‘Avengers: Endgame’ Culminates 2010’s Pop Culture Phenomenon
Avengers: Endgame has the most crowd-pleasing finalé to a long-running pop culture series ever made.
Michael Curley
Michael Curley is a full-time high school teacher and part-time film aficionado based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Although he is a fan of films of all kinds, he has a particular soft spot for major Hollywood blockbusters done well. Michael's film essays are currently exclusive to PopMatters.com. He can be reached @MCurleyfries on Twitter.
‘Captain Marvel’ Sends a Powerful Message to Audiences and Filmmakers
The first female-centric film in the MCU, Captain Marvel, bakes the female experience into every aspect, making a potentially familiar story fresh and exciting.
Animated ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ Is a Pop-Art Masterpiece
Animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse uses unique, groundbreaking animation techniques and engages with the most ‘out-there’ comic book concepts to tell a hilarious, relatable, timely coming-of-age story.
Ruben Fleischer’s ‘Venom’ Has No Bite
Ruben Fleischer's toothless antihero film, Venom is like a blockbuster from 15 years earlier: one-dimensional, loose plot, inconsistent tone, and packaged in the least-offensive, most mass appeal way possible. Sigh.
The Obstacles in ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ Are Not Typical of MCU
Peyton Reed's "Disney-fied" Ant-Man and the Wasp is unchallenging in all the best ways.
The Highs Are Higher, the Lows Lower in ‘Deadpool 2’
The first half of Deadpool 2, in which Vanessa is murdered and Wade becomes purposeless and suicidal, is a slog. The second half, where Wade commits to defending an angry teenage mutant, positively soars with fantastic action and some of the funniest superhero film moments in years.
The Action in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Is Relentless
The focus on Thanos single-handedly saves Avengers: Infinity War from becoming the overstuffed mess many feared and lends the film a relentless action pace more akin to Mad Max: Fury Road than a superhero blockbuster.
Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ Has Its Claws in the Zeitgeist
Ryan Coogler's Black Panther engages with deep and timely social, cultural, and psychological concepts, and completely taps into America's zeitgeist.
Cue the Music: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’
James Gunn crafts a deeply flawed film, but Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which digs deep into daddy issues, is still entertaining, visually gorgeous, and likable.
James Mangold’s ’Logan’ Depicts Wolverine’s Worst Nightmare
In Mangold's Logan, an elderly, sick surrogate father and a young, estranged, emotionally-scarred "daughter" come to rely entirely on the aged Wolverine who is now but a haunted, battered, suicidal husk. It's nothing like superhero films that came before.