McCarthy's been around for quite a while. I believe he's Variety's #1 film reviewer. Here's some excerpts of his prior reviews of comic book films. There's TONS of 'em BTW, but I just cut and pasted the big uns. If you folks would like to see any film in particular, lemme know.
Spider-Man
"The long-awaited bigscreen incarnation of the 40-year-old Marvel Comics superhero emerges as a perfectly serviceable early-summer popcorn picture that will satisfy its core teen constituency and not displease general viewers looking for some disposable entertainment.
From his first appearance in "Amazing Fantasy" in 1962, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's arachnid crime fighter stood out from the pack of other comic do-gooders by virtue of his humble background. Quite unlike the otherworldly Superman/Clark Kent and the millionaire Batman/Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker was a bashful, clumsy, ultra-straight, 98-pound weakling from working-class Queens. ...
[Peter] first uses his new strength and acrobatic skills to dispatch Mary Jane's a-hole b.f. in a school fight, then thinks to impress her by earning money in a wrestling challenge matched against a monster named Bone Saw. This entire apprenticeship section was always going to live or die on the charm and appeal of the actor playing Peter, and the initial sweet sensitivity Maguire conveys, followed by the growing thrill of self-discovery of his new superhuman abilities, proves captivating.
Unfortunately, when "Spider-Man" settles into full superhero mode an hour in, the conventional contours of David Koepp's script come fully to the fore. With the Green Goblin committing such heinous acts as blitzing a World Unity Festival in Times Square toplining Macy Gray and threatening to drop Mary Jane and a Roosevelt Island tram loaded with kids into the East River, he and Spider-Man face off in increasingly standard-issue good guy/bad guy fashion, with no bigger issues to give their rivalry special import. Further deflating the balloon is an abundance of over-cranked digital physical action that's singularly lacking in grace or the feel of real movement, human or animal.
Ironically, it's when "Spider-Man" sticks to simple human interaction that the film breathes and ingratiates itself. ...
Physically imposing production is notable for Neil Spisak's production design, which involves considerable invention but also allows New York City to play itself without Gotham City-like stylization. James Acheson's costumes, beginning with the terrific ribbed Spider-Man outfit, are splendid..."
http://www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&r=VE1117917507
Spider-Man 2
"...Crackerjack entertainment from start to finish, this rousing yarn about a reluctant superhero and his equally conflicted friends and enemies improves in every way on its predecessor and is arguably about as good a live-action picture as anyone's ever made using comicbook characters. ...
Here, working from a story devised by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Michael Chabon, [screenwriter, Alvin Sargent] makes at least five characters into tortured souls with momentous decisions to make and places them all in a narrative frame within which the related elements are adroitly proportioned. ...
The new emotional levels and increased opportunities provided by the script give the actors a chance to stretch, and they all respond, none more than Maguire. Running the gamut from heroic knight to heartbroken suitor, thesp is a constant delight, his lightness of touch providing many grace notes to what was already a lively characterization."
http://www.variety.com/ac2005_review/VE1117924197
X-Men
"...this curiously tepid adventure will likely divide auds between those grateful just to see their cult heroes faithfully translated (under 25-year-olds), and others (anyone older) for whom an overcomplicated concept is rendered so-what? by underwhelming execution.
...pic's main plus can only be defined in a sort of backhanded compliment: It's seldom ludicrous or laughable, no small achievement given the cartoonish material. Yet the somber tone helmer Singer shoots for here does little good, given that story, set pieces and production design never kick into an engrossing, exciting or stylish high gear.
"X-Men" plays like a so-so middle chapter of an epic series rather than a fitting kickoff. Premise and characters are intro'd in desultory fashion, with little momentum toward a climactic good vs. bad faceoff, which advances the story so little that the preceding two hours are rendered almost irrelevant.
Unlike, say, Tim BurtonTim Burton's Batman" films (or such like-minded exercises as "Dark City," "The Crow" and "The Matrix"), "X-Men" lacks directorial and visual design cohesion, and a singular, haunted emotional center to make its brooding tenor more than just a fashionable attitude.
Much of this is due to the X-Men concept itself: Since there appears no clear rhyme, reason or limitation to the mutants' all-over-the-map gifts, they seem much less an oppressed minority than a jumble of comic-book conceits. As Wolverine, AussieAussie thesp Jackman (a last-minute replacement for Dougray Scott when latter was detained on "M:I-2") gets enough screen time to create an admirably cynical, melancholy character. But Paquin has little to do except whimper for help, while the other X's (most notably Berry and Marsden) are highlighted so little their individual powers scarcely register.
Stewart and McKellen exercise their RSC-trained perfect diction but little else; casting of these routine nemeses could have been switched with no discernible gain or loss...
