DVD

Have you ever imagined what The Sixth Sense would have been like if the little kid hadn’t been such a bitch and had tried to actually listen to all the dead people? Maybe they just needed help or something, like Mischa Barton did (hot even when far too young and vomiting).

Well Ghost Town does just that, pitting a live and well Ricky Gervais (who plays a bitter about life Dentist) versus the ghostly remains of a tuxedo laden Greg Kinnear. Kinnear wants Gervais to get his widow (Tea Leoni on the comeback path) to still love him or something, and surprisingly enough Gervais and Leoni end up having the hots for each other. Makes perfect sense, considering Leoni is engaged to none other than the Rocketeer himself Bill Campbell (boner).

Whatever. This movie was pretty good and entertaining. And the best part by far is Alan Ruck with a very minute and cheesy role as some dead dad.

4 out of 5 Bangbuses

Note: This film is not to be confused with There’s Something About Mary, The Sixth Man, Ghost World, Just Like Heaven, Spanglish, What Lies Beneath, or GhostBusters II.

30 Rock: Season 2 doesn’t even need a review, because it is a fact that every single person (sources pending) in the world loves it now. And rightfully so.

The writers strike put the kibosh on a third of the planned episodes for Season 2. This allows the short season an easy three rotations in your DVD player before remembering the life you once had, if, you know, you’re super crazy and stay at home and basically just watch 30 Rock and eat pasta all the time. Hypothetically. (Damn.)

Reasons why 30 Rock Season 2 owns lives for three months straight:

1. SUPERSTAR CAMEOS! Jerry Seinfeld, Will Arnett, and Matthew Broderick are just a few of the huge stars that love 30 Rock and appear in season two. If we know anything about celebrities, it’s that they dictate what we like. So, we like.

2. SUPERSTAR ALEC BALDWIN!

3. SUPERSTAR GENIUS-BRAIN WRITING! See: everything, always, again. Lightening fast, topical, self-deprecating, borderline offensive. It’s like the perfect storm, sitcom-writing styles. Also, your friends will really really like when you inadvertently (and shamelessly) start using these brilliant phrases and dialogue in your everyday conversation as if they were your own creations. Try it.

4. SUPERSTAR TINA FEY! Aka Liz Lemon, aka Tina through her own eyes. Season 2 takes Liz through relationships with new boyfriend Floyd, old boyfriend Dennis “Rat King” Duffy, and through continuing conflict between finding maturity amidst the continuous daily circus that is her life working on the Tracy Jordan Show. She is sort of okay sometimes I guess, if you like insanely smart hilarious adorable talented people.

Liz drunk dials the condo board that won’t return her calls; sings “You Oughta Know.”

5. SUPERSTAR FAN! That’s you! GO WATCH, LEARN, LOVE, so much love.

If there is one downside to 30 Rock Season 2, it is that, much like 30 Rock Season 1, after watching it, nothing else will seem nearly as funny… except more 30 Rock. You know what that means.

[Ed.'s note: this was received with a note from Chris Nash that read: "Here's your fucking Joan Crawford. Six typed pages of it. People need to know this stuff." And now we give it to you, gentle reader.]

I wasn’t a fan of Joan Crawford when I watched this collection. Other than Mildred Peirce, I hadn’t seen any of her movies, and she didn’t strike me as anything special.

So I figured, why not get to know the lady? She seems like a nice old lady; like she’d give me candy just for walking by her house on my way to school. And this is supposed to be a collection of her best movies, right? Well, being vol. 2, I guess it’s her best movies numbers six through ten… but there’s got to be some gems in there. I mean, the sixth best Dolph Lundren movie is Army of One -– and Army of One is pretty great.

This collection contains the films A Woman’s Face, Sadie McKee, Flamingo Road, Strange Cargo, and Torch Song. The set itself is top notch; every movie is on its own disc (no double-sided nonsense, where one side is a movie and the other side is a bunch of scratches with ‘side 2’ printed on it) and each movie comes with a cartoon (which are amazingly restored and colourful as fuck) and either a short documentary about the film, a related newsreel short, and other related odds and ends.

