Avengers: Age of Ultron

I rewatched this movie tonight after having seen it opening night in the theaters. I think it got better for a second viewing. This movie started out with an action scene, and almost didn't let down for the rest of the movie. There were a few moments to catch your breath, but then you were almost immediately thrown into another action scene. It was exciting and exhilarating. It had just enough funny moments to keep you on your toes, and I cried when Quicksilver died.

If I had one complaint about this movie it is that the team didn't really work together as a team. They were still a group of individuals and you see them fighting each other more than anything else culminating in the scene where Thor ensures the creation of Vision. There's no communication there. No team. It's frankly amazing they get anything done. I'm hopeful that future incarnations of the Avengers will fix this problem by not having Tony and Thor as a part of the team, and also through the training they seem to have instituted at the end of this movie. However, Civil War is supposed to have a feeling of friend turning against friend, and I don't think we're going to get that because I don't get the feeling that these characters are friends. I get the feeling that they work together for necessity's sake. When Cap and Iron Man fight, I'm not going to take it as good friends fighting each other because they show no evidence of that friendship in this movie, starting from Cap's comment, "language" to Tony.

Another thing was that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were included and brought back to HQ and made a part of these discussions. They just finished torturing the team, and although vague mention is made of Hawkeye not trusting them, the rest of the team just continues on as though they were supposed to be there. And by the end of the movie Hawkeye is giving Scarlet Witch a lecture on how if she walks out the door to fight, she's an Avenger. In the end they leave her protecting the doomsday switch. That's a lot of trust for someone who was just engaged in torturing you and fighting for your enemies.

These did not really detract from the fact that Marvel has turned out another spectacular movie, and one which is in the running for my favorite film of the year. I give it an A.

Shawshank Redemption

I started watching this movie because it was IMDB's top movie of their top 250 movies. I have decided to watch them all, as best as I am able. As the top movie of all time, I had built up a lot of hopes around this movie. I was not disappointed. The movie starts watching Andy (Tim Robbins) take the blame for a crime he didn't commit. He then moves to prison where he eventually makes friends with both the criminals and the wardens as he steals money for them.

The piece clearly follows the friendship of Andy and Red (Morgan Freeman) as they go from prison to freedom, and remain the best of friends. It was beautifully done, and I deeply cared for both characters before the movie was over. One of the best scenes was when they murdered the man who knew that Andy had not committed the crime. You could see how dishonest the judicial system really is in just that one moment.

One thing that bothered me was why the law would not follow through and look into the city on the postcard that Red got, though. That was their best lead, and they acted as if it did not exist.

The movie also provided a look at institutionalization, a psychiatric condition that exists in prisons and mental institutes. Two of the characters, Red and the librarian have this condition. The librarian kills himself, but we see hope that Red will overcome it in the end. It was also interesting because it took place from the 1940s to 1960s, and there was an interracial cast of characters, and the two men who become closest of friends are interracial. This was an interesting choice, and I wonder if it was done on purpose in 1994 when the movie was made to make a point about the time it was about, or whether in the 90s they just didn't think about that much anymore.

Overall, I give the movie an A.

American Ultra

My husband likes spy movies, so he wanted to see this. I thought the premise sounded interesting until about 30 seconds into the movie. When he sold me on the movie, he didn't mention that the main characters were stoners. I knew from the moment I saw them pass the bong that this was not going to be a good movie. Nonetheless, I was surprised at just how bad it got.

I think you were supposed to be stoned while watching this movie, in order to not notice that the scenes didn't flow, and there was no logical progression from one thought to the next. I mean, really you end up with the guy you thought was the head of the CIA being murdered in the woods by the real head of the CIA, a character you haven't seen at all yet. It's ridiculous.

At some point you realize that Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) is former CIA herself, and quit her entire real life to be with this stoner guy she's supposed to be handling. Then she becomes a stoner herself, and falls in love with him. Even though she's lying to him not only about who she is but about who he is. But then you have to realize the whole Hawaii trip is her fault.

She knew he couldn't leave the town without violent panic attacks but she took him to the airport to go to Hawaii and then got mad at him because he couldn't leave. But she was the only one who knew why he couldn't leave! Also, the CIA is trying to kill him for trying to leave town, so clearly his handler should know that he's not allowed to leave town, and maybe, just maybe, she would try to encourage him not to leave town instead of trying to encourage him to leave town.

Overall, I give the movie an F for not thinking itself through and not having a plausible plot.

Fantastic 4

Unlike many geeks, I've really enjoyed the X-Men movies, put out by Fox. Therefore, I wasn't expecting Fantastic 4 to be terrible. I wasn't going to see it opening night, but my husband really wanted to go, so we went. You guys, this was the first time I've ever seen an audience actively booing at the end of the movie. Now admittedly, the booing might have had more to do with the fact that there was no stinger at the end of a comic book movie, since we all waited through all of the credits for one. But still, if people had enjoyed the movie I don't think they'd boo it that soon afterwards.

Through most of the film I was bored. I mean, origin stories, right? It was just these kids building something, and there was no suspense because you knew the thing had to work for them to get their powers. Building this thing took up literally 1/2 of the movie. Then they build it, and an accident gives them powers, and they spend the next 1/3rd of the movie either running from the government or working for the government. Finally, the writers realized we might like to see the team fight and become a team, so that comes out of nowhere.