Newton Thomas Sigel's widescreen lensing, John Myhre's production design and all other design/tech aspects are glossily high grade, if unmemorable; Michael Kamen's wall-to-wall score is routine. Polished but impersonal direction reps another disappointing failure (after 'Apt Pupil') by Singer to build on the prestige momentum of his sleeper soph feature, 'The Usual Suspects.'"
http://www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&r=VE1117787549
X2
"'X2' is actually an accurate title for the 'X-Men' sequel, as the new picture is about twice as good as the original, although this will mean very different things to various constituencies. Hardcore fans and sci-fi/comics geeks, who propelled the 2000 release to a then-surprising worldwide gross of $295 million, will be thrilled by the big jump in special effects work and new plot developments, while nonconverts and the just-curious will likely find the follow-up merely half as silly as the first edition. ...
What was implicit before concerning the prejudice against mutants has now been made the film's overriding concern. While younger viewers may take this focus on bias as something close to profound, more mature auds might tend to view the metaphor as more than a bit simplistic, rendering clear the generational divide the film will undoubtedly encounter."
http://www.variety.com/ac2004_review/VE1117920610
Hulk
"No contemporary filmmaker has taken a comicbook character more seriously than Ang Lee takes "Hulk." A seriously brooding psychological drama for much of its somewhat overlong running time, this impeccably crafted piece of megabuck fantasy storytelling aims to pull off the tricky feat of significantly reworking the superhero format while still providing the expected tentpole-type entertainment thrills for the international masses.
Lee and his habitual producer and screenwriter James Schamus ... have used the Marvel comic ... as a means to explore such weighty issues as the search for one's true identity, the struggle of an everyday personality with a dark inner self, father-child legacies, repressed memories, lost love and transformative anger. ...
The dialogue and acting also are on a level not normally encountered in pictures about freaks of nature who swat bullets away like flies and chew the tips off explosive rockets before flinging them back at the helicopters that launched them.
'Hulk' is, in the end, a noble, shrewd, skillful but still thwarted try at upgrading one of the preferred genres of the moment and of respecting the intelligence of the audience more than is the norm with popular entertainments these days. Helping the cause are the actors -- Bana, Nolte, Lucas and particularly Connelly and Elliott -- who clearly take their work as seriously as did the thesps in, say, 'The Ice Storm,' without quite the textual heft and complexity to support them."
http://www.variety.com/ac2004_review/VE1117920999
In other contrasts...
Superman: The Movie
(Variety Staff)
"Magnify James Bond's extraordinary physical powers while curbing his sex drive and you have the essence of Superman, a wonderful, chuckling, preposterously exciting fantasy.
Forget Marlon Brando who tops the credits. As Superman's father on the doomed planet Krypton, Brando is good but unremarkable.
As both the wholesome man of steel and his bumbling secret identity Clark Kent, Christopher Reeve is excellent. As newswoman Lois Lane, Margot Kidder plays perfectly off both of his personalities.
Tracing the familiar cartoon genesis, film opens with spectacular outer-space effects and the presentation of life on Krypton where nobody believes Papa Brando's warnings of doom. So he and wife Susannah York ship their baby son on his way to Earth.
Striking terra firma, the baby is found by Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter who take him for their own. But the time must ultimately come when Superman's powers for good are revealed to the world and his debut becomes a wild night, beginning with Lane's rescue from a skyscraper, the capture of assorted burglars and the salvation of the president's airplane.
Lurking in wacky palatial splendor in the sewers beneath Park Ave, supercriminal Gene Hackman views this caped arrival as a superthreat befitting his evil genius."
http://www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&r=VE1117795350
Smallville (2 reviews)
Steven Oxman (Oct 12, 2001)
"Clark (Tom Welling) is a freshman in high school and has an unspoken crush on cheerleader Lana (Kristin Kreuk), who's dating quarterback Whitney (Eric Johnson).
The show is filled with these stereotypical American icons, although they're presented fairly realistically and not exaggerated to extremes. The look of the series similarly opts for a believable bucolic idealism, rather than going the comic-book route.
In Alfred Gough and Miles Millar's teleplay, Clark's an outsider, no matter how beautiful, fast or powerful he is. He is, in that sense, every teenager who wants the prettiest girl in school but for one reason or another can't have her. ...
We're used to these teen roles being cast with actors clearly older than their characters, but this case is particularly extreme -- Tom Welling looks different from different angles, but in none of them does he look like an adolescent. It's more of a problem here than usual because it blurs the age difference between him and one of his primary foils, Lex, who's supposed to be seven or so years older than Clark but looks the same age."
http://www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&r=VE1117916084
Brian Lowry (Sep 30, 2003)
"The casting gods were awfully kind to "Smallville," providing the series with more than its share of good will -- from hunky star Tom Welling and too-cute-to-be-true Kristin Kreuk as the object of his affection, Lana Lang, to John Schneider and Annette O'Toole as his earnest parents.
"Smallville" is one of those rare shows that has managed to successfully update, and in some instances improve upon, the mythology of a well-known character. Last season, for example, featured a dynamite twist indicating that Clark's Kryptonian dad Jor-El might have not been the benefactor he's been portrayed as in the past -- sending his kid to Earth as a conqueror rather than a hero.
Well-made sci-fi and fantasy shows seldom garner the respect they deserve, but anyone watching "Smallville" in its first two seasons knows the series has been a cut above..."
http://www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&r=VE1117921991
