad dialogue and bad acting, but great action scenes, great sets, great costumes, great effects, great monsters, a gynormous (heh heh) Venus of Willendorf, and poetry by Tennyson (don't worry, Glenn, he's dead). It's also nice to see Ron "Hatchet Face" Perlman getting steady work. Overall, it's no Pan's Labyrinth, but I'll probably still watch it like 10 more times. Alternate ending here.

RATING: 80%

(Image from moviesblog.mtv.com. I do love me some Mignola.)

Collections

A collection is a group of things that you might get over time by either buying, stealing, or holding on to (mostly) useless things. Collections can be cool, like my collection of miniature Star Trek ships or comics, or they can be kind of sad, like my collection of state quarters or bottle caps. A collection may also be used to judge a person's character, like if a dude has a collection of comic books he is probably a pretty cool dude, but if he has a collection of Nazi memorabilia then he is probably a Nazi or murderer or both. In conclusion, I also have a collection of rejection letters, a collection of Dia De Los Muertos figures, and a hefty collection of reviews on this very website that nobody reads.

RATING: 80%

DuckTales

Basically, Donald Duck decides to join the Navy and leaves his nephews; Huey, Dewey and Louie, in the care of Scrooge McDuck (#2 on Fortune's Top 15 Fictional Characters of 2008). Basically the Beagle Boys (as in the dog breed) run around and try to scheme new ways to rob Scrooge of his money, while Magica DeSpell just tries to take Scrooge's "Number One Dime" (as in a $.10 piece of currency). Throw in Gyro and Launchpad with some other fools and you've got a pretty lame ass show that I used to love as a kid. I do give strong points for the theme song. However, I just found out the show was intended to be an allegory about the fall of communism. That doesn't make it any better, but remember, kids, Disney was right and the Russians lost. Rumor is he was a huge supporter of Reagan and supply side economics, and that's all hearsay, but I don't doubt it.

RATING: 41%

Wilhelmina Murray

As anyone who read the 20 bajillion comments I left on Glenn's recent post can probably guess, I'm totally in love with Alan Moore's Wilhelmina Murray. I think she's an even better study of the kind of radically feminine strength that Moore tries to showcase in Promethea, precisely because she's physically and emotionally vulnerable and can't just turn bullets into moths or teleport into other dimensions.

I believe that if we succeed at getting homo sapiens settled down and happy in the 21st Century without wiping ourselves off the map, it'll probably be because we come to better recognize in ourselves exactly the kind of qualities Moore has embodied in this character. Especially soul.

RATING: 98%--"She'd be cuter if she was a redhead," said the man-ape.

(Image from farm4.static.flickr.com.)