New releases from The Mountains Goats, Ed O’Brien, and YHWH Nailgun
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Superhero films: art or avarice?
JULIAN LAWRENCE and NEIL ARCHER debate the question of whether such cinema is simply a cynical money-making exercise with a dodgy political agenda — or not
Money-makers' mayhem: Winter Soldier, Falcon and Black Panther from the Avengers franchise
[Hannaford/Creative Commons]
ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
Julian Lawrence, senior lecturer in comics and graphic novels, Teesside University
MARVEL movies aren’t cinema. So what are they? Martin Scorsese recently labelled them “theme parks,” but I suggest they function primarily as commercials. I agree with Ken Loach’s comment that they are “a commodity which will make a profit for a big corporation – they’re a cynical exercise.”
Francis Ford Coppola agrees with them both – except he doesn’t think they went far enough, labelling superhero films “despicable.”
They are not the first to take aim at superhero movies. In 2014, Birdman director and screenwriter Alejandro G Inarritu condemned superhero blockbusters: “They purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing. And they are honestly very right-wing... Philosophically, I just don’t like them.”
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DENNIS BROE enjoys the political edge of a series that unmasks British imperialism, resonates with the present and has been buried by Disney