Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)
DIRECTOR: Robert Rodriguez
CAST: Josh Brolin, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eva Green, Bruce Willis, Powers Boothe, Rosario Dawson, Dennis Haysbert, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven, Ray Liotta, Christopher Lloyd, Jamie Chung, Jaime King, Julia Garner, Stacy Keach, Juno Temple, Marton Csokas, Lady Gaga
REVIEW:
Sin City was one of the coolest movies of 2005 (or any other year). Adapted by Robert Rodriguez with painstaking accuracy from Frank Miller’s hyper-stylized, ultra-violent graphic novels, it was a blast of visually inventive, kinetic, wildly over-the-top sadistic fun. For various reasons which vary depending on whose version of events you listen to, it took a whopping nine years for the much-discussed sequel to finally return to Basin City, and like many follow-ups that take this long to see the light of day, it’s dubious whether it was worth the wait. It would be overly harsh to call A Dame to Kill For a trainwreck (though its disastrously abysmal box office returns would argue otherwise), but while it’s diverting, much of the freshness has evaporated. Like other inferior sequels, it remixes a lot of familiar ingredients but without that undefinable “spark”. Dame is not really “bad”, but while it apes its predecessor’s style, it largely lacks its panache, despite moments of flirting with recapturing it. Continue reading
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
DIRECTOR: James Gunn
CAST: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper (voice), Vin Diesel (voice), Lee Pace, Karen Gillan, Michael Rooker, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin
REVIEW:
And now for something completely different: Despite being an adaptation of a comic series, Guardians of the Galaxy represents a risk and a departure for Marvel by basing a major summer would-be blockbuster (and hopefully a new film franchise) around a band of heroes who aren’t household names, and sending Marvel’s film adventures into space. The resulting product is sufficiently quirky and far off the beaten path to leave it to be seen how well mainstream audiences will take to it, but Guardians of the Galaxy is engaging for the most part, and also represents something different from your run-of-the-mill comic book superhero movie. There’s maybe a dash of Star Wars, and at least in the oddball tone, maybe a pinch of a more coherent The Fifth Element, but overall this isn’t that much like anything we’ve seen before. Continue reading
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
DIRECTOR: Bryan Singer
CAST: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Halle Berry, Ellen Page, Shawn Ashmore
REVIEW:
Like some of the best comic book superhero movies (Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and its own predecessor X-Men: First Class), X-Men: Days of Future Past, taking its name and some plot elements from a well-known X-Men comic storyline, mixes things up and takes the genre in unconventional directions. The result is perhaps the strongest installment the X-Men film series has churned out yet, equaling or surpassing First Class. 
Taking back his seat in the director’s chair from the likes of Gavin Hood and Matthew Vaughn, Bryan Singer has kept the fresh life First Class breathed into the floundering series going and taken it even further. Days of Future Past, as its quirky title suggests, does something very different with the familiar characters, but as with its aforementioned cinematic cousins, different’s not a bad thing, especially when more generic comic book films are churning out left and right these days. Continue reading
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
DIRECTOR: Alan Taylor
CAST: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Eccleston, Kat Dennings, Stellan Skarsgard, Idris Elba, Rene Russo, Jaimie Alexander, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano, Alice Krige, Adewale Akinnouoye-Agbaje
REVIEW:
Thor: The Dark World, following in the footsteps of the introductory outing for its title character, 2011’s Thor, and the 2012 superhero all-star extravaganza The Avengers, is a step down and feels like an obligatory episode. It moves briskly and serves up serviceable fantasy action-adventure, but it lacks the epic feel of Thor and it’s hard to care much about what’s taking place onscreen despite a bunch of flashy special effects, dwelling in the middle ground of mediocrity also occupied by Captain America: The First Avenger and Iron Man 3. Continue reading
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
DIRECTOR: Anthony Russo & Joe Russo
CAST: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo
REVIEW:
After a series of underwhelming Marvel comic book flicks in the Avengers’ universe (Captain America, Iron Man 3, Thor 2), Captain America: The Winter Soldier manages to rise above the mediocrity and provide a worthwhile adventure, surpassing the Captain’s introductory outing by leaps and bounds and surpassing the first Iron Man and the first Thor as the best solo installment the Avengers have yet produced. In fact, it might be the best comic book movie since The Dark Knight, supplying satisfyingly spectacular summer comic book entertainment that mixes high-octane action with a little character development and a little political intrigue and manages to stand on its own apart from the behemoth Marvel has created with The Avengers series. Continue reading
Man of Steel (2013)
DIRECTOR: Zack Snyder
CAST: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe, Laurence Fishburne
REVIEW:
