The more ads I see for the Ant-Man movie, out July 17, the more I want to see it. Part of it is my love of the underdog — the poor thing seems to have been overshadowed by the bigger Avengers: Age of Ultron out already, and it doesn’t seem to figure much in Marvel’s movie plans. I also love watching Paul Rudd, and it will be nice to see a superhero film where the whole fate of the world […]

The surprise comic-book movie hit Kingsman: The Secret Service will be available on Blu-ray and DVD June 9 and for digital purchase May 15. The film stars Colin Firth as a super-smooth secret agent who wants to train streetwise kid Taron Egerton into the Kingsman agency. The two, with the help of Michael Caine and Mark Strong, wind up trying to keep Samuel L. Jackson from taking over the world. The Blu-ray has a 90-minute look behind the scenes of […]

On Saturday mornings, Turner Classic Movies shows serials, short episodic movie chapters, at a rate of one installment a week. Their most recent series is Batman, a 1943 15-chapter telling of superhero adventure “based on the Batman comic magazine feature appearing in Detective Comics and Batman magazines created by Bob Kane” (as the credit card has it). We first see Batman, “America’s #1 crime fighter” (and government agent, surprisingly), sitting at an ornate desk in a “chamber hewn from the […]

DC and Warner Bros. have apparently had enough success with their original animated movie line, of which the most recent release is Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, that they’ve put out 22 of them. However, these films are distinctly Not for Kids, since they’re rated PG-13 and feature amounts of violence (and more recently, sexual insinuations) that make that rating accurate. Yet kids like DC superheroes, and so do their merchandising partners. JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time, for example, is […]

As someone who cared so little about the most recent Amazing Spider-Man movie that I haven’t even seen it yet, I have mixed feelings about the news that Sony Pictures (who has the wall-crawler’s movie rights) will be teaming up with Marvel Studios on the next film. I do want the character to be a success, because I like fun superhero movies, and Spider-Man is the poster child for wisecracking. I hope that they don’t feel the need to make […]

Marvel has released an ad for the return of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on March 3 that emphasizes the women on the show. Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) is awesome (because she’s basically Wolverine), and I like deadpan Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg — not in this trailer), but … while I want to see more of Mockingbird (Adrianne Palicki — have they called her that yet?), I don’t want to see Skye (Chloe Bennet) get powers, and too many of the plot […]

I just got back from a free preview of the upcoming Kingsman: The Secret Service, due out February 13. I had fun, since there were twists I wasn’t expecting (although I didn’t like some of them). Then again, I didn’t remember much about the comic it was based on. It’s an action-adventure spy film, emphasis on the action. The plot threads are familiar: young aimless dude Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is taken under the wing of accomplished, well-dressed older man (Colin […]

Although the home video release is next month, tomorrow marks the release of Guardians of the Galaxy digitally. And to promote it, Marvel has been releasing a ton of clips from the extra features. Here they are, starting with the Blu-ray release trailer. (I found it interesting that instead of critics, they use quotes from celebrities. A new frontier in marketing?) Here’s director and co-writer James Gunn talking about his vision, with the prelude of a fake video game. Of […]