If Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav didn’t spend all last summer and fall trying to destroy unions, Dune Part Two would have been out last October – after Oppenheimer and Barbie already set 2023’s blockbuster standard for box office and awards season. Instead, in a bit of extremely accidental fortune, and thanks to Zaslav and his ilk depleting the rest of 2024’s blockbuster lineup, Dune Part Two now gets to be the early big screen savior of 2024 all by…
Movies and indictments of the drug war have been around almost as long as the war on drugs itself, with Sicario adding itself to the list in 2015. By now, it is hardly a novel position to take that there are no true good guys on either side of the border, that violence and escalation only breeds more of it and so on, or that real crusaders for justice need not apply.
But even if the morals and lessons aren't…
The Marvel Cinematic Universe technically wasn't shaken up right after The Avengers, given that three sequels to established heroes followed. It had been a while since Marvel introduced new headlining heroes into their movie realm, yet they certainly went to the edge of the galaxy to make up for it soon enough. Nevertheless, their new Guardians of the Galaxy delivered some of the high points of the Marvel universe to that point.
When Marvel began its universe with Iron Man,…
When Avengers: Endgame came out, it marked the end of Marvel’s current 22-film long saga, which is the average length of a network television season. Given how episodic the MCU can be, this is an ideal comparison for better and sometimes worse.
Before the Avengers two-part 'season finale' the last time most of the Avengers were seen was their big breakup in Captain America: Civil War, which was the 13’th film of the MCU and a fairly fitting midseason finale…
In 2016, Deadpool broke new ground when it came to 21’st century Marvel movies, in both language and meta humor. A lot changed afterwards, from Logan taking the R-rated Marvel/Fox baton in much more brutal ways, to Avengers: Infinity War turning out to have a much higher body count than those two ultra-violent films combined.
Just three weeks after Josh Brolin decimated one Marvel cinematic universe, a less purple and more futuristic version of him comes after Deadpool. But with…
Sicario was released in 2015, but for many reasons, it feels like a pretty long time ago now. Of course, it isn’t exactly this newfound franchise’s fault that Day of the Soldado was released right when real life plots about Mexican border turmoil and U.S. sanctioned child abduction became more horrifying than any movie. However, it is one of the many factors that doesn’t work in the sequel’s favor.
While half of the key players that made Sicario such a…
No one except Kevin Feige and maybe Stan Lee envisioned what would begin with Iron Man in 2008, so certainly no one had any idea that it needed an ending. Of course, 21 movies, billions of dollars and appearances by half of Hollywood’s A-list have ensured that the Marvel Cinematic Universe can never truly end. However, 2019 was all about providing an Endgame anyway.
Yet one year before, the end already seemed to come for almost everyone inspired by those…
Before there was Star Wars, and before Lord of the Rings was anywhere near big screen life, there was Dune. Author Frank Herbert’s books were a pioneer for science-fiction novels in the 1960s and 70s, yet the quest to adapt them has been perilous for decades. But now in 2021, time, technology, long overdue luck and the mind of Denis Villeneuve have finally worked in Dune’s favor.
Now decades after breaking ground on the page, it gets to shatter a…