Just when you think there may be some hope for a Zack Snyder property, here we are again with another head scratcher. The movie that gave us hope was the trippy, funny, quirky Army of the Dead, a zombie movie with the gore of the genre, but with the light tonal notes of Shaun of the Dead. In short it was a worthy entry into the zombie horror genre, if on the more accessible, mainstream side (check out my review here). The new spin-off film, Army of Thieves, just landed on Netflix, and it is a prequel, but a prequel probably nobody asked for. It might make you think Snyder & Co. longs to have the C.V. of J.J. Abrams (see the Cloverleaf films) or M. Night Shyamalan (see the Unbreakable trilogy). Imagine taking the most obscure–the least likely–character from an action film, and then giving him a sweet, heart-warming, dramatic origin story with romance, and have the actor that played the character direct it. I can’t think anyone would select German actor Matthias Schweighöfer’s safecracker as the character that warranted a spin-off from Army of the Dead, but there it is. And you can watch it right now on Netflix.
Ten years of movie reviews. How do you pick the best? Our theory from the very first day of publishing borg has been reviewing only those things we like, things we think are fun, imaginative, or just plain cool—because if we think they’re cool, maybe you will, too. What makes a great movie? #1 for us is great writing—great storytelling. #2 is re-watchability. Lots of movies are good, but if every time you watch it you enjoy it all over again and maybe find something you didn’t see before, then you likely got far more value from the movie than the price of a movie ticket. #3 is innovation—there’s nothing to top off a good story like new technology surprising us. Finally, the experience must be fun—why else would you devote two hours or more of your valuable time?
So in Casey Kasem style, here are the Top 40 movies we recommend, spanning 2011 to 2021. These are our favorites. How should you use lists like this? If you like what we talk about at borg, you’re probably going to like these movies. If you’ve missed any, odds are you have some new movies to take a look at. Let’s start at #40 and move our way to #1. As with everything borg, we’re stressing genre movies, so don’t expect to see strict dramas or a lot of Best Picture Oscar winners here. Title links are to our original borg review.
Every new technological creation seems to eventually arrive at a point where you can buy it at 99 percent off its original price. It’s the classic 99% off sale. And while it’s not true for everything, we can see it in many ways across the decades. Look at something like the simple calculator, once a giant machine costing thousands of dollars, ultimately it came down in price (and size) to fit in your wallet as a free giveaway as businesses all over stamped an advertisement on the back as a marketing tool. Today it’s a free feature on nearly every personal computer and android phone. In the 1990s Connie Willis focused on the emerging technology of animating dead people in films in her groundbreaking novel Remake (discussed here at borg back in 2012). It happened and it’s only getting better. As recently as December Star Wars fans saw Mark Hamill reprise a young Luke Skywalker via imaging software in The Mandalorian, and probably the best use so far can be found by the de-aging of Michael Douglas in the Ant-Man movies.
In basements (and governments?) across the world software designers and users dabble in “deep fake” imaging, attempting to push this technology to defraud (or prevent the defrauding of) others by digitally replacing faces in all kinds of video recordings. Imagine making such video images by uploading a static image and simply pressing a button. Guess what? Now anyone can. Look to an unlikely source to visit the future, thanks to a genealogy company’s new software program that costs its subscribers… nothing. Quietly slipping in its own add-on free to its pay subscribers, a surprisingly good “artificial intelligence” turns any photograph into a short animation. Yes, you, too, can re-animate the dead, maybe not as Mary Shelley envisioned more than 200 years ago, but take a look for yourself…
If you don’t want to see anything about Avengers: Endgame you might want to skip the latest trailer, which reveals some trickery by Marvel Studios in its earlier trailers–although with time travel bringing anyone back into the fold it’s not just possible but a likely scheme to mess with Thanos, and anything can happen. Take a look at the new trailer below, along with a new poster including the key cast at least one version of what we’ll see in the film.
If you don’t see Captain Marvel first (reviewed here at borg), one thing is clear: you’re not going understand what’s going on in Avengers: Endgame. As Marvel fans will see in one of the codas for the current film in theaters, everything is coming together, and in today’s trailer the Avengers Assemble–that also means new uniforms.
