Reviews

Ugh! "Avengers" wore me out. Lets begin with this spoilfest review. The character I was most looking forward to being fleshed out was Hawkeye, who starts out as a zombie.... Loki has a good entrance, but his alien-buddies are never fleshed out, named, or given any character development whatsoever. Apparently, their "advance warfare" includes just really-drunken aerial driving. Thor was a pure letdown. He had no swagger, wasn't boisterous, and his costume changed without rhyme or reason. PLUS, he just *poof* appeared, and this killed the beautiful and tragic unrequited love ending of "THOR". PLUS, PLUS, he didn't even try to find Jane, or even pound her with a hailstorm or anything! Maria Hill was just annoying eye-candy whose stunning visage countered her lack of plot-points. And Captain America was lackluster. Black Widow was okay. Hulk was funny, but it was kind of creepy how he went after Black Widow. He spends half the movie telling everyone not to bring out the bad guy, then he kind of reveals in the movies silliest moment that, oh, golly gee, I can do this anytime I want to. And Pepper Potts as a daisy-duke wearing penthouse babe? I don't think so. The worst continuity of the series fell on Iron Man. At the end of "The Incredible Hulk", it was setup where Tony Stark was forming the Avengers, then we find out in "The Avengers" that he wouldn't even be accepted? No Odin, No Jane, No tender flashback scene for Cap's love-interest... I felt the movie really could have benefited from some roller-coaster ride, instead of all peaks. I was surprised to see "Jenny Agutter" listed in the credits, apparently she was an unnamed council-member who was so poorly lit she didn't stand out. The best part was Agent Coulson who died (wtf?). And who was the rogue pilot who took it upon himself to nuke New York? No hints at future teammates.... No real philosophic underpinnings like X-Men had... It was kind of just DisneyWorld on Crack, but it was fun to see on opening night....

***Sepia-toned Spoilers*** If you love a virginal patriotic man in tights, you must see Captain America: The First Avenger. Plucky young Steve Rogers is beset upon by bullies. Don't worry Steve, It Gets Better! And how. Military is in Rogers blood, but a host of maladies plague his body. He's skinny, he's asthmatic, he's everything pharmaceutical companies look for in a poster boy, but he's got one thing other's ain't got... Courage. After numerous attempts at enlisting, our hero gets in the Army, with the help of a tipsy Fairy-German Godfather. Steve has trials in boot camp that allow him to showcase his ingenuity, resolve, and dedication. Not since Madonna has such Ambition grabbed America by the balls. With a little help from Howard Stark, who has one hand in the future, and the other on a random hot-dame's tushie, Steve is injected, erected, electrocuted, and pretty much comes out the other side as Marvel's American Adonis. It's like he read one issue of Men's Health, and all the tips worked! (!!!) The tone of the movie is self-effacing yet sure-footed. I was only annoyed by the line, "This is not about me". How many Marvel Movies about Chris Evans must he remind us that it's not all about him? (???) Peggy, the love interest is pitch-perfect as a tough-as-nails high-brass broad who doesn't just dance with anyone. Bucky is strangely Steve's Age, and almost gets a hero moment before he falls off the train. There's some fun Iron Man post-foreshadowing (wrap your head around that), and we see where Tony Stark gets his mojo, his moulah, and his machines. The Red Skull could have benefited from a bit more back story, but he is serviceable, and no one sheds a tear when he suffers Odin's wrath (wrap your head around that one, too). Captain America is a feel-good ego boost at a time when we are all at each other's throats. I honestly never questioned whether Cap was a Democrat or a Republican. He certainly didn't seem concerned with what tax bracket he was in. There was enough multiculturalism in the cast to feel good about. And for the first time, a 3D moment really got me, and I actually flinched. ***Big Spoiler*** There is "The Avengers" trailer at the end, which feels kind of cheap and breaks tradition of having an credits end-cap scene. It was slick, and unfortunately only showed Scarlet Johannson as a female Avenger. So far from the female buffet Marvel served up in the X-Men flicks. I was hoping for some surprise like She-Hulk, Spiderwoman, or even The Wasp or The Scarlet Witch. Looks like The Black Widow will have her hands full of intrigue (good thing she's so flexible~ yawn). If you plan on seeing "The Avengers" in May 2012, be sure to catch up on Captain America lore here, first. Oh, and you may never look at a red, white and blue freeze pop the same way again!

