Author: S. Brady Calhoun

I really thought I would use this space more as a place to talk about comics.

That mostly hasn’t happened but there is always 2024. I buy an awful lot of comics but I’m slowish to get them read and my thoughts are usually no deeper than, ‘hey, I liked that.”

Or, “I really gotta quit buying this as I am not enjoying it.”

Here’s a few of the ones I liked in 2023.

1. Mark Waid and Dan Mora’s Batman / Superman World’s Finest

Mark Waid and Emanuela Lupacchino’s World’s Finest: Teen Titans.

Waid has carved out a little section of the DC Universe that is free from the current continuity. He sets the stories in different time periods of the character history and then just barrels along. When either of these titles shows up in my box I know I’m going to have a good time.

2. Daniel Warren Johnson’s Transformers. Johnson’s comics are the best thing in the comic shop every time they show up. Johnson took Beta Ray Bill, a cool side character in Thor and made the best miniseries of the decade with him. Now, the folks at Skybound took the license for Transformers and handed Johnson the keys.

I have never in my life cared at all about Transformers. I was a GI Joe guy and I don’t give a whit about robots. Ever.

And when I saw Johnson was doing this I just immediately added it. It’s the absolute best.

3. Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo. This year will be the 40th anniversary of Sakai’s samurai rabbit Miyamoto Usagi. It began as an interesting pastiche of Samurai films in an anthropomorphic world. Usagi began as the surly Yojimbo character played by Toshiro Mifune. And the book had analogs to Zatoichi, the blind samurai and Lone Wolf and Cub.

But it morphed into this wonderful ongoing story about wandering samurai who tries to help people, cares about his friends and mostly rejects the fatalism of the genre.

The book became a saga filled with Japanese mythology, history and culture. And, it’s ultimate strength is one of the great things about comics, it can be anything. If Sakai feels like it the book spends several chapters with a murder mystery. Sometimes he does supernatural horror. Sometimes it’s history lessons or gentle action and romance.

Sakai has a whole subset of books about Usagi’s descendent who lives in a futuristic Star Warsesque universe called Space Usagi.

These are always at the top of my reading pile and they never disappoint.

4. Tom King and Greg Smallwood’s Human Target

I can’t think of another comic writer who focuses on despair and defeat the way Tom King does. Mixing that tendency with Bwah Ha Ha era of The Justice League and the very human and small-scale concerns of The Human Target (a bodyguard who usually is a body double) made this book miles above anything else.

It was also, far and away the best-looking book on the stands.

King, like Waid, has been given his own section of the DC universe to just do what he wants. He’s currently writing Wonder Woman, Penguin and has the best Riddler story I have ever read in a collection of Batman books called One Bay Day.

5. Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo’s Nightwing

The first year of this was the best superhero comic out there. It’s firmly in a crunchy middle stage but is often the strongest book of the month and occasionally a wonderful, experimental ride into superhero joy.

The book I think that it comes closest to is Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye. If you know that book then you know how wonderful comics can be. This one remains the real deal.

6. Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero’s Birds of Prey

When I got to the last page of the kick ass first issue I howled/snorted and hooted with joy. A phenomenal book filled with great action and great jokes. I look forward to where this is headed.

7. Rick Remender and Max Fiumara’s The Sacrificers

You get tossed into the deep end of a weird world and so far, every issue builds to something terrifying and strange. Remender is one of the great comic book writers of his generation and Fiumara’s art takes the crazy setting and makes it sing.

Meanwhile, after buying this you mist also go pick up A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance the best comic of 2022 and a collaboration with Remender and artist Andre Lima Araujo.

It took me a while to get past the opening of this movie. It was a personal thing as the flick involves a mentally disabled adult and as the parent of two autistic kids I generally can’t handle seeing those depictions on screen. 

But after a brief set up, a bank robbery and a trip to jail the movie moves director Bennie Safdie’s Nick Nikas off screen and spends the rest of its time with Robert Pattinson’s dirtbag criminal. 

