Reviews

JV: The Extraordinary Adventures of Jules Verne, is a animated series from France that carries on the tradition of fictionalizing the life of a historical figure for the purposes of storytelling (see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter for a more extreme example of this). Verne has been the subject of a previous series, the live-action The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, but this series aims for a younger audience.

Set in the late 1840's, Verne is teenage law student at the Sorbonne in Paris. Yearning for adventure, he dreams of travelling the world and writing about his exploits. While visiting the offices of a famous travel magazine, to try to talk his way onto an expedition, he thwarts a robbery and gets the attention of the magazine's editor, Professor Artemus, himself a famous world traveller, who hires Jules to be his assistant. Thus begins Jules Verne's adventures around the world and the birth of his career as one the Western world's pre-eminent authors of science fiction and exotic tales.

Jules is very much a young man of action, athletic - though not to a ridiculous degree - and very good at quick thinking and improvisation. He's also a bit of daredevil. He has a talent for engineering and technology (in real life, Verne was a great lover of science and had a solid grounding in practical engineering which he used to work for several years as a patent attorney). Each episode has at least one sequence in which Verne improvises a solution to a problem using materials on hand and his own imagination. The supporting characters include Professor Artemus, who encourages Jules to write about his adventures; the professor's pretty daughter Amelie, who's a good match for Jules in both her athleticism and thirst for adventure; De L'ennui, Artemus' bookkeeper, who constantly worries about how much the professor's expeditions are costing the magazine; Esther, Amelie's nanny, who still frets over her long after the girl has aged out of needing a nanny. And lurking in the background: Captain Nemo himself.

The animation is decent for a TV budget production, with some good shading and lighting effects. The English dub for the main cast is competent and effective, although the voices don't often match the characters' mouth movements. That's a common problem for dubbing a show into another language, but it's not overly distracting here. The characterization is solid, with the main cast never quite straying into cliché territory. Jules is highly intelligent, but sometimes hindered by naiveté for someone who has seen little of the world. There's a romantic tension between Jules and Amalie, with she both occasionally critical of him and yet willing to trust him.

The design of the series is visually pleasing, with a lightweight steampunk aesthetic. The gadgetry is mostly consistent with the time period, although there are a few exceptions. One standout is Jules' belt buckle, which is a veritable Swiss Army Knife, containing retractable blades, a compass and multiple other gadgets. And then, or course, there's the Nautilus......

All in all, this is a fun and entertaining series. Nothing groundbreaking, but surprisingly interesting. It will appeal to fans of Verne, since many of his adventures contain elements that are lifted straight from his stories - including some of the more obscure ones, like The Green Ray - and are introduced as the experiences that inspired his future tales. The program is currently only available on some streaming channel (as of this running, it's on The Roku Channel), but it's worth seeking out if you like animesque adventure, steampunk or retro-futurism.

Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero could have been a game-changer in the Ultraman franchise. The first (and so far, only) live-action Ultraman series to be filmed in the United States, and only the second to feature a cast of English-speaking actors, the show could have opened up the world of Ultraman to the lucrative American market that has long dismissed this world famous hero due to sometimes cheesy and irreverent dubbing.

The Ultimate Hero has all the standard characteristics that make a good Ultraman show. A titanic alien hero bonds with a human partner who works for a scientific investigative team with high tech vehicles and weapons. The team regularly encounters giant monsters, alien invaders and their unstoppable superweapons. When the team battles something they cannot defeat, Ultraman's human avatar transforms into the giant hero and evens the odds. Besides his battle prowess, Ultraman also has an arsenal of energy-based weapons for monster-slaying. But he's also solar-powered, which limits his ability to operate on Earth. His limit is marked by a warning light, usually on his chest, that creates suspense by telling the audience he's running out of time.