It’s good seeing most of the Avengers back again, even if there’s still no sign of the last recruit, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. The only quirk: Danai Gurira’s Okoye is in the poster, but her name was the only actor not included in the first poster released today in the above-the-title list of actors (she is listed below the title, along with those not pictured: Benedict Wong, Jon Favreau, and Gwyneth Paltrow)–contractual deals tend to be specific about what actors get the top of the marquee listing and who doesn’t, but this decision tends to stand out. But Marvel updated that a few hours later (shown updated to the right above). And in the realm of trickiness, note that the original poster included 19 names, many of which were omitted this time–reflecting the characters who vanished in Avengers: Infinity War, like Benedict Cumberbatch.
Take a look at the next trailer–if you dare–for Avengers: Endgame:
Marvel Contest of Champions is a 2014 mobile fighting game from Kabam, released four years ago on iOS and Android, boasting more than 100 million players. Based on ideas generated from the 1982 three-issue Marvel Comics series Contest of Championsby Mark Gruenwald, John Romita Jr., and Bob Layton, players select superheroes from across the history of the Marvel universe to battle each other. Both the original comic and the game key in on the scheming machinations of Grandmaster and the Collector, and if the idea sounds familiar, it may be because it was also featured in Marvel’s big screen Thor: Ragnarok, with Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster pitting Chris Hemsworth’s Thor against Mark Ruffalo’s Planet Hulk-inspired gladiator Hulk.
Initially intended to be based on Marvel’s Super Heroes Secret Wars comics, the Contest of Champions video game features more than 100 playable characters, and includes dozens of others. The characters as realized for the game and the game environments is the focus of a new book from author Paul Davies, Marvel Contest of Champions: The Art of the Battlerealm. The book represents one of the rare assemblages of so many characters from all segments of the Marvel universe. Showcasing the story by Sam Humphries and artwork by Gabriel Frizzera, Luke Ross, and others, the book is full of great character designs, concepts, and final selections. It even takes readers beyond the events of Infinity War, although the game does not adhere to the movies.
Readers and game players will find it difficult coming up with characters from Marvel Comics not incorporated into Contest of Champions. In the book they’ll find updated versions of all the superheroes (and many villains) from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, plus the X-Men, Deadpool, Old Man Logan, X-23, Spider-Gwen, Ghost Rider, Howard the Duck, Hyperion, Jane Foster’s Thor, Miles Morales’s Spidey, Kamala Khan’s Ms. Marvel, Spawn, Dark Phoenix, She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Cable, Gwenpool, Mephisto, Blade, Carnage, and the Inhumans. Plus there’s the Netflix Marvel series characters, lesser used characters like the future evil Hulk called Maestro, Magik, M.O.D.O.K., Sentry, Sentinel, Sabretooth, Agent Venom, Morningstar, Guillotine, Karnak, Kang, Doctor Voodoo, Black Bolt, and Venompool. Both Angela, grand-daughter of Odin, and King Groot are brilliantly realized in the game and the book (shown above).
Here are some preview pages fromMarvel Contest of Champions: The Art of the Battlerealm:
Originally released in 2015, Jason Starr’s Ant-Man: Natural Enemy is back in a new paperback edition as part of Titan Books’ new novels of the Marvel Universe. Separate from the stories in the comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s still tough if you’ve watched the movies to separate Scott Lang from Ant-Man and Ant-Man and The Wasp actor Paul Rudd. But why would you want to? Readers or moviegoers new to Ant-Man who missed out on classic Dr. Hank Pym Tales to Astonish in the classic comics or S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Eric O’Grady in Robert Kirkman, Phil Hester, and Ande Parks’ The Irredeemable Ant-Man will want to put those on their reading list. But if the movies are what reeled you in to become an Ant-Man fan, get ready for even more fun with Scott Lang in Ant-Man: Natural Enemy.
Scott’s daughter Cassie is living with him in New York, with custody being amicably split with her mother and Scott’s ex-wife Peggy, now living in the Pacific Northwest. Cassie is a teen now, so along with Scott using online dating to find companionship he also is trying to look out for Cassie as she is looking for her first boyfriend. As they both try to get along with each other and face uphill battles in their hours apart each day, a piece of Scott’s past creeps in. When Scott was in jail he made plenty of criminal acquaintances. Scott ultimately turned state’s evidence on one of the smarter criminals, Willie Dugan, after Scott met Dr. Pym and began to take on the role newly minted good guy and superhero Ant-Man. Dugan has now escaped from Attica, and the FBI puts Scott, Cassie, and Peggy in protective custody. Scott refuses the help of Iron Man Tony Stark and the resources of the Avengers, figuring Dugan is a small-time hood that he can handle. That’s until several of Scott’s old jail acquaintances end up dead, and Cassie seemingly vanishes while under the watchful eye of an FBI agent.