Torch Song
We learn from ‘Tough Baby’–– the bonus feature documentary about Torch Song — that it’s a musical constructed from songs written for (but not good enough to be used in) other musicals of the era. This film is literally garbage. It tells the story of an older actress who is bitter at her aging face and takes it out on everyone. After going through numerous musical directors on her newest film, she finally meets her match in a blind pianist who isn’t afraid to call a spade a spade. In the case of Torch Song, the spade in question occurs when JC and the cast perform the song ‘Two-faced Woman’ while dressed up in black-face. More… »

Twenty-Three. That’s how many times I’ve seen the best Charlie Brown episode of all time. Once each year since I was born.

Yeah, it’s better than the Christmas episode (“oooh”-ing in unison is no longer cool, you fucks), and way better than the rest. You got Charlie with the faulty ghost costume, the Halloween party with bobbing for apples, Snoopy doing his WWI flying ace routine, Pigpen still having dirt float around him even in costume, and the most classic of all scenes; Linus out in the pumpkin patch awaiting the Great Pumpkin.

You might think that the apple bobbing and weak costume originality outdate this show. But you forget that there is not a single parent in this show (Linus hangs out alone in the pumpkin patch until 4am), hinting towards a futuristic world where adults no longer exist and we remain children for our entire lives; a world where you are allowed to wear the exact same outfit everyday and where young people worship Beethoven.

So move aside Jules Verne, Charles M. Schultz is the best futurist of all time.

Infest Wisely, a collaborative lo-fi sci-fi film, written by Jim Munroe and directed in seven chapters by Munroe and six other directors is… well, why don’t you digest that sentence first. Okay, seven chapters, seven directors, crazy nanotechnology that appears to make the Toronto of the future a better place, but oh wait! This crazy nanotechnology is actually going to take over everyone’s brains! Brutal.

Anyway, it’s my humble opinion that there is nothing wrong with a movie that features a talking cat, bike chase, and the destruction of a shoebox model city. Throw in a ‘high tech photo viewer’ (for the pictures people can take by blinking their eyes!) which is actually the same dollar store cutting board my mom uses — with photos superimposed over it — and you have a charming low budget dystopian flick that wears its politics like a silk-screened bike gang patch on its sleeve.

If you ever wondered what would happen in Last House on the Left if the parents exacted revenge on the wrong people and replaced the soundtrack with The Spanish Flea, allow me to answer: it becomes a horrible movie called Otis.

Otis is a mess of a movie. It claims to be dark comedy/horror, yet succeeds at neither. The only thing that shines through in this installment of Raw Feed’s indie horror canon is the filmmaker’s utter insincerity toward it’s target audience. Contrary to what they’d like you to believe, they’re not doing anything new. They’re not breaking new ground.

In brief, Otis is about a lonely, overweight pizza delivery man trying to fulfill the fantasy of living his older, popular brother’s highschool life. He does this by kidnapping girls in the neighbourhood and torturing them into participating in a mock prom he’s set up in his basement. The movie follows Otis capturing a girl named Riley, and how her parents and the FBI attempt to find her.

The problem with Otis is it’s just bad. The story is flimsy and incidental rather than being carefully plotted, and the characters are shallow mockeries (unintentional mockeries) of a bad 80’s movie. Daniel Stern plays the angry dad, who’s always frustrated and adds nothing new to any conversation, only yelling, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN (fill in the blank with whatever the last person said)!?” He essentially plays a bad copy of his character in Little Monsters. Illeana Douglas plays the worrisome mother; there’s the inept cops, the bratty younger brother, and Kevin Pollak’s portrayal of Otis’ bullying older brother who does nothing but yell. I’m not exaggerating. He never speaks a line, it’s always yelling. Which could be funny — if it wasn’t in this movie. But don’t blame the actors. We’ve all seen them before. This isn’t poor acting - -it’s bad directing and bad writing. But mainly bad directing.