The English-speaking cast is adequate to the task of handling the outrageous story material, with two exceptions. Rob Roy Fitzgerald plays his hot-shot sharpshooter character a little too broadly, making him more obnoxious that gung-ho. And Kane Kosugi, who plays Ultraman's alter ego, is kind of a blank slate, rarely showing much emotion beyond some occasional lip-biting anxiety. That this is intended as a children's series (despite some occasionally disturbing violence) is apparent from the one-dimensionality and broad performances of the guest cast.

One would think that an Ultraman series made with American production values would look great, but this show had a low budget and it often shows. The model works and miniatures are about standard for a Japanese Ultraman series but should have looked much better. Ultraman's monster fights are uninspired (more on that later), and the practical effects are about one short level above a typical Sid & Marty Krofft production.

There are some good things about the series. The stories are solid and varied, even if the acting and dialogue is occasionally over-the-top. There is genuine menace to the monsters, who often kill guest characters on-camera. And the monsters - mostly re-designed from the original Ultraman series - look spectacular: colorful, intricately detailed and heavily textured. Sadly, that's a double edged sword. Reportedly, the monster costumes' complexity made them fragile and easily damaged, as well as eating up a substantial part of the show's limited budget, which results in suit actors playing way too safe during the fight scenes. The monsters - and Ultraman, sadly - move with ponderous slowness, shoving and swinging blindly at each other instead of grappling and throwing.

The Ultraman franchise goes far beyond the simplistic "guy in silver unitard beats up stuntmen in rubber suits" rap that has been used to denigrate the franchise for over 50 years. It's a fully-realized and complex multiverse that drew legions of fans from around the world decades before the Marvel Cinematic was a glimmer in Kevin Feige's eye. With the 35th Ultraman series due to debut in Japan in July 2022, it's sad to think of how far it could have reached, and what sights we could have seen, had the first live-action American effort not failed.

Agent Crush is a spy spoof featuring a robot secret agent out to stop a flatulent supervillain from destroying the world, in a story told through the magic of SuperMarionation!

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, SuperMarionation was a process created by British TV producer Gerry Anderson (The Thunderbirds; Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons) for many of his series aimed at children. They combined puppet characters equipped with electronic mouth controls with intricate mechanical special effects and miniature works. Agent Crush's puppets don't quite have the aesthetic appeal of Anderson's (to be honest, most of them are pretty ugly), but that's part of the charm of this quirky movie.

Crush is an android security agent who is more Maxwell Smart than James Bond - not that he's aware of it. His many screw-ups lead to the world security agency that commissioned him to order his destruction. But he is saved from "death" by a freak blackout engineered by his nemesis, Boris Goudphater (pronounced "Good-Farter") and gets a second chance to prove himself. With the help of the kindly scientist who created him and the scientist's gung-ho daughter, he saves the world and ends the threat of Goudphater.

Pretty standard stuff, but the story is elevated by the adult humor (although there's nothing on the gross-out level of the similarly themed Team America: World Police) and over-the-top voice acting.

Ioan Gruffudd (who played Reed Richards in two Fantastic Four movies) plays a deadpan, emotionally-stunted Agent Crush who manages a lot of subtlety with restrained inflection. Goudphater is played by the master of bombast himself BRIAN BLESSED (yes, you must spell it with all capitals). Brian Cox plays the scientist Dr. Spanner with Neve Campbell as his daughter. Danny Glover chews the scenery to Gary Busey levels as a crazed army major who wants to see Crush recycled. And former James Bond, Roger Moore, plays the head of the world security agency.

That this is an homage to Gerry Anderson is obvious from the moment you see the sign for "Meddings Junkyard. (Derek Meddings was Anderson's long-time special effects master, who later won two Academy Awards for his effects work, including one for Moonraker.) Crazy cool vehicles (an Anderson hallmark) from cars to spacecraft, abound in this movie and the action pieces are built around them.

The budgetary restrictions are visible in locations - mostly in multiple re-used effects shots in the climactic chase scene, and some of the voicework could have used a little re-tooling, but the movie is fun and entertaining, especially if you were a fan of what inspired it.