And I have no triggers for hanging out with dirtbag criminals. 

Pattinson delivers a mountain of nervous scumbag energy and he’s absolutely willing to be evil on screen. And not like justifiable evil, not that sort of movie star evil where you believe he actually has a good reason for what he does. 

He has his reasons, but it’s hollow nonsense. Nearly everyone he comes in contact with is destroyed and you know Patinson’s Connie Nikas would skate away from all that terrible responsibility — he’d blame everyone around him and God — before he ever took responsibility for his actions. 

The Safdie’s are masters of pressure cooker movies. I always describe Uncut Gems as a heart attack disguised as a film. 

This doesn’t quite reach that point, in part, because I wanted Connie Nikas to get caught as soon as humanly possible and I wanted Sandler’s scuzzy jewelry dealer to get away with it. 

Pattinson and Safdie are joined by Jennifer Jason Leigh who plays a perfect drug addled girlfriend and Taliah Webster is solid as a teenager over her head. 

The Safdie’s also deploy two non-actors; Peter Verby as a counselor and Eric Paykert as a bail bondsman. 

The scenes with both of them are strong but Paykert in particular delivers the truth on film. 

I was not surprised to find out that he was a real bail bondsman and was simply having another day at work while the cameras were rolling. 

You know that scene in Goodfellas where Ray Liota meets with the district attorney who was, in fact, the real attorney who really confronted the real Henry Hill?

There’s just an authenticity there that can’t be faked. 

I will say that I want to see the cut scenes where Eric Roberts played the bail bondsman. I bet they were stellar in a different way. 

Anyway, if you love stress movies this is a sure thing.

Despite it’s tragic true story The Iron Claw is a movie that is full of joy.

The first half of the flick sets up the Von Erich family, a Texas wrestling dynasty lucky enough to have four boys who can mostly be stars at the same time. 

The movie doesn’t explain how the territories worked in the 1970s and 1980s and simply suggests that this is a family business run by the Fritz Von Erich and that there is a world championship title that Fritz believes should be held by one of his boys. 

Von Erich is the kind of dad who lets the children know which son is his favorite at any given moment. 

“But the rankings can always change.”

I’m a big wrestling fan and all I really knew about these guys was that they were huge in Texas and they all died. 

The movie shows you what was special about them, and the pressure they lived under and (and this is vital) how much joy they had. 

Given how it all worked out few of us would trade places with The Von Erichs. But in those early years, when they were young men and the world was full of possibilities, those were clearly good years.

Watching them go to parties or dance at a wedding is delightful. 

You hear a tragic story and it’s just a statistic and you can forget about all the years of fun and joy there must of been before the game ended. And that people are more than their endings. 

So, I loved the first half of this even as you can sense just how badly this was all going to go.

The second half presents some surprises too. I thought something happened much earlier than it ended up, but it happens later and again there is a bit where some of them climb the mountain before the fall. 

No one should go to this movie looking for the true story of anything. The movie pretends one of the brothers just never existed and it condenses the timeline of at least one major event. 

Also, who knows if Fritz Von Erich deserves all the blame for how these things worked out. But a good story needs a good heel and Fritz was always a master of that role.

So Iron Claw is not factually true but it is emotionally true. It feels real in most of the ways it presents life in front of adoring crowds and behind the scenes. 

I have no idea if Fritz really was obsessed with the NWA belt, I suspect very little of that is true. The belt was just a macguffin for the fans that the wrestlers could use to separate them from their money. 

Money is what made the whole thing turn. 

And I say that, but then you watch interviews with Bret Hart (a champion from another famous wrestling family) and you can tell how much esteem he had for those titles even if it was the promoter and not the competition who put the belt on the wrestler.

The movie does the best it can but it also fails to really show how big those Texas crowds were. And Aaron Eisenberg tries hard but there is only one Ric Flair and anyone trying to do Ric Flair will always be a poor shadow of The Man. 