Another thing I couldn’t get over was the soundtrack (both the actual score, and the soundtrack itself). I’m amazed Warner Brothers shelled out the money to fill this movie with classic 80’s music. Not just the garbage stuff - the stuff that actually costs a bit of money. Unfortunately I guess the filmmakers realized that the soundtrack was a highlight of the film, so Otis is full of montages where Blue Oyster Cult, DEVO, and Flock of Seagulls songs play from beginning to end overtop of nothing special.

As for the musical score? I don’t know why I’m seeing so many movies with BAD guitar rock scores. Ironman anyone? Has guitar hero made so much of an impact it’s actually ruining movies? Hey Hollywood, we don’t like guitar rock as much as we like hitting buttons on a stick while our friends laugh and Highway Star plays in the background. And in the case of Otis, it’s not even good guitar rock. It sounds like it was written by your older cousin’s bar band. But not your cool older cousin, the older cousin you think would probably rape your girlfriend.

When I said there is only one thing that shines through in OTIS, I wasn’t giving credit where credit is due. The second act is actually good. When we see the interaction between Otis and Riley, I don’t feel like turning the movie off. So I guess that part’s a winner (unfortunately it’s bookended with a cinematic jar of piss and a bucket of dead mice).

As well, a few performances rise high above the rest of the cast. Bostin Christopher’s portrayal of the title character is great. One of the only times I actually laughed (or even smiled) during the movie was because of him; and it came from him. HIS performance - not a pratfall or a ‘clever’ situation. Tony Krantz should thank him for providing the only time this film even comes close to hitting the mark. I hope another role comes along for Bostin to showcase his abilities, because it would be a shame if we could only find them here. Two other highlights were from Tracy Scoggins as the television anchorwoman (who is still hot) and Jere Burns as Agent Hotchkiss. They gave more to their roles than the movie deserved.

Other than that, I still hate OTIS.

And the worst part about me hating OTIS is, if - by some far-off - chance the filmmakers ever read this review, they’re going to think they succeeded. They’re going to think the accomplished exactly what they set out to do, patting themselves on the back thinking they’ve struck a nerve and the current climate isn’t ready for something as groundbreaking as OTIS. I know this because they say it in the TWISTED WORLD OF OTIS special feature. They ACTUALLY eat their own bullshit. They think they’re amazing. Some great self-congratulatory quotes are:

Screenwriter Erik Jendresen:
“It’s a comedy about a paedophile, (with a self-congratulatory smirk of how clever he is) which is just universally wrong.”

Daniel Stern on why he likes OTIS:
“I like human beings… what happens to regular folks.”

Director Tony Krantz:
“OTIS is a political film. It’s also metaphoric of our times.”

And lastly:
“We wanted to be the first satire of the torture-porn genre.”

That’s the one that really gets me. Being the first isn’t the same as being the best. Just make a good movie. I’m reminded of something George Romero said that I always fall back on: “Night of the Living Dead has been made 100 times, yet it’s never been made.” Simply put, if you have a unique vision, you’re never telling the same story.

So, makers of OTIS, upon hearing that I hate your movie, please don’t think you’ve won. I don’t hate you because you’re ‘edgy’; I hate you because you’re that loser goth kid nobody liked and I took pity on, only to discover a week later you’re actually just socially retarded, you swore at my sister, and you’ve been stealing my CDs.

You want edgy, funny, revolting, and suspenseful? Watch Chan-wook Park’s segment ‘CUT’ on the release of ‘Three… Extremes.’ He accomplishes what these guys never will, except he does it in half an hour.

On the surface, Raw Feed has a lot going for it. It’s an arm of Warner Brothers distribution centered on making straight-to-DVD low-budget horror and it’s headed by half the directing team of The Blair Witch Project and a few writers from The X-Files. Which is why I find myself disappointed with what they have to offer - they should just be better movies. Great, refreshing, stand-alone movies that live up to the reputations of the filmmakers behind them.

