Cinema attendance surges in times of economic insecurity and moral ambivalence, and with storm-troops of superheroes out to crush absurdly irrelevant bad guys, movie escapism isn’t so much offered as detonated. But I can’t help wondering, if the Avengers are so great, why can’t they stop the powdered baby pill smugglers?

I mean, wouldn’t you enjoy watching a superhero tackle just one goddamned oil spill? Ooh, or how about a flying goody-goody facing his or her own demons? Where’s our $200 million movie about a fight to the death with power-sapping civil litigation, or sneak-attacks from the evil Captain Vicodin? Read more