But Maura Tierney, Holt McCallany, Lily James and Jeremy Allan White all provide great supporting work and Zac Efron turns in a superb performance as the guy trying to hold it all together even when he’s falling apart.

When you see what happens to him … well,  the final card made me cry for five minutes. 

This is a perfect movie about families and tragedy and a little bit about wrestling. It’s a winner.

If you caught me in the right moment in the last 20 years you probably heard my Michael Mann rant. 

It’s long and I won’t go into it a whole bunch here but essentially he’s a director that I do not enjoy. 

Annnnnddd, anytime I did it people just started yelling at me. As well they probably should because on a technical level Mann is one of the great Hollywood directors from the last 50 years. 

People would just start screaming, ‘Heat! How can you not like Heat?!” 

And folks, I am that guy. I’ve softened on Heat over the years but I still think it’s a waste of the first DeNiro/Pacino collaboration. I also think The Insider is a perfect movie but that’s the exception that proves the rule and I’m just not going to give you Mann as a maker of great films. 

Well, to be fair, he is a maker of great films he’s just a maker of great films in which I personally get very little joy from watching.  

Ferrari is another perfect example of all of my problems. Watching Ferrari I sank in my seat and realized, “Oh shit, this is Ali all over again.” 

In case you missed it, in 2001 Mann made a movie about the most charismatic sports figures in the 20th century, with one of the most charismatic actors of the 20th century and he turned in a boring movie about the time Ali was kept away from boxing for political reasons. 

I mean, what is the one thing you want to see in a movie about Muhammad Ali? A bunch of boxing. Just a ton of boxing. Instead, it’s a movie about everything except boxing. 

Sooooo, if you go to a movie called Ferrari what’s the one thing you want to see? Well, I hope it was a interior drama about a rich guy who is mourning one child while dealing with his current wife, his secret child from his mistress and some minor business issues. 

Cause if you wanted to see how he built his company, cool behind the scenes racing stuff or anything remotely resembling a car movie you have come to the wrong place. 

Meanwhile, Penelope Cruz is the truth, Adam Driver delivers some solid work and Shailene Woodley takes a meager role and invests life into it. 

I’ll just admit that I’m the problem. I want Mann to deliver things (a strong narrative and intriguing dialogue) that he’s honestly not ever shown the slightest bit of interest in doing. No one but me ever, ever wanted anything out of Miami Vice other than for the characters to look cool while driving around doing nothing. 

Sooner or later you have to admit that you are Charlie Brown running at Lucy’s football even though you should absolutely know better. 

His movies always look amazing but every time I watch one I’m reminded that there’s nothing there.

Ok I got a doozy for you. 

My boss is always throwing movies out there and he has strange taste. He’s from a different time (late stage boomer) and he’s constantly suggesting these movies from the 80s that are blind spots for me. 

To Live and Die in LA was one (amazing) and Ron Howard’s Night Shift (still haven’t seen it) is another. 

I was a kid in the 80s and so all the serious non-kid friendly movies passed me by. Which means that I basically missed Mickey Rourke’s career. 

To me he’s the guy in Iron Man 2, Sin City and Randy the Ram. Oh and he could have made something as a heavy in the the remake of Get Carter if it had not been a Stallone vehicle. 

So that’s how we end up streaming The Pope of Greenwich Village which is somehow actually streaming on Amazon Prime.

So what is this? It’s Italian Cliches the movie. It’s not quite a parody, at least, no one intended to make a parody. But it’s also not the great crime New York movie it wants to be. It’s like if Martin Scorsese’s second-cousin woke up one day and said, “I could do that.”  

Rourke is a waiter who dresses like a mob boss and has the hottest girlfriend in the world, Darryl Hannah. But he’s also got an ex-wife and crazy debt and a needy kid brother (who is actually his cousin because they’re Italians). 

The cousin (Eric Roberts) gets him fired and then gets him to go along with a burglary that puts them in the cross hairs of the cops and the local mob boss Bed Bug Eddie (Burt Young). 

