After the credits it's an after party!

Opening Everywhere: Marvel’s The Avengers

HEY GRANDPARENTS!!! OPENING EVERYWHERE: THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL!!!

Possibly Opening Somewhere: LOL, A Little Bit of Heaven

Never Heard of ‘Em: Mother’s Day, Meeting Evil

The Avengers

Michael Bay Washed Ferrari Scale:

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

“Lord have mercy, there are scenes in The Avengers that flat out whistle. The strongest aspect of comic book action is, though it is (generally) encapsulated in a frame, it doesn’t need to conform to the physics of reality. So too, The Avengers movie, which fluidly blends CGI and ambition to output something not quite of this world. When the shot goes from The Hulk to Cap’ to Iron Man to Thor to Black Widow to Hawkeye … and back again, well you’ve convinced me that there are still a few angles out there that haven’t been beaten into the ground.” – Laremy Legel, Film.com

“As such, it has no right to be this good. A 3-D movie featuring not one, not two, but six brilliant and/or ludicrously muscled protagonists fighting to defend Planet Earth from a Nordic god in a snit has no right to be anything but confusing, ridiculous and generally devoid of simple human affect. And yet it’s none of those things.” – Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle

Armchair Analysis: Someone on my Twitter feed made a joke yesterday along the lines of “How is it that The Avengers suddenly became the comic book we couldn’t wait to see as a movie?” And the geek child that I used to be – since blossomed into a burly man of sexual authority – snorted, laughed and said, “I know, right? Preposterous.” But here we are. Riding strong at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and earning a B+ from Vinnie Mancini, The Avengers is an instant blockbuster. I will now insert my fingers into my ears because I won’t see it until next week.