Author: Joel Copling

Rating in Stars: ***½ (out of ****)
Cast: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale
Director: Peyton Reed
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for sci-fi action violence)
Running Time: 1:57
Release Date: 07/17/15

Ant-Man contains all the usual ingredients of the superhero movie (Indeed, it also contains many of the same things that have made the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe so creatively tired lately), but it’s in the way screenwriters Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, and Paul Rudd rearrange and, in a roundabout way, mock them that the movie finds its pretty considerable success. This is the best introduction to a hero we’ve seen yet in this universe (and, if you’re into ranking things, the second-best movie overall that Disney and Marvel have overseen these past seven years). Mark it down to a mixture of the kind of wacky fun that most of these movies have been missing and a serious approach to the mythology that, finally, is starting to feel lived-in.

But yes, all the usual plot elements are here. We have the Everyman with a hero complex and a unique past: Scott Lang (Rudd) was the well-meaning dad to daughter Cassie (an impossibly cute Abby Ryder Fortson) before wife Maggie (Judy Greer, one of our brightest comic actresses again semi-wasted here in a wife role) remarried to policeman Paxton (Bobby Cannavale) and Scott himself became a career criminal, ending up in the slammer for three years. The film begins as he is finally released–only to procure and then lose a job with a popular ice-cream chain.

We have the Hero’s Destiny, which is here for Scott to be an expendable soldier/guinea pig for Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), a billionaire scientist who, in 1989, was attempting to discover how to shorten the distance between the atoms (or something). In the present, he is emerging from what seems to be reclusive period in solitude, having handed the company down to his protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) years ago; Hank’s daughter Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) is some sort of head of research, too. Cross has perfected shrinking technology that Hank gave up on years ago, except without the knowledge that Hank’s suit, which shrinks its wearer to the size of a bug, is still active.

Enter Scott into this whole thing, because Hank thinks the technology is dangerous and simply wants to fight fire with fire. From here, we get the usual superhero shtick: Scott trains to become a hero dubbed “the Ant-Man” much to his chagrin by “communicating” with the counterpart insect, which does give us a cool sequence where he fights with another, cameoing Avenger. When the climax comes, director Peyton Reed’s shifting perspective of big-vs.-small takes over in creative ways (such as the battleground of Scott’s final encounter with someone in a different, also-tiny suit called the Yellowjacket being a Thomas & Friends train set or a particularly thrilling battle with a suitcase that turns LifeSavers hard candies and an iPhone into deadly weapons).

This all combines to make this one of the better films in this dominating franchise and just simply an enormously clever ride on its own terms (Even the sequences juxtaposed into the end credits, a phenomenon that has now dominated the franchise’s way of imparting important plot details regarding the whole she-bang, are better than they’ve been in ages). The actors all gel rather wonderfully with their characters (Rudd in particular has a way of making Scott’s abrasiveness likable, and who knew the actor we needed in these movies was Douglas, who hasn’t been this strong in years), and even when the pieces of the puzzle connect exactly where one expects them to, Ant-Man succeeds rather hugely at making us grin too much to care too deeply.

Rating in Stars: ** (out of ****)
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, the voice of James Spader
Director: Joss Whedon
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of sci-fi action, violence and destruction, and for some suggestive comments)
Running Time: 2:21
Release Date: 05/01/15

It’s not that this so-called cinematic universe about myriad superheroes is, perhaps, growing too large for its own good (The knowledge that the final installment in the series will be split into two parts, releasing in 2018 and 2019, might be nirvana for its fan base, but for the rest of us, it’s a worrisome thought, given the number of characters with which it will, by then, need to deal). It’s not that the films themselves have, with a single exception, followed the same basic formula of “Well-meaning hero + generic villain = finale in which they inevitably face each other.” It’s that the stakes in writer/director Joss Whedon’s Avengers: Age of Ultron feel almost entirely insular.

This was not so in 2012’s “The Avengers,” which, for all its difficulty rallying a troupe of disparate heroes together and maintaining a singular personality, at least embraced those many personalities and giddy action sequences into an infectious blend. Here, things are more functional, purposed to push forward a plot that, miraculously, at least makes some sort of sense but feels entirely existent within itself until the end of the third act (and, of course, excepting the usual, mid-credits sequence with the end-game villain against whom these quirky characters must work when all is said and finally done). The result is a slight confection of diverting action sequences that lead to other diverting action sequences and rarely pause long enough to hear what the characters are saying (another stark difference from the first film, which basically simmered in its appealingly written and performed exposition dump).

