Tony Scott, RIP

August 20, 2012

Well this is a bummer to start the week: We’re shocked to learn tonight that Tony Scott, the brother of Ridley Scott and the director of films such as The Hunger, Top Gun, and True Romance, died today at the age of 68 due to an apparent suicide. Sources report that Scott leapt from the Vincent Thomas Bridge in […]

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Review: ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’

July 6, 2012

There’s a moment late in the new Spider-Man film during which one of Peter Parker’s (Andrew Garfield) teachers says that some have remarked there are only ten stories in the world. One of her professors retorted “There is only one: ‘Who am I?’” I was kind of hoping she would say “There is only one: […]

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Marvel has actually done okay by its lady-heroes

July 5, 2012

I never intended for this to be a trilogy, but what the hey. I’m all riled up. In part one, we looked at the idea that Marvel was ignoring a deep and venerable stable of female superheroes, instead opting for rejects like The Guardians of the Galaxy. As I showed, this is simply not the […]

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Superheroines in film, ctd

July 4, 2012

Following up on yesterday’s post about Marvel’s “lack”* of female superhero films, I wanted to address a slightly different issue. As we’ve seen, the supply simply isn’t there: It’s disingenuous to argue, as Alyssa Rosenberg does here, that “Marvel will dig into the weirdness of its back catalogue before making a movie or a television […]

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Established, female, standalone Marvel characters

July 3, 2012

Can you think of many? I ask in response to this: It’s telling that we live in a world where Marvel will dig into the weirdness of its back catalogue before making a movie or a television series about one of its recognizable, established female heroes… I mean, I’m on record as thinking the Guardians of […]

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Some scattered thoughts on “The Avengers”

May 7, 2012

Spoiler-free (mostly) until the jump; after that you’re on your own. First—and perhaps most importantly—I enjoyed it a great deal. It’s an extremely fun picture with a surprising amount of humor and the perfect smattering of whiz-bang, yippie-ki-yay action sequences. I highly recommend it. I (begrudgingly) saw it in 3D; it was fine. The only […]

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“Bronson” and “Drive”: A case study in “interesting” cinema

February 5, 2012

Jailhouse Art Teacher: Very interesting, Charlie. Charles Bronson: Interesting? JAT: Yeah, it’s interesting. CB: And what does that mean? JAT: Interesting’s good! Bravado! You know? Yeah, you can’t pin it down. You can’t tie that up in a nice little bow. —Bronson, 2008 Bernie: I used to produce movies. In the 80s. Kind of like […]

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Taking a second look at “Sucker Punch”

December 21, 2011

I didn’t see enough movies this year to put together a proper Top Ten list, unfortunately. But I did want to talk about one flick that came and went without too much notice earlier in the year that would have gotten consideration for such a list, should I have made one: Sucker Punch. (As this […]

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