TV #5 of 2018: Marvel’s The Punisher, season 1 I don’t care much for either the beginning or end of this show (which seem to tell us little we didn’t already know about the character), but the middle section is surprisingly solid. I’m also really impressed with Ben Barnes’s acting and accent work — I …
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TV #2 of 2018: Marvel’s Runaways, season 1 I had high hopes for this one throughout the first few episodes, but it definitely ended up as one of those Marvel projects with better acting than writing. I understand it deviates a lot from the source material too, which is even more frustrating – I hate …
Movie #19 of 2017: Thor: Ragnarok (2017) By far the best Thor movie, and one of the better Marvel Cinematic Universe movies overall. Lots of humor, neat worldbuilding, and actual character growth for Thor and Loki! It could have done better by its female characters, but all in all it was a fun ride and …
TV #44 of 2017: Marvel’s Inhumans, season 1 Oh, my god. This show was so awful that it retroactively makes Iron Fist look pretty decent by comparison. We’re never given any reason to care about the characters or their situation, the villains have no clear motivation at all, and the plot basically spins its wheels …
TV #34 of 2017: Marvel’s The Defenders, season 1 Plotwise, this show is basically just another season of Daredevil. Yes, he’s teaming up with some superfriends, but the main character arc is Matt’s, and the most important returning characters / concepts come primarily from his show (with Iron Fist as a distant second). There are …
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TV #33 of 2017: Marvel’s Jessica Jones, season 1 My wife and I watched/rewatched this season respectively before binge-watching the new Defenders season with friends. It remains a really great examination of male privilege and rape culture, using the heightened storytelling language of superpowers to explore those issues. Like the best of the fantasy genre, …
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Movie #7 of 2017: Doctor Strange (2016) I’m still happy with my decision to wait until Doctor Strange was on Netflix to watch it (so as to hurt box office returns in protest of the casting). But having now finally seen the thing, I will freely admit that it was a pretty good movie in …
TV #16 of 2017: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, season 4 The season finale was kind of a letdown, but the season itself was the best S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever been – and close to the best the MCU in general has offered in terms of character-driven informed storytelling and really meaty material for its actors. I …
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Movie #6 of 2017: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017) This sequel takes everything I loved about the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie and turns it up to 11. It helps that the team is already in place at the start of the film, so we get more of their banter and prickly …
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Movie #5 of 2017: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) I hadn’t seen this movie since it was in theaters, and my wife hadn’t seen it at all, so we streamed it through Amazon before heading out to see the sequel. Even three years later, it’s still really impressive how much this movie stakes out its …
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