Hail, Dehydration! On "Avengers: Endgame" and the Incredibly Expanding Blockbuster

Inspired by Avengers: Endgame, the 182-minute grand finale of the Marvel cinematic saga, I crunched some numbers and examined how blockbusters—especially ones not encumbered by Endgame's hefty narrative obligations, with so many characters and storylines to pay off—are expanding at a much faster rate than is the human lifespan. I am solely responsible for the math in the piece, and the jokes. You've been warned.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Ant-Man and The Wasp

The just-fine firm of Lily, Douglas, & Rudd, LLP (Marvel Studios)

I saw a review headline earlier today proclaiming Ant-Man and The Wasp "the perfect summer movie." I could easily name 20 perfect movies released during the summer going back to Jaws, released the summer before I was, but the phrase "a perfect summer" movie almost invariably refers to movies that aren't very good. 

Ant-Man and The Wasp isn't Not Good. It is, as my pal and editor and occasional (today!) Pop Culture Happy Hour panel-mate Glen Weldon observed in his review, fine.

I'm going to see it again tonight, in fact, but only because it's on a bill at the drive-in with Incredibles 2, which I've not seen yet, and because I haven't been to the drive-in in I think two years. I won't stay for the third feature, Avengers: Infinity War, because that movie will end at 3 a.m. and it's a 55-mile drive back to the District. But I'm glad that screening is happening.

Anyway, please enjoy our PCHH dissection of Ant-Man and The Wasp. It's fine.

And Now For Something Largely the Same: It's My Fifth Annual Village Voice Summer Movie Preview!

In olden times, Memorial Day weekend marked the start of what was known as the Summer Movie Season. It's an obsolete notion, now that would-be blockbuster releases are most heavily concentrated between mid-February (when Black Panther arrived this year) and the first weekend in May, and can come out basically any month of the year other than January. But as a kid who grew up planning my summers based on which hotly anticipated, frequently disappointing tentpole release came out when, I carry the torch for the idea that summertime is the season for escapist genre films that seek to overwhelm the senses.

My pal Alan Scherstuhl, the Village Voice's film editor, indulges me, assigning me each May to single out a dozen due before Labor Day that show promise. These features get shared among the whole New Times media ecosphere; sometimes even before they turn up in the Voice. No matter. Here's the list.

Presenting My Fourth Annual Village Voice Summer Movie Preview

It's a tradition! Here once again I choose a dozen movies due in the next three months for which I've got medium-high hopes.

Air-Conditioned Fun in the Summertime 3: Presenting My Third Annual Village Voice Summer Movie Want-List

The Nice Guys, which I expect history shall remember as my favorite film of the summer of 2016, came out last week; Captain America: Civil War, probably the best of the Marvel bunch, is old news. But Memorial Day weekend is still the traditional start of the summer movie season. Here, for the third consecutive Memorial Day weekend, is my Village Voice list of summer movies I want to see. Light up a phone in any of these and you'll hear from me.

Enjoy those X-Men, everybody! I'll be observing the holiday at the AFI, taking in Spartacus in its 212-minute entirety.

Period Piece: The Man from U.N.C.L.E., reviewed.

Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer (Daniel Smith/Warner Bros.)

I'm a sucker for sixties spy shit, and that Guy Ritchie's new big-screen version of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is, unlike most reboots of stuff from the period, actually set in the period is a big selling point for me. It luxuriates in the clothes, cars, and music of the era, updating only the sexual politics. My NPR review spends an unlikely sum of real estate discussing Dirty Dancing.