I guess that venn diagram is, well, me.

I quite enjoyed Set It Up. It was just... pleasant. Plus at Zooey Deutsh is just terrific. But it was nice to watch a movie, knowing it was all going to work out, and at no point was it going to take some weird dark turn where one of the leads becomes a murderer or something. The boy-meets-girl/boy-loses-girl/girl-forg…

I know for myself, as I’m getting older what I want to watch has softened. I like a mix of cerebral arthouse and formulaic fun in my movie watching but the formulaic nature of typical PG-13 comic book and action movie blockbusters have left me feeling cold. I don’t care about generic “we’ve got to get the MacGuffin…

I’m just so glad that the TV show looks to be as good as I hoped. The comic book was amazing, and I cannot WAIT for this to drop! 

whatever keeps you from suicide, I guess

He probably doubled the value of the work by shredding it.

“is that he can never actually win”

Eh, different strokes for different folks and all that, but I *genuinely* loved Wonder Woman. I had sincere and STRONG emotional reactions to it in the theater; I wasn’t grading on a curve. It’s a flawed movie overall (the mythology is murky, the climax is pretty weak) but the best parts of it absolutely soar.

Yeah, Marvel has definitely dealt with dark themes before. I was more talking about the visuals of the Nolan films. The colors and atmosphere, along with the plot and themes (and acting) really just gave me a cohesive dark experience. I get why Marvel doesn’t want to do that, though. They’ve more or less…

I suppose it depends how you define “dark” or “serious.” Marvel certainly hasn’t made a movie with the tone of the Nolan Batman movies, true. But Winter Soldier is a critical examination of drone warfare, the surveillance state and government secrecy, a movie that posits that one of the MCU’s most august institutions…

I’m not a big Marvel fan, but i’ll definitely give them credit for that. They haven’t had anything close to a big fuck-up yet, which is pretty damn difficult at the rate they’re putting out movies. That being said, I don’t think i’ll ever be able to enjoy a Marvel movie as much as I enjoyed any of the Dark Knight…

I actually think that Crane plays an important thematic role across the three movies. In ‘Begins’, he’s the first real challenge Batman faces, and the first hint that there’s something darker lurking in Gotham than organised crime. He makes Batman re-evaluate what his mission will entail. In ‘Dark Knight’, Crane’s…

I’ve been saying this myself for a while. The MCU is definitely the victim of its own success (to the extent that you can call a multi-billion-dollar franchise that’s stronger than ever, even after ten years, a “victim” at all), because they make the job look easy. Detractors mostly focus on (and magnify) minor flaws,…

This should be called the the Snyder Fallacy. What Tom means by not “winking” is taking the film’s premise seriously, without pointing out to the audience (not the characters) that the circumstances or the source material are ridiculous. Zack Snyder famously took that to mean “no jokes!” which was stupid and not at…

The Joker was hilarious, in a terrifying way:

I liked how Ebert put it: “Batman Begins” at last penetrates to the dark and troubled depths of the Batman legend, creating a superhero who, if not plausible, is at least persuasive as a man driven to dress like a bat and become a vigilante...The movie is not realistic, because how could it be, but it acts as if it…

Agreed. There is a ton of great humor in the trilogy and it’s used to break the tension. It’s not jokey or punny. Shit man, the first scene in the prison ends in a punch line! 

“Let me get this straight, you think that your client, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante, who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands, and your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck.”

There’s something about Murphy’s line delivery of “the Bat-man” that is so uniquely him. It simultaneously conveys how Batman has become this object of fear and legend to Gotham’s criminal underworld and yet you can tell Crane is almost excited to encounter him.

“which makes him into a sanctimonious prick who’s trying to evade moral responsibility on a technically.”