TheRetroCritic

Good Christmas specials are so hard to find these days. Most of my and your favourites are probably extremely dated by now. Luckily, here comes Marvel Super Hero Adventures: Frost Fight! to save the day. The animated feature takes The Avengers and sends them on a quest to find Jolnir, the legendary Santa Claus, before Loki does since his plan is to steal his powers of bending space and time. They travel to space using a portal built by Tony Stark and end up on a Christmas planet, because why not. Meanwhile, Thor and The Hulk stay behind on Earth to help fill in for Claus should he not be found. Rocket Raccoon and Groot, from the Guardians Of The Galaxy , are also involved as they land on the same planet and meet with Mrs Claus. The entire thing is, as you can tell, completely ludicrous but it doesn't take itself seriously at all, remaining tongue-in-cheek throughout. In fact, Frost Fight! is surprisingly very funny: you've got Rocket Raccoon fighting Gingerbread Men, Gr

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 Blade and, later, X-Men kick-started the first wave of modern blockbuster comic-book movies, Marvel jumped head-first into a Hulk movie and handed the directing keys to Ang Lee, known to Hollywood back then mostly for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon . An odd choice of director but then again Kenneth Branagh made Thor so... Maybe not so odd after all. The result was a unique take on the Hulk character and the superhero genre in general which might have very well been ahead of its time. The film was by no means perfect and did suffer from the occasional "what-the-hell?!" moment as well as a ridiculous running time but looking back, the bad rep it often receives nowadays really feels harsh and, at times, misguided. Visually, Hulk is still an impressive achievement. Lee's film boasts an incredibly stylised look which really pays homage to the comic book form and gives the film a grand, operatic quality. Ang Lee doesn't f*** around! When he makes a comic