"Sausage Party" is a vulgar and perverted trip into the culinary profane world of Shopwell's

More than any animated movie you've seen so far in your life, Sausage Party is profane, obscene and downright lewd.  As one of the first animated features to be catered exclusively to adults, that crude quality benefits it as much as possible during its less than 90-minute running time.   In addition to the sexual innuendo present in nearly every other line of dialogue, the script (by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir) infuses allegory of the religious, the political and the social, and there are laughs aplenty, to be sure (particularly amusing is the quarrel among and the eventual friendship between Sammy Bagel Jr. and Karim Abdul Lavash, two edible pastries that clearly represent two races standing on opposite ends of religious spectrum in a very sacred land).  The final act, however, in which all the products in Shopwell's supermarket (the movie's setting, for the most part) fight the humans in their protest to be eaten and otherwise used, feels redundant and superfluous.  Haven't these guys learned by now - from the lead characters in Toy Story franchise - that it's best if you just accept your fate in a human dominated world, even if that means being digested by the "Gods"?  Still, Party delivers what it promises: a satisfying good time for the deviant child in all of us.
B

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"Kubo & the Two Strings" is overproduced and over told; its mythology is convoluted and perplexing

Kubo is a good kid, to be sure, but his plight in "Kubo and the Two Strings" is confusing and unnecessarily complicated.   Accompanied on his journey by a white haired primate with parental instincts known simply as Monkey (Charlize Theron) - who may or may not be the reincarnation of his recently deceased mother, I'm not quite sure - and eventually by Beetle, a Samurai-type warrior (Matthew McConaughey) with four arms who wears a large suit of armor - Kubo - with his magical guitar and his equally marvelous sheets of paper, which can transform into whatever the young boy plays on his enchanted tambourine - battles twin witches (or are they sorceresses?), giant underwater Eye monsters and eventually the legendary Moon King.  Although the visuals look amazing, the script is heavy handed on mythical folklore of the world it takes place in, and even more laborious when it comes to the spoken word, which is hardly charming or humorous.  This is the sort of experience that children will merely only "like", while the adults will be too busy checking their watches all too frequently.  It is a movie that will leave an impression on everyone without really impressing anyone.
C+

"Manifest Destiny Vol 1: Flora & Fauna" puts a new twist on Lewis & Clark's American expedition

If only the real journey of the two famous 19th century explorers was this much fun when it really took place.   Starting in year 1804, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark set out to explore the unexplored American frontier, and in the hands of writer Chris Dingess and artist/illustrator Matthew Roberts, their journey is both fantastical and horrifying.  More than just a Wild West adventure, Manifest Destiny Volume 1: Flora & Fauna is a delightful treat for eyes and the ears for all comic book lovers the world over.

Accompanied by the Lemhi Shoshone Native American woman, Sacagawea, the journey of Lewis and Clark in this comic book series incorporates an updated twist on the historical journey of these non-fictional, historical people.  Imagine if the real explorers of the aforementioned quest ran into Minotaurs who possessed a taste for the human flesh, and who were large and threatening and intimidating in stature, with a buffalo head on top of their bodies instead of a bull's one?  Or how about an infected group of zombie like former humans, whose bodies have been taken over by plants and roots, and who are capable of turning anyone they come into contact with into one of them?

In addition, Dingess and Roberts' version of Sacagawea is a bad-ass warrior, capable of slaying the said Minotaurs with ease, and putting down any undead threat without difficulty.  She's sort of a Lara Croft of the American wilderness, a woman whose toughness here exceeds her legend, and rightfully so.  Combined with the ambition of Lewis and Clark, this trio is bound to re-write the history of the American exploration with some serious bang and panache.  Manifest Destiny: Flora and Fauna may not be historically accurate, but that's not what it's trying to be to begin with.  Interpreted purely as a comic that's meant to entertain - and do so with a particular kick to the readers' senses - it's an imaginative work of exceptional ambition.  In a sea of science-fiction themed comics from Image, Destiny infuses history, originality and unbridled excitement in the most impressive way yet.
A-

"Suicide Squad" is pure visual excess with little story & character substance

An overblown action movie mess that is more focused on how it looks than how it sounds.  The script is pretty lame; several times I cringed at how poorly the dialogue was written, and the villain - khm, villainess, an other-wordly entity called Enchantress, is clearly over the top, and cartoonish to a point.  Whatever happened to good old fashioned villains of flesh and blood?  There are a few scenes with Jared Leto's Joker and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn that are more captivating than they have any right to be, but overall, the movie is at least twenty minutes too long.  Will Smith brings nothing to the role of Deadshot, as the character could've been played by anyone, and the difference would've been negligible.  All the bad guys (i.e. members of the titular so-called "Suicide Squad") are rather lame, and have none of the personalities to hold this storyline together the way a movie of this expensive of a budget should, but it is no matter.  David Ayer's direction, and especially the script, is lazy and uninspired.  But, with the movie's large box office intake so far, we can certainly expect countless sequels, prequels and spin-offs in the decade(s) to come.  And they may not even have a script next time at all; just a series of shots that add up to two hours of running time, in which these people walk around arguing and using poor wisecracks to show us just how "human" they are.  That scenario probably would've been better than this movie, if I'm being honest.
C-

