Nathan's Movie Reviews

 Love Everlasting   (2021) Written by Tom King Drawn by Elsa Charretier      The first in my ongoing Tom King reappraisal is one of his most recent series. I wanted to pick this, because a lot of my previous disdain had to do with King's reinventions and reinterpretations of superheroes. So what did I think of the first independent thing I'd read from him and my first review in this series? It is... ok. The concept is really great. A woman is forced to fall in love with new people in new time periods/scenarios only for the romances to fall apart tragically and a mysterious person to kill the woman and reset the loop. The time periods and scenarios are all sends up of classic romance comics tropes which is done really well. The artwork by Charretier is very classic looking, almost Darwyn Cooke-esque. The biggest problem for me is that despite the great premise and artwork, overall the book just wasn't that fun to read. The repetitive cycle establishes the un...

  Tom King      I read a lot of comics and have a lot of favorite writers and artists. I even have some creators that I don't care for. Without a doubt one of the more recent examples is Tom King. He started writing independent series at Vertigo like Sheriff of Babylon, but he really exploded onto the scene after writing the 12 issue maxi series Vision at Marvel. From there he went to DC to work on Batman, and lesser known characters like Mister Miracle and Adam Strange.      My familiarity with Tom's work was down to hearing about how awful his Batman run was. I have not read any of the 85 issues he wrote for the character, but I think that he had some interesting ideas for the character that ultimately fell apart in execution. Something that I would could say the same thing for his 12 issues on Mister Miracle, which I have read all of. There are a lot of great character ideas and storytelling devices in that series to explore the troubled trauma of M...

 Mildred Pierce (1945)         Generally Approved for Audiences    1 hr. 51 min             Directed by: Michael Curtiz Starring: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden & Ann Blyth      I can't believe that I haven't reviewed a film noir flick yet, since I am a big fan of the genre, but here we are. For the uninitiated, film noir is a genre of crime pictures that existed from the 40s to the late 50s. Most often they are typified and parodied as those movies with are hard drinking private eyes narrate every single thing and are dealing with a treacherous dame, with hard hitting jazz music drowning out everything. This idea is so firm in the public consciousness, despite the fact most classic noirs exist in stark contrast to this. The perfect example of this is Mildred Pierce. If you are looking for private eyes, cliched characters and jazz music then I'm afraid that you'll walk away disappoi...

  Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) Rated PG-13                 2hr 34min Directed by James Mangold Starring: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridger and Mads Mikkelsen                         I had the absolute privilege of seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen last month. It's always been a favorite movie of mine ever since the first time I saw it when I was 13 years old and home sick. The movie was unlike anything I'd ever seen and instantly made me forget being sick, and I was reminded of all this when watching Raiders again. I hadn't seen it in almost a decade and I had forgotten just how good it was. The script, characters, action, cinematography and direction were all perfect, but those were all just window dressing. The real joy was the kind of magic and pure entertainment that the film had.              I bring all o...

  Twin Peaks (2017) Directed by David Lynch     I'm going to be honest here, I'm not actually sure what to say. David Lynch's work is very personal and hard for me to explain in words just what I like about it so much, and Twin Peaks 2017 might be the hardest. Still I am going to do my best. Twin Peaks is an 18 episode continuation and conclusion to most (if not all) of the major plot points of the Twin Peaks universe.  This is basically an 18 hour long movie broken up into hour long episodes and just like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, I feel like even the most ardent Peaks fan needs to know some things from going in to the new show. First, while this is a continuation of the original show, thew tone is very different and the world is different too. 25 years has passed in our world between the two series (the original 90s one and 2017) and it has for the people of Twin Peaks too. The characters have changed (some predictably and others very unexpectedly) and the wo...

  Strangehaven (1995-Present) Written and Drawn by Gary Spencer Milidge     This series is something else. As much as I enjoy my superhero comics or "capeshit" as my superhero burned out brother calls it, every now and then I do need a break. Sometimes that's a break to movies or video games or even independent comics. So when I finished watching through all of Twin Peaks (the original series, Fire Walk with Me and Twin Peaks the Return) I was left with the emptiness of having no more Twin Peaks to watch and went to my bookshelves to try and fill the void. I stumbled on three volumes of Strangehaven that I had purchased because one of my favorite youtubers had introduced me to in a video (that I will link to below). The plot of this series is that a man named Alex Hunter crashes his car and is taken to the village of Strangehaven where he meets strange and quirky characters and finds himself discovering the town's secrets, but that's where the Twin Peaks compariso...

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) Rated R    2hr 14min Directed by David Lynch Starring: Sheryl Lee, and Ray Wise     Welcome back to my mini Twin Peaks binge where I try to collect all of the many thoughts about the insanity and fantastic(ness?) that is the world of Twin Peaks. I have already covered the original series, so the next stop is the prequel, sorta sequel movie that is Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Oh boy, does this film come with a million asterisks before you even watch it. First of all, if you were watching the original series and mad at the cliffhanger and wanted this movie to resolve everything, then be prepared for disappointment. If you were thinking that since this movie is a prequel and that you can use this to get into the world before watching the series, you are wrong. Because this movie would spoil the whole mystery of who killed Laura Palmer, which would drastically impact a newcomers enjoyment of the show I feel. If you are a fan of the...

  The Invaders # 1-12 (2019) Written by Chip Zdarsky Drawn by Carlos Magno & Butch Guice        I have never really cared about the Invaders, although I do respect and understand their place in the larger Marvel Universe. To give some context, The Invaders were Marvel’s first superhero team existing in the Golden Age of comics, and being made up of the superheroes Marvel’s predecessor Timely Comics had at that time.(Although being retconned into existence in the late 60s)The team consists of Captain America, his sidekick Bucky (eventually the Winter Soldier), Namor (one of the first mutants and the King of Atlantis), Jim Hammond (the original Human Torch who is an android and not the Johnny Storm Fantastic Four version), and his sidekick Toro (also an android) as well as a host of other characters including Spitfire and Union Jack. The basic premise of the story is that Namor has killed Americans on US soil and is acting like more of a jerk (than usual ...

  Batman 3-D (1990) Written and Drawn by John Byrne        The 1990’s was a distressing time for comics. The rise of the young Image artists with their aggressively grim and dark characters like Spawn and Youngblood. Marvel struggling to stay relevant with a ridiculous assortment of gimmicks, such as holographic and glow in the dark covers, while most of their best talent quietly left for rival DC Comics. The worst was by far DC, who took part in the gimmickry and was still being outsold by both Marvel and Image. The big 2 had become the big 3 with DC taking home the bronze. This is one of those gimmicks.     I would describe the story but there really isn’t much of one. A simple murder mystery with the Joker, Penguin, Two Face and the Riddler as the suspects. Nothing that hasn’t been done a million times before and in a lot of cases it was done better. The book also has Batman pin ups by some of the best artists of the time, and a classic 1940s B...