‘Avengers: Endgame’ Faces the Other Side of Loss
Whereas the heroes in Avengers: Endgame stew for five years, our pandemic grief has barely taken us to the after-credit sequence. Someone page Captain Marvel, please.
adventure
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.
Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’ and Pedagogical Filmmaking in the Movement for Black Lives
As with Da 5 Bloods, Spike Lee's films are replete with experimental aesthetics that deconstruct the conventions of (white) Hollywood and re-frame and re-contextualize Black lives and Black history.
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 Grand Budapest Hotel’ Gorgeously Conveys Our Need for Poise and Elegance
The sense of artifice in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel helped him create an alluring reverie of both color and meaning.
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.
A Fix of Fantasy: Reviving the Wondrous Films of Karel Zeman
The imaginative filmmaker Karel Zeman influenced many artists including Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, fellow Czech Jan Švankmajer, the Brothers Quay, and animator Lawrence Jordan's recycling of classic 19th Century imagery.