Ant-Man
The little heist movie that survived its own production chaos. Edgar Wright developed it for a decade and left over creative differences months before shooting, and Peyton Reed stepped in and kept the script’s heart: a cat burglar trying to…
Tag what to watch tonight
Avengers: Age of Ultron
The overstuffed one. Joss Whedon’s second and last Avengers film tries to advance every character, launch three new ones, set up two future movies, and stage a doomsday finale, and the strain shows in every seam. It is still a…
Guardians of the Galaxy
The movie that should not have worked. A talking raccoon with a machine gun, a sentient tree who says one word, a cast of nobodies from a comic strip nobody read, and a director best known for schlock horror. James…
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
The best film Marvel has made, argued with a straight face by a large chunk of the fandom. The Russo brothers took the star spangled man out of the period piece and dropped him into a seventies paranoid thriller: surveillance…
Thor: The Dark World
The low point of the first two phases, a movie that feels assembled by committee in a hallway. Thor: The Dark World sends the God of Thunder after Malekith, a dark elf who wants to plunge the universe into darkness…
Iron Man 3
Shane Black came in and made a Shane Black movie that happens to wear the armor: Christmas settings, deadpan voiceover, a broken hero, and a buddy structure that pairs Tony with a kid from Tennessee for the middle stretch. After…
The Avengers
The gamble that paid. Six leads from four separate movies, one writer director asked to make them talk to each other, and a studio betting the whole blueprint on it working. Joss Whedon’s The Avengers is still the most purely…
Captain America: The First Avenger
Joe Johnston’s period piece is the most old fashioned movie in the canon, and it profits from it. Steve Rogers starts as a four foot nothing kid from Brooklyn played by a digitally trimmed Chris Evans, and the movie’s smartest…
Thor
Kenneth Branagh brought his Shakespeare training to the God of Thunder and it mostly works. Thor opens in Asgard with golden spires and Anthony Hopkins booming like a stage king, then grounds itself in the dirt of New Mexico, where…
Iron Man 2
The rushed sequel, and it wears the rush. Tony Stark outs himself as Iron Man, watches his blood poison him, drinks too much, fights a Congress hearing, and juggles a revenge plot, a rival arms dealer, a new assistant who…