For the uninitiated, "steampunk" is a literary movement in science fiction and fantasy literature that embraces retro-futurism, a technical aesthetic based on how people of the past saw the future, particularly in the Victorian era where steam power was the motive force of industry and transportation. It recaptures the imagery and style of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, filtered through modern sensibilities.

Steampunk makes money, in books, fashion, prop design....even architecture and music. Which is probably why the makers of this movie put the word "steampunk" in the title. There's just one small problem: there's nothing even remotely steampunky about this movie. It's set in the future, not the past, with a post-apocalyptic aesthetic that is vaguely more cyberpunk than steampunk, while still lacking the budget to visualize anything more complicated that dime store chic.

There are also no samurai in the movie. Oh, there are some women who run around in white geisha face paint and carrying katanas, which they can use to stop laser beams but not someone attacking them with a two-by-four. But they don't exhibit any kind of samurai code or sensibilities. They're just another "theme" biker gang seen in a million Mad Max rip offs.

The plot is an incomprehensible mess, with "fuel pirates" stealing gasoline from...someone. It's really just a bunch of scenes of various groups of people with goofy wardrobe choices and face paint, with some of the "pirates" actually wearing tri-corn hats, and others with painted-on sideburns that reach into areas where the human face doesn't actually grow hair. Most of the cast just opts for random black or white stripes across their faces, like they just wandered in from an Adam Ant video.

The filmmaking is a absolute mess. I would advise not watching film if you have epilepsy or some other neurological disorder that is triggered by visual over-stimulation. There are more blur filter and pixellation than a Japanese porno film - probably to hide the cheap backgrounds - and enough shaky-cam to give a circus acrobat vertigo. The fight scenes are uninspired and done back actors with no combat training. The worst fights are in slow motion in a futile attempt to hide how bad they are.

If you're looking for a good steampunk movie, try The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movies or Christopher Nolan's The Prestige. Or seek out one of the better steampunk-themed TV shows like The Wild Wild West or The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne. And the only good samurai movies come from Japan.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a TV show about a submarine where nothing ever works when it should. Despite the hilarity potential of that premise, the show is not a comedy (at least, not intentionally). Instead, it was the first big sci-fi TV epic series from Irwin Allen, who would go on to produce The Time Tunnel, Lost in Space and Land of the Giants.

The series revolves around the super submarine Seaview. It is the world's first privately owned nuclear submarine, designed by not-quite-retired Admiral Nelson (Richard Basehart) for his civilian research institute. Despite this, the sub is crewed by Navy personnel and is still technically under Navy command (at least one episode revolves around the possibility that Seaview would be ordered to start World War III by launching a nuclear missile at the Soviet Union). The series is set in an unspecified "near future" time where the world is exactly the same as the current year, but the "near future" is needed to justify the super-advanced technology in the show, such as a mini-sub stored in the Seaview that can also fly.

The show's nominal commander is Captain Lee Crane (David Hedison) who doesn't get to do much captaining, because there's an admiral aboard who gives most of the orders. There is also a first mate (Robert Dowdell), who has even less to do, since the Captain has been relegated to the role of First Mate, a handful of regular officers and crew, including a communications officer who is never referred to by any name other than his nickname, "Sparks", and a rotating collection of lesser officers and crewmen, many of whom don't make it through an entire episode (this show pioneered the concept of Red Shirts two years before Star Trek first aired).

The first two seasons are a mixture of Cold War-era espionage stories and sci-fi tinted spy/adventure stories. Beginning in the third season, the show's writers started taking some weird drugs or something, and in the final two seasons, the Seaview was imperiled by sea monsters, mermen, aliens, mad scientists, time travelers, living puppets, ghosts, the Flying Dutchman, the Abominable Snowman and a FRICKIN' LEPRECHAUN!

