My Own Little World

Having just come from Infinity War , the Marvel Cinematic Universe is reeling. The film with the largest scope and greatest stakes (along with arguably the franchise’s most menacing villain) has left all fans in a sort of mourning period. I saw that film twice in theaters, and because of its weight I felt like I needed a bit of space to process all the consequences of its insane climax. That’s part of what makes the franchise’s next entry both fitting and puzzling. Ant-Man and the Wasp takes a completely different tone than Infinity War , and that split my opinion of it. I appreciate that it does not have the large stakes and scale of most MCU films, but at the same time it also feels unimportant and almost like filler. In a similar manner to the first ­ Ant-Man film, its lightweight nature undermines its own sense of self-importance but in an even worse context for such a film because it follows a much grimmer installment. I know that that might be a strange area of criticis...

As I have become an adult, the first Incredibles movie has grown on me quite a lot. I began to realize how deep-seated its themes are and how many mature issues it tackles for an animated film; there is something special about how animated films like this can allow one’s guard to drop and communicate some heavy messages to the non-children in the room. A sequel has seemed like a pipe dream for so long that I was almost in disbelief when the announcement was made that Incredibles 2 was entering production and would be released in 2018. I think it is safe to assume that few people were nervous about this film ruining its predecessor; Pixar has done a highly serviceable job with its most beloved properties’ long-awaited sequels ( Toy Story 3 and Finding Dory being prime examples), and the return of nearly every component involved in the original eased my mind that much more. I wanted to see the return of that impeccable family dynamic that was often more enticing than the acti...

Infinity War is the Empire Strikes Back of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is a comparison made quite often – not just for this film, but for nearly every franchise. At some point, every gritty sequel will be likened to the practical perfection of Empire and its usurping of its predecessor’s formula. Whether this is deserved or not is a contentious subject with the fans of whatever franchise falls prey to the discussion. With the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though, Infinity War fits the mold perfectly. For the first time in these nineteen films, the stakes are real and not contrived by an incompetent villain. For the first time, the villain is a true psychopathic terror that gets true sympathy that can even approach empathy. For the first time (at least in an Avengers film), this group of god-like beings feels truly threatened by the antagonist, incapable of stopping them. There’s other parallels to be made for sure – like how both Infinity War and Empire split up ...

Comic book films have begun to vary quite a bit in the past couple of years. Deadpool opened the doors to R-ratings in the genre, Logan showed how emotionally compelling and tonally focused those films can be, and Wonder Woman brought a strong female presence to the genre for the first time. In Black Panther , we have yet another drastic change; this time, though, it is to more than just the superhero genre. Sure, we do finally have a properly fleshed-out black superhero; but the bigger thing here is the subtext. There is so much to this film’s major themes that make it one of the timeliest comic book films ever made. This is rooted in the film’s villain Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan. Besides Jordan’s great performance, this is a highly and uniquely motivated villain. His core motivation is to flip the narrative of blacks worldwide and to leverage Wakanda’s (the African nation at play) premier technology to do so. He wants to oppress their oppressors and demand ...

While watching Justice League , I couldn’t help comparing it to The Avengers . The two films are trying to do very similar things with their respective teams, and they both have very similar story beats (not unreasonable to expect given Joss Whedon’s heavy involvement in both). Honestly, that comparison does Justice League a lot more favors than you might otherwise expect: they both are fun, entertaining, bombastic blockbusters with characters the audience can get behind. Of course, Justice League is not in a vacuum, and neither is The Avengers . And that is where the problems start to show. The biggest problem I have with Justice League is its lack of character development. Now, this actually doesn’t come from this film itself, as all of the new characters (Cyborg, The Flash, and Aquaman) are enticing as presented here. The problem is that we haven’t had the prior experiences with these characters that we had in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before The Avengers came to ...