Read on to get *spoiled* on XFC! As a decades-long fan of X-Men, here is what I noticed. I do recommend seeing the film. Great intro. Shaw's and Erik's spot-on German gave me high hopes for the kind of intricately cultural world the X-Men can be. Then it kind of went downhill. The White Queen, here just Emma Frost, was listless and bland. She had no sarcastic and droll dialogue, she was "top-heavy" with not enough rump to back up her legendary figure, and her face was kind of chipmunky instead of drop-dead ice gorgeous. Azazel, the character I was most interested in getting to know, may as well have been made of cardboard, he said almost nothing and we learned nothing about him in this film. Ditto tornado-guy (never got his name until the credits~ "Riptide"). The biggest plot let down for me was Shaw having the helmet we see later in the series for Magneto. I had assumed that the metal surrounding Magneto's head allowed him to create magnetic fields so strong Xavier couldn't penetrate them. Guess anyone can have a metal head with the same effect (oh, wait, how does the Prof read Wolvie's mind?) Anyhow. There are so many other characters that get so little treatment personality-wise, it's almost like flipping through a deck of cards. Angel~Banshee~Darwin~Havok. We just assumed they joined the CIA team because they were asked- very thin motivation. Mystique, Beast and of course Eric and Charles fare much better. Erik is my fav performance in the film, handily beating Charles in the charisma field. His accent kind of flows into a Scottish tinged mess at the end. I was very pleased with the special effects. All were top-notch, but did little to quell bland team development. I kept waiting for Magneto to help Charles build Cerebro, or at least re-build it. Highlights were fun cameos by Wolverine and the original Mystique/Raven. Abysmal and totally taking me out of the film was Moira McTaggart. She had no accent, no discernible culture of any kind, and played a generic hot CIA-agent (?) The original Moira in her cameo in X3 had more gravitas in one scene than this one in the whole film. The one character I was surprised by was Darwin, and was disappointed he didn't "survive" very well. Allegiances shifting at the end seemed kind of stiff. The music was often heavy-handed. The White Queen SHOULD have knocked this movie out of the park, and was the biggest writing/casting misstep. Beasts feet kind of grossed me out, but once he furballed, he was cute. Beast did more in one-week than seems possible: Fashion maven, courtier, rocket scientist, chemist, physicist, psychic "brain surgeon", etc., but it was neat having him around. I'm not salivating for the second installment, but will watch it. XFC suffered from the Freshmen 15, it could stand to trim up and get serious about studying...

Sad Spoiler Alert. Ugh, you just didn't care about any of the characters but the dog and the baby. Oh, rich white couple, blecch! Man fires Hispanic maid for being concerned about bad vibes in home. He's against that crap, but has African tribal art all over his walls? Wife doesn't seem to care. Wife has bad posture. Teenager is just generally annoying. The movie starts with about 300 edits. Then cycles through every camera angle in the house to the point of absurdity. Really the most interesting thing in this movie was the automated pool cleaner, and really that's kind of sad. There was no creepy build up. In fact the first sign of demonic infestation was a total house makeover! Please, and the first noise was a sonic boom that let you know the film wasn't in overly creative hands. "People are seemingly breaking into our house every night and little hunter is scared, we need to go out for drinks, hon!" WTF? And then during the climax, it turns out that demons can just be expelled with common kitchen ingredients? Do we ever find out what happens to the nanny? I'm also glad there weren't too much of Micah and Katie as they seemed to have porked out enough for at least 2 or 3 sequels. Katie's breasts, in particular, stunning in the first film, seemed to have given up the cause in the prequel. Wish this was a "Yeah!" review, instead it's just kind of "meh".