Haha you’re right. But you get what I mean - he flips Thanos the bird, and then that becomes the snap. 

He should have snapped with his middle finger, that would have been a proper Tony Stark thing to do.

The grade is a B- but this review reads like it has no redeeming features at all. The author-insert main character, the improbably over the top infidelity, “essay points with legs” - it sounds like a parody of pretentious lit-fiction.

I think they did what they did to Thor because they want to keep using him in later films. He’s the only one of the OG avengers whose story arc doesn’t really wrap up. Instead he hits a new low, which resets his character a bit and gives him somewhere to grow from again.  

I suspect that they played up her role as an intentional red herring (and to build hype for her solo film, of course). A lot of fan theories about how the film would play out centered around her, and then it turns out they use her as a misdirect in the first 15 min of the movie and that’s it.

Endgame reminded me very strongly of Return of the King. (That’s actually been my spoiler-free review for friends who asked how it was). It’s fully committed to its world and characters and has full expectation that the audience feels the same. And it’s not at all ashamed to get cheesy and manipulative when it’s appro…

I love that they took so much time at the start of the film to show the impact of the snap. That was a really touching moment. 

Avclub film reviewers collectively review *every* film that gets a wide release (and many that don’t). From arthouse fare, to foreign films, to big blockbusters. Even those weird evangelical religious films that exist to cater to the bible belt.

Right or wrong, the oscars do matter - they make a big difference in how much money smaller films earn. Often “oscar bait” films can only turn a profit if they get nominated.

I don’t know, I feel like allowing English-language films would invite gaming the category. Lots of films are international productions these days, whatever rules they apply it wouldn’t be too hard to shuffle money around to get your low-budget oscar bait to qualify.

It’s kind of weird to hear that a film is taking the “American Idol” self-myth seriously, in 2019. Do they make any attempt to grapple with the fact that these singing competitions rarely lead to actual stardom, or that where you place in the competition doesn’t matter? There’s only been a handful of people who turned…

Because you’re 14 and they’re Real Artists who make Serious Music, of course.

I think it would be fitting if Endgame didn’t have any after-credits stingers. Stingers serve to tie the films together, and this is the end - there’s nothing to tie it to. Well, except for the next million MCU films they’re making, but still - it’s *an* end at least.

It would be really cool to see a jukebox musical starring the artist herself. 

I think he originally conceived it as a logical plan, and then as the years went by it turned into a religious crusade, at which point the logic doesn’t matter anymore.

The poster also looks like Dumbo is flying out of the Japanese war flag...

My impression is that there are two types of cosplay:
Group A) People of both genders who dress up because it’s fun to pretend to be a character they like
Group B) Attractive women who dress up because men like to see attractive women dressed as characters

Obviously there’s overlap - I’ve sure most people in Group B do…

This is a weird premise for a novel, because all-girls and all-boys boarding schools actually exist, and it wasn’t long ago that they were really common. Obviously hiding the whole existence of the other gender is more extreme, but... is it really that different, in practice?

It’s not about America at all. The US only makes up ~30% of the profit for a typical superhero film. There are still plenty of countries in the world that are happy to ban films starring gay characters, the big one being China. That’s why you see gay characters all the time on TV, but rarely in big budget movies.

I’ve been making soft-boiled eggs like this for a long time, though I’ve never done the brine bath. The problem I always run into is that the yolk is never in the center of the egg, so I end up with part of the yolk over-cooked and part of the white under-cooked. Does anyone know a way to avoid that?