MoviesNot even Christian Bale’s best performance to date can stop Thor: Love And Thunder from shattering a longstanding MCU consensus Of all the things I expected from THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER, being an unironic homage to STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER was not one of them and yet Taika Waititi’s fourquel opens with a ..
MoviesWhen billionaire playboy industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is kidnapped and mortally wounded during a terrorist ambush in Afghanistan, he must use every ounce of his ingenuity to survive and escape. Returning home a changed man, Stark decides to start righting the wrongs of his past and takes his first step into a larger ..
MoviesWhen Loki appears in a SHIELD facility and steals the Tesseract, Nick Fury decides its time to mobilise the Avengers. But bringing together a group of heroes is quite different from creating a team and with an alien invasion imminent, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye and The Hulk will need to find ..
TelevisionIt’s getting harder and harder to write these up without divulging some of the interesting and intriguing things that are being revealed. I’ll still try not to give too much about ON A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE… away but, with a heavy heart, I’m going to slap this post with a warning for… ***SPOILERS & SPECULATION*** ..
TelevisionWhy can’t we have nice things? There was something almost inevitable about the pre-release critical and cultural bashing “Iron Fist” received. After a run of small screen Netflix success, I guess Marvel was due a backlash, and after constantly outgunning their rivals cinematically, the great and the good of Twitter and beyond, as well as ..
TelevisionWhen I reviewed Season 1 of Daredevil, I dared to hope that the characters from Marvel’s Netflix MCU offshoot would make the leap to the big screen to join in the “Infinity Wars”. While it seems that’s increasingly unlikely, the disappointment is somewhat mitigated by the depth and breadth being brought to life in Marvel’s ..
MoviesYou could be forgiven for thinking that Kevin Feige has taken the undeserved criticism of the formulaic nature of the MCU personally, using the 2021 slate of releases to subvert and refute the notion, first with SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS and now with ETERNALS. Sure, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY brought irreverent ..
TelevisionWhile the big revelation of the episode might be something most of us have been expecting, BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL has much more than that up its sleeve. With the six episodes so far having been meditations not only on grief but also finding something to say about each era of sitcom it’s touched upon ..
MoviesEleven years. Twenty-one movies. All leading up to this. In the wake of Thanos’ victory, the remaining Avengers regroup to figure out how to live up to their name. But there are no easy paths to setting things right and its only through the unexpected return of Ant-Man that an opportunity presents itself – one ..
Television*SPOILERS, MAYBE?* There are lies, damn lies and LOKI episodes which laugh to scorn at the audience’s expectations. Delivering on the event promised by its title, THE NEXUS EVENT retrospectively justifies the naval-gazing of LAMENTIS (which some, but not I, found so tedious) with a premise-shattering payoff. Quite simply, you couldn’t get to THE ENXUS ..
TelevisionWith Marvel letting it all ride on their big multiverse bet, staked first in WANDAVISION and doubled-down on in LOKI, WHAT IF…? offers the MCU an irresistibly broad canvas on which to work. With canon now being a matter of corporate whim, who knows whether what we’re about to be offered will have ramifications beyond ..
TelevisionWith events last week reaching a crisis point in Westview last week, all eyes were on the fourth episode of WANDAVISION to see how the story would be continued. The answer is to crank the metatextual dial up to ‘11’ in WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM and show us the same three episodes again, but from ..
Television*SPOILERS, MAYBE?* Given just how many presumed-pruned resurrections we’re reunited with, it’s curiously fitting that JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY is absolutely packed with Easter eggs and, seeing as LOKI’s debut season is entering its own endgame that Loki himself references his ultimate destiny as played out in AVENGERS: ENDGAME. But then, as the multiplicity of Lokis ..
MoviesBlack Panther: Wakanda Forever, lost in grief, volunteers as tribute. Setting a new standard for “in media res”, Marvel’s BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER opens with a scene which echoes the ongoing Phase’s preoccupation with the multiverse only this time it’s a metatextual incursion as real-world events – the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman – bleed ..
Television*SPOILERS, MAYBE?* It’s been observed more than once that LOKI sometimes represents Marvel’s take on DOCTOR WHO and The Time Lords in particular. In LAMENTIS, the third episode of the season, this comparison becomes particularly apt as Loki (Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) find themselves trapped on the world of Lamentis-1 as it experiences ..
MoviesWay, way back before 2012’s “Avengers Assemble”, The Hulk and Thor came face to face in “The Incredible Hulk Returns”, the first in a trilogy of TV movies reviving the much-loved show. David Banner (Bill Bixby) has been living quietly, without the emergence of the Hulk, as Dr David Bannion, a research scientist at an ..