Man of Steel is to Superman as Batman Begins was to Batman; resurrect a popular comics character left floundering in the wake of poorly-received previous cinematic outings (the last attempt at a grand return, Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, flopped) and bring him back to the big screen better than ever. Continue reading
Iron Man 3 (2013)
DIRECTOR: Shane Black
CAST: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, James Badge Dale, Ty Simpkins, William Sadler, Miguel Ferrer, Paul Bettany (voice)
REVIEW:
When it comes to superhero trilogies, Iron Man 3 isn’t bad enough to be an example of the “third movie curse”, but nor does it save the best for last. Like Iron Man 2, it’s adequately diverting summer escapist entertainment, but like Iron Man 2, it’s mildly underwhelming. Perhaps responding to a common criticism of the last film, Iron Man 3 has a somewhat higher action quotient, and it wisely doesn’t try to match the sheer spectacle of last summer’s The Avengers, aiming to be a little more character-oriented. Like its predecessor, its pacing is uneven, with some lengthy sequences that tempt one to check the time in between spectacular action sequences. The result is serviceable summer comic book action fare, but doesn’t go above and beyond like The Avengers or Christopher Nolan’s recently completed Batman trilogy. Perhaps, after such entries that defy the supposed constraints of how far this genre can go, more ordinary installments like this just don’t feel like quite enough anymore.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan
CAST:
Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman
REVIEW:
WARNING: WHILE I HAVE ASPIRED TO AVOID OUTRIGHT “SPOILERS”, THIS REVIEW WILL MENTION SPECIFIC ASPECTS OF THE FILM’S PLOT
Along with Joss Whedon’s The Avengers earlier this summer, Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy has redefined the possibilities of what to expect from a “comic book superhero movie” and raised the bar to a level that future entries in the genre will be hard-pressed to equal, let alone surpass. While The Avengers served up grand spectacle on an unprecedented scale, Nolan’s Batman films went the more thoughtful, introspective, and in many ways, more groundbreaking approach, defying the expectations and supposed constraints of the genre, approaching the material as deep, dark, serious drama, and making the likes of Spider-Man look fluffy and insubstantial in comparison. Batman Begins was a respectable launching pad. The Dark Knight soared above and beyond, seizing the title of, for my money and the money of many others, the most dark, ambitious, and adult-oriented comic book superhero movie ever made, and now Nolan has chosen to cap off his series with a climactic chapter, perhaps the first time a director in a superhero series has chosen of his own accord to conclude his story (as opposed to Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Bryan Singer and Brett Ratner’s X-Men, who were robbed of intended fourth installments by the disappointing receptions of their third entries). While in my opinion The Dark Knight remains unseated as the most impressive of Nolan’s Batman films, The Dark Knight Rises brings this solid trilogy to a respectable conclusion. Continue reading
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
DIRECTOR: Marc Webb
CAST:
Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen, Sally Field
REVIEW:
The road to this reboot was a twisty-turny one. Originally, despite the general opinion of Spider-Man 3 as a disappointment, Sony intended to forge onward with a fourth installment with director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire still attached. But due to reasons including Raimi’s clashes with the studio during the making of Spider-Man 3 (he did not want to include the villain Venom in the film, who was essentially forced on him by producer Avi Arad), Maguire’s hefty salary requests, and possibly other behind-the-scenes issues we’ll never know about, Sony eventually completely dropped Raimi, Maguire, and company and decided to start fresh with another Spider-Man movie that, like Batman Begins, had nothing to do with those that came before. Many, including myself, were highly skeptical of the news of a reboot again showing us Spidey’s origin story, considering we’d seen it in theaters a mere decade ago, and I still haven’t 100% made up my mind whether the reboot has justified its existence, but viewed on its own, it’s an entertaining (if not quite “amazing”) addition to the masked webslinger’s onscreen adventues. Continue reading
The Avengers (2012)
DIRECTOR: Joss Whedon
CAST:
Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Clark Gregg, Gwyneth Paltrow, Stellan Skarsgard
REVIEW:
I don’t think there’s ever been a movie with as much set-up as The Avengers, for which Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America all, to greater or lesser extents, served as prologue. It was a risky gamble (any of the four movies leading up to The Avengers flopping badly enough could have derailed the whole endeavor), but it has not only paid off, it has done so with flying colors. The Avengers is a virtual comic book movie fan’s wet dream from start to finish, and crafts an epic spectacle on a level that might surpass that of any existing comic book film. As entertaining as Iron Man and Thor are, The Avengers easily climbs to another level. The Dark Knight may deal with darker, deeper themes, but the two movies’ tones are different enough that it seems unfair to compare them, and both represent the genre at its crowning pinnacle. The Avengers is delirious levels of fun from beginning to end, and provides any Marvel comic fan with two hours in cinematic candyland. Continue reading