“‘The Avengers’ Gave Us Marvel’s Peak, 10 Years Ago”

Pour one out for the superhero movie, which had a great moment once upon a time and has steadily lost that moment every year since. Continue reading →

“Able to Do Anything Post-MCU, Robert Downey Jr. Chooses ‘Dolittle'”

What’s a man do to when he has all the money in the world plus a rehabilitated image as Marvel’s greatest hero? He does little. Very, very little. Continue reading →

Review: Iron Man 3, 2013, dir. Shane Black

Looking backward, there are more reasons than not to expect disappointment from Iron Man 3. For one, history shows that the third entry tends to be the worst in many franchises, a la  Return of the Jedi, The Godfather III, Infernal Affairs III, The Dark Knight Rises; for another, Shane Black’s contribution to the story of … Continue reading →

Review: The Avengers, 2012, dir. Joss Whedon

The Avengers didn’t have to do much to impress me. Being as honest as possible, Joss Whedon’s attempt at making a respectable entrance into the 2012 summer season with the capstone picture of Marvel Studios’ long-gestating superhero bonanza just needed to be tolerable to get a pass from me. Put bluntly, C-level material alone would … Continue reading →

Avengers, Assemble For Take 86: Behind the Scenes Avengers Images

Well, we’re almost into April, and I can only imagine that in the coming thirty days we’ll see the campaign promoting the May 2nd release of The Avengers ramp up in a big way. Marvel’s unleashed some new screen caps here and there to follow up the truly horrible poster released at the end of February and … Continue reading →

Review: Iron Man 2, 2010, dir. Jon Favreau

The sequel in a superhero franchise is generally highly anticipated for all the promise it holds. With all of the origin work out of the way thanks to the first film, the second entry in the series naturally possesses more room to maneuver and wow audiences without being stymied by a need to portray the … Continue reading →

Review: Sherlock Holmes, 2009, dir. Guy Ritchie

Guy Ritchie, the proud creator of notoriously stylized gangster films like Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, is not a director well known for his relationship with the concept of “restraint”. So the fact that my fingers are about to type the sentence, “Ritchie shows uncharacteristic restraint in his latest film,” comes as … Continue reading →

The Cinematic Decade: My Top 25 of the 2000s (pt. 2)

This installment: Entries 20-16. Starting with: 20. Persepolis:  Visually sumptuous in the face of its stripped-down aesthetic, Persepolis is the autobiographical tale of Marjane Satrapi’s life growing  up in Iran and coming of age in the late 1970s. Told with a soft, elegant cell animated style, the film follows Marjane from her happy childhood spent … Continue reading →