By this point, there has been an established formula in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s a reason they are so successful at the box office: people see them as a reliable option for being entertained at the movies. That’s not a bad thing by any means – I thoroughly enjoy every single one of these movies and plan to for the foreseeable future – but it does mean that each successive film in the franchise needs to stand out at least a little bit from the rest to keep interest high. This year, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 partially failed at that with its convoluted plot and somewhat rehashed humor; on the contrary, Spider-Man: Homecoming successfully rebooted a character that has had problems in past in film, giving me a film that I really enjoyed. Thor: Ragnarok does something I didn’t expect in trying to change up the formula from the previous two films focusing on the character: it cranks the humor up to 11. OK, there’s more to it than that, like the way the film ...

DC Comics' attempt at a cinematic universe hasn't been the best so far. Every one of the three films they've released has had narrative problems that range from fairly noticeable to downright awful. Only one of them has actually established any kind of concrete tone for the franchise. None of them, from my perspective at least, are films I would consider buying based on quality alone. When you're putting as much money behind movies as Warner Bros. is behind these new DC Comics films, that's never a good thing. That being said, they're still figuring things out, so I decided to give them another chance by seeing their newest release Wonder Woman . And you know what? I'm incredibly glad I did.  This is a really solid comic book film and an incredibly enjoyable thing to experience in a theater. Wonder Woman  has all the components of a good film and simply puts them loosely over a comic book aesthetic and branding, and that makes it work better than c...

I loved the first Guardians of the Galaxy  film. It was so relentlessly original and infectious, and up until the release of Captain America: Civil War  it was my favorite movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I loved the cast, the writing, the soundtrack, and virtually everything else about it (save the villain; Marvel almost never does well there). Naturally, after the success of that first film, Marvel decided to attempt a repeat, bringing back the same cast, the same writer and director, and the same talking tree and raccoon. Marvel's sequels have usually at least in some ways improved on the originals, and sometimes they have struck gold, so I was quite hopeful for Vol. 2 . In some ways, this film does quite well, mostly due to the clever humor. Part of this is because of the writing and how fast and furious the jokes come, but I feel a majority of the humor's success comes from the chemistry of the cast and how everyone has different comedic slants. Every charact...

A little over a year ago, Marvel released one of the first R-rated comic book films: Deadpool . It's huge box office returns changed the game for the genre, allowing studios to realize that their audiences were not just OK with their favorite characters being placed in more extreme films -- they actually welcomed the change. Fast forward to today, and Marvel is taking another stab at the R-rated comic book film with Logan . Unlike Deadpool 's attempts to parody and make light of the superhero genre, however, Logan  aims for the skies and tries to transcend the genre's limitations entirely. Instead of seeing itself as confined to any sort of box, it tries to be an "indie superhero film," for lack of better phrasing. It goes for a small-scale character-driven drama with some bursts of action along the way. And you know what? It works perfectly.  This is the perfect film to send Hugh Jackman's portrayal of the Wolverine riding off into the sunset b...

What do you do when you want to like a movie so much, but you walk out of the theater bored and wanting to just sleep away your problems? I've never had to ask this question until last night. I made the always-tragic mistake of putting my hope in some amazingly well-crafted trailers and expected the world with Suicide Squad . Instead, I got a movie that bored me. A movie with some of the greatest comic book villains of all time, and it bored me. I legitimately yawned several times towards the end and was just waiting to get out of the theater so I could do something far more interesting. I also want to put a bit of a disclaimer before the rest of my thoughts: this is no way because I want to align myself with the critics. If you remember my Batman v Superman  review (if you don't, just  click here ), you'll remember that, despite the negativity critics hurled at it, I quite enjoyed it. It was something far different tonally than anything else any comic book film had g...

Many of you know the high regard in which I hold film critics. Quite often, that Tomatometer score is my deciding factor as to whether or not I want to see a movie. It might be a bad idea to put so much weight on other people's opinions, but it typically works quite well for me, so I haven't changed the way I choose what movie to watch. Why am I telling you this, you ask? Because I want you to know how hard it is to say that I enjoy a movie that critics hate... ...like Batman v Superman . I liked this movie. Yes, there were some elements that made me a little uneasy at times, but on the whole this is a great example of how to make a really fully stuffed superhero film. That being said, there are some gripes I have with Batman v Superman  that make me dock it more than a little bit, and there are still others that I'm not decided on yet. In light of that, I'm going to try a new format for this review in which I'll separate the different aspects of this film...