3/6/22What the hell were any of us thinking making the terrible Batman Forever a huge hit?Summer blockbusters were not in a great place in the mid-'90s
3/6/22The Dark Knight changed things, foreverThe Batman sequel moved with a crisp confidence that had been mostly missing from blockbuster cinema for a long time
3/5/22Batman Returns is a relic of an age when disgusting monsters only ran for office in the moviesTo really enjoy Batman Returns, you have to give yourself over to its triumphant silliness
3/4/22Christopher Nolan dragged Batman (and superhero cinema) into a more serious “real” worldFinally, Batman got to be the real star of a Batman movie
3/3/22Tim Burton played fast and loose with the Caped Crusader in his inventive blockbuster BatmanIt’s oddly thrilling to see a big-budget superhero movie that’s so clearly a single person’s vision
3/1/22Batman & Robin is the silliest superhero blockbuster, but is it really the worst?It is a bad movie, to be sure, but its awfulness is kind of fascinating
2/28/22Batman changed how blockbusters look—and how Hollywood sold themBatman wasn’t just the biggest movie of 1989—it was a cultural phenomenon
12/10/21Zack Snyder's cut of Justice League was the preposterous superhero-movie event of 2021Marvel dominated the box office, but it was The Snyder Cut we all talked about
11/12/21F9 got audiences back to theaters by giving them all the absurdity they cravedAfter a year inside, who could resist the siren call of Fast & Furious on the big screen?
9/17/21Is Bad Boys For Life the last blockbuster?Thanks to COVID-19, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence's big-screen reunion is the final relic of a time when large…
9/3/21Disney’s lucrative remake plan culminated with a soulless, joyless “live action” Lion KingJon Favreau used groundbreaking technology to strip all the life out of the animated classic
8/20/21Marvel won big as its heroes lost everything in the downer epic Avengers: Infinity WarWill the biggest franchise in movie history ever top its two-part crossover smash?
8/6/21The Last Jedi let the past die—and pissed off a galaxy of overprotective fans in the processRian Johnson dared to make an anti-nostalgic Star Wars. The diehards were not pleased.
7/23/21In Rogue One, Rebel spirit and corporate control collided to make Disney’s best Star WarsDisney is simply not into spending hundreds of millions to indulge a director’s whims when there’s Star Wars money…
6/25/21American Sniper fought a culture war on the box office battlefieldClint Eastwood's wartime biopic emerged victorious in a year of superhero blockbusters
6/11/21Blockbusters don’t get much bleaker than the kids-killing-kids spectacle of The Hunger GamesCatching Fire taught the Harry Potter generation to distrust adults
5/28/21Even the Dark Knight was no match for the box office might of The AvengersIn 2008, the year that the Marvel Cinematic Universe began, Batman ate Marvel’s lunch. Iron Man, the movie that…
5/14/21The final Harry Potter closed a decade of hits—and of failed attempts at the next Harry PotterThe Harry Potter series was too big to fail, and yet it could’ve failed so easily, again and again. In Harry Potter,…
4/30/21Toy Story 3 went Ham(m) on all our hearts—and made a fortune doing itI must’ve known that all the toys weren’t about to die. I had to know. This was a G-rated kids’ movie, the third…
4/16/21Avatar, a strange dream that became the biggest movie of all timeIt’s been more than a decade since a wholly original film was the biggest hit of its year. All our reigning…