Now let me take a moment and be a geek on you, but, this is Dr Doom's costume:

This really doesn't do justice to how bad it was. I mean by the time he showed up it was torn to shreds and looked like it was barely sticking to him. For those who don't know, this is Dr Doom in the comic books:

Kind of bad-ass right? 

I don't understand why Fox decided to get rid of pretty much the one awesome thing about this franchise. Then, I guess because they needed some kind of drama, Ben (Jamie Bell) blames Reed (Miles Teller) for his having become ugly. This never happens in the comic books. Ben always accepts his own responsibility for what happened to him, even though Reed blames himself. It was mischaracterizations such as this that really angered my husband, and caused him to hate the movie. 

For myself, I was never a Fantastic 4 fan. I didn't read the comics. The movie did an adequate job of explaining who each of the characters was, even if that was because they were so dramatically changing the story line that they had to do so. But the thing is I wasn't really entertained by the movie. I was bored through most of it. Even the final battle wasn't very exciting. 

Overall I give it a D. 

Justice League: Doom

I watched this movie with my husband, who is determined to get me to like DC characters and stories. For some reason he seems determined that because I like Marvel comic books and comic book characters I should like DC comic book characters. However, I feel that DC overpowers their characters, and doesn't make them likable. I mean, come on, they have a character that the way to kill her is to make her think she's still in a fight she can't give up? It's stupid.

This movie is about a supervillain who collects a group of people who hate the Justice League and then pays them to follow Batman's plan to neutralize his friends. Although Batman made the plans to neutralize the Justice League, he also had plans to neutralize his own plans. Thus there really wasn't any stress to the movie. Once Batman managed to punch his way out of his parents' grave, he had the plan to fix everyone else's problem.

The movie expected you to already know who everyone was. The closest to an introduction you got to the bad guys was that they all wanted an individual Justice Leaguer dead. I guess it would have been too much for a short movie to explain, but it did seem like it required a little more explanation of who the characters were and what their super powers are.

Overall, I alternated between bored and confused. What was this chemical the Martian character was sweating out? Why did he or I care? Why are they all afraid of solar flares? Don't we get those every day and find them harmless? Yet the bad guy's plan is to cause them? Why did Green Lantern just put down his ring and cry?

I have to give it an F.

Ant Man

How do you do an origin story without doing an origin story? Marvel promised us no more origin stories, but this sure resembled one - without being the boring story you already know the ending of that so many origin stories are. Sure, it told us the origin of the current generation's Ant Man. It also gave us a yellow jacket and a wasp that are sure to make appearances in the next edition of this story.

The movie starts out on Scott Lang's (Paul Rudd) last day in prison for a burglary; we start out uncertain who exactly the good guy and who the bad guy is. It soon becomes clear in a scene where Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lily) and Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) are trying to invent a new shrinking suit using cute baby lambs as test subjects. She comments, "weren't we using mice?" and he asks, "what's the difference?" indicating that he has long since lost any qualities that were moral that he may have had in the beginning of their research.

We get plenty of action, starting from a prison fight and ending in a knock-down-drag-out brawl between Ant Man and Yellow Jacket, who clearly has the superior suit. Ant Man can get small, but he has no weapons other than super-strength, which makes him more relatable, and less like the monster that his daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson) assumes Yellow Jacket is. It also means he has to rely on his wits, not his suit, in my mind making him more enjoyable than Iron Man.

Although it is not a comedy, the movie is laugh-out-loud funny. I can't even begin to count the number of times the entire theater erupted into laughter. My favorite of these was when Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) pulls out his keychain tank and tells his daughter, "it's not a keychain," before riding a tank through the wall of the building.

The movie plays with our notions of good and evil. In the end, criminal Scott Lang is clearly the good guy, but what about Hank Pym? He was determined to keep the suit out of the hands of the highest bidder, in this case Hydra. This is certainly a good cause. But at the same time, when his wife died, he sent his daughter off to boarding school, and he abandoned his protege, both major failings as a person. In addition, he picked a thief and escaped convict to wear his suit, essentially picking someone society and he felt was expendable. If the mission went south, he wouldn't care about the person who he killed.

Also I was so excited for the second stinger, I think I literally squeed. Stay through the whole credits. It's worth it.

This movie is a contender for my favorite movie of the year. I give it an A+.

Minions

I really enjoyed Despicable Me (2010). Part of the reason I liked that movie was the Minions who bumble around and help Gru. So when I heard that they were coming out with a Minions movie, I was excited. I expected it to be cute and funny, and I was not disappointed.

I was a little hesitant because Minions do not speak English. I think they may in part speak Spanish, but I haven't worked out the rest of their language yet. Sometimes the Spanish made sense. However, there was a voiceover that gave commentary on what was happening and the minions made themselves understood.

The movie was funny, such as when one of the minions mistakes a yellow fire hydrant for another minion. Another funny scene was when they made dust out of a vampire in the dark ages trying to celebrate his birthday.

One thing I wish is that there had been any female minions. I felt that the movie was playing out for the boys, but giving the girls nothing. The only real female character is Scarlett, the big bad guy. There's no reason for there not to be female minions, so this felt like a major omission. However, I'd still say the movie is worth seeing.

Overall I give it an A-.