The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) Review
1960s retro-futurist aesthetic as protection against contemporary political fatigue. Galactus underdeveloped, period setting works.
2020s1960s retro-futurist aesthetic as protection against contemporary political fatigue. Galactus underdeveloped, period setting works.
2010sJames Mangold's first Wolverine film. Japan setting, bullet train sequence, the foundation that led to Logan.
2010sTom Holland's age-appropriate Peter Parker, Michael Keaton's working-class Vulture, John Hughes-influenced high school direction. The 7 reflects honest evaluation of one of the better Phase Three MCU entries and the best Peter Parker since Tobey Maguire.
2020sSpider-Man: No Way Home turns twenty years of Spider-Man films into one event. Three Peter Parkers, five returning villains, and an ending that costs the hero everything.
2010sChristopher Eccleston wasted as Malekith. The first MCU film that feels like industrial franchise routine.
2010sRobert Downey Jr.'s strongest moments buried under franchise machinery. Black Widow's intro, War Machine's recasting, and Whiplash wasted.
2010sThe 1940s adventure that built the franchise's moral foundation. The 9 reflects honest evaluation of the most disciplined origin film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the entry that gave the franchise its moral center.
2010sFlat performance, press tour damage, decorative feminism, and the protagonist who is actually the villain. The film does not reward straight-through viewing.
Fiction WritingTwenty films damaged by studio interference, from Blade Runner's imposed voiceover to The Magnificent Ambersons footage burned to recover silver. What the director intended, what the studio delivered, and which director's cuts are worth seeking out. Studios are rarely wrong…
AmbitionTwenty of cinema's greatest stop-motion and Dynamation films, from Harryhausen's Sinbad to del Toro's Pinocchio. The handmade art that digital perfection cannot replicate.
Film TrilogyThe Back to the Future trilogy earns its 9.5 by solving the hardest problem in serialized storytelling: making three films that each stand alone while building a cumulative argument none of them could make individually. Zemeckis and Gale understood something…
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