Many of the episodes' plots tended to be very basic, such as "Seaview is threatened by X", "Spies try to trap/steal/destroy the Seaview", or "Scientific experiment threatens to destroy the world". Stories are developed and tension is built by having everything on the Seaview inexplicably fail at the most inappropriate moments (the ballast tanks were particularly troublesome, stranding the sub on the bottom of the ocean roughly once every three episodes or so). A lot of it can be explained away by virtue of the Seaview being an "experimental" sub, but most of the time, it's just an injudicious application of Murphy's Law for the sake of cheap thrills. This is kind of a trademark of Irwin Allen productions.

Nevertheless, the show is great fun, a top-flight example of an action/adventure series done right - even in the goofy later episodes. Much of the enjoyment of the show comes from the cast. Basehart is suitably professorial and commanding as Nelson. Hedison makes up for his lack of proper captaining by being a heroic leading man. The crew is generally presented as being professional, courageous, intelligent calm under pressure and working well together. A particular standout is Terry Becker as Chief Petty Office Francis Sharkey (fun fact: ten years later, Don Rickles would play a CPO named Sharkey in a navy-themed sitcom built around his particular style of comedy). On first impressions, Sharkey comes across as the most insubordinate officer in the entire navy, challenging orders - sometimes openly disobeying them - and usually suspicious of his superior officers and most visitors on the ship. He gets away with it because he is ALWAYS the first person on the Seaview to suspect something is amiss: Whenever Nelson or Crane are replaced by an impostor, Sharkey is always the first to point out that they are acting strangely. Whenever a con man or foreign spy starts scamming Nelson, Sharkey is always the first one to smell a rat. Nelson clearly tolerates Sharkey's insubordination because his instincts are a vital part of Seaview's security.

The series is noteworthy for being an unapologetic sausage-fest. Although there were a number of female characters in the first two seasons, the Seaview never had a female crew member, even temporarily. And beginning with the third season, the female characters practically disappeared. There were only three female characters in the third season - two of whom had no dialogue - and none at all in the fourth!

The special effects are often quite good for the 1960's. The exterior of the Seaview was depicted with a variety of detailed models, one of which was about 9 feet long. The Flying Sub was also an attractive design despite a curious lack of aerodynamics on a vehicle that was a part-time aircraft. Underwater scenes are presented using camera filters and quite of lot of actual underwater filming. Turbulence around the sub was depicted with the actors throwing themselves from side to side as the camera tilts to and fro (another thing Gene Roddenberry would steal for Star Trek). It all looks pretty good if you're not too picky.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is rightfully regarded as a "classic" TV series, presenting a premise that was unique for its time and imitated by many later series. It has much of the same timeless appeal as shows such as Star Trek, The Wild Wild West and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. It deserves to be seen because it's great TV fun that should not be lost or forgotten.

Ahhh...the 1980's. I remember them well. Family-owned video rental stores, renting out VHS tapes to the unsuspecting public, were on every other street corner in America. With the proliferation of these stores came the need for product to fill their shelves, and not just in the "Adults Only" section behind the curtain in the back of the store. It seemed like anybody with a video camera and a lot of free time on their hands could call themselves a "filmmaker" and get a distribution deal with fly-by-night companies that have all gone the way of the video stores themselves.

Which explains the existence of Ganjasaurus Rex. a spoof of the giant radioactive monster movies of the '50's that's about 20 years too late and now, 30 years out of date.. It's a film that proves there is no downward limit to the definition of "amateur" or "low budget" movies. A bunch of stoners, who collectively possess less unfried brain matter than a squirrel, start growing a new strain of pot called "Cannabis sequoia", a type of marijuana plant that grows as tall as a redwood tree. It attracts the attention of the worst Not-zilla ever seen on film, played by a plastic toy that can actually be seen carried around by one of the cast members in one scene. With its completely immobile plastic face sniffing around the pot crop and eating it, Ganjasaurus becomes a problem for the stoners and the government team that's on-site to crack down on local pot growers - when he decides to actually show up, which isn't often.

