Nathan's Movie Reviews

  Tom King      I read a lot of comics and have a lot of favorite writers and artists. I even have some creators that I don't care for. Without a doubt one of the more recent examples is Tom King. He started writing independent series at Vertigo like Sheriff of Babylon, but he really exploded onto the scene after writing the 12 issue maxi series Vision at Marvel. From there he went to DC to work on Batman, and lesser known characters like Mister Miracle and Adam Strange.      My familiarity with Tom's work was down to hearing about how awful his Batman run was. I have not read any of the 85 issues he wrote for the character, but I think that he had some interesting ideas for the character that ultimately fell apart in execution. Something that I would could say the same thing for his 12 issues on Mister Miracle, which I have read all of. There are a lot of great character ideas and storytelling devices in that series to explore the troubled trauma of Mister Miracle and his wife

 Mildred Pierce (1945)         Generally Approved for Audiences    1 hr. 51 min             Directed by: Michael Curtiz Starring: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden & Ann Blyth      I can't believe that I haven't reviewed a film noir flick yet, since I am a big fan of the genre, but here we are. For the uninitiated, film noir is a genre of crime pictures that existed from the 40s to the late 50s. Most often they are typified and parodied as those movies with are hard drinking private eyes narrate every single thing and are dealing with a treacherous dame, with hard hitting jazz music drowning out everything. This idea is so firm in the public consciousness, despite the fact most classic noirs exist in stark contrast to this. The perfect example of this is Mildred Pierce. If you are looking for private eyes, cliched characters and jazz music then I'm afraid that you'll walk away disappointed. But, make no mistake, Mildred Pierce is noir. A riveting