31 August 2014
[Note to self: moving house, filling it with flat-pack furniture and getting kittens really get in the way of blogging. Apologies for tardiness.] I don’t know if it was because of the cinema I was in (my first visit to Peckhamplex, the independent multiplex located in Peckham, obviously) or it was the film itself, but Guardians Of The Galaxy was…
2 April 2014
Let’s start with the summary – Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the best second film of the Marvel studio films so far. It is better than Iron Man 2, obviously, and even better than Thor: Dark World. It manages the trick of bringing out what worked well in the comic books (in this case, the modern espionage/conspiracy style of…
3 November 2013
Do comic book sequels suffer from the problem that the origin story for superheroes is always the most interesting? This is the not necessarily unwanted problem that Marvel Studios now have, after the success of developing the films leading up to The Avengers and beyond. Iron Man 3 tried to close the circle for Tony Stark, but what to do…
4 July 2013
Some ridiculously belated thoughts on Iron Man 3 (or Iron Man Three, as it was titled on the BBFC certificate at the start of the film), two whole months after watching it (in 2D, because I don’t do 3D unless I have to, and I very rarely have to) because I couldn’t quite coalesce my responses to it (unless you…
4 May 2012
The content of this blog should indicate that this film was made for someone like me, who loves films and comics (although I’ve never been a huge Avengers fan), so whatever I have to say will come out biased. However, no matter how much I geeked out watching this film and how entertaining and awesome it was (it’s probably the…
1 August 2011
It may not be news to you, but I didn’t know that Joe Johnston won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for his work as part of the team on Raiders of the Lost Ark. This fact certainly explains a lot about the feel of this origin story for Captain America: a serial adventure with a period setting but a…
11 May 2011
I went to see Thor last week (before it came out in the US, which makes me smile), and I saw it in 2D (because it wasn’t filmed in 3D, so it looked better and I didn’t have to pay unnecessary money for the privilege), so this isn’t a review but a collection of thoughts on the film. Topline: Thor…
2 May 2010
Another topical detour from catching up on films I saw in the cinema in January and comic books I have bought, to talk about something that converges on two of my obvious loves: films and comics. And nothing to do with the fact that it hasn’t come out in America yet … I really enjoyed the first Iron Man film,…
5 May 2008
There is a lot of sense in Marvel producing their own film versions of the superheroes. There have been some excellent films based on Marvel characters (step forward X-Men 2 and Spider-Man 2) but there have also been some awful films (Elektra and Blade: Trinity). Also, and more importantly to Marvel, the comic book film is the perfect summer blockbuster:…