Ant-Man: Natural Enemy is surprisingly real and current. Both Scott and Cassie struggle with the negatives of current technologies. Cassie is bullied on the Internet by her peers at school. Scott can’t seem to meet the right people via dating apps. Scott is as down-to-Earth as a superhero can be. Fans of the laid back hero motif in Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye comic book series will feel right at home with the similarly put-upon everyman Scott Lang. And if you liked watching Peter Parker’s day-to-day goings on in the big city in Spider-Man: Hostile Takeover (reviewed here at borg.com), you may also find Starr’s novel to be a good read. Cassie becomes as interesting an heir to Scott as Scott was to Dr. Pym.
As part of the continuing celebration of 10 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that kickstarted filmdom’s modern superhero blockbuster chapter, AMC Theaters are getting the entire team back together for an eight-day movie marathon nationwide beginning Thursday, August 30. Get ready for the Marvel Studios 10th Anniversary Film Festival. Marvel has converted three early films in the series to IMAX for the first time: Iron Man, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Incredible Hulk. So the entire 20 film series will be screened in IMAX, plus many of the films will also be screened in 3D.
The announcement arrives with the home video release of Avengers: Infinity War, now available on Blu-ray and Digital HD, 4K, and DVD. If you missed Infinity War, check out our review here (and catch all our Marvel Cinematic Universe reviews below). This is your chance to catch up any or all of the films you might have missed in the theater, including the three 2018 releases Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Ant-Man and The Wasp. And it will give many younger viewers the opportunity to see some great superhero movies from the early days of the MCU on the big screen for the first time.
The big day of the festival appears to be September 3, with a great single-day line-up: Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Ant-Man and The Wasp. The series will run over Labor Day weekend, with four films per day from August 30 through September 5. On September 6, AMC will screen two fan-favorite films, to be selected by a fan vote. See the Marvel Studios 10th Anniversary Film Festival website for more details. It also seems likely based on past screenings that AMC may offer some kind of bundled purchase price for multiple shows. Check back to the website as the end of August nears for any additional promotions.
Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the Hulk haven’t done it. Along with Captain America and Thor, now Ant-Man adds another Marvel Cinematic universe film that matches the spirit of its first solo film. That’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, premiering this weekend in theaters across the U.S. If you count Ant-Man as one of your favorite films of the MCU, you won’t be disappointed in the sequel. As with the original, Ant-Man and the Wasp is the rare superhero movie that will appeal to all ages of moviegoers–not a single scene will pollute the minds of the littlest kid, and for the older generation that loved that classic sci-fi trope from The Incredible Shrinking Man, moviegoers don’t need to follow the MCU to jump right into this film. Better yet, Ant-Man and the Wasp has heart like nothing else on the big screen from Marvel, except for Paul Rudd’s first adventure as Ant-Man only three years ago.
For those not paying close attention, this film takes place before the events of Avengers: Infinity War, and two years following the events of Captain America: Civil War. Each of the character-led superhero films have those elements special to that character. The trademarks of Ant-Man return for this sequel: a slightly daft and bumbling hero (played by Rudd) enjoying his superpowers, a friend whose rapid-fire banter steals every scene (played by Michael Peña), a romantic co-lead ready to bust out and make her own name (played by Evangeline Lilly), even more cutting edge special effects that show today’s actors playing scenes looking just as they did 20 years ago, and the return of the great Michael Douglas with every bit the acting chops he had back in his The China Syndrome, Coma, and Romancing the Stone days as the incomparable Dr. Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man. Rudd’s Scott Lang has only three days left under house arrest before regaining his freedom, as Dr. Pym and daughter Hope (Lilly) attempt to secure the last piece of technology required to try to reach Pym’s wife, long ago left in the quantum realm. But they aren’t the only ones after this new technology.
The film doesn’t stop at mere fan service, bringing in three new characters that take the quantum universe story arc from the first film into new territory. That’s Michelle Pfeiffer as Dr. Janet Van Dyne–the original Wasp, Laurence Fishburne as former Pym colleague Dr. Bill Foster, and a stunningly good MCU debut by Hannah John-Kamen–at last in a major big screen role after playing supporting characters this year in Tomb Raider and Ready Player One. John-Kamen’s character has the same fierce grit and badass determination as Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok, and like Valkyrie, we hope she’s back in the sequel to Avengers: Infinity War next year. As with Thor: Ragnarok, Ant-Man and the Wasp brings the comic book page to life, and like Black Panther, the film has an antagonist you may find yourself rooting for. And make no mistake, Lilly’s Wasp could take over the reins from Black Widow as Marvel’s lead superheroine.
