Captain America!

Updated on July 22, 2011 By Ken Begg 21 Comments

In honor of the new Captain America movie (YAY!) out today, here’s a link to the reviews I did of the Reb Browne TV movies.

Best of all, the running time is a flat two hours. Deduct 10 minutes or so for the end credits, and that brings the film in for a (by today’s standards) lean one hour and fifty minutes.  But remember to hang out for that teaser ending to The Avengers next summer.

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  • Reed

    I desperately want this to be good. I’ll go see it on Tuesday; I just won’t fight opening weekend crowds.

  • Reed — My strategy now is (surprise!) The Old Man Plan, where I hit the first show in the morning. It’s cheaper, and the dreaded Chattering Teens aren’t up and about yet.

  • JazzyJ

    This movie is starting to get REALLY good buzz — let us know what you think when you get back, Ken! :-)

  • GalaxyJane

    I watched the second of these yesterday on Siffy and was shocked to see Christopher Lee slumming his way through it. Also Connie Selleca? Maybe? Was an incredibly unethical doctor, especially for the good guy.

  • GalaxyJane

    Definitely Connie Selleca, thanks IMDB!

  • The Rev.

    A review I read of the new movie said that it didn’t have a post-trailer Easter egg as the previous Marvel movies have. They also didn’t love it.

  • The Rev.

    Er, post-credits, rather.

  • Rev. I believe there IS a teaser ending, but that they withheld it from critic showings to keep it from being blown. We’ll find out soon.

  • Rock Baker

    I just don’t believe for a second that they won’t find some way to screw it up. I don’t think they have it in them to do it right. I’ll eventually see it when my brother picks up the disk for this like he has the others, but I predict one of those reactions of “It could have been really good IF…”

  • Rock – I hear you, but really, you have to judge a film for what it is, not what it isn’t, barring something extremely egregious. As long as it’s basically played straight and Cap is shooting Nazis at the same time he’s kicking other Nazis in the face, I’ll be more than satisfied.

  • tim

    there is a post credits scene.
    I thought the movie was just ok. I wasn’t sure that it would be good because I haven’t liked a lot of joe johnston’s other movies, and I think the problems with this movie lie directly with him. it was nowhere near as bad as green lantern, at least, but that’s not saying much.

  • John Campbell

    I’m with Ken on this one.

    Take a movie for what it is.

    I’m a Hellboy FANATIC. Could there have been more in the movies, sure!

    BUT!! I think they are fantastic as they are!

    Sometimes it’s okay to suspend ALL plausible belief.

    Well unless the words “Alber Pyun” or Uwe Bohl” are in play…

  • Rock Baker

    I’m not sure I follow that logic. Why afford one a pass and not the other? (serious question)

  • Rock — Well, when people ask me to define a ‘bad movie,’ one of my criteria, actually the central one, is that the film fails at what it’s trying to do. Very few films are so completely misjudged or offensive in their very conception that it alone is enough to mark it a failure.

    So the logic is, are you saying “The film would have been better IF…” because that would have better achieved what the filmmakers were going for? Or are you saying, The film would have been better IF…” because you wanted another film entirely and were set on getting that film?

    Assuming the goal of the new Spider-Man film is to be more “Twilight-y”, well, really, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. A broodier, more damaged Peter Parker is not an unreasonable revamp of the character. Is it MY Peter Parker, or one I’m especially drawn to? Not really. However, assuming I went to see the movie, I think I’d be better off as a viewer to judge the film on whether it pulled off its conception of Peter Parker, rather than saying, “Well, I just don’t like the idea to start with.” What’s more successful, the Nolan Batman or the Adam West Batman? Both.

    Movies can almost always be better. How many are perfect? Not many. And saying you ASSUME your reaction to the movie is going to be, “I think it would have been better IF…” just seems counterproductive to me. That may not be what you meant, but as written it sounds like you’re sort of setting the film up to fail.

    Was it the exact movie I would have made? No. However, it was pretty great, so that’s good enough to me.

  • John Campbell

    Ken punches with iron in his words of shark pummeling.

