Man of Steel

Armando Iannucci makes deeply political comedies that are not actually at politics at all.  This is not the only good thing about his latest project, The Death of Stalin, such a remarkable thing, but it is perhaps what makes it a great film and it’s definitely what saves it from being …

Pay Back Africa

Tonight’s blog entry, which ought to be a relatively simple movie review, is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to write, which is in itself is illustrative of how thorny cultural criticism has become in late-stage capitalism.  The reasons for this are manifold and all worth exploring:  …

Is It Any Wonder?

I wanted to like Wonder Woman.  I really, really did. I’ve always enjoyed the character, for any number of reasons:  the intriguing backstory of her creator and his motivations; her origin story, steeped in some of the stranger aspects of Greek mythology; her debut during the early days of America’s involvement …

Superdelegates

In these exciting times when the only thing Americans love more than billion-dollar superhero movie franchises is petty intra-party political sniping, I thought it might be time to return to a favorite obsession of mind:  the ideological leanings of various comic book characters.  This has been explored in-universe a bit …

Unglamorays

See, here’s the thing:  the Spider-Man cartoon theme was, well, amazing.  No sane person could argue against that.  But the Captain America and Hulk cartoon themes were dumb as shit.  And have they gotten any less shit-dumb in the last 40 years?  No, they have not.  All that has happened …