Rest Stop was Raw Feed’s first film, written and directed by John Shiban and staring Jamie Alexander. The basic story is Nicole and her boyfriend Jesse are running away from home. While driving in the middle of nowhere in the desert (and after a some quick road sex with a horribly obvious body-double), the two end up at a rest stop so Nicole can go to the washroom while Jesse waits in the car. When Nicole comes back, Jesse and the car are gone. Nicole finds herself alone at the rest stop, with nothing but a locked-up ranger station, a dirty washroom, and a spooky RV in the parking lot. That is, until the mysterious creepy yellow truck appears and forces her into a night of terror. All the while Nicole has to find out where Jesse has been taken, who the truck driver is, and who the weird family are living in the RV.

I never go into a movie wanting to hate it. I always give what I’m watching the benefit of the doubt. But when conventions are shoe-horned into a movie for no reason other than to fill up the horror movie checklist, I’m a little insulted. I’m generally forgiving if the filmmakers are being cheeky with it, but when you’re doing it stone-faced just to do it, don’t treat me like an idiot about it. And the use of a body double only makes it more pathetic.

When they show us a nice medium wide shot of Nicole taking off her bra, and then cut to a screen full of tit just before the bra crosses the nipple, I’m not thinking that’s sexy. There’s no natural momentum. It’s just shot after shot of Nicole and Jesse embracing cut against a giant zoomed-in booby (yes, booby). This isn’t pubescent masturbation material. And when you’re just throwing in tits, you should at least have the pride to ask yourself, “can a 13 year old jerk off to this?” And if the answer is ‘no,’ then keep it out. Directors should all take a lesson from my VHS copy of Total Recall that shows nothing but static where a three-breasted alien once stood.

As for the actors, Jamie Alexander does the best with what she was given (she also plays the hot chick in the underage drinking episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). Joey Lawrence appears about halfway through and does an AMAZING Bruce Willis impression, which is worth checking out on it’s own. Everyone else just seems to be doing their jobs and little else.

Overall, Rest Stop is an overly ambitious movie that loses direction within the first act (and this is confirmed with the DVD’s three alternate endings). I know John Shiban is a good writer. With some great television under his belt (remember that awesome ‘Field Trip’ episode of X-Files?), he knows how to carry a story; but the problem with Rest Stop is it needs an answer-man. Rest Stop doesn’t have Agent Mulder from The X-Files or the Winchester boys from Supernatural to let the audience know what’s really happening; so, the audience has no clue what is really going on until the credits start rolling. And I mean that literally — the movie’s big revelation occurs in a small video that runs alongside the credits. And even then I’m still a little sketchy as to who did what to who and why.

I ended Rest Stop remembering the reason Nicole wanted to go to the rest stop in the first place; when Jesse asked her why she doesn’t just pee on the side of the road, she answers, “I’m not going to pee in the dirt.”

And that’s kind of how I feel about Rest Stop. When I watch studio-made straight-to-DVD horror, I know I’m slumming it. So when I’m slumming it, I want to at least do it with a little class.

I’m not going to pee in the dirt.

The Life of Mammals. The Life of Birds. The Trials of Life. Get it? Good. The BBC is seriously into life. Not just any ordinary old life, I’m talking the best of the best: whales, gorillas, phytoplankton and parrots. You would think that the solid gold animals that make up these documentary series would make them enjoyable or entertaining to watch. You’d be wrong.

See, I love animals. I love fish, and kangaroos and all the problems associated with being them. However, after watching roughly 17 hours, no shitting, of animals being themselves and eating each other you start to realize something. What the hell is the point? I mean, it’s freakin sweet to see salmon swim upstream — they go through this whole big endurance race to the north to have fish sex, creepy though -– but honestly, why do they do it? It’s way easier to just chill down south like your grandpappy.