    I once again agree with ken’s assessment.

    I can guarantee you will never catch me running around preaching the horrors of the reality that there were NO elves at Helm’s Deep!

  • Rock Baker

    That all makes sense. And I guess I am, in a way, potentially setting the film up to fail in my own mind, but not really. Normally, I go into a modern movie with as low an expectation as possible, and if they give me even a token bit of effectiveness, it elevates the whole affair. The problem with something like this is that there are certain things which should be included, but I just don’t have the faith in modern Hollywood to set aside their PC politics. I’m not sure if I can properly get my point across (particularly without a spell checker), but a Captain America movie should be exactly the sort of gung-ho, “let’s go get ’em” flag waver that would have been written during the War. The Nazis and the Nips would be the Bad Guys without any kind of whitewash, for example. Everybody would smoke cigarettes, and they wouldn’t be evil for doing so, as another good example. They rarely make an entertainment war movie without trying to justify the actions of the characterts through some PC filter. Am I making sense?

    Take Superman Returns. That was nothing like Superman is supposed to be, because the ‘real’ Superman isn’t PC anymore. I didn’t ask a lot from the film, but it insulted me anyway by screwing around with an American icon. I just didn’t recognize that version of Superman.

    And, if I might pick, I’d argue that The Horror of Party Beach didn’t fail at what it was trying to do. It served up the elements promised, the script was just stupid, so was it a failure or no? I’d say it was a ‘bad’ movie, but it certainly delivers the goods, so I’m not sure it fails on thsoe grounds. Then you get over to a (in my eyes) pretty good movie like The Navy vs The Night Monsters. Maybe it wasn’t as polished as The Thing or The Monolith Monsters, but I’d argue that film did what it set out to do. The Fat Spy, From Hell It Came, the Brain From Planet Arous, those films I would argue are pretty good considering what they are. The whole ‘good’ or ‘bad’ label seems applied with peril. I’ve no doubt that Captain America will be a technically good movie. It will be slick and professional. But is it Captain America? I don’t see how it can be in the PC environment the film was made.

    I’m not ruling our a miracle picture, but I’m not holding my breath. I guess that sums up my feelings pretty well.

  • Rock — I don’t know, of the films you mention, only Brain from Planet Arous POSSIBLY works on its own terms. And even then it’s pretty goofy. Fat Spy don’t work because it’s a horrible laughless comedy with hideous songs, which I don’t think was their goal. (If it was, though, then well done, chaps!). The other films all feature threadbare, goofy monsters (which I love, but they don’t inspire fear), bad acting, and horrible scripts with generally moronic characters. Plus Navy vs. the Night Monsters featured the wince-inducing antics of Bobby Van. Nice guy in real life, I’m sure, but yikes!

    Superman Returns failed in terms of its own ambitions. It attempted to dirty up Superman (i.e., make him more ‘relatable’ and ‘realistic’), but never really justified that idea. Superman with a bastard kid? What was the point? The film didn’t provide one, and that was the problem. Lesson one: don’t mess around with a character’s essentials if you can’t pull off the revisionism. As well, the film was structurally a mess. In the end, SR just wasn’t a very good movie.

    Captain America plays Cap entirely straight, and in no way tries to rewrite or reconceptualize who he is. I guess you could complain about him having a low level of superpowers, but that’s the Ultimates take, and its a pretty minor revision; the kind of thing that might have bugged me more if the rest of the film didn’t work. But really, they captured Cap’s essence capably enough that focusing on the minor problems I had with the film would have just seemed like carping.

    I see most of what you’re saying, although really, I don’t care much if the characters smoke. First of all, it’s another universe, so maybe they didn’t smoke as much there. Plus, there was a fair amount of drinking, so that’s something. And I guess I could have got hung up on the Howling Commandos having a black guy in it, but I’m just not that concerned with the film being that ‘realistic.’ The Howling Commandos always had Gabe Jones in it, so I would have missed him had he not been there.

