Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Platypuschow Tales of the Black Freighter is set within The Watchmen universe but there are no superheroes to be found here.With Gerard Butler as the voice talent we see a tale of a mariner who is the sole survivor of an attack on his ship by pirates and his efforts at survival and getting home to his family.Standing at little over 20 minutes this little short actually manages to tell a story competently, but make no mistake it isn't a very nice one.Grim, dark and harrowing this is a tale of desperation and a tale of madness and there was never going to be a happy ending here.Depressing and hard hitting this is a watchable little piece but one that will stay with you afterwards and for all the wrong reasons.Watch at your peril.The Good:Well animatedVery well writtenThe Bad:Not the easiest viewingThings I Learnt From This Movie:This was an extra on the Watchmen (2009) dvd, I think it's better than the actual film

MBunge When they finally turned the classic comic book series Watchmen into a movie, they had to leave a lot of stuff out. You may find that surprising if you've only seen the film, given how long, detailed and dense it was already. But as one of the most complex stories every written in comic book history, there was a lot they had to skip. Instead of simply forgetting about that stuff, they've taken most of it and turned it into two short films. They're both must-sees if you were a fan of the movie or the comic. Taken on their own merits, however, one of them is must better than the other.Tales of the Black Freighter was a comic-within-the-comic that told the story of the sole survivor of a ship destroyed by the infamous Black Freighter and the horrible, mad lengths he goes to in order to save himself and protect his family. They've turned the comic story into roughly a half-hour long cartoon with some decent animation and good voice work by Gerard Butler as the sole survivor. In making it into a cartoon, unfortunately, the writers and directors leave out most of the powerful and creepy narration that make the original work so striking. The comic-within-the-comic was also thematically connected extensively and intimately with the main story of Watchmen and severing that union robs Tales of the Black Freighter of a lot of its purpose and force.Under the Hood is based on text pieces that ran in the original comic concerning the autobiography of Nite Owl I, Hollis Mason (Stephen McHattie). That was the old guy talking with Dan Dreiberg at the start of the movie. He was one of the original masked adventurers of the 1940s who eventually hung up his mask and tights and wrote a book about what he did and why he did it. In the comic, excerpts from the book were used to flesh out and reinforce many of the themes Alan Moore was driving at in the series. It's been adapted for the screen as an episode of a TV news show about Hollis Mason and his book. Host Larry Culpepper (Ted Friend) talks with Mason, the former Silk Spectre, Sally Jupiter (Carla Gugino), former super-villain Moloch (Matt Frewer) and others about the book and the nature of super-heroes in the real world.Under the Hood is much better than Tales of the Black Freighter. It deals more directly and explicitly with much of Alan Moore's deconstructive take on super-heroes and heroism in general, and is therefore hampered less by being detached from the main story. There are also some very good performances by Stephen McHattie, Carla Gugino, Matt Frewer and Rob LaBelle as Doctor Manhattan's former sidekick. They show the twin sides of the super-hero as presented in Watchmen; the human dimension concerned with celebrity and personal drive and desire, and the sociological perspective of how the existence of such entities would interact with and change the larger world.I imagine the idea is that both these films will eventually be re-integrated into the main Watchmen movie in a special edition DVD. Hollywood loves to sell people the same thing over and over again. I'm not sure it'll be worth getting that DVD because adding this stuff into the movie would make it 4 hours long or more. These works, especially Tales of the Black Freighter, would also not fit alongside some of the changes made in adapting the comic to the screen.If you liked Watchmen, the comic or the movie, I suggest you give this thing a rent and enjoy this stuff on its own.

ThurstonHunger ...as this pretty much proves the essential nature of comic books. Not having the pieces integrated puts the movie(s) at a decided disadvantage . This DVD also included an excruciatingly overlong Culpepper Minute...although I do like the irony of it being called a minute and lasting an eternity, perhaps it was named the same in Moore's Watchmen. I don't recall...I will say Stephen McHattie as Hollis Mason was outstanding in this.Anyways, to me the Black Freighter story here ends up coming across hackneyed, and hack-kneed (and twisted-head, snapped-off-arm, etc...). The shocking gore piles up, and the story in my opinion is just not strong enough to stand on its own. While I'm at it, the Watchmen movie was alright, but reading the whole piece, in episodic installments, truly was a better way to enjoy it.So Moore is right in that his art-form was superior, despite the clearly loving attempt at a cinematic treatment. And yet, many folks will just not pick up anything that is book like (even if candy bars came with pages and a spine, I sense people would flee), so having the Watchmen and related items released is not such a heinous crime. Better than writing greeting cards to supplement one's creative pursuits.Anyways, if you watched the movie, and have not read the book, I'd only seek this out if you truly dig the graphic dark side of human behavior, but you'd be better served by exploring the graphic novel side that holds it all together.Thurston Hunger 3/10

tseng808 I regard this more as something stand alone than something that accompanies The Watchmen. It is the perfect example of an animated short. The entire plot is chilling from start to end especially with Butlers sterling performance as the Sea Captain. The animation i was quite surprised how much i actually liked it as i did not expect a great deal of detail- but it looks extremely effective. I can only hope in the directors cut of Watchmen that it makes an appearance between the film as it did in the graphic novel. Though it is unfair to constantly relate this back to the film as it is its own work and has its own merits.For me it is exactly what i wanted it to be, a haunting exploration of the inner mind.