I came up with a few possible solutions as to why animals exist and do what they do.

1. Humans over analyze animals and forget that they are animals. We assume that we are better than animals but really, we just want to do animal stuff and have sex too.

2. We would be totally fucked without them.

3. They are reflections of a greater being who is beyond the grasp any human theist or current religion could contain.

4. A metaphor.

4. David Attenborough.

Sitting on couches, beds and basically doing dick all at work I have had the time to come to the conclusion that animals exist purely to be narrated by David Attenborough. I mean, David has practically narrated every animal there is. He narrated two whales into eating each other. Seriously, I saw it. He even narrated a polar bear into catching a beluga. It doesn’t take a genius to put this together.

While being initially interesting, David has worn me thin. He really likes to narrate animals doing the same thing. Watch any random clip from the above documentaries and I can guarantee that it will go as follows: David narrates the prey into the scene. He brings in the predator. He then proceeds to show off his dramatic skills by either a) allowing the weaker animal to get away, or b) allowing the kinetic carnage to ensue. Yes, the animals may look different, but being guided by Attenborough (pure id) they all end up doing the same thing.

Bottom line, watch one, watch ‘em all.

BBC LIFE SERIES: 7 Social Climbing Monkeys out of 11.

If I were to write a quick summary of this film (which I won’t), I would call this movie boring. But sometimes Ryan made really cute and playful faces that made me giggle.

It may come as a surprise to few that with all my vast writing knowledge and experience, I have never reviewed a DVD before. So when I was handed Chaos Theory I thought to myself… why the hell am I going to start now?

In fact, the only reason I put this movie in the DVD player was to inspire my girlfriend to have Ryan Reynolds role play sex (better than makeup sex if you can get her to be Ryan). Needless to say, I couldn’t get her to do it (we compromised and I made her play me instead) and the heartbreak of her refusal got me thinking: Why can’t my girlfriend be Ryan Reynolds?

Instead of writing a review of this movie, I will write an appeal to girlfriends everywhere explaining why guys want to fantasize about Ryan Reynolds and why girls should concede to (my) role-play demands. I thought the most effective way to do this was to write him a new resume. I call it ‘Ryan Reynolds is a cooler, better, sexier person than you: The Resume.’

RYAN RODNEY REYNOLDS – SUPERSTAR

I enjoy long walks inside your girlfriend

In Conclusion: Does anyone know of a Halloween store open this time or year? More importantly one specializing in Ryan Reynolds?

Super High Me…. Super Size Me? Whoa, they almost sound the same! Comedian Doug Benson was pinned down by sweet Mary Jayne when he discovered this gem. If I was baked right now, that might make me laugh along with him. A little. Unfortunately for Doug, I am only high on instant coffee.

Armed with a catchy one-liner, Doug sets out on a quest to get baked for thirty days. On the surface, it’s a funny concept, but one that isn’t foreign to many of us. I could pick any number of my friends and follow them around all day and they would be funnier than this dope.

To make his bogus investigation seem credible, Doug goes sober for a month. He consults with a doctor and a psychologist. He has his sperm count checked, does his SAT’s, and even does a test for Extra Sensory Perception! After the control month, he gets ripped and does the tests again.

If you haven’t given up already, or are too stoned to give a damn, hold on! Yes, there is a deeper theme in this cloud of smoke. During one stand-up bit, our man Doug actually brags that he has a license to smoke weed because he whined to a doctor about some back pain. But throughout the film there is no discussion with his doctor, or anyone for that matter, about this crippling back pain that can only be cured by cannabis. Like many of us, he just wants to get baked.

At the peak of the film, the DEA raids several Californian clinics that hook sick folks up with their meds. Why? The Governator and his crew running the state are cool with medicinal marijuana, aren’t they? But those pesky feds are not stoked. What! These people are sick! Well, as this film demonstrates, fuck-bags like Doug are inconsiderate and will abuse the system. He laughs at how easy it was for him to get medicinal marijuana. This undermines any serious discussion Super High Me presents about the right for sick people to smoke up.