    I’m not saying you don’t have to right to want to see see what you want to see, Rock. There’s really no right or wrong in these matters, it’s pretty much all personal taste. Still, from the outside, demanding that a film made in 2011 have the complete and utter mindset of a film made in 1941 seems quixotic at best.

  • Rock Baker

    I just think that’s the essense of a period piece. The Rocketeer worked because it fully captured that gee-whiz nature of the serials, in addition to being a really, really good movie. They didn’t try to change what the era was all about, so it was very easy to settle into the film and enjoy the ride. (To be fair, the world hadn’t changed as much between 1938 and 1991 and is has between 1941 and 2011, politically speaking, so that’s a factor.) Absolutely though, personal taste is everything.

    I admit, you make Captain America sound like a fun movie, and I know I’ll be seeing it eventually. I do like Tommy Lee Jones too, so I’m not going to avoid the picture.

    Good and Bad in movie terms is ALL about taste. I happen to have liked most of the songs in The Fat Spy (“I’m Glad I don’t Get My Way” and “If I See You Again” probably being my favorites) and I found most of it pretty funny. Maybe my standards for music and comedy are lower than yours? Either way, I know when I enjoy something.

    I never understood the repulsion people have for Bobby Van either. As designated likable sidekicks go, he always seemed friendly enough to pull it off. I’m not saying you’re wrong and I’m right about this either, I just don’t get it.

    Again, ‘goofy’ is a term that means different things to different people. Maybe because I was young when I first saw it, Tabanga remains one of my favorites. From Hell It Came is a little odd, but it fails not as a slick little horror movie from the 50s. Mostly, that punding musical score by Darrell Caulker raises everything else to another level. Not the most agile monster ever put on film, but there’s something there I like. (I also like jungles, islands, science fiction, and tree monsters, so maybe it’s as simple as the movie offering up all these things at once.) All I know for sure is that I love the movie every time I see it. In the end, though, it comes back to personal taste. That’s why I have such a hard time recommending movies to people. I may love something, doesn’t mean the other guy will. In the same respect, I never put much stock in what other people say about movies. If I listened to the critics, I never would have known the joys that are The Green Slime, The Manster, Dinosaurus!, etc.

    What were we talking about?

  • Rock — I don’t even know what ‘lower’ means in this context. Different. I will say that I doubt many people find Fat Spy genuinely funny, and I speak as someone with an appreciation for music hall style comedy.

    Van’s comedy has a flop sweat quality that unnerves me. He never really strikes me as being at ease, but rather poorly pretending to be at ease. Again, I’m sure he was a nice guy in real life, but on screen, he just doesn’t work for me.

    I think you can love something and still recognize that it’s not very good in an objective sense. Indeed, this entire site is predicated on that. From Hell it Came clearly isn’t as good of a movie as, say, X the Unknown.

  • Rock Baker

    Yeah, but isn’t that a bit unfair? X The Unknown is a British striaght sci-fier like the Quatermass films. It’s a different animal entirely from From Hell It Came, which is a drive-in B picture from the States with more of a pulp mentality. In it’s own class, there are far worse examples. Unknown World for example.

    I’m sure my comedic tastes are what the longhairs would call ‘low-class’ since I like Gilligan’s Island and Abbott and Costello, and always found the Stooges funnier than the Marx Brothers (not that I can deny the talent clearly on display when the Marx’s are on the scene). I like Beach movies, Jim Varney, and Hal Needham movies. Some would classifiy all that as Low.

    As for Van. I don’t know, there’s something about the guy I like, I always have. Tommy Kirk too for some reason, although I’m not sure about that one. Even I can see that Kirk is no Don Sullivan.

    I do wonder if recognizing if something one likes is not really good is entirely applicable, based on some of the music that sells into gold record territory.

    All in all, I think my Video Cheese reviews need to be forwarded with a note that they reflect only my personal impressions, and let the reader take that for what he feels its worth.

  • Rock Baker

    If the scuttlebutt on Facebook is anything to go by, Captain America is this generation’s Goldfinger. EVERYbody is rushing out to see it! (I had a publisher offer me an assignment, then rush off to see the pic instead of giving me the details of the job!