First, the good news: 2015 was a fantastic year at the movies. There were great original stories, sequels done right, adaptations that match their source material, and more. But for every great movie, there are a ton of bad ones too. For those of you with short memories, 2015 was also when we watched Ed Helms (The Office, The Hangover) bathe in raw sewage, the Entourage crew prove their alpha-douche toxicity could not be contained to the small screen, and a recent Oscar winner giving such an over the top, hammy performance while at the same time wearing such a sparkly costume, that I reckon he’s been taking wardrobe inspiration from Jareth the Goblin King (if you haven’t seen Labyrinth, you really should).
Read moreFantastic 4 Film Review
I feel that I should preface this review by stating that I am not the biggest fan of Fantastic 4 from any iterations of the comic book, so my expectations have been not at all high that someone someday will make a live-action Fantastic 4 movie that works. Fox’s latest attempt, directed by Josh Trank of Chronicle fame, doesn’t necessarily get things wrong as much as it doesn’t get the things it needs to right, which is a shame because there are a lot of interesting ideas that probably would have worked well in comic form. But what it amounts to here is essentially a 100-minute long trailer to a movie we never end up seeing, or better yet, wouldn’t want to see.
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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