SPECIAL: The 50 Best Superhero Movies

Image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Chris Luckett

Many lists that are predominantly populated by modern movies feel slanted to younger writers/readers who may not have an exposure to films older than they are or a contextual understanding of their importance.

The superhero movie is a unique beast, though. A few genres and sub-genres, like sci-fi, have been greatly helped by the advance of CGI over the last quarter-century. Sci-fi was still capable of brilliance with just ideas alone, though; superhero movies lend themselves so closely to goofiness, parody, or sublime farce that the modern age of computer effects has served largely to legitimize a type of film that often wasn’t taken very seriously before the new millennium, even when they starred icons like Superman or Batman.

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SPECIAL: The Best Movies of 2015

Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Chris Luckett

Last year, in my Best Movies of 2014 article, I commented on how weak a year we’d had. If only I’d known what 2015 would be like!

For the first time since I launched The Apple Box in 2011, I don’t have 25 movies to strongly recommend. I’ve always said the only movies that deserve to be on a “Best of the Year” list are 4½- and 5-star films, and standing by that, that leaves me with 17. Just 17 movies last year, out of the nearly 150 that I saw, were good enough to write home about.

There were far more average or mediocre movies compared to great ones last year, but that doesn’t mean 2015 was a wash, by any means. These 17 movies, in fact, feel all the more special by being surrounded by weaker fare than usual. These films reminded us all that no matter how bad a year’s cinematic crop, there will always be brilliant movies. Continue reading

REVIEW: The Avengers: Age of Ultron

Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Chris Luckett

Cinema has a long, storied history of computers running amok. From 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner to the Terminator and Matrix series, intelligent machines have become the new evolution of Frankenstein’s Monster.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron appears on the surface to be yet another superhero juggernaut, but what separates it from its Marvel brethren — and what elevates it above most of them — is that the villain isn’t a malevolent alien or a possessed scientist, but an artificially intelligent monster of our heroes’ own creation. Even Earth’s mightiest heroes aren’t invulnerable to hubris.

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