With so much pop culture in the world, it’s hard to know what’s best. Fortunately, Media Magpies has you covered, as one of our writers will occasionally share what they have determined to be The All-Time Top Five.
Comics! They’re not just for a specified subgroup anymore! They’re for everyone, whether you like it or not. We can’t get enough of comics at the movies, adapting one medium to another not because of any inherent artistic value — images created in panels are quite different than those filmed at 24 frames per second! — but because the economic qualities of comics make for boffo BO. Undying characters! Unending universes! Intellectual property that, due to generations of un-unionized work and outright evil contracts, can be manipulated for ever and ever for next to nothing! If there’s one thing we’re glad to see at the theater or on our screens at home, it’s a movie based on a comic!
And with the number of comic book movies increasing while non-comic-book movies become less and less important to studios, it’s never been easier to see one! But this embarrassment of riches has led to conflict. With so many comic book movies out there, fans are constantly arguing about which ones are the best. Fortunately, Media Magpies has the answers. For the longtime fan and newbie alike, here is the definitive list — the All-Time Top Five Comic Book Movies (although you may of course suggest your own in the comments).
Riki-Oh: The Story Of Ricky — Comics are the realm of superheroes, and what is more superheroic than pulling a nail out of your hand and punching an eyeball out of your enemy’s head? Based on the manga by Masahiko Takajo and Tetsuya Saruwatari (the latter of whom co-wrote the film with director Lam Nai-choi), Riki-Oh follows the title character as he must break out of a hellish prison and avenge his dead girlfriend with only his superhuman strength and martial arts prowess to face down prison guards, assassins and a warden who happens to be a giant demon. The bold-strokes storytelling is matched by bloodsoaked imagery, with stomachs punched through and guts pulled out, tendons tied together and heads destroyed with a single blow. It is often hard for films to translate comic book action, told via still images and gutters, to nonstop motion; but Lam brings the visceral experience of a gory spread to unforgettable (and practically produced) life.
Ghost World — Daniel Clowes’ comic of alienated youth reaching the final alienation of adulthood is brilliantly adapted by Terry Zwigoff, eschewing strict fidelity for something respectful of Clowes’ clean lines and linked yet loosely plotted events but still coherent as a coming-of-age flick. Clowes’ deadpan is broken up with more action (and with musical numbers — a freeing dance to a Bollywood number and the immortal thunderings of Blues Hammer — providing a kinetic jolt) that gives the increasing melancholy more weight. Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson are perfectly cast as the leads; but Steve Buscemi, as a minor comics character elevated into a supporting player who can’t even support himself, is the sad soul of the movie, an aspiration and a damnation, his face something Clowes wishes he had drawn.
Josie and the Pussycats — We consume pop, but pop will eat itself. The Human Centipede of the comic book movie takes an Archie spinoff from the 60s and pumps it full of the best late 90s/early 00s hitmakers MTV has to offer, as a small band hits the big time with all the glossy success and loss of soul that comes with it. The bold colors and lines of the comic become bright lights and slick sheen, and the idea of stardom is revealed to be the reality of corporate control. Authenticity wins out in the end of course, that’s what has the most audience appeal, and Archie has not gone broke over 70 years of selling teen hijinx to the American public. Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan’s film is a bright and shining lie and a mallpunk dream and too catchy to forget.
Fritz The Cat — Ralph Bakshi’s 1972 film might give a softer ending to R. Crumb’s comic series, but it still contains plenty of the ugly violence, casual racism and outright pornography that the fans craved. Bakshi’s animation gives a slightly cartoonier feel to Crumb’s drawings of an anthropomorphic cat looking to get laid in the wasteland after the ’60s wave broke, but he maintains a comically scuzzy and then viciously scuzzy atmosphere, translating Crumb’s misanthropy to the silver screen. The comic-y exaggeration lets the curdled contempt for hypocritical liberation, not to mention the rock-hard cat cock, be depicted in a way that won’t send viewers running for the exits — well, at least not all of them. (And to that end, the trailer is not safe for work.)
