Super is a 2010 movie written and directed by James Gunn. His last movie was Slither which I liked quite a bit. It's a 2006 horror comedy that wasn't too popular at the box office. It's gotten a few fans since and they rate it a 6.5 rating at the IMDb. That's kind of where I would peg it. In 2000 Gunn wrote and directed The Specials, an amusing take on superheroes and their personal and group relationships. He also wrote the two Scooby Doo movies and the 2004 Dawn Of The Dead. He's the only guy to have written two #1 movies that were in the box office at the some time. Not that it means much when your last movie didn't make any money. Super was a hard sell according to the commentary by Gunn and Rainn Wilson. Gunn started the script in 2003 and a lot of actors had to sign on before they got any money. With a pretty miniscule budget of 2.5 million bucks the cast worked for SAG scale and they shot in Shreveport Louisiana with a small crew. It didn't make much of its cost back in the theatres but it didn't play in many of them. It did better on other delivery systems and it's IFC most popular film on VOD.
Super has a great cast in Rainn Wilson, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon, Michael Rooker, Ellen Page, Gregg Henry and Nathan Fillion. Rainn is a cook at a diner which is where he met Liv Tyler. The two of them had gotten married before the movie starts. Liv's a recovering addict who slips back into her old habits and she leaves to go live with Kevin Bacon before the credits role. Kevin, a sleazy drug dealer, is, according to him, interesting. Michael Rooker is his right hand man. Rainn's encounters with Kevin and Michael don't go well and he's beaten pretty nicely. Rainn becomes more depressed and has a vision where tentacles come out of the wall and cut open his head so the finger of God can touch his brain. A series of events lead Rainn to think he should become a super hero to fight crime. He goes to a comic shop for some research and that introduces him to Ellen Page. He designs and sews his own costume and the Crimson Bolt goes looking for crime. He attacks drug dealers, child molesters and other scum. His pipe wrench of justice busts the jaw of crime with one mighty smote and a cinder block dropped from a 2nd floor fire escape can fuck up a drug dealer pretty well.
Rainn decides to take the fight to Kevin and attacks his house. The Crimson Bolt hadn't figured on guns and they got 'em. He runs off. One of the gang recognizes Liv's husband under the red mask and they give chase. The CB gets away but is shot in the leg. The thugs know where he lives so they head there and accidentally kill the police detective who figured out that Rainn was the Crimson Bolt. Knowing he can't go home the CB has run off to Ellen's and she flips out when he reveals his secret identity to her. She patches him up and lets him stay there. She wants to be his side kick so bad. She designs her own costume and becomes Boltie. That's Ellen in her Boltie costume above. It's a cute costume but it covers a murderous beast within. Things get more and more violent as the movie progresses and nearly everyone dies. Yet it has a happy ending of sorts. It's compared to Kick-Ass and it's not the same type of movie. Gunn says the movie is "about a guy who's on his own sort of spiritual quest and he just happens to wear a superhero costume during it. But it's really about the guy and not the costume." I liked it better than Kick-Ass when it all played out. It's dark and bleak and introspective so a lot of people aren't going to like that but I did. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone but some people are going to like it. There's a nice score by Brian Tyler who also did the score for our second feature.
Sperhauk had picked up the BluRay of The Haunted World of El Superbeasto and we watched that. It's a 77 minute cartoon from 2009 that was written and directed by Rob Zombie. Several other people helped with writing, like the two guys, Tom Klien and Mr Lawrence, who helped with additional directing. It has a Ren and Stimpy kind of look and Lawrence worked on that show for a while. He also worked on Rocko's Modern Life which I liked when it was on but haven't seen them in years. Klien worked on Christmas in Tatter Town and The New Adv of Mighty Mouse before this. He's been a producer on The Simpsons for the last three years. Papa is the voice of El Superbeasto and he's joined by a nice list of actors for the other voices in THWOES. Rod doesn't do any voices in his movie but he does in Super. He's the voice of God. Funny, huh. Rob's wife Sherri Moon Zombie does the voice of El Superbeasto's step sister Suzi-X. She's a sexy blonde in tight blue costumes who occasionally shows off her boobs. Paul Giamatti plays the skinny red headed guy who wants to be called Dr Satan and he's got a yen to rule the world. He kidnaps a striper El was interested in because she has the mark of the beast on her ass. That starts the ball of justice rolling. There's a lot of nudity, sex and violence as El Superbeasto puts a stop to the evil scheme. I laughed a lot but it's not going to be for everyone. Not my mom's cup of tea as it were. I think a lot of people might enjoy this. If only they could hear about it somehow. It's short, rude, quickly paced and earns it's R rating. I liked that it didn't take anything to seriously. I mean, it's set in Monsterland and there are Nazi Zombies. That picture up there reminds me it's also another movie with Hitler's head in a jar. What's not to like when it gets blown up real good.
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