And you can see where this is going. Except, it never quite gets there and it never says exactly what it wants to say and then it ends on a bizarre turn that doesn’t work at all.

And, and, and I think I kind of love this movie as much because it’s a big misfire.

There is a burglary in this movie that gave me so much respect for directors like Michael Mann who throw heists and burglaries around in their movies all the time. You think it must be easy to direct a scene like that and then you watch this and see how badly it can be directed and you realize how talented some people really are. 

It’s like when people show you shots from weak Spielberg movies and you can see just how much time and effort he puts into everything and how good it all looks even when the movie itself is not a classic.

As for the acting it’s all over the place. 

Roberts turns the dial so far past 10 that the only person who could come close to him for screen ham is Nic Cage.

He also plays the weakest wise guy I have ever seen in a movie. Watching it I said to myself, “oh here’s why DeNiro, Pacino, and Caan all turned this down.”

No one wants to play that weak and I’m betting no one wanted to play opposite someone playing that weak. 

Burt Young and M. Emmet Walsh are safely ensconced in their usual just show up and look like lowlifes phase, Daryl Hannah is in a tragic romance movie, Kenneth McMilan is doing fine work in a movie about an old guy trying to make it and get out with One Last Score and Geraldine Page is playing the coldest, meanest New York mama you have ever seen.

She got 8 minutes of screen time and an Oscar nomination. Just wow. 

You know what this movie is? This is the movie I imagined the character Vincent Chase making as his big first hit movie in the world of Entourage. 

The tag line there was “I am Queens Boulevard.” And even though you didn’t see the movie you knew Chase was in a Mean Streets knock off picture that wasn’t nearly as good as he hoped it would be. 

Mickey Rourke can relate. He’s miles better than the material. But he’s saddled with Eric Roberts (who was almost fired and should have been) and he’s stuck with plot points that never go anywhere and he’s keeps delivering the goods in a movie that just doesn’t respect him. 

Watch him and you won’t wonder why everyone said he wasn’t just the next DeNiro or Pacino but that he was the next Brando! 

That wild ending I was talking about. Well, there was a plan and Rourke is in the middle of walking away as clean as bad kid on Christmas morning and then Roberts shows up and blows it to hell and then the movie just walks away (literally) with all of that. 

It’s this microcosm of what’s wrong with the whole movie in one big dumb scene. 

Have you ever hated a movie you wanted to watch five or six more times? Cause I think that’s where I am tonight.

There are writers who have very specific tics. If you have seen that video of Aaron Sorkin’s work quoting from himself you will know what I mean. 

Stephen King does a specific thing (mostly) as does David Mamet and Quentin Tarantino. 

And then there is Paul Schrader, the man known for The World’s Loneliest Man. Schrader has been doing a specific type of thing since he wrote Taxi Driver. 

I haven’t seen all of them but I have seen most of them and if you have either seen a character writing in a diary or watched a movie with an oppressive narration that examines the dark heart of America you either watched a Paul Schrader movie or someone doing a parody or an homage to a Schrader movie. 

Extra points if the main character sits at a small desk under low light and the voice over tells us what he is writing in a diary. 

Anyway, Master Gardener is that. One other Schrader thing to note, his characters are always wretched and either irredeemable or as close to irredeemable as possible. 

The guy who wrote Taxi Driver, Hardcore and Raging Bull does not make lighthearted comedies. 

Schrader, like Mamet and Sorkin took to directing. Schrader mostly directed his own scripts but he’s also been a hired gun. 

And here in the sixth decade of his career he’s suddenly made a trilogy of films about his lonely man. 

First Reformed came out in 2017, The Card Counter (which had one of the most shocking moments in film that year) came out in 2021 and this followed in 2022. 

The Card Counter had a line in it that has stuck with me for two years. The main character is talking about abuse, “The body remembers. It stores it all.”

Schrader is that kind of writer. Not everything lands but when he hits you it’s a gut punch. 

Master Gardner has a secret similar to The Card Counter and the aesthetic of most of Schrader’s films. 

