• Avengers: Endgame

    April 26, 2019 - By 

    God bless Robert Downey Jr. As Tony Stark, the lonely tin man with a hole in his chest, Downey Jr. does more with his face than all of the Avengers films’ awkward speechifying about teamwork, solidarity and what it means to be Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. A decade of story-telling synergy comes to a close with Avengers: Endgame. So much of it is the sludge we’ve become used to, but when the thrusters kick in, and the film finds its heart, it’s because of Downey Jr. He almost — but not quite — makes all of this worth it. It’s been some time since the…

  • Avengers: Infinity War

    April 27, 2018 - By 

    Yeah, there’s some spoilers. “We’re in the end game,” announces Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange in Avengers: Infinity War. Sure we are Steve, but it’s a long game. For ten years the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been in the group stages. Infinity War is the qualifying round. There’s still the semis to look forward to. The basic narrative logic of Marvel Studios’ unprecedented and profitable experiment in serialised story-telling is that of deferred gratification. Maybe you liked this specific film, maybe you didn’t. But hey, check out what’s coming up next. Here’s Spider-Man. Here’s the Guardians of the Galaxy. Here’s the big bad…

  • Thor: Ragnorok

    October 27, 2017 - By 

    In July I wrote that Spider-Man: Homecoming was the funniest Marvel movie so far, a distinction that has lasted all of, oh, three months. Actually, Thor: Ragnorok is the funniest one yet. The Marvel factory, whatever its faults, is pumping out plain old good times on overtime hours. Ragnorok, the third and presumably final solo outing for Chris Hemsworth’s Men’s Health Goldilocks, retains some of the studio’s familiar issues, but makes up for them by being — for long stretches — honest to goodness hilarious. The Lord — sorry, God — of thunder is front of house, but Kiwi film-maker Taiki Waititi is the man of the hour,…

  • Spider-Man: Homecoming

    July 14, 2017 - By 

    ‘The world’s changing’, announces Michael Keaton’s Vulture, Spider-Man: Homecoming’s feather-ruffed villain, ‘and we have to change with it’. Change is the name of the game for the web-slinger’s third modern cinematic run, following Tobey Maguire’s and, less successfully, Andrew Garfield’s time in the red and blue undies. Adrian Toomes (Keaton) is speaking as a resentful civilian caught up in the skyscraper debris of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a metal-scrapper by trade, forced to make a living scurrying in the damage left by Stark and co. (when his crew are pushed off their clean-up gig by the drily-titled, Stark-sponsored Department of Damage Control, it’s the…

  • DIY Dublin: The Big Bang

    April 20, 2015 - By 

    In this installment of DIY Dublin, Loreana Rushe chats to John Hendrick, the owner and proprietor of The Big Bang in Dundrum shopping centre about what it’s like to run a successful comic book store. Hi John! First off, can you tell us about how you got into comic books? What appeals to you so much about them? That was actually my Mom’s fault. She used to get them for all of us growing up as kids to encourage us to read, from there it sort of, kind of escalated to being my favourite thing ever. I still read books,…