Monkeybone — Monkeybone supposedly has very little in common with its inspiration, Kaja Blackley and Vanessa Chong’s graphic novel Dark Town. It was clearly messed with in post-production, with director Harry Selick losing control of the project. Selick himself was uncomfortable with so much live-action material, as Brendan Fraser’s repressed animator moves between the limbo of Dark Town and the real world (he is possessed by the spirit of his pervert monkey cartoon character id in the latter environment). It is a mess and yet in its endlessly inventive and crude images, its careening between dream and death and life, its sense that anything can happen — including a furious Bob Odenkirk chasing the ambulatory corpse of Chris Kattan so he can harvest its organs, leading to a showdown at a giant farting monkey balloon — is the spirit of what comics can be, how a page can lead to a world previously unimagined. These days we know how sophisticated comics and their filmed adaptations can be and can scoff at the fools and scolds of the past who thought the funnies were puerile trash. Monkeybone knows those prudes were right — and that is what made comics great.
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Department of
Conversation
I’ve seen none of these, and now I want to see all of them but Fritz the Cat. (Look, I don’t want to watch anything that will make me feel like I can’t look my own boy cat in the eyes.)
I’ve seen the other four and… yeah, I don’t think I’ll be going for 100% list completion any time soon, haha.
Thanks! Ghost World and Josie would honestly make a great double bill, young millennial women in indie isolation and pop solidarity. And Riki-Oh and Monkeybone are tastes worth acquiring. Fritz … yeah, you’re probably safe with the edited version:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VWPnNzRQFsI
Love that feeling of knowing exactly what an unlabeled YouTube link is going to be before I click it.
Aw man, my threads!
I have seen two of them, and I think you’ll quite enjoy Ghost World and Josie and the Pussycats (certainly for rather different reasons).
What did we watch?
99 River Avenue – Watch along with Lauren! I found this to be entertaining, with a great performance by the underrated John Payne, but it was of a muchness in a way that taxed my attention span. Also worth noting that the unambiguous happy ending clearly means this is not noir.
Frasier, “Room Service” – Maris comes to Seattle, her second marriage in shambles as her husband left her for another man. In need of comfort, she seeks out Frasier, but Niles does his best to prevent them from making that mistake again. Alas, Niles just signed the divorce papers and things take a strange turn. Strange, and very funny as we end up in the land of farce once more, if leavened by some real emotion being processed by this menage a Crane. (Also, Bebe Neuwirth not dressed so sternly – Sterninly? – is kind of hot.)
Yeah, I know I said this before, but I don’t get why anyone categorized 99 River Street as noir. (Looking at you, Wikipedia.) Not every mid-century crime movie is film noir! You have to discriminate!
I need to see more movies with Payne–I think I’ve only caught this, Miracle on 34th Street, and Kansas City Confidential. He has a very particular energy but a lot of range within that, even based on this limited sample.
The people who compile noir box sets have a lot to answer for… although I’ve discovered some very fun movies through them that don’t really fit the genre so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.
Same. And to be fair, debating genre edge-cases is fun, so there’s also that.
Bebe Neuwirth in femme mode, I’m biting my thumb…also I remember the bellhop gag here being incredibly funny.
The bellhop – credited as “Waiter” – was superbly played by a journeyman actor named John Ducey. He milks the scene for all it’s worth with just a few perfect line reads and expressions.
The X-Files, “Tooms” and “Born Again”
Hey, it’s Skinner! The Cigarette-Smoking Man is always looming over him in “Tooms,” and that’s both ominous–Skinner is currently under the conspiracy’s thumb!–and ameliorative–Skinner is not definitely the conspiracy’s man, or no one would have to keep an oppressive eye on him. Pileggi has exactly the right look and energy for all this, too: superficially an establishment guy, but with a lot of personal power coiled up in reserve. Also, we get the Smoking Man’s first line of dialogue.
It’s so hard to watch Mulder during Tooms’s hearing: it’s where his usual enthusiasm becomes a kind of unflinching, deliberate faux-guilelessness that’s principled in its own way but aggravates my sense of pragmatism. Yeah, sure, Mulder, tell the truth, but could you not at least frame it in a way that makes it more comprehensible to a court of law? Say that Tooms kept clippings that indicated that he was obsessed with historical strings of murders where five livers were always taken, and that you’re worried he could try to complete the current “gotta catch ’em all: livers edition” if he’s released. Say that his home indicated that this was not just a temporary, “oh, I lost my job and got harassed by the FBI” disturbance but a lifelong one. Do anything to acknowledge that you know that telling the bald truth about your beliefs in this case will immediately result in getting Tooms released! Come on!
