The MacGuffin

It is amazing to think that in the last five years, Iron Man has gone from being just another character on the comic page to the crown jewel in Marvel’s movie stable. In large part this success has been achieved by the iconic title performance by Robert Downey Jr., but the series has also produced some of the most consistently fun comic movies to come out in the last few years. This all reached a fever pitch with last year’s release of The Avengers, so it only feels logical that the first film to try to pick up the mantle after that would be the latest adventure in the Iron Man saga, Iron Man 3.

Spencer and Greg give their DVD rundown for April 2nd, 2013. In this episode they discuss Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One, The Bible, Dirk Gently and John Dies at the End.

Movie clusters are a bizarre phenomenon. That two studios would execute similar ideas at the same time speaks to the quirkiness of Hollywood. Usually one film ends up being much stronger than the other, but sometimes both are bad. The latest example of this in action is Snow White and the Huntsman, which is an improvement over Mirror Mirror, but is also not great.

It is one of the most anticipated films of the year. The build-up to it has been almost without precedent. But The Avengers finally opens today, and proves to be an excellent start to what looks to be one of the most prolific summer movie seasons in recent years.

In honor of the release of The Avengers, Spencer and Greg look back on Marvel’s road to its release.

When I heard that Morgan Spurlock was making a documentary about Comic-Con, I was excited. He is one of my favorite documentary filmmakers for his ability to pinpoint a topic and question it from all sides. For the making of the film, Spurlock had a crew of 150 people with backstage access, so I expected no stone to be left unturned—but when I finally watched Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, I was sadly underwhelmed. It felt like it was a shadow of his former work.

In honor of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Spencer and Greg discuss Idris Elba. Then they look at cinematic rivalries, before giving DVD picks of the week.

Spencer and Greg share some of the foreign films that have influenced them, suggest some early 2011 releases worth revisiting and give DVD picks of the week.

Spencer and Greg discuss Ryan Gosling in advance of Drive, look back at James Marsden’s career for Straw Dogs and give their DVD picks of the week.

In the middle of this summer season of blockbusters at the theater, it seemed like a good midway checkpoint to see how 3D is faring. In a previous article I wrote in response to the tacit dismissal of 3D as being worthwhile (you can see that article here), I stated how the idea of watching some of the coming summer delights would be more fun with Hal Jordan’s power ring shooting beams into the audience or Thor’s hammer flying over our heads. Now that we’ve seen a goodly amount of these big popcorn flicks, I wanted to take a look at how value-added the 3D was at this point.