Welcome to the Comparative Opinions podcast! This week hosts Holly and David, and guest host Julia, talk about Superhero Fatigue – just in time for Suicide Squad to come out! When will this superhero movie cycle play itself out? Who knows! Maybe we do – listen to find out.
Comparative Opinions is a weekly half-hour-ish podcast hosted on ComparativeGeeks.com. Subscribe for new episodes every Sunday!
Considering this is a pretty eventful year for movies and shows in general, August is about to begin a slower month or two of releases. Besides Suicide Squad next weekend, there’s not much out in theatres, and sadly there’s also not as much new streaming this month as usual. What is coming is great, though, so let’s get to it.
Sleepy Hollow
I absolutely love Sleepy Hollow, but that could be because it has a few things I also absolutely love: Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Christopher Walken, and music by Danny Elfman. Worth checking out if you love even just one of those things.
Sliding Doors
I randomly caught this late one night, and even though I’m super iffy on Gwyneth Paltrow, it had John Hannah (of bumbling-younger-brother Jonathan in The Mummy fame) and so I watched it all. For a romantic dramedy, it’s actually a unique and interesting concept.
Star Trek: Nemesis
The good: Star Trek, Patrick Stewart. The bad: A meh story-line that pulls a Serenity with some much beloved characters.
Funny or Die Presents: Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie
Ok, all I have to say about this is: Johnny Depp dressed in orange face playing The Drumpf. You’re welcome.
The Little Prince (August 5)
The first ever animated version of the amazing and beloved French story, and I must say from the trailer it looks pretty amazing. If anything, it’s one of my favorite stories and thus I will definitely check it out. It also has a great voice cast to go with wonderful looking animation.
The Get Down (August 12th, first part)
Watch the trailer, because this Baz Luhrmann-created Netflix original looks fantastic.
The Road (August 25)
Based on a bestselling novel and starring Viggo Mortenson, this eerie post-apocalyptic film follows a man and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee, who we all just saw as Kurt Wagner in X-Men Apocalypse) as they try to survive in the wastelands and make their way to the sea.
Once Upon a Time: Season 5 (August 26)
I only managed to keep up with the first half of the latest season of Once, and I’m really eager to catch up before the new season starts in September because they’re bringing Aladdin into the Storybrooke family, and I love Aladdin an embarrassing amount.
Some Notables Leaving Netflix in August:
Addams Family Values
The Sandlot
Inside Lleweyn Davis
A Coen Brothers’ movie that had a lot of critical acclaim, if you missed this when it came out (like me) catch it to see what all the praise is about!
Matrix Trilogy
The Matrix is coming to Amazon! Always worth a watch, now you can see them on streaming if you don’t own them. And if you’re like me, you really watch these so you can catch the Rob Dougan in the soundtrack and admire genius and awesomeness.
The Others
I’m not one for horror, but this movie so wonderfully captures suspense and internal anguish that I love it. If you scare easily, watch this one with the lights on during the day, but definitely watch it.
The Piano
Ok, I love this movie but… I’ve only seen it once. It’s one of those movies that is so amazing it stays with you without multiple views. It’s so incredibly tough to watch, and yet worth it because of how it captures one of the worst times in our recent history.
Say Anything…
A classic 80’s teen romance, starring John Cusack and directed by Cameron Crowe. Perfect with popcorn after a long day, when you really just need assurance that life can work out.
Scarface
Another classic worth seeing at least once, if anything else for the iconic scenes that are referenced frequently in other media and the performance of Al Pacino.
Scent of a Woman
Another classic Al Pacino film, this one is more heartwarming than Scarface, and features a famous and iconic tango scene with Gabrielle Anwar of Burn Notice fame.
The Night Of
I apparently missed the fact that this has already been on, but this intriguing crime drama will be airing its finale on August 28, so there’s time to catch up before then.
Notables Leaving HBO (Aug 31):
Alpha Dog – a suspense with the late, great Anton Yelchin (*cries*)
Snatch
Spaceballs
If you’d like a full list of everything coming to Netflix, click here.
A lot of really exciting things always come out of San Diego Comic-Con, and this year was no exception. A lot of teasers and trailers were released, giving us first looks at several upcoming films that already have a lot of buzz. I’m only highlighting the ones that really stuck out to me, which unfortunately is most of them…
Something that is interesting to notice is that it seems that movie ideas can come in cycles. Some cycles last longer than others, but they do not last forever. This concept stems from the fact that it seems that over certain time periods you will see almost the exact same concept show up in a bunch of different movies from different studios. Often you will see one or two that stand out and then the others will have fallen flat. Depending on how well the good ones do the cycle might last years or just a year.
Part of what happens during these cycles is that after watching the trailers it feels like it is all various levels of the same movie. Why do some of these cycles last longer than others? Why do the cycles seem to happen in the first place?
With the recent release of Star Trek Beyond, I wanted to Throwback Thursday to a Star Trek related post… when I found this one, it made me laugh and I felt I needed to share. This was originally published June 25, 2013 on Comparative Geeks, with Star Trek Into Darkness in theaters. So get back into that mindset, sit back, relax, and read how terribly wrong I was…
Alright, I want to talk about the recent Star Trek movies, and what I think a good next sort of plot would be. To do so, I think spoilers will be unavoidable, so I just wanted to throw that out there now. If you haven’t seen Star Trek: Into Darkness yet, go forth to the movie theater and do so. Then come back and you can read on.
There have been a couple of different plot sources so far, so while there has been some reaction against their source in the second one, I want to point out that there was something different in the first one. And that means we need to move into spoilerville. Onwards!
Comparative Geeks 