The Avengers themselves have grown into their roles as world-savers and chemistry as bickering, friendly rivals, and each has his or her own issue this time around. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is still sort of suffering PTSD from his previous adventures with this group as Iron Man; he and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), who becomes a hulking rage monster when rankled, have been dabbling with Loki’s scepter, which exhibits artificially intelligent behavior, and accidentally create Ultron (voice of James Spader, who is wonderfully vindictive and sarcastic in this role) in the process (He wants to control the world by eradicating it of humans, because that makes sense). Bruce and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), aka Black Widow, start up an entirely inconsequential romance that goes nowhere and serves no purpose. Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), aka Hawkeye, has a secret family (Linda Cardellini fills the Concerned Wife role, but at least it’s Linda Cardellini).

Whedon’s screenplay fails to do that for characters like Thor (Chris Hemsworth), who is just a big, lovable demi-god with a hammer, and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), who has almost always been as dull as his Captain America alter-ego. Returning but smaller characters (Don Cheadle and Anthony Mackie appear briefly as Tony and Steve’s compatriots, James Rhoades/War Machine and Sam Wilson/The Falcon, and Samuel L. Jackson has another extended cameo as Nick Fury, head of the now-dissolved S.H.I.E.L.D. organization) receive even less to do, and new ones (Ultron might be a curious contradiction at first, but he’s ultimately just a metal brute with an evil plan, while Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen’s appearances as a set of oddball twins with their own, supernatural powers are entirely because of the plot) suffer, as well.

Only some of the film’s attempts to deepen the characters beyond the face value of the thing for which they stand really work. The action sequences are only as fun as they’re allowed to get when Tony, in the famed Hulkbuster suit, and Bruce, in glorious, green form, duke it out as a kind of dueling machismo takes over. The climax is mostly underwhelming (though a new hero excites both in his Frankensteinian creation and in the way he makes everyone else completely redundant) and certainly derivative of the first film’s blowout. Avengers: Age of Ultron does very little that is distinctly wrong; it just reeks of not being very distinctive.

Rating in Stars: *** (out of ****)
Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, the voices of Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel
Director: James Gunn
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language)
Running Time: 2:01
Release Date: 08/01/14

It might seem an odd place on which to start a positive review of, well, any movie, as well as it might run the risk of flying in the face of the usual logic, but Guardians of the Galaxy tries to be three things at once and only really works as one of them. Bear with me here, though, reader, because the one thing it does succeed at being is so significant that it dwarfs the other, less successful attempts. Because the screenplay by Nicole Perlman and director James Gunn approaches the origin story of yet another team of scrappy, fundamentally different superheroes as a comedy of five egos battling each other’s opposing philosophies.

It’s funny stuff in a smarmy and sarcastic way that might be its undoing if not for the fact that the actors in the roles of our heroes are so adept at playing the comedy mostly straight. The exception to that might be Chris Pratt as Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord, the de facto leader of the group that forms by accident and through reluctance on each member’s part. He was stolen from Earth mere minutes after his mother’s death and, even now, is stuck in the mode of the 1980s, listening to a Walkman radio as a way by which to remember her. Zoe Saldana is Gamora, a ruthless assassin and one of the two daughters of the guy who is positioned as the Big Bad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Dave Bautista is Drax, an assassin himself who has no capacity to understand metaphor (Things don’t go over his head, he explains, because his reflexes are simply too good).

There are also Bradley Cooper voicing Rocket, a raccoon and former laboratory experiment whose personality defect is that he wants to cause destruction wherever he goes, and Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, a sentient tree and Rocket’s hired bodyguard whose vocabulary is limited to five words (one of which is his name). The film smartly downplays these characters’ positive attributes to such a degree that they only occasionally eke through: Peter is brave but self-congratulatory in his courage, Gamora always has the hardened exterior of the girl who was taken from the family her father killed so that he could enslave her, Drax is determined to face the man who killed his own family to a degree that places everyone else at risk, Rocket will never understand why he was made to cause destruction but definitely wants to wreak that havoc, and Groot is, well, Groot.

The film’s attempts at something more earnest than it is feel as much like half-measures as its attempts to work as yet another stepping stone for the MCU, which pop up when the film must ultimately position them against a generic threat. He arrives in the form of Ronan the Accuser (an unrecognizable Lee Pace), who wants to control the universe with some sort of Infinity Stone that does something or other. It’s a MacGuffin, basically. He joins forces with Nebula (Karen Gillan), Gamora’s sister, while the heroes call upon a couple of officials (played by Glenn Close and John C. Reilly in throwaway appearances) from the planet that Ronan and Nebula hope to destroy. The conflict resolves itself in about as convoluted a way as a confusing MacGuffin can provide.

That, then, speaks indirectly to the film’s decision to also attempt to work as an action movie, and Gunn is mostly imprecise in doing so. The sequences of escapes and combat are competently staged and shot by Ben Davis but largely unspectacular (The finale is a whirl of random motion). Even so, there’s the dominating positive force of the primary cast of characters, each of whom is such a stand-out original that everything surrounding them is rendered null by their presence. Guardians of the Galaxy is a very funny movie in its best moments, and that is because of pure, unflappable conviction exactly where it counts.