No point in talking about the cast, because you haven't heard of any of these people unless you lived in the area where the movie made. Calling them "actors" may be overly generous. The cinematography is lackluster, with characters' faces disappearing from view every time they step into the shade of a tree to recite some dialogue and the camera lighting reflecting off the inside of Ganjasaurus' nostrils in close-ups. The cops and G-men are indistinguishable from the slow-talking, stiff-necked louts from a Cheech and Chong routine. The film takes a decidedly pro-marijuana stance, at a time when such viewpoints were still considered scandalous, even while telling a cautionary tale about the dangers of pot attracting giant lizards, or something. There is also a "professor" of something-or-other who is an "expert" on Ganjasaurus, despite it not being seen by human eyes since World War II. At one point in the film, he gives a lecture on the history of Ganjasaurus while holding a 12-inch Godzilla toy, a sad reminder to viewers of how much better a giant monster movie could be.

The filmmakers attempt some compositing shots while Ganjasaurus rampages through a town, and some overly-ambitious attempts at stop-motion animation, but the perspective and positioning are always wrong, with Ganjasaurus continually shot with its legs concealed to cover up the sad reality that they lack the flexibility to simulate walking. Microphones are never positioned properly and sound editing is non-existent, making all the dialogue sound like it was recorded in an echo-filled high school auditorium (which it may have been).

It's been said that the best way to truly appreciate "2001: A Space Odyssey" is to watch it when you are stoned out of your mind. That may also be the only way you can watch Ganjasaurus Rex and not think it a complete waste of time. It's certainly the only way you'd find the "comedy" funny.

The Milpitas Monster is cautionary tale about pollution and warns us that if we let our garbage pile up too high, it will spawn a 50-foot monster that will....um...steal our garbage cans?

That's pretty much what defines the rampages of the giant, vaguely insectile beast of this movie. Oh, he may turn over the odd sanitation truck, voyeuristicly stare at teenagers at a high school dance or leave huge, wet sloppy footprints all over the landscape (which NO ONE in this movie ever seems to notice), but it's his strange attraction to people's trash cans that set him apart from other cinematic environmental horrors.

The movie was made by a group of students who managed to crank out a film that would embarrass Ed Wood, but you have to give them points for effort. Only able to afford one actual actor (who plays the town drunk back in the days when alcoholism could still be treated as something to be laughed at), they recruited the good citizens of Milpitas, California to fill out the cast. The effects used to create the monster range from a man in a monster suit, some oversized props, a few well-staged forced perspective shots to give the monster the illusion of immense size and even some stop-motion animation for the scenes where the monster flies.

The overall effect is not very good, but may be worth watching from a film student's perspective to understand how budgetary limitations may be overcome. There are a few things in this movie that seem disjointed and out of place. Although made in the 1970's, most of the teen characters act like they came from a '50's monster movie instead: there's a gang of trouble-makers harassing the film's young hero whose primary misdeeds appear to be being stupid and tricking the drunk into spiking the punch at their dance. The hero himself can be seen reading a book called "Male Manners", as if high school kids cared about such things in the Nixon era.

Weird anachronisms aside, this movie is best appreciated while playing the home version of Mystery Science Theater 3000 with your friends.

