The stakes have been raised so many times with event flicks that, when approaching one, hope is always tempered with experience about what to expect, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson. With AVENGERS: ENDGAME, though, hope wins out. The spectacle is everything it should be, and the story, of necessity a meandering thing, is nonetheless sustained by… Read More »
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
For sheer value-for-money, you can’t top AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. It’s pure entertainment with an endless parade of the kind of whiz-bang special effects, not quite sloppy sentiment, and a constant barrage of the quips and banter that define grace under pressure in the Marvel Universe. Plus, pretty much everyone from the MCU finds his or… Read More »
CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR
CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR asks the cinematic question “What would happen if we took a whole passel of superheroes from the Marvel Comic universe and tossed them together into one film?” But wait, what if we pitted them against one another over a fundamental difference of opinion about ethics, and then added a dash (or… Read More »
CAPTAIN AMERICA — THE WINTER SOLDIER
fIn CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, Captain Steve Rodgers, aka Captain America (Chris Evans), is experiencing an existential crisis. Its not just that he has a lot of catching up to do after being cryogenically asleep for seventy years or so. The novelty of Thai food and the internet dont get him down, its the… Read More »
YOU ME AND DUPREE
What sad and lifeless thing is YOU ME AND DUPREE. Not even Owen Wilson’s potent slacker charm can save it from a fatal lack of any sort of momentum, much less energy, leaving it with the sort of stasis that sucks all the fun right out of the proceedings. He’s the eponymous Dupree, a sweet… Read More »