The Green Hornet (2011)

Seth Rogen is not a leading man, and he is certainly not a superhero. For the most part his film, The Green Hornet, understands this, and occasionally it thrives upon that understanding. The idea of Rogen as a dashing playboy who one day decides to use his wealth and power to fight crime is ludicrous. So instead we get a slim but still oafish party animal who one day decides to use his wealth and power to do some crazy hero type shit with his cool new toy, Kato. It’s a take that’s so obviously handicapped it’s almost brilliant. Unfortunately, The Green Hornet is “almost” a lot of things.

The Unseen - Comic Book Movies

Hey Cinewisers - we've got another new sereies debut for you today, this one coming from freshly minted Cinewise contributer Andrew.  It's called The Unseen, and with it Andrew will be focusing on below-the-radar or forgotten genre films you may want to check out, again or for the first time.  Here's his first Cinewise piece:

Seeing as how Iron Man 2 launched the 2010 summer movie season last weekend, I thought it’d be fitting to kick off my column on underrated and overlooked genre films the same way, with some comic book superheroes. So if you’re still in need of a superhero fix after Iron Man 2, here are three alternative comic book adaptations to throw onto your Netflix queue. Though these films are all CGI-free, don’t require 3D glasses and have yet to be remade/rebooted, they are all worth checking out...

The Losers (2010)

The Losers is a really, really stupid movie. This isn’t much of a problem when it’s fun. And sometimes, The Losers is fun. But generally it’s a tonally/logically/cinematically challenged mess.

Like recent fanboy flick Kick-Ass, The Losers is a comic book adaptation that mixes dark violence with skewered comedic quips. In the first ten minutes a helicopter of recently rescued children gets blown out of the sky, our hero (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) drowns his sorrows in Bolivian cock fights, then beats the crap out of a woman in a spicy hotel room brawl (to be fair, she gives as good as she gets). Shortly thereafter, the bad guy shoots his designated “hot assistant” in the face for allowing the wind to briefly blow away the umbrella shielding him from the sun.

This movie is rated PG-13. Are we having fun yet?