In the past few years the Marvel Comics line-up of secondary superheroes really kicked into gear in the publisher’s solo titles. We’ve previously raved here at borg.com about Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye and Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto’s Black Widow. Another popular secondary Marvel superhero is the current Ant-Man, Scott Lang. In comicbookdom there’s probably no superhero more put-upon than Lang’s Ant-Man. His crazy backstory, the origin of his powers, and his inability to catch a break makes him instantly appealing, so much so that he’s the one that got his own Marvel Cinematic Universe movie last year.
Actor Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man was one of the highlights of this year’s Captain America: Civil War, and that same Ant-Man has headlined his own series this year with Marvel’s monthly The Astonishing Ant-Man. And the entire year has been about Lang trying to explain to the reader how he ended up in prison. Again. Series writer Nick Spencer provided this year’s best humor in his choice of situations he dropped Lang into, his choice of team-ups and sidekicks, and loads and loads of superhero inner-monologuing and witty banter.
Whether it’s a single issue team-up with Captain America aka Sam Wilson or Ms. Thing aka Darla Deering, The Astonishing Ant-Man has been a fun read in a year full of drama-focused fiction and non-fiction. Spencer plants Lang in today’s world with not a lot of situations that are grave in the way other comic book series are grave–Lang is plagued with plenty of First World Problems (although saving Miami from a Giganto is probably important to the locals). But every month in different ways The Astonishing Ant-Man is full of the comic book fun you liked as a kid. Artist Ramon Rosanas consistently created a visual treat full of Ant-Man doing everything we love–the little guy that saves the day, whether or not he gets recognized for it. Then there are those personal issues–struggling between his ex-wife Peggy, his ex-girlfriend Darla, his ex-whatever Janice aka Beetle, and She-Hulk even makes an appearance. Above all else is his efforts to stay a hero in the eyes of Cassie, his daughter-turned-criminal via the amazing new “Hench” app.
What Ant-Man was for Marvel Studios’ Avengers franchise, Deadpool is for 20th Century Fox’s X-Men franchise, proving that a good story and good delivery can outperform big budget, team-up blockbusters. Ant-Man stepped away from the standard superhero movie tropes to give us a flawed human trying to do right by way of some good tech, and Deadpool went to the next step and took the superhero story that much further away from the norm. As the #1 box office success of any Rated R film, it also proved you cannot predict what will fail and what will succeed.
But all the press that distinguished Deadpool as something completely new and different was really just feeding into the marketing hype. Seemingly collectively shocked by the impending change-up of “the first Rated R superhero movie,” press and critics ignored so much. From an over-the-top action standpoint was Deadpool that far different from RoboCop, The Crow, or V for Vendetta–all also carrying the R rating? And from a crude humor standpoint, is Deadpool any different from the similarly hilarious Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2, or if darkness is your thing Sin City or Watchmen–also Rated R?
The reality is that the success of Deadpool can be found in the melding of all the elements you need for any good superhero movie. If you skipped this one or only watched it in the theater, now is a good time to revisit it on Blu-ray or DVD. You no doubt missed some great elements during your first watch, and the special features that accompany the home release point out plenty that will likely elevate whatever view you already have about this release.
The Blu-ray we reviewed included both the Blu-ray and DVD as well as a digital Ultraviolet code for viewing on your Vudu or Flixster account. Deadpool includes the best behind the scenes coverage of any Blu-ray we’ve reviewed this year in its “From Comics to Screen… to Screen” segment. Who knew how much stunt work was required for all the elaborately choreographed action sequences and how much was actually CGI? Sure, we knew star Ryan Reynolds was in the “Deadpool red” supersuit for part of the film, but his two stuntmen really carried a lot of the film with one stuntman tearing his ACL for one of the less-involved sequences. And like the movie’s in-joke, the two other X-Men that appear may well be lesser characters when compared to the team in X-Men: Apocalypse, yet the fact we get to focus on far fewer means we got to know Colossus that much better. Plus director Tim Miller and costume designer Angus Strathie made sure Negasonic Teenage Warhead wore the classic X-Men yellow supersuit.
