“Captain America”: A patriotic surprise from the comic-book past

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:30:00 +0000

Maybe we've just reached the midpoint of a sweltering summer, when Popsicles start to seem like the apex of the culinary arts. Maybe I've been beaten down to bargain-basement expectations by a season of relentless superhero-action spectacles. Maybe I passed out after the air conditioning failed during the New York press screening of "Captain America: The First Avenger," and what I'm remembering is just the collective hallucination of a bunch of movie geeks locked in a 90-degree sweat box on 42nd Street. Be that as it may, "Captain America" is exactly what the third week of July needed: a curiously fun, surprisingly imaginative and unashamedly old-fashioned yarn of skulduggery and adventure.

“Thor”: All hail the ripped Aryan goofball!

Thu, 05 May 2011 01:01:00 +0000

Do we actually want Shakespearean drama, or a simulacrum thereof, in comic-book movies? I think the only reasonable answer is "sort of," and that's exactly what Kenneth Branagh delivers in the massive but middling "Thor," an edge-of-summer tentpole production that delivers the goods, albeit in laborious fashion and at enormous expense. A whole lot of "sort of," dressed up in faintly fascistic regalia. I've got no problem with the continuing viability of the classic Marvel and DC Comics heroes, per se, although it's a little surprising. But their hegemonic control over the many-branched Yggdrasil of pop entertainment is starting to bug me.

A movie like "Thor" isn't just trying to be a popcorn flick for teenagers; in an era where "youth culture" reaches deep into middle age, that's not good enough anymore. It has to evoke the Pop Art colors and muscle-bound iconography of 1960s comics its younger viewers have never seen, incorporate a few plausible pop-science theories and suggest a passing familiarity with both the genuine Norse legends behind the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby comics and the design history of fantasy cinema stretching back to "Metropolis." Its cast features a plural number of Oscar winners and an elevated Anglo-drama sheen; even Aussie hunk Chris Hemsworth, whose resemblance to the 'roid-rage Aryan Thunder God is startling, turns out to be a decent actor. It's supposed to have mind-blowing action scenes, a heart-rending father-son story, a compelling love affair and a Cain vs. Abel fraternal standoff.

Salon.com > Thor

“Captain America”: A patriotic surprise from the comic-book past

“Thor”: All hail the ripped Aryan goofball!