If you ever said to yourself that you would like to hear someone talk about the most esoteric elements of gardening for two hours then buddy have I got a flick for you. 

However, spoilers, this might be the first thing of his I’ve seen that suggests redemption is possible. A movie that believes horrific people can change.

Except … I’m not sure the main character of Master Gardner deserves redemption and I’m not sure he’s trying to earn it.

There is a surface level to this but I also felt like there was something else, growing under the soil. 

At the end of Taxi Driver, Robert Deniro’s Travis Bickle, a pathetic psychopath, kills some very bad men and is treated as a hero. He drives off with a girl he likes as the movie comes to a close.

But, if you missed Schrader’s point, he will tell you point blank that what we have seen in the movie is just Bickle’s first killing. The victims of the next one will almost assuredly be innocent people. 

What I’m left thinking about, days after seeing Master Gardner, is not that the protagonist was trying to be a better person but rather that he had a specific plan and executed it.

Is this ending a happy one? Does he ever deserve to be happy? 

This is an intriguing film and a fine thriller. But I am not sure it is the film I initially believed it to be.

Joel Edgerton’s Narvel Roth is a man who in his old life covered his body in offensive tattoos. But only now, in order to enact a new relationship is he willing to have them removed. 

Are these the actions of a man who is changed by love? 

I am suddenly reminded of The New Testament, You can’t put new wine in an old bottle, the new must be poured into a new vessel. 

And then I found myself thinking about the world where Roth has come from. And, considering this — what kind of person is Sigourney Weaver’s Norma Haverhill? Consider that she not only gave him a job and a place to live but that she also let him (ahem) tend to her garden. 

She certainly saw those tattoos and never once asked him to remove them. 

The friction between them would seem to be over once Edgerton announces his intention to marry Quintessa Swindell’s Maya Core. 

There is a violent episode, once again deftly handled by Roth. 

But I don’t think these three will be happy on the same property for long. 

Everything we see in the film shows us a man who has changed and perhaps been changed by love. 

But are the things we have seen true? 

There may have already been too much discussion of the Bible in this review but I would note that Schrader was raised by strict religious parents. 

So at another point Jesus talks of a farmer who throws out seeds on the ground and some of them are eaten by birds and some grow in shallow ground are destroye, some of them are choked to death by weeds and some are planted in good soil and grow into good plants. 

What I’m trying to say is that this movie supposedly has a happy ending but I don’t believe that Narvel Roth and his new bride are planted in good soil. 

I think they are out here, with us, among the weeds.

My Godzilla kick is going to end here. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s probably exactly what a modern remake of Godzilla should be.

Briefly, Godzilla shows up, starts tearing up Japanese towns, a legion of hapless government employees try to stop him until they eventually are successful.  Spoiler? I guess? 

Shin Godzilla is a response to the Fukushima Nuclear Accident and the failed government oversight/response. 

Part of that shows when every government meeting early in the movie leads to another meeting. The point is driven home when one character asks why so many meetings are needed for a news conference. 

Wicked satire maybe, but not exactly riveting scenes.

Those of you who consider it an article of faith that Godzilla should look like a man in a suit will be pleased and the action/destruction scenes are really good. 

But 

A: I just don’t care about anyone here. 

B. Man in a suit special effects are not my jam. 

The Godzilla nuclear breath looks great here though. 

Finally, as a remake the movie makes us sit through scene after scene of people saying things like, “that destruction was caused by an undersea volcano.”

Hero bureaucrat: “maybe that destruction was caused by a giant, nuclear, undersea creature.” 

Everyone else: “That’s ridiculous.”

It’s like watching a vampire movie set in the modern day where no one has ever seen or heard of a vampire. 

Plausible? Maybe. 

But should you even try it? Maybe not.

The Holdovers is perfect at all the things that can either make or break a period dramedy. 

First, the cast inhabits every character. Paul Giamatti is great, as always, but he’s also the only guy in Hollywood who could make you care about a grumpy, lonely, mean professor at an elite boarding school. 