When it comes to movies about superhero kings, forget Wakanda. Atlantis is the place to be. Aquaman has a richly-realized superhero fantasy world build from the ground up and full of life. It's the story of Arthur Curry, a child of two worlds who must make peace between them when his evil half-brother seeks war. Long derided by folks unfamiliar with the comics as "the guy whose superpower is talking to fish", this movie should show the non-fans what comic fans have always known: that Aquaman is a certified badass. Comparisons with Black Panther are inevitable: both are movies about superheroes who are the hereditary kings of hidden, super-advanced societies. But Aquaman is superior to Black Panther in every way. Atlantis, unlike Wakanda, is a true "lost world", a place hidden from outsiders by isolation, not politics. And Arthur Curry is a much more engaging hero than T'Challa. Whereas Black Panther and his sister are confident to the point of being insufferably smug and unshakably convinced of their own moral superiority, The Aquaman (like The Batman, he is no longer referred to as just Aquaman, he's THE Aquaman, now!) is conflicted and full of doubts. For all of his manly swagger, he knows it takes more to be a king than just inheriting a title, and his story is about his journey to become king. His story also tells us that there is more to him that just a title. As his mother says, "King fights for their country. You fight for everyone." Take, that, T'Challa!. The special effects are top-notch. Atlantis is not merely rendered as a place, we get tantalizing glimpses of its ecosystem, with Atlanteans using trained sharks, whales, hippocampi (giant seahorses) and even Mosasaurs (which is not the only thing about this movie that will invoke Jurassic Park). There's also a sea monster that talks with the voice of Julie Andrews (I'm not making this up.). As per any superhero origin story, this film introduces major members of the hero's Rogues' Gallery. In this case, Orm, the Ocean Master who is Aquaman's evil half-brother, and Black Manta, DC Comics' first major black supervillain. Aside from a quick reference to Arthur's role in defeating Steppenwolf in Justice League, there are no other references to the overall continuity of the DCEU, which is the only thing that keeps me from giving this a 10/10 rating. Since it takes place after the formation of the League, it would have been a nice touch to mention that Arthur and Mera were getting a little financial help from Bruce Wayne while trekking across Africa and the Mediterranean, instead of wondering how they got from the middle of the Sahara to Sicily. It also precludes that the Altanteans' greatest weakness in the comics - they can only survive out of the water for brief periods of time before risking death from dehydration - doesn't apply to Atlanteans of royal blood, like Arthur and Mera. But small issues aside, Aquaman proves that Wonder Woman wasn't a fluke, and that Warner Brothers can produce superhero films on a par with the best of what Marvel can offer.

Let's get this out of the way first thing: Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan is a bad movie. Badly acted, badly directed, bad CGI effects (but, of course, you knew that as soon as you saw this listed on the SyFy Channel). And yet, it's entertaining in ways that its creators probably never intended. A group of teenage hoodlum wannabes are punished for their crimes...by being sent to camp. Their punishment comes in the form of drill-sergeant survivalist cop who clearly should not allowed within 100 feet of minors and a psychiatrist who wants them to get in touch with their feelings. For a teenager, I can't imagine which of them would be worse company for a weekend. As befits a horror movie that needs a body count, you will hate nearly all of these people and want them to die within 15 minutes. Don't worry, you'll get your wish. Pretty soon, the campers are getting pruned by a 15-foot-tall freak who appears to be developmentally disabled, until you realize that, somehow, he was smart enough to make or buy an double-headed ax with a 10-foot handle (C'mon, those things can't be easy to come by!) that's just big enough for a guy his size to use without looking like he's playing with a toy. He's given a back story familiar to anyone who's a fan of "maniac-in-the-back-woods" horror films. The movie plays out exactly as you expect it to. It "stars" (and I'm using the word in its loosest possible interpretation) Dan Haggerty and Joe Estevez. It's a hallmark of how low this movie sinks that its best-known performers are a TV actor whose last significant role was in 1978 and Martin Sheen's cheaper, less talented brother. Haggerty's role is little more than a cameo (and the scariest thing about this movie is, that apart from his hair and magnificently-sculpted beard going from blond to gray, he doesn't appear to have aged a day in the last 40 years). And Estevez spends the entire movie acting as if Gary Busey and Nicholas Cage are inside him, battling for possession of his immortal soul. There's nothing even remotely original about this movie: from turning a folkloric character into a generic psycho killer to the contrived excuses for why nobody's cell phone and car seem to work when they really need them, to the cookie-cutter characters whose odds of survival are inversely proportional to how annoying they are. Even Estevez's third-act freak-out seems oddly derivative. But if you approach this movie with appropriately low expectations, the cheese factor is good for a few laughs.