Gorgeous, electric Mulder-Scully scene in this episode, with the two of them in the car: Mulder wanting to protect her from being contaminated by his choices, Scully being willing to risk herself for him and him only. I know they eventually have a full-blown romance, and good for them, but all I really need is for them to be this intense about and devoted to each other.
The final chase sequence with Tooms is fantastic and creepy, with Hutchison all slicked-up with bile and moving like a demented animal, with the cramped space amping up Mulder’s panic, and with the excellent use of the escalator.
“Born Again” has a premise that is especially ridiculous on the surface–a cop resists his buddies’ dirty cop shenanigans, gets killed for it, and is reincarnated as a little girl who, eight years later, takes telekinetic revenge on her past self’s murderers–but I had a lot of fun with it. It has some great, haunting images–the origami giraffe, the diver in the fish tank–and some nice character touches (I love Mulder whispering to the facial reconstruction tech to give the image a silly mustache to make the little girl laugh and put her at ease). It also comes with one of my favorite throwaway Mulder lines, where in the midst of explaining this absolutely absurd plotline, he says, “All the evidence suggests [the episode summary.]” Ah, yes, this is truly the only conclusion anyone could reach when faced with these facts! All the evidence suggests, sir! Scully’s face in some of her reaction shots is accordingly hilarious.
Pretty good child actor here, so I’m not surprised that she went on to have an actual career. Mimi Lieber is also great as the dead cop’s widow who is now married to one of his targets.
Mulder’s absolute conviction that everything he says and does is not only rational but the only possible outcome is endearing not only as a character trait – I genuinely believe the show plays fair by this, because he’s usually at least partly wrong and is open to being so – but as a quirk of a show doing something that had genuinely never been done before. Other shows would improve on the basic idea, but none would have Mulder’s charm.
Skinner quickly became my favorite character in his sense of very pragmatic honor and dramatic motivation, even moreso than Mulder, he is consumed by the singular goal: protect his agents from harm. Pileggi is terrific too, he’s got that character actor sense of a life led before the show started.
“he is consumed by the singular goal: protect his agents from harm” — I think this is an archetype that is perhaps more prevalent with the rise of the middle manager protagonist (c.f. Hal Incandenza’s essay in Infinite Jest regarding Hill Street Blues) and it’s a great one. Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses (who in turn has a lot of Paul Crocker from Queen & Country in his DNA) is not completely this (he is certainly fine with harming agents on his own initiative) but it’s a huge part of his appeal.
M*A*S*H, Season Two, Episode Seven, “L.I.P. (Local Indigenous Personnel”
This is a fairly simple one about Hawkeye discovering a soldier has gotten a local woman pregnant and is trying to finagle her and their child back to the US. It’s a little too simple for my tastes, though it does have the great complication of Hawkeye discovering the woman he’s been trying to bang all episode is a racist and immediately dropping her. We get a lot of Hawkeye’s righteousness this episode, obviously, and this feels like its best expression when he happily sacrifices getting laid – something we know is important to him – for his values. Genuine sacrifice is always amazing in stories, even at a scale like this.
Biggest Laugh: “When it comes to the circumcision, see me, not the cook.”
Yeah, Hawkeye dropping his racist temporary love interest in the big standout moment for this episode. I feel like a key part of making a character admirable is whether their morality affects their own behavior when it runs up against something they want, rather than just affecting their judgment of other people’s behavior.
100%. It’s gotta be something you’ll do even when it legitimately damages you, or at least is wildly inconvenient.
The funniest version of this is Larry David not sleeping with a woman outside his marriage, though he has the pass, because she’s a Republican.
This is the episode I could not get to stream on Hulu for love or for money in our current watch-through. I have seen it plenty of times, but it would have been new to my wife.
