SUPERHEROES– tag –

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Captain America: The First Avenger is theoretically part of an ongoing story, namely the Marvel superhero films linked by the eyepatched Samuel L. Jackson. A year ago, I complained at length about last y...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) Thanks to his friend, Ryo, the sensitive, weepy Akira is merged with a demon in a blood-drenched orgy. Now he transforms into the berserk hero Devilman, created to save humanity. Or was he? Now on Netflix, Devilman ...

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) We’ve seen many superhero series begin on the big screen. Until this year, though, we hadn’t seen one with a proper ending. That we get one in The Dark Knight Rises testifies to the strength of Christoph...

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) Beginnings are important, especially for superheroes. But endings, arguably, matter more. A lot of viewers took against the end of Man of Steel. Partly it was the perversity of showing one huge battle, t...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) James Gunn’s Super is distinguished straight off by its opening titles, an overwrought, very funny, crayola-violent cartoon. Director James Gunn could have been one of the kids in Super 8; according to h...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) Jack Frost is an ageless boy who delights in freezing the world at winter, but is frustrated that no ordinary people can see him. He’s bundled off to the North Pole to meet the Guardians, protectors of children: ...

(SFX, Future Publishing) Ant-Man starts with our hero, played by Paul Rudd, seeming hopelessly outmatched in a prison brawl with a mountain-sized convict. It foreshadows the challenges he’ll face when he’s insect-sized, dodging stamping ...

(SFX, Future Publishing) At the start of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the First Avenger has been left behind by the world. (“I’m here to pick up a fossil,” quips Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.) By the film’s end, that same wor...

(Sight & Sound, BFI - I also wrote an article on the film's production for the MangaUK blog.) I saw Disney’s CGI cartoon Big Hero 6 when it premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival, promoted under its Japanese title Baymax....

(SFX, Future Publishing) The new Robocop has an impressive brain. We know because we see it on the big screen, being prodded and sutured by Doctor Gary Oldman with an insouciance to impress Peter Cushing. Another scene shows Robocop nake...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Chronicle, a debut film by director John Trank, retells the Steven King Carrie story but with a male outsider. Andrew (Dane Dehaan) is a high-school geek with an abusive dad and terminal mother, who deci...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) The pendulum swings back. Last year’s Batman v Superman was vacantly humourless in its presentation of Batman (played by Ben Affleck) as a stubbled killer. Now The Lego Batman Movie parodies the character as a hi...