2025 - SUPERMAN, latest version on the big screen

Yes it's entertaining, it has action and humor.  It's a little on the long side but not excessively so.  Superman turns out to be a good summer movie event.

The film was carefully cast.  David Corenswet is very good as Superman, he manages to instill the modesty in the character and is not some saccharine goody two shoes.  Rachel Brosnahan is a feisty Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult is the hiss able villain Lex Luthor.  This version of Superman adds Krypto the Superdog a character I had remembered from the conics.  Fortunately they didn't push their luck on this super pet stuff so we weren't inflicted with Streaky the Supercat.

The writer/director James Gunn is obviously an aficionado of this superhero stuff as he has proved with his Guardians of the Galaxy series for Marvel.  But Gunn is smart enough to know that you can't take this material very seriously he loads the film up with plenty of humor. 

If I had any issue with the film it would be that the plot is a very busy one with civil wars, a kaiju monster, an inter dimensional prison and the addition of lots of other superheros that probably most people have never heard of.  In this film we are expected to know who Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Metamorpho and Mister Terrific are.  It sometimes seems like you can't tell the players without a program.

There has been some criticism that this film has some kind of left wing agenda.  Maybe yes, maybe no.  I suppose it's what you read into it based on what your politics are.  But if you want to waste your time worrying about the politics of a film that has a guy flying around in his underwear, be my guest.

Written by James Gunn, the running time is 129 minutes.

2014 - THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, I think I've heard this same old song before

Doesn't anyone remember Star Wars Episode 4 anymore?  Guardians of the Galaxy borrows a lot from that film.  The green woman is a stand in for Princess Lea, Star Lord is Han Solo, the tree creature is Chewbacca and there's a couple of bad guys who are clearly modeled after Darth Vader and The Emperor.

A lot of drivel was written on the Internet about how this was Marvel Studio's phase 3 in their story arch series, but this film sure looks a lot like phases 1 and 2 to me.  There is an elaborate story arc connection with regard to some magic stones or something that has been in the works and referenced in the last several Marvel movies.  However I skipped the last Thor movie because I just didn't care so I don't know if the power stones were mentioned in that film or not.

This was the film that supposedly was to be loaded up with humor.  What passes for humor in the Marvel Universe is a talking racoon and listening to music mix cassette tapes from the 1970's.  Chris Pratt appears to have been hired to carry the comedic load and I guess he does about as well as can be expected with the script and story.  Speaking of the script the co-writer and director James Gunn plays it very safe in this film.  There is none of the subversive and sick humor that permeated his bizarre film Super.  I'm sure the studio wasn't about to go down any road that made fun of religious fanaticism. 

Come to think of it Guardians of the Galaxy also borrows from another classic film, The Dirty Dozen.  Assemble a team of people who barely get along with each other and have them work together to fight the evil Nazis Kree.  This is a very derivative film.

The audience I saw this film with loved it and this film made a lot of money.

122 minutes.

2010 - SUPER, very bizarre super hero film.

The writer/director James Gunn's take on vigilante violence. An ordinary citizen decides to be a masked super hero in order to fight crime, this a very strange film.  Gunn mixes comedy, drama, violence and satire.  Gunn takes a lot of shots at Christians and has a Christian hero, in this case a short order cook who becoming a masked super hero called "The Crimson Bolt" whose ex addict wife becomes mixed up with a drug dealer.

This film kind of walks the same path as Kick Ass except the female sidekick in this film isn't a potty mouthed little girl but a half crazy comic book store employee who can't separate reality from comic book fiction.

It's hard to know what to make of this film when it shifts into a very serious tone towards the end of the film.  Gunn appears to trying to make some statement about real violence vs fictional media violence and the individual's inability to separate the two. 

However since this is a film, the storytelling gods must be served and good trumps evil in the end.  In reality this story would end in a tragic mess for everyone involved.  Unfortunately James Gunn didn't have the courage to go there.

96 minutes.