A program of three shorts at the local festival:
“Stalking the Bogeyman” – Based on a This American Life story based on an article wherein the author recounts a confrontation with and names the man who assaulted him many years ago. It’s harrowing material, but the movie’s best quality are animated interludes that depict the horror of the situation without feeling exploitive. These segments make the impossible to fathom possible to witness and an otherwise unremarkable adaptation worthwhile.
“ The Hope Chest Has a Secret Drawer” – The best of the trio. A woman spends the afternoon caring for her aging mother as she suffers from dementia, represented by the sound of a radio that won’t quite tune to a particular station. The daughter dutifully follows her mother, engages in circular conversation, coaxes memories, patiently gets her to eat bite by bite. The film’s twist is similarly played with muted drama, thankfully preventing it from toppling the whole delicate tower. Instead it leans on a final line that gently reaches in and breaks your heart. Great stuff.
“ Trauma: The New Epidemic” – In many ways an extended PSA, but one with indelible on-the-ground footage of the conditions in an Ethiopian hospital and the navigation their medical professionals have to pull off to do what would be routine matters in the States. Power outages during surgery, a team of surgeons using bolt cutters to jimmy a screw to the correct length before inserting into bone – these are systemic problems made visceral, and if there’s a benefit to the PSA format it’s in the outlining of solutions.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Premonition” – kinda fun, didn’t have a “premonition” of what the twist was going to be this time although it’s fairly well-trodden ground. Will hopefully have more to say on the discussion post.
I always want to know if people see the twists coming! I was spoiled for “Revenge” in advance–I think Stephen King talked about it at one point, and he definitely has a short story that gives away the ending of the excellent “Breakdown”–but I can’t remember if I guessed this one in time or not.
This YouTube video on The Occult Dimensions of Nosferatu which is pretty solid and features a practicing occultist discussing Cornelius Agrippa and Lacan among other things. The host and guest note that Dracula and Nosferatu are distinct mythologies because of this difference in attitudes – Dracula is about using tech and logistical rules to defeat the vampire (plus cowboys), Nosferatu is a true demon and only the Maiden, and desire, can destroy him.
Threw on Always Sunny’s “The Gang Solves The Gas Crisis.” The running gag of the Gang getting distracted and bogged down by working out the crew dynamics is what makes this a classic, as is Dee trying ludicrously hard to dismiss how she was planning to murder Dennis and Frank. Guest starring Dave from Happy Endings (“Why are you doing this to me?!”)
The tiny runner that this dude has a completely pointless life to the point of confusing the Gang is so killer to me. “He’s been watching golf for three hours!”
Lol the build to the end where he’s just watching golf before his apartment windows explode is great.
The crew dynamic stuff is so good, it hits this great mix of being completely right each time in the abstract and completely idiotic in each application to the real world.
“We’re gonna hit you where it hurts!” “Your dick!” “What? No-“
The Purple Rose of Cairo — During the Depression, an unhappily married waitress (Mia Farrow) escapes to the cinema, but things get complicated when Tom Baxter a character from the film (Jeff Daniels), magically steps off the screen. This is mostly a comedy, and all the scenes with Tom are funny, as is especially all the business the other film characters get up to while Tom has abandoned them. Daniels is great here as the square-jawed but naïve movie hero, but he’s even better as the self-aggrandizing but insecure Gil Shepherd, the actor who played Tom and now gets involved to try to save his career. And we are moving now to the period of the Allen/Farrow collaborations where her performance is less showy than in her earlier installments; rather she serves here as the backbone of the story. Which makes it easy to ignore how good she is; her pleasant confusion in her scenes with Tom replaced immediately by starstruck fanning when she realizes she’s talking to Gil. Danny Aiello also has a wonderful role as the boorish and occasionally violent husband. Aiello made a career out of playing guys whose bark is worse than their bite, and he has just enough charm here that you see why a mousy housewife would believe she couldn’t do better.
Hannah and Her Sisters — The ur-Allen, still considered by many his best film. The structure here is less formal than many of his pictures. It almost works as a series of vignettes about the titular sisters as well as Hannah’s husband Elliot (Michael Caine) and her ex (Allen). In that way it almost harkens back to Everything You Ever Wanted to know About Sex, but really I see it as prefiguring the later work of Quentin Tarantino, who may have learned from this movie that you can just skip all the stuff that isn’t the most interesting scenes from each story and the audience will catch up.