Rating in Stars: *** (out of ****)
Cast: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Cobie Smulders
Directors: Anthony Russo and Joe Russo
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence, gunplay and action throughout)
Running Time: 2:16
Release Date: 04/04/14

(Note: If you are one of the seven people who has not seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier yet, it is highly recommended you do so before reading this review. Of course, why are you reading it if you haven’t?)

If Captain America: The First Avenger did nothing to alleviate the problem of introductory superhero movies offering only a generic origin story and an equally generic conflict, its sequel does the opposite. We are already accustomed to Captain America, the hero whose costume adorned with stars and stripes is as unsubtle as his earnestness to protect American lives, and so, with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely rather effectively apply a political undertone to the proceedings. Luckily, rather than going down the simplistic road of an obvious allegory, the politics here are entirely self-contained. They exist within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which this is the ninth film, and the stakes are higher as a result.

Here, the major villain comes from within the system to which Captain America (and, thus, Steve Rogers) belongs, and he’s not having it. HYDRA, the off-shoot club of the Nazi regime spearheaded by his old foe, has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D., the government agency that paired Steve (Chris Evans in a solid performance) with the other Avengers to defend the Earth. He discovers this at his old barracks, where he was trained with the late “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan) to defend the country, when forced to go on the run by that corrupt system. In that way, the villain is not the human person very blatantly telegraphed to be a corrupt individual but an idea.

It’s a pretty neat trick to sew doubt in the minds of the heroes here and the audience who have grown to have a sizable kernel of trust in that system. It’s a slow knife between the ribs, rather than some generic conflict against which Steve must work with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), aka Black Widow, as well as a helping of allies (a returning Colbie Smulders as Maria Hill, Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, aka the Falcon, who has a nifty flight suit with wings, and Emily VanCamp as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent undercover in Steve’s apartment complex). Someone close to them is killed, the establishment around them slowly crumbles, and it’s on the run they must go.

The film does succumb to two different familiar conceits with its presentation of a trio of villains. In ascending order of uniqueness and importance, there is Brock Rumlow (Frank Grillo, an intimidating presence), a seeming ally of Steve’s until a neat combat sequence in confined quarters. There is Alexander Pearce (Robert Redford), the aforementioned corrupt individual in power, who wants to continue HYDRA’s work at whatever cost (and his ultimate plan is even more radical). The third is a figure from Steve’s own past whose identity should not be revealed, but he shares the moniker of the film’s subtitle–and has a self-repairing metal arm, to boot.

The result of the familiarity is, admittedly, not of great impactfulness in the big picture. It appears in an extended action climax in which Steve and the Winter Soldier face off on a helicarrier (one of many in this case). Directors Anthony and Joe Russo stage the sequence as sleekly and efficiently as ever, but the most intriguing elements of their film are the ones that pit Captain America against the corroded ideology that helped to make him the hero he is. That is what ultimately gives Captain America: The Winter Soldier its surprising complexity and lifts it above its predecessor.

Rating in Stars: ** (out of ****)
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Eccleston
Director: Alan Taylor
MPAA Rating: (for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, and some suggestive content)
Running Time: 1:52
Release Date: 11/08/13

At the start of almost every sequence, Thor: The Dark World seems like it’s heading in the heading in the direction of being a surprisingly, solidly interesting first sequel to Thor. By the time we reach the end of each sequence, though, the screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely has regressed backward to the flippant and familiar. This process is tiresome in its repetition, because here is a narrative that has some real potential to make major steps toward building upon the direction in which the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to be going. Instead, by giving us all the generic beats of a sequel that feels a lot more like wheel-spinning, the screenwriters offer only the familiar to underwhelming results.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is now the protector of the Nine Realms, on one of which he easily defeats a fearsome rock beast to the adulation of the crowd watching (“Maybe next time you should start with that,” exclaims one of his fellows, and we nod in agreement). He’s juggling this responsibility with that of rebuilding the peace left to die by his adoptive brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) after the disastrous events he facilitated and then committed on Earth (for which he will remain in prison) and the prospect of ascension to a throne currently filled by their father Odin (Anthony Hopkins, once again displaying credence in an underwritten role).

The major conflict here shows up on Earth, though, because Jane Foster (Natalie Portman, looking disinterested), the woman Thor met and fell in love with on Earth during his last visit, has stumbled across an anomaly with the help of Darcy (Kat Dennings, a delight) and Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård), who kind of went insane after New York’s invasion by aliens. The anomaly’s source is a mysterious rift in the time-space continuum (I think) that leads her to the location of the Aether, a substance that predates existence (I think) and possesses some sort of power to do something. Honestly, by the time Jane is pointing out to the others that it will cause “spatial extrusions” (what?), the audience will have clocked out both intellectually and emotionally.

