IF I HAD A HAMMER: Movie Reviews of Thor: Ragnorak and Justice League by Howard Casner

For questions: hcasner@aol.com

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Warning: SPOILERS

When I was young, I tended to not favor DC Comics, but gravitated toward those of the Marvel variety. This is because as a barefoot boy with cheek I never really fit in, was an outsider, so I found the Marvel universe, with its conflicted superheroes and conflicted supervillains, to be more reflective as life as I saw it.

Spiderman was especially someone I could identify with and why Spider-Man: Homecoming is the best Spidey film because it most closely mirrored what my life at school was like.

This approach, which often drives the movies based on Marvel characters, is why I have usually found these films, even the subpar ones, better than the DC ones, with a couple of exceptions (The Dark Knight Rises).

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PEOPLE COME, PEOPLE GO. NOTHING EVER HAPPENS: Movie Review of The Grand Budapest Hotel by Howard Casner

grand-budapest_2813768bThe Grand Budapest Hotel, the new demi-farce written by Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness and directed by Anderson, is like a box of chocolates.  The outside is lovely to look at, even entrancing, and when you open it up, the chocolate itself gleams with droolful anticipation.
And then you bite into one and sometimes you get the deep, rich double chocolate you have always dreamed of, and sometimes you get the sour cherry cream (or whatever ingredient you consider to be the one you grimace at and throw back in the box after taking one quick bite).  Read the rest of this entry »