Hannah is the successful but not snobby elder sister who left a stage career to be a mother but can just swan in and have a triumph in The Doll’s House whenever she gets the bug. Dianne Wiest is Holly, a struggling actress living in Hannah’s shadow, and Barbara Hershey is Leigh, a recovering alcoholic at loose ends who lives with the brusque Max Von Sydow. (Who gets the best line — “If Jesus really did come back and see what people were doing in his name, he’d never stop throwing up!”). Caine, Hannah’s husband, has developed a crush on Leigh and contrives to maneuver her into an affair. And these scenes, with Caine as a sophisticated and successful guy running around and hiding behind corners, are probably the best of the film. I don’t typically think of him as a very physical actor, but he puts just enough physical business into the performance to really sell Elliot’s desperation, which is complemented by Allen’s eye for physical storytelling.
Speaking of Allen, he largely bifurcates the movie’s comic and dramatic beats. Hannah and her sisters get all the drama, while his comic story is largely separate. After a health scare, he considers becoming religious and decides to convert to Catholicism. (After a shopping trip we see him unloading a Catholic Bible, a carved wooden crucifix, and a loaf of Wonder Bread.) And while he is largely unconnected to the story of the main family, the way his scenes zigzag through all the other stories give the movie a lot of energy — there’s never a moment where any particular plotline gets tedious because the next sequence is about different characters. But it doesn’t feel disjointed because you quickly get acquainted with everyone. It really does recreate some of the feeling of being in an extended family, where each person has their own story, the highlights of which you will hear at Thanksgiving.
This is something that only jumped out after exposure to later Allen, but as many delights as there are in the performances of Cairo, I feel like we’re also starting to see hints of Lazy Woody, or at least the quicker setups and not-quite-blocked oners that would become hallmarks later on. This is less a knock on Cairo than an observation of methods that served him and maybe he thought would still work after he lost his fastball.
I’ll have to keep an eye out, as someone who thinks he continues to make excellent (and excellently shot) pictures even if no longer with the consistency of this period. I will say the split screen scene with Tom and Gil does seem a little fakey, which is sort of a surprise so soon after Zelig.
“Boy, you must really love this picture!” is an unforgettable moment, but the whole thing really belongs to Farrow. The ending is downbeat but there is at least the joy of the movies, there whenever you need it.
Hannah and Her Sisters does have a lot of recognizable personality types as I get older, especially Hannah and Von Sydow’s character. The latter isn’t wrong, exactly, but he’s so fucking exhausting, and I’ve learned to avoid people who are THIS indulgently, outwardly unhappy.
Blood and Wine is merely pretty good when it could’ve been great but Caine is excellent and uses his physicality so well – he’s nearly tubercular in his hacking and wheezing but still big enough to effectively menace, a rotted oak that can still crush you.
Similarly menacing in Mona Lisa in what could be a thankless role.
Me Before You
First time. My wife put this one while making dinner. She had seen it before but I hadn’t. I caught some 20 minutes in the middle on and off, then the last forty minutes uninterrupted. I did ask some questions for context as it went on and I think I grasped all the story fundamentals.
To further complicate things, she had the dub on and we only switched to English until the final ten minutes or so. Under normal circumstances, if this had been a better movie, I would not have considered to have seen the movie in full until I’d seen it in its original language.
I did log it on Letterboxd as seen in the end. Given what I saw of it, I don’t think I missed a great deal of the full experience. I will go back and see the start of it for completion’s sake. Eventually.
Emilia Clarke has some very pretty eyes. My wife’s words.
Mad Men
Season 6, Episode 7. “Man with a Plan”. First time.