The film even offers the requisite villain whose main henchman is far more threatening and interesting. The former is Malekith (Christopher Eccleston, embarrassingly hammy), whose major defining feature is looking like a steely-eyed, poodle-wearing cousin of Nosferatu, and the latter is the Kursed, played by Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje in a convincing physical performance that gains mileage from his silence. They are the last of the Dark Elves, an ancient race whose members (excepting a horde of expendable soldiers, of course) all died as a result of Malekith’s bid for power. It’s dull stuff and, once again, overshadowed by the continued, conflicted relationship between Thor and Loki (Hemsworth and a very good Hiddleston shine in these sequences).

After much to-do (a treasonous escape from his home realm of Asgard, a death, some more expository nonsense about a “Convergence” that I think created the universe), Thor and Malekith do battle that once again introduces a bit of creativity into the mix (The hero, his foe, and a bunch of other things around them dash in and out of different realms) before yet again devolving into murkiness (The final confrontation way overcompensates the lack of distinctive coloring in director Alan Taylor and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau’s imagery by dousing everything in red). It’s indicative of the constantly shifting process of regression inherent in Thor: The Dark World, which is at least an interesting mishap.

Rating in Stars: ***½ (out of ****)
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Ben Kingsley
Director: Shane Black
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence throughout, and brief suggestive content)
Running Time: 2:10
Release Date: 05/03/13

If the first film had the opportunity to examine the reasons that its titular superhero had to don the gold titanium alloy suit shot with hot-rod red that has an arsenal of weapons up its sleeves and in its shoulder pads only to thrust him into a generic conflict and its first sequel did nothing to expand upon that potential (It certainly didn’t and, in fact, regressed from it), then Iron Man Three is the first time in this series–or, indeed, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, considering his appearance in The Avengers was in direct proportion to how he interacts with another superhero–that the man within the suit has been properly examined. What writer/director Shane Black finds is a damaged prodigy from privilege and a source of unflappable sarcasm. It seems that trauma, which is the real conflict in store for the man, activates the defense mechanism of outwardly taking nothing seriously.

That is a quality that Black’s carefully honed screenplay shares, too, as is clear in a sequence wherein Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) visits an anomalous location in Tennessee where an explosion may or may not have occurred that is similar to a series of them that have left many people dead and no trace of a source. He meets Harley (Ty Simpkins), a young, plucky kid whose personality mirrors Tony’s own and who aids in Tony’s investigation of the scene of a crime that left five people dead. The scene is oddly but affectionately balanced between the investigation and their repertoire. Downey’s performance is similarly balanced between the moroseness of Tony’s internal conflict and his sarcastic deflection of it; it’s the actor’s best work to date in the role.

That internal conflict has reared its head in the form of sleeplessness and posttraumatic anxiety following the events that led to New York City being overrun by aliens. Even the mention of the city or the beings from someone as innocuous as a child who wants an autograph on his drawing of the battle sets the stress level to 11 for Tony, whose Iron Man alter ego has gone through an upheaval as of late. The lack of sleep has nonetheless spawned a terrific creative spike in the form of remote-controlled suits and a nifty device that summons them and has been placed subcutaneously in his wrist. When one of those attacks is upon Air Force One, he uses one of them to great effect–until, of course, it meets the front end of a semi truck (The interrupted hero shot is a constant, go-to gag that never fails to illicit a healthy chuckle).

External conflict is two-fold this time around. First, there is the re-introduction of Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), whom Tony met in 1999 (a meeting that we see in a prologue amusingly scored to a late-decade one-hit wonder) while working on a project with confidant and sort-of-girlfriend Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall). He wants to collaborate on his newest bit of technology, which is the rejuvenation of genetic defects through cellular manipulation, with Stark Industries, but Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), its C.E.O., thinks it highly weaponizable. The other, seemingly more generic conflict comes from a terrorist calling himself the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley); he is the one responsible for bombings positioned as social experiments for the President of the United States (William Sadler), who has now publicly championed James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), aka Iron Patriot, as an official superhero on the government’s behalf.

Things, though, are not as they seem, and the result is the film within the Marvel Cinematic Universe that feels as if it’s taking the biggest number of chances. Part of that is in the revelation of the Mandarin’s identity (refreshingly played as a joke that might be a barb aimed at the MCU itself for giving us such generic villains); the other part is in the action sequences, which are either creatively conceived (the aforementioned Air Force One rescue or the destruction of Tony’s residence, in which a piano is used as a weapon) or thrillingly staged (the climax, which might predictably be set among crates on a rig in the ocean but is a highlight all the same due to the welcome levity of humor and more of those interrupted hero shots). Iron Man Three is unique and risky, yes, but it’s also a lot of cheeky fun.