In a year that sees Disney sitting atop the box office charts with the four highest-grossing films worldwide of the year, with one more likely waiting in the wings (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), and with more than $4.7 billion in global receipts so far (with another likely $3.433 bigllllion to come), the studio’s next potential blockbuster franchise is just around the corner. Marvel’s Phase 3 kicked off this summer with the release of Captain America: Civil War, taking $1.15 billion at the box office, and now the MCU’s next entry arrives November 4th when Doctor Strange hits theaters. With a mix of popular superhero and fantasy elements plus the seemingly invincible Marvel branding...
Read moreDeadpool Movie Review
I said something similar to last year when Fury Road came out, which after seeing this movie begs repeating: “The fact that this movie even exists is a triumph.” Not to get lost in the history of the project, but I’m very confident some of you may not even remember the fact that Ryan Reynolds has played the foul-mouthed, psychotic, Marvel comics mercenary Wade Wilson/Deadpool before - in 2009’s X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. The main problem there was that the geniuses behind that film took a character whose most evil weapon is his mouth and literally sewed it shut… Then poor Reynolds had another shot at superhero stardom a couple years later with GREEN LANTERN, and the less said about that the better. (Yes, he acknowledges both of those movies in Deadpool.)...
Read moreAnt-Man Movie Review
AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON has about the same problem that ANT-MAN has in this critic's opinion. To a major extent, too much of this film feels like Marvel is just checking off entries to a list and not allowing this film to breathe on its own. Granted, for ANT-MAN it’s more of an annoyance than anything else. But while I do appreciate and admire the scope of what Marvel is still doing, which frankly hasn’t been attempted at this extent before, it can lead to a frustrating film-going experience for some when you can sense how much the movie wants to break away and do its own thing.
Read more'Daredevil' Series Review
Marvel Studios has always been a mixed bag for me. When they’re able to be very true to their characters and make the plot hit the beats of the big storylines, we can get a Guardians of The Galaxy or Winter Soldier out of them. Or, we can get a convoluted bag of half thought-out ideas with numerous plot holes, but they’re so visually interesting on screen we try not to think about it (aka Avengers: Age Of Ultron). When Marvel is able to make me believe all of these things share a continuity, it’s when I get most invested in theses movies of theirs. But one thing that is easily found in the source material that I don’t see in the movies are the normal people, the neighborhoods, and the rest of the world. Enter “Marvel’s Daredevil,” the first of five planned Netflix shows, which provides the exact storytelling boost that the MCU needed in my opinion.
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