Giamatti has done it all in his singular acting career including being the lead in a hit rom com, investing the founding father John Adams with fire and humanity and being the face of a cable network (Showtime) with Billions. 

Giamatti’s Paul Hunham is up there with his greatest roles. 

Hunham is lonely, sad and despairing at the future of America. He is, of course, a teacher. 

In 1970 he is ordered to remain at the school over Christmas break so that he can watch the students who will not be going home for the holidays. It’s clear that he would have been there anyway, the movie gives Hunham no family. Hunham isn’t broken up about his aloneness, he has his books and he has his apartment on campus and what else does a man of his intellect need? 

Over the course of two weeks Hunham forges a bond with one of his students, Angus, played by newcomer Dominic Sessa and the school’s grieving head cook, Mary Lamb, played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph. 

Lamb lost her son in Vietnam and the war and the draft hangs over everyone and integral to the plot. Angus is an angry kid who faces military academy and the draft if he gets thrown out of another school. 

The ultimate source of his anger and fear and explored along with Lamb’s grief and Hunham’s decisions to wall himself away in a boarding school. 

The movie is funny but never sacrifices the realism of its characters for a joke. It feels like we just settled in to watch these lives for a few days and then we are sent on our way. 

There is high drama, to be sure, and fun but it all feels grounded and realistic. There is the whiff of a romance for Hunham and the movie handles it so well I found myself just nodding in agreement. When it’s resolved I said to myself, ‘yes, this is what it would be like, exactly right.’

Or consider that one supporting character is having what he calls a battle of wills with his father. Near the end of the movie we see who won, and we can guess why, but it is a reward for those of you who are paying attention. The movie does not call anymore attention to it than is necessary. 

There is, ultimately, a crossroads for the main characters and a satisfying conclusion to the story. I felt a little better about the world when it was over and whether it’s 1970 or 2023 that really is saying something. 

This is one of the best movies of the year.

Godzilla Minus One is so good it made me cry. Ok, that’s not all that hard so let’s try this. 

It’s so good that it redeems the idea of Godzilla movies for me. Most Godzilla movies are silly and cheap and dumb … but they don’t have to be. 

Anyway, I am not the biggest fan of the franchise. The first one is a classic, and it is impossible to argue with a movie that so completely nails the national identity of a country in the aftermath of a lost war and the invention of the nuclear bomb. It was as perfect metaphor for the atomic age as Frankenstein was for science replacing God in Mary Shelley’s era. 

But mostly, when I turned on Godzilla movies on television I didn’t last long. They were slow, silly and just not something I could sit through. 

I will watch nearly every episode of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Doctor Who, most any superhero thing right now regardless of production values and quality because we all have our things. 

But Godzilla is not mine. 

And then we get a flick like Godzilla Minus Zero and it just upends everything. Here’s what it does:

1) It makes you care about a collection of WW2 veterans who are trying to rebuild their lives and their country. 

2) It gives them realistic motivations and behaviors and makes them so compelling that you actually care if they live or die when Godzilla comes around. 

3) It also looks right (not great or immaculate or movie perfect) but it looks like a Godzilla movie should look. Hard to explain but it’s true. 

4) And every time Godzilla shows up it’s scary and fun. 

There is not one human being I have ever cared about in a Godzilla movie until this one. 

There were moments in Kong Skull Island (part of the American Monsterverse series that includes Godzilla) that landed well but it never completely overcame its video game like structure.

Godzilla himself and the disaster special FX are all believable even if none of it looks exactly real.

And the sound guys on this deserve giant bonuses. The old girl sounds great. 

IMDB says: Instead of creating a new roar, the crew simply played the original Godzilla roar over loud speakers and recorded the audio.

Seriously, give those guys and girls giant bonuses. 

I’m already tired of the trope of making a film look like the era of films it is emulating. But this looks like it came out of the 1950s and also looks amazing. 

Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki with astonishing heart and scary power. 

I’m still in shock, I think. How did this guy make a movie this good?