MoviesAs he prepares to ascend to the throne of Wakanda, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) wrestles with his nation’s history of isolation and what that means in the modern world. But T’Challa’s troubles are compounded by the sins of his father whose actions decades previously have set in motion events which will culminate in a battle for ..
MoviesSeventeen films in, you’d forgive Marvel for resting on their laurels but there’s no sign of fatigue as Marvel closes out its Thor trilogy with “Thor: Ragnarok”. Driven by recurring dreams of the destruction of Asgard, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) allows himself to be captured by the fire demon Surtur in order to pre-empt and prevent ..
Television*SPOILERS, MAYBE?* There’s a lot to take in, in the first episode of LOKI, Disney+’s latest Marvel Cinematic Universe offering. While leaning fully into the multiverse shenanigans of AVENGERS: ENDGAME, GLORIOUS PURPOSE nevertheless reaches all the way back to 2012’s AVENGERS ASSEMBLE (as visited in Endgame) to continue the story of Loki Laufeyson. Apprehended by ..
HorrorIts eventual path to the big screen may have had a more convoluted timeline than even Christopher Nolan’s most unrestrained fever dream could have concocted for “Tenet”, but the question which dogs “The New Mutants” is ‘was it worth the wait?’ The answer – unsurprising for anyone who’s been watching the most recent “X-Men” movies ..
MoviesToday, 31st May 2019, marks the 25th anniversary of the one and only screening of Roger Corman’s infamously unreleased “The Fantastic Four”. Tax write-off? Copyright obligation? Shits ‘n’ giggles? Whatever the reason, this million-dollar movie was apparently never meant to see the light of day, but then again if you want to find it, it’s ..
MoviesIt’s become somewhat fashionable, it seems, to preface any review of Marvel’s BLACK WIDOW with some passing reference to it being about time or asking why it took so long for one of the most prominent and prolific Avengers to get her own solo movie. Whatever the reason, what struck me most strongly was that ..
TelevisionWHAT IF…THE WORLD LOST ITS MIGHTIEST HEROES? is the first episode of the series so far to take its central question and wrap it not around a speculative exploration but around a central mystery instead. It’s a mystery that I managed to solve well ahead of its narrative reveal, though, because I suddenly remembered the ..
MoviesDo you remember when summer SciFi blockbusters were unashamedly fun? Do you remember how you felt watching “Return Of The Jedi”? Before you got all old and cynical and ironic. Before your “Star Wars” heart was hardened by special edition vandalism and successive soulless prequels? Before the angry words and bitter sentiment of a million revisionist ..
TelevisionTHE STAR-SPANGLED MAN sees us hopefully complete the series’ setup act as we get to know a little bit more about our new Captain America, a little bit more about the Flag-Smashers and a whole lot more about the Super Soldier Serum programme. Our two leads finally unite, brought together to bitch at each other ..
MoviesI am so, so happy for Ryan Reynolds. Seriously, the guy has earned it. He’s tried so hard, so many times and after “Blade: Trinity” [for the record, I quite liked his turn as Hannibal King], “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”, “R.I.P.D.” and – shudder – “Green Lantern”, it’s an absolute delight to see him finally crack ..
TelevisionAs “Daredevil” season 2 continues to burn up the Netflix bandwidth across the globe, I take a look back at “Jessica Jones”, Marvel’s most recent new addition to its expanding MCU TV empire. While “Daredevil” felt edgy, dark and different to the Marvel Cinematic Universe we’d had to that point, it still adhered to many ..
MoviesMarvel accelerates its masterplan as Raimi red-lines the rating limits in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness Although it pays lip service to the ongoing ramifications of The Blip, DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS is the first of Marvel’s Phase Four films to exist outside the shadow of the many lingering questions ..
TelevisionSo here we are at last. Nine weeks seem to have flown by as Marvel Studios have served up, piece by piece, one of their boldest, most emotional and most fascinating productions yet. WANDAVISION has surely surpassed all expectations and THE SERIES FINALE (as if it would be called anything else) doesn’t disappoint – unless, ..
Television*SPOILERS, MAYBE?* Tricky to the end, FOR ALL TIME. ALWAYS. sees LOKI end its debut season not only subverting the usual Marvel formula for finale fireworks but double down by pulling out a few more surprises before things end in the most unexpected and intriguing fashion possible. Getting there, though, sees the series finally make ..