Writing reviews of these Marvel flicks really ought to be fairly easy at this point since they can more or less all be summed up with “if you like this sort of thing, then you’ll like this one, too” — and while that’s as true as ever in the case of the just-released Captain America : Civil War, there’s plenty on offer here worth commenting on in a bit more depth, much of which isn’t taking place on the screen at all. So let’s dive into that first, shall we?

Make no mistake — the latest entry into the so-called “MCU” had a big opening weekend and looks set to make its parent company plenty of money. But a number of box office websites projected it to do considerably more business right out of the gate, and keep in mind that those figures are usually adjusted downwards thanks to…

Let’s be brutally honest — there’s always been something kind of fucked up about Batman, hasn’t there?

Mind you,  I say this as someone who loves that character and still reads both major “Bat-books” religiously every month, but come on — here’s a guy with all the money in the world and a deep desire to right all of society’s wrongs, and what does he do? Goes after common street criminals, most of whom are probably both poor and desperate. Meanwhile, the rich are robbing us all blind to a degree most of us can’t even conceive of, and when we complain about it even just a little bit, the wusses at the top of the economic food chain — the ones who own the entire media, the entire political system, and frankly the entire world — these lily-livered, gutless scumbags in $5,000 suits or even more expensive cocktail dresses…

Waaaaayyy back in my early days as an armchair critic, I focused almost exclusively on exploitation, horror, and other “B”-movie genres. They’re pretty much all I wrote about, in fact, and calling my blog “Trash Film Guru” made a kind of sense back then. These days, of course, I find myself casting my hopefully-more-sharply-trained critical eye on just about anything, and if I went back and added up the numbers over the last two or three years I’d probably find that I’ve reviewed just as many comics as I have films, and that I’ve reviewed as many Hollywood blockbusters, documentaries, foreign films, and straight-to-video numbers as I have old-school (or, for that matter, new-school) exploitation flicks, but still — the “Trash Film Guru” name continues to run at the top of my site, and since it does, I take it as almost a personal responsibility to review new Quentin Tarantino…

When a new comic series comes along touting itself as being “like Wes Anderson remaking Reservoir Dogs,” I’m bound to be intrigued — if for no other reason than the fact that I absolutely despise Wes Anderson every bit as much as I love Quentin Tarantino. As a result, writer Matthew Rosenberg and artist Tyler Boss’ new five-parter from Black Mask Studios, 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank, had my attention from the outset — but was going to be on a very short leash. If it proved to be a fun, foul-mouthed crime caper with a ’70s exploitation vibe, then I’d be in for the duration. But if it played out like a self-consciously “quirky” story loaded down with bright primary colors and a nauseating “rich people are nothing but harmless ‘big kids’ who never grew up and pal around with deadpan mute sidekicks from the Indian…

Who are we kidding? You know damn well what the score is going into any flick called Navy Seals Vs. Zombies — it’s going to be a low-budget action/horror hybrid with as smattering of D-list “stars,” crummy effects, atrocious dialogue, poorly-staged fight sequences, risible acting, and no real point to it.

And to be sure, director Stanton Barrett’s straight-to-video 2015 might-as-well-be-an-Asylum-film has all of that —errrmmmm — going for it. But somehow it manages to pull off the seemingly- impossible task of being both exactly what you expect it to be, as well as something far worse.

When I saw this one added to the horror movie queue on Netflix recently (it’s also available on Blu-ray and DVD from what I gather but, as I’m sure it goes without saying already, you needn’t bother) under its alternate title of Navy Seals : Battle For New Orleans (although it was filmed…

Long before Prince (way too) prematurely crossed the mythical Rainbow Bridge, he crossed another bridge — specifically, Graffiti Bridge. And while this 1990 sequel to Purple Rain isn’t remembered all that fondly by many and frankly showcases His Royal Badness at his most self-indulgent, it’s far from a bad flick, features plenty of well-staged, extremely-high-energy song and dance numbers, and provides an interesting glimpse into the spiritual awakening he was going through that would go on to inform so much of the rest of his life and career.

Originally conceived of by Prince (who wrote and directed it) as a co-starring vehicle for himself and then-girlfriend Kim Basinger, their break-up necessitated a quick bit of re-casting and, I’m guessing, resulted in a budget-and-resources trim-down from Warner Brothers, but who are we kidding — given the film’s navel-gazing premise and heavy focus on music over story it was probably never…

In recent days I’ve emerged from my funk by feeling the funk — leave it to Prince to have provided his fans with the one sure-fire way of getting over his death which is, of course, by getting into his music. He wouldn’t want us to feel too blue for too long, after all — he’d rather have us all feeling decidedly purple. And what better way to not only remember, but celebrate, his extraordinary life than by witnessing the magic he created at the very height of his powers?

Granted, one could argue that said “height” lasted for decades, but for my money the best filmed record of it came in 1987 with the release of his flat-out monumental concert movie, Sign “O” The Times, directed (with a considerable amount of flair and confidence, I might add) by Prince himself with uncredited assistance from his former manager/business…

I was pleasantly surprised (enough, at any rate) by Franck Khalfoun’s remake/”re-imagining” of Maniac that he landed on my entirely unofficial and even more entirely unwritten “directors to watch” list, but here’s the thing — the fact that said “list” doesn’t actually exist means that it takes no more effort to scrub a name off it than it does to add one to it, and guess what? Khalfoun’s latest writing and directing “effort,” 2015’s i-Lived, more or less guarantees that’s exactly what I’ll be doing with his. Let the interminable bitching begin —

I barely use apps for shit, but I guess the young folks do, so who knows? Maybe for them, the idea of a flick about one of them that’s kinda/sorta haunted will have greater resonance. And maybe they won’t think this film’s protagonist, a twenty-something nitwit named — groan! — Josh (portrayed in truly cringe-worthy style…