First day of school for Sterling, Cutler, Cooper, Gleason, Draper, Chaough, Price and Co. The writing consistently finds great comedy out of both teams moving into the same space, highlights being Ted Chaough presiding over an awkward and fruitless spitball session, Harry moaning about his office gain and Roger’s incredible second firing of Burt Peterson. The latter points towards the bubbling tension underneath it all, most evident in Round 1 of Don and Ted’s game of one-upmanship (not without the comedy of a smash cut to the plane in a storm and “Not now!”), and every partners’ meeting when they consider who to keep and who to hire. The women pick up on this fairly quickly, with the ever-perceptive and ever-more-assertive Peggy taking Don down a notch for embarrassing Ted, and Joan saving Bob Benson’s job after some remarkable kindness (maybe future affection?) from him helps her get rid of a cyst she didn’t even know she had. The former feels like another step in a long and complicated relationship (Peggy won’t be the last woman to shock Don with her refusal to go along in this episode), the latter like a tentative first step in an unpredictable one, since Joan an the audience know so little of Bob Benson yet. Speaking of unpredictable relationships, I dig that look of understanding Pete, of all people (again), gives Joan when she speaks up for Bob. Weird how those two seem to have grown closer, even after the Jaguar debacle. And it gives Pete a surprisingly quiet and relaxed exit from an episode where his personal and professional lives keep destroying each other. I like the confidence of Clara, his new(?) secretary, taking his hissy fit and calmly talking him down only for him to spit out some of his darkest invective yet.
Now, the core of the episode is Don and Silvia’s two-day hotel roleplay, where Don is at his most intense but also his most controlling, nearly demeaning. We can see how and why it’s exciting for both of them, but also that Don is going down a familiar pattern, and that his latent abandonment issues and need to drive things the way he wants them ensure he will be left alone again. Difference is Silvia sees it too, and in her epiphany decides to cut to the chase and end the affair and be the wife again, which was always the endgame here. Don ends up with the rug pulled from under him again, by his inability to see himself as he is and the cycles he goes through. There’s another Kennedy dead on TV, there’s a different wife crying, and he’s numb and alone, again.
*Looks ahead at what the next Mad Men episode is*
Awwww yeah boy, let’s fucking gooooooooooooooooooo.
Bob Benson is a really good foil to the internal/external tensions among the characters this season and not in any way you’d expect.
Another definitive list from Magpies, can think of no stone left unturned. It is interesting(?) how the issues (ha) of the comics have now been inherited by the movies, namely their popular image being dominated by capes, long-running lore painting towards corners and making for difficult entry points. This was my memory of comics in the 90s, and they’re mostly all still going today, so I guess they figured it out.
I say this as a devoted superhero comic book reader: I don’t know what’s keeping the industry going. The monthly comic is just as impenetrable as it was in the 90s. Sales are not good, and younger audiences are not buying. The model of the future comics is Dog Man, aimed at kids only and published in books and not floppies. The 32 page comics on my coffee table are a relic and will die out with me. It’s sort of a wonder they haven’t already. Never mind that Disney and WB could close their comics companies today and still have decades of IP to tap into over and over.
You’re not wrong, but people have been saying this — and entirely justified! — since the 1990’s, but the industry continues. Comics sales are I believe better today than they were in most of the previous 20 years.
One commonality I find with people in their thirties who gave up comic books is getting really burnt out on crossover events/titles, eventually the amount of canon erasure/rebooting in DC became laugh out loud funny.
And the irony is that DC is doing a “history” comic and so far, seventy five percent of that history would have been exactly the same in 1995. All the reboots achieved nothing.
Wrong! They made the company, let’s see, 150 dollars each.
In a broad sense comics are doing great and a large part of that is manga, right? I could very well be wrong but my impression is a manga series may run extremely deep but is not broad in the Marvel/DC crossover way, and while it may have a lot of history is generally easier to pick up.
As we discussed Tuesday, not making room for American Splendor feels like an error. Maybe Shutton didn’t do his research.
*insert bitter Giamatti-esqure rejoinder here*
Raimi is one of the only Western filmmakers who seems to grasp what comic books can do and how they can match cinema. Gonna stan for Spider-Man 2 purely for the “I WANT SPIDER-MAN!” very splash page scene, and while Darkman isn’t technically based on a comic book, it has that maniacal focus on single, impactful images and moments. (The rack shot on the gang of thugs in the opener is amazing.)
There is a version of this that is comic book movies that are not actually comics but have their sensibility, and Darkman is at the top of the list.