Magellans at the Movies: the Blog

  Deadpool & Wolverine (Spoiler free) Genre: Superhero/action comedy Director: Shawn Levy Released: 2024      Much of the pre-release discourse surrounding Deadpool & Wolverine has centered on whether or not it can "save" the foundering MCU. Having now seen it, my short answer is: no, but my longer answer is: why was it ever thought that this film would represent some kind of major course correction for Marvel?       Certainly nothing in the marketing that I saw indicated that this was meant to introduce some kind of radical alteration to the current direction the MCU is going in, and the film itself more than bore that out. Deadpool & Wolverine, despite having been folded into the MCU by dint of Disney's 20th Century Fox acquisition, is very much what I would call a stand alone movie. It's far more concerned with its titular characters than it is with slotting itself into the overarching narrative of the universe it is nominally a par...

A Quiet Place: Day One Genre: Horror/apocalypse thriller Director: Michael Sarnoski Released: 2024      The Quiet Place franchise came out of nowhere with a bracing blast of much-needed originality and shows no signs of stopping, hence A Quiet Place: Day One, a prequel going back to, you guessed it, the first day of the invasion by the sound-seeking alien bugs (hereafter referred to as super clickers because that's what they are) that enforce the movies' memorable library rules.       Whether or not Day One works for you will, I expect, be determined in large part by what you're looking for from it. If you're here in the hopes of another Quiet Place movie with people picking their way through dangerously noisy environments while super clickers just kind of chill in the background, you'll get your fill and then some. If, however, you're like me and you went into Day One wishing for an update to the formula, new understanding about the super clickers and...