Comics Movies
Comics and movies both blossomed in the cultural landscape of the 20th Century. And as they flowered they cross-pollinated one another with their brightest blooms and their most effective arrangements. The digital revolution has opened many doors to the previously unfilmable, leading to an explosion in the number of comic book adaptations.
For many people 'comics movies' mean gaudy titans in tights pounding the snot out of one another. However, if you remove the properties of the two big American companies (DC and Marvel), a broader spectrum of the fantastic and mundane is revealed.
Presenting for your selection, a cornucopia of pocket universes born of ink, transformed into light. For Superheroes peruse the DC and Marvel sub-headings under Comics Movies, stage left.
Pictured: Marv (Mickey Rourke) takes a moment to collect his thoughts in 2005's "Sin City" - cinema's most faithful comic book adaptation to date.
Spawn (1997)
5.2/10
Director: Mark A Z Dippe
Starring: John Leguizamo, Michael Jai White, Martin Sheen, Theresa Randle, Nicol Williamso...
Five years after being murdered by corrupt colleagues in a covert government agency, Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) makes a Faustian pact with the dev... Read more
Akira ( Blu-ray ) (1988)
8.1/10
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
Groundbreaking Japanese animated epic set in the post-WWIII metropolis of Neo-Tokyo. The labyrinthine plot revolves around a battle between oppressive... Read more
Kick-Ass (2010)
7.6/10
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Mark Strong, Nicolas Cage, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Aaron Johnson, Chloe Grace...
When Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) - ordinary New York teenager and rabid comic-book geek - dons a green-and-yellow Internet-bought wetsuit to become... Read more
Captain Marvel (2019)
7.2/10
Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Gemma C...
Captain Marvel is an extraterrestrial Kree warrior who finds herself caught in the middle of an intergalactic battle between her people and the Skrull... Read more
Barbarella (1968)
5.9/10
Director: Roger Vadim
Starring: Marcel Marceau, Ugo Tognazzi, Milo O'Shea, John Phillip Law, Jane Fonda, David H...
Barbarella is marked by the same audacity and originality, fantasy, humor, beauty and horror, cruelty and eroticism that make comic books such a favor... Read more
Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
5.4/10
Director: Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont
Starring: Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, Rosario Dawson, Parker Posey, Alan Cumming
The curvaceous Archie Comics girls' rock band with "long tails and ears for hats" is brought to life by Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid and Rosario Daws... Read more
Casper (1995)
6.1/10
Director: Brad Silberling
Starring: Christina Ricci, Bill Pullman, Cathy Moriarty, Eric Idle
Amazing special effects render this tale of the friendly ghost more real and exciting than previous tales of good-humoured hauntings. Bill Pullman, Er... Read more
Wanted (2008)
6.7/10
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Starring: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terence Stamp, Thomas Kretschmann,...
James McAvoy is your average, down-trodden office drone whose uneventful life is about to become more eventful than he could have imagined. After disc... Read more
Watchmen (2009)
7.6/10
Director: Zack Snyder
Starring: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Mor...
Zack Snyder ('300') hit a home run with cinema audiences in adapting Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic comic book. Set in an alternate 1980s univer... Read more
Lone Wolf and Cub 1: Sword of Vengeance (1972)
Director: Kenji Misumi
Starring: Tomisaburo Wakayama
He was Ogami Itto, a man who held himself to the harsh code of Bushido, entrusted by the Shogun with the gravest of responsibilities, that of official... Read more