TheRetroCritic

Review available on the new website .

Review available on the new website .

Thinking about it, 2005 was a pivotal year for comic book movies. The first Fantastic Four movie was released after the first wave of modern superhero films reached its peak with the likes of superior sequels Spider-Man 2 and X-Men 2 , the same year that the gritty Batman Begins came out to reclaim the Dark Knight's validity and just before further dire sequels pretty much killed those franchises until Iron Man several years later. It should have been no surprise, then, that the film was both very much a product of that first wave in spirit and yet also the start of the subgenre's decline quality-wise. The Fantastic Four were always a lighter, more colourful bunch so making a live-action version of the comics would require some pretty high-end special effects to pull off the characters' unusual abilities and a script sharp enough to not let the film devolve into farce. With no Roger Corman in charge this time and an audience who accepted Spider-Man as a legitimat

The Avengers are back in a sequel that promises to be even bigger and more epic somehow. Joss Whedon once again directs and, though you'd expect juggling that many main characters (plus about a dozen new recruits) would make for a complete cinematic mess, the man somehow pulls it off once again and delivers a blockbuster every bit as ambitious and entertaining as it suggests. Well, apart for that weird half hour where Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) takes us for a particularly dull ride back to his "safe house". Urgh... Other than that, this sequel fixes a lot of what made the first movie a little too uneven. While the first Avengers suffered from a ropey opening sequence and an altogether sluggish first half hour, this movie throws us directly into the action and doesn't let go for a good while which is instantly refreshing. Again, everyone gets their chance to shine but also screw up. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), whom, I assume, has amnesia and therefore can&#

After the double dose of disappointment Marvel offered us a year prior ( The Wolverine , Iron Man 3 ), I was certainly nervous about the direction the company was taking for its second phase, even though  Thor: The Dark World wasn't too bad. Thankfully, Marvel came back to prove me wrong, very wrong, with Captain America: The Winter Soldier , the present day-set sequel to The First Avenger . The real worry I had going into this one was that it would just feel like yet another Avengers Assemble , giving up on the retro feel of the first Captain America movie altogether, something I personally love about the character and that particular flick. As it turns out, The Winter Soldier is deeply rooted in the character's history and we actually get to see how that history had an impact on Steve Rogers' present. Sure, the film goes for a decidedly modern thriller vibe but it still manages to feel like a superhero movie and keep some good old-fashioned camp intact. With Jo

Captain America may technically be the First Avenger but, really, this was Marvel's final pawn setting up their epic, ambitious blockbuster crossover The Avengers . Beating past film incarnations of the character quality-wise was never going to be a big challenge so I had fair expectations for this one. Like Thor , Captain America is an inherently difficult superhero to pull-off on the big screen without it coming across as very dumb and/or very silly. Luckily, Marvel have done incredibly well to make their iconic character and his solo film work, creating a badass hero even non-Americans can happily root for without feeling particularly offended by the obligatory patriotism the character brings forth. The big revelation here is Chris Evans whose usual tongue-in-cheek persona could have easily made Captain America nothing more than a joke but the man plays it completely straight and is all the better for it. His Steve Rogers is a goody-two-shoes you nevertheless genuinely feel