The Brave One (2007)
Oct 21, 2007Female Vigilante
Neil Jordan teams up with action producer Joel Silver to make a vigilante film where Jodie Foster starts toting a gun against thugs on the streets after the murder of her fiancé
Zoe Kravitz
X: First Class (2011)
Jun 5, 2011Comic-Book Superheroes/Origin Prequel
An X-Men origin story that serves as the occasion to recast the series with younger actors. This works far better than the previous two films, integrating the characters in a strong story, although is quiet at the superheroic action
After Earth (2013)
Jun 7, 2013Planetary Survival Adventure
Enough with the M. Night Shyamalan bashing. Here Shyamalan pulls off a solid and interesting planetary adventure where the only real misstep is that much of the film rests on the non-acting shoulders of Jaden Smith
Divergent (2014)
Mar 29, 2014Young Adult Dystopian Future
Designed as a copycat of The Hunger Games, this Young Adult film as a modest hit. The premise is fundamentally implausible as human psychology - and when there's no basic credibility, you cease to care about the contrived dramatics
Insurgent (2015)
Mar 21, 2015Young Adult Dystopian Future
Divergent, the first entry in this Young Adult dystopian series, a poor man's Hunger Games, failed the "I can't hold any suspension of disbelief" test. This offers more of the same, plus lots of random effects sequences
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
May 16, 2015Post-Holocaust Action
30 years in the making and the results are sensational. An action film so relentlessly foot-to-the-floor and full of kinetic wildness that it blows all its contemporaries away and sets the bar anew
Allegiant (2016)
Mar 26, 2016Young Adult Dystopian Future
The Divergent series is a fundamentally implausible scenario for people that think horoscopes are a profound insight into human nature. This is the most interesting of the films and gives us an imaginative future world
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)
Mar 2, 2019Harry Potter Spinoff
The first Fantastic Beasts was a welcome opening up of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter universe and offered something fresh in the series. This is a more mixed bag where it feels like it is back to business as usual for Rowling
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Mar 9, 2019Animation/Comic-Book Superhero
Sony, the holders of the Spider-Man copyright, squeeze more out of the property with a madcap animated offering that mixes up a host of alternate takes on Spider-Man in what visually resembles an explosion at a pop art exhibition
The Batman (2022)
Apr 30, 2022Comic-Book Superhero
The reboot of the Batman franchise post Zack Snyder returns to the Christopher Nolan conception with Robert Pattinson as an emo Batman who resembles The Cure’s Robert Smith. Not completely successful on all fronts but a promising start