Iron Man, I think, is never going to be bettered, even if one day one of its sequels or spin-offs ends up being genuinely better cinema, because Iron Man had a bit of good fortune that none of them ever will: it was unexpected, and you only get to have that happen once. Just like […]

Disclosure: I have some personal history – I wouldn’t say we were “friends”, but we were more than casual acquaintances – with one of this film’s executive producers. That is to say: we were in film school together, and I production designed a short he directed. I do not think this colors my opinion, for […]

Two things are immediately notable about Captain America: The First Avenger. One is that it has the most unnecessarily particular title of any comic book movie since X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The other is that it’s actually fun to watch, which shouldn’t be noteworthy at all, but in this age of darker, edgier comic book movies […]

Somewhere or another this week, I read a review in which somebody lightly dismissed the problem of casting superheroes the approximate sentiment “Robert Downey, Jr. can’t play ’em all, so take what you can get.” This seems wrong to me: why can’t Robert Downey, Jr. play them all? Why can’t the long-threatened The Avengers, finally […]

Two years ago, we got an unexpected treat in the form of Iron Man, which came from out of nowhere (movies based on Marvel comics had been sort of bad for quite a while, nobody involved on either side of the camera had a proven record in effects-driven action films, the trailers were completely awful) […]

On behalf of all those who bitched about Hulk back in 2003, I’d like to apologise to Ang Lee. His one and only foray into the comic book movie was undeniably flawed, but it had a surfeit of ambition, maybe even too much – not a sin that the subgenre commits all that often. Ambition […]

Full disclosure: one of the associate producers of this film is a friend of mine from college. Once, he directed a movie that I production designed. Now he’s a Hollywood executive and I blog. I’ll try to keep my spittle-flecked jealousy from spilling into the review. Iron Man is a film straddling a knife’s edge […]