If you are bored at work like I am and drugs are not an option, give this a go. If not, fuck it – go burn one with your friends. Your friends are funnier than Doug Benson.

More than bad, this show is confusing. The premise seems to be that our hero, who boasts his profession as doing “a lot of things,” has a “burn notice out on” him. Judging by the plotline, it’s like being blacklisted, only sexier. But sexy or not, I’m not entirely positive what burn notice means, so I don’t understand his dilemma.

Burn Notice is like VIP without the distraction of all the boobs. And with Bruce Campbell. If this show isn’t on Spike TV already, you can probably look forward to that.

JUICEBOXdotcom says Burn Notice: Season One is:

“Multicultural!”

“The wigs the wardrobe people got look very real!”

“Main character is against smoking!”

“Can watch this show for 20 minutes if nothing else is on!”

“Miami looks warm! Might inspire you to winter there!”

Maaaaaan. Considering I chose this out of our Free Pile based on the triple-threat of ridiculousness that is its cover image + title + tagline, I feel like a bit of a goon for actually having enjoyed it in earnest. So goonly, in fact, that I’ve avoided slopping together a review for about a month in hopes that I’d eventually stop getting bugged about putting one up. But since that doesn’t look like it’s happening, and since I enjoy enjoying free things, let’s kick the ground and get this over with.

Tell Me You Love Me is a good television show. Its working title, though the network wouldn’t have it, was the far more charming/appropriate Fuck Me, Please and as such there are loads of dinks and boobs on the television screen.

It’s about three couples, all of which you see the dinks and boobs of, who are in various stages of their respective relationships, and are narratively linked by a common therapist (who you also see the boobs of… and she is 70!). The cast apparently had to do a bunch of tequila shots in order to get past the first-date-y-ness of the pilot where they barely knew one another but were still groping each other’s bits (see, I even listened to the episode commentaries for that nugget. WHAT HAS BECOME OF OUR HERO?) More… »

There is no such thing as bad television.

After popping in disc one of Joey season two, I assure you that I still believe this to be true with every inch of my bloody, pulsating heart.

Admittedly, there are a few shows out there that — to an untrained viewer — initially seem like garbage. Jennifer Love Hewitt whispers sensually to ghosts. Trash bin. Charlie Sheen is a sex predator living with some closet gay and a small child. Total landfill material.

Joey Tribiani moves to LA to become a serious actor. Hmm…

I refuse to libel these shows by labeling them “bad television.” There is no bad television, only bad consumers of television. For the purposes of this review, I’m going to refer to these shows collectively as. . . More… »

Does anyone remember the straight to video G.I. Joe movie where Cobra teams up with an underground race of snake people to release space spores into the atmosphere that will de-evolve humans into amoebas? It’s a good movie. I think there was a scene in it where Bazooka gets hit by Cobra laser fire and it totally killed my eight-year-old boner because it was probably the first time Cobra had ever hit anyone despite constantly firing so many lasers it makes the laser floor of Joe Nightclub seem just as limp dicked as it’s patronage.

What made it one of the only things I can really remember about my childhood is that Bazooka (That’s right, his name was Bazooka. He also wore a football jersey instead of a uniform) leapt back to his feet, coolly growled “you shot my trigger finger,” and then beat the nearest Cobra soldier to death with his bare hands. Boner restored! That’s all I could really think about when I was watching the Beatrix Potter collection. Instead of buying this DVD set, parents should buy their kids toy guns.

Enough about Beatrix Potter though, have you heard that in the new G.I. Joe movie G.I. JOE stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity? It’s not even about how awesome America is! It’s about international pussies that foil terrorist plots using state of the art anti-terrorist technology. I think DJ Qualls plays General Hawk. This is a franchise that used to feature a character named Sgt. Slaughter. Is it just me, or do we not care that the next generation is going to grow up to be girls?