"Shutter Volume 1: Wonderlost" is an overstuffed fantasy suffering from excess of story and characters

I never thought I'd see this.  A decent idea of a story, led by a beautiful and clever heroine, in a setting of unlimited imagination, but ultimately held back by its own excessive ambition.  Shutter Volume 1: Wonderlost feels like someone's wild dream gone completely out of control to the point where nothing really makes sense anymore, except the level of absurdity we witness from page to page.

As written by Joe Keatinge and illustrated by Leila Del Luca and Owen Gieni, Wonderlost possesses a most bizarre visuals that at once capture our eyes and imagination.  Their protagonist, Kate Kristopher, who leaps from one dangerous, life-threatening situation with her talking cat (which, by the way, has a clock on its stomach), is the kind of heroine reminiscent of our own best explorers.  She's a dare-devil with long white boots, and a flock of lengthy dark hair to match.  As Kate occasionally recalls her adventures with her late father - who even led her to the moon once upon a time - she is chased by assassins and hoodlums from the entire universe over - some wanting to capture her, while others want to see her dead - and it would seem that a member of her own family is behind it all.  

All of these events occur with such high kinetic energy that I found my head spinning more than once.   The narrative, which starts off well, quickly jumps into unnecessary overdrive, without developing the lead characters appropriately, and proceeds to introduce way too many additional cast members of this very quirky and bizarre universe.  By the time I turned the last page, I couldn't help but wonder if the creator was high on something while conceiving this idea; it feels terribly over-written, and if I may so, overstuffed with too much of everything.   It looks great, that much is true, but it sounds anything but genuine and authentic.  It's difficult to care for a lead character when she isn't even given a proper minute to develop even the slightest bit of humanity.
C

"The Manhattan Projects - Vol. 1: Science Bad" portrays USA's finest military and science experts as murderous madmen

What if the "genius" men behind the (in)famous Manhattan Projects from the middle of the last century weren't the celebrated and brilliant generals and scientific experts we consider them to be, but something else altogether?  What if one of them was a multiple-personality homicidal maniac who only appears to be normal, and in fact is anything but?  What if there were aliens from other cosmos who agreed to help us in destroying our enemies in exchange for other favors?  Such an alternate reality is a product of writer Jonathan Hickman and artist & illustrator Nick Pitarra, and their creation is a comic book series that, for the most part, defies genre conventions.

In The Manhattan Projects Volume 1: Science Bad, Hickman and Pitarra introduce us to the primary characters that will drive their narrative forward.  They consist of the leading military expert of the top secret project, General Leslie Groves, who is in charge of the entire operation; Dr. Joseph Oppenheimer, a man who "is not his own brother", and who appears to have psychological problems of the worst possible kind; Richard Feynman is a physicist who has a strange affection for his own appearance; and rounding out the rest of the main characters is a dejected looking Albert Einstein, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in form of an Artificial Intelligence, and Wernher von Braun, a rocket scientist from Germany who possesses a prosthetic arm.

The tone of this first Trade Paperback volume is satirical, to say the least, and infused with plenty of the absurd (Japanese Kamikaze Killing Machine attacks the Manhattan Projects secret base!) and the truly bizarre (alien Siill and his buddies, from a far away galaxy, who offer the above mentioned characters "the stars" in exchange for future favors of yet undetermined nature).  The violence is campy, the dialogue is bordering on the humorously outlandish, and the storyline consists of an alternate reality where just about anything can - and does - happen.  Hickman's and Pitarra's The Manhattan Projects may not be for the mainstream comic buffs who grew up on Marvel and DC's superheroes' universe, but for those who are fans of other Image sci-fi & horror serials of the peculiar kind, such as Black Science, Nameless and Cry Havoc (to name just a few), it should satisfy their sweet tooth just enough to keep reading further.
B

"Legend of Tarzan" is flat, uninspired and worst of all, boring as shit

Without a doubt, the worst movie adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs' legendary character yet. The script is awful and full of cliches already seen thousand times over in countless terrible films, the casting is uninspired (Alexander Skarsgard as Tarzan? Seriously???), and the action scenes come across as watching paint dry on a fence that's barely hanging on to dear life. Director David Yates brings no vision whatsoever to this material that arrives not that long after the similar but much superior The Jungle Book. This summer has already seen a record number of bad movies that not only underperformed at the Box Office, but have been less than inspiring for the audiences. This should be on any sane person's ten worst movies of 2016, and the best way to view it on a plane, if you must, is to watch it without using the headphones, and also without looking at the screen.
D-