The film’s being produced by Di Bonaventura Pictures. They’re the guys that made a movie about an army of space robots that turn into big rigs and fighter jets, but made it boring. Don’t worry though, they hired Stephen Sommers to direct it. He wrote Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride. Fuck. (BBC Warner)

So this one time at Live 8, this guy called Elton John asked Pete Doherty to perform “Children of the Revolution” with him. Sir Elton John thought it was a good idea to ask the guy who squirted a syringe full of blood at an MTV News camera if he’d perform “Children of the Revolution” with him. At Live 8. This is a guy who was evicted from his London apartment for reasons of £10,000 of unpaid rent and BLOOD DAMAGE to the walls.

Anyhow, the Live 8 performance (wherein Doherty looks like a baby giraffe learning to walk) is not on this DVD. Neither is the time he threw a 26er of vodka at an audience demanding they fill his empty cigarette pack before he continued playing. This stupid boring DVD was filmed in late 2004, just after The Libertines barfed him out and before Babyshambles even had a chance to record their first record, so Doherty is just a burgeoning young cartoon character here instead of the full blown retarded Snoopy he has become.

A Babyshambles DVD should be like every article on The Superficial baked into a garbage pie. But this is total zzz. And was apparently released without the band’s consent. Though it’s doubtful they even care or remember that fact. (Eagle Vision/Eagle Rock Entertainment)

Look at all those fuckin’ heroes. Standing on rubble or something, all steely and awesome. Third Watch, the show which introduced these heroes to the world, is the raddest show ever. It makes me wish I was saving babies or stopping kids from selling their bodies for drug money instead of writing about Third Watch like an asshole. But someone’s got to spread the gospel. We all have our burdens. More… »

More than anything else, watching Michael Clayton, a movie that got nominated for Best Picture to the confusion of everyone who actually saw it, will make you want to go and watch hours of YouTube interviews with George Clooney. Because he’s just so disgustingly charming. And good looking in a way you wish you could be. And charming. I mean, this guy was in Return to Horror High. And he was good in it. More… »

I was genuinely excited as I unwrapped my copy of Justice League: The New Frontier. As the comic book loving, cartoon watching handsome devil that I am, anything targeted at people 10 years younger than me is generally something I’m going to love.

About ten minutes into the movie, an American pilot (Hal Jordan, voiced by David Boreanaz) who was just shot out of the air (despite the Korean War having ended, literally minutes ago) is fighting against a Korean kid who wants to kill him. Then Hal Jordan shoots him and we see his face covered in the kid’s blood.

Despite its PG-13 rating, and following all the regular cartoon violence rules (don’t actually see bullets hitting people, etc.) I decided it would be best for that 12-year-old personality of mine to take a back seat on this one.

Justice League: The New Frontier is a re-imagining of the world’s most famous Super Team, set against a post-Korean War back drop. It’s based on what is widely acclaimed as one of the best Superhero comics to come out in the past long while.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about the film.

First: the good. It was a great story with a lot of characters interestingly woven into one another. It doesn’t focus on Superman or Batman like every other DC motion picture initiative seems to. The opening hooks you. The conclusion is great, and opens the door to more stories. And the character design (with one exception) and animation style is just lots of fun.

But, truth be told, the adaptation felt as though they had left things out. I looked it up and I was right. There are sections missing from it. There are gaps in that middle section of the film that would have done a lot to fill out the story. That’s not to say the story doesn’t work. All the pieces fit together in the very clever fashion that usually comes with well thought out re-imaginings, and to say the story left me unsatisfied would be a flat out lie. But it could have been… you know… more?

The special features were alright, too. With a few bonus episodes of an unrelated Justice League cartoon and the usual smattering of ads disguised as cool content, you get some nice extras with this package.

All in all, the film feels like a solid 7 out of 10 on the arbitrary scale of whatever the hell I feel like, and knowing that 12 year old, I’ll probably watch it again. (Warner Bros. Animation)