CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR

(Joe & Anthony Russo, 2016)

Considering all of the moving parts, characters in motion, plotlines and subplots, action sequences, back story, expository conversations, locations and ideas in Captain America: Civil War, the movie is a relative model of economy and forward momentum.
In some ways it is an incredibly dense mess: much of it would make no sense to anyone who doesn't already know the Marvel Universe or these characters, and its structure is broken backed; four huge action scenes break up the 140 minute run-time, but the movie seriously drops down to first gear in that first hour as pieces are moved around the board, agendas established, themes nursed to life.
Once it gets going its popcorn pleasures are manifold, and the details are purest geek pleasure.
It has twin plots which entwine from early on. In the first, following the opening battle between the Avengers and mercenaries led by CrossBones (Frank Grillo) leads to civilian casualties, the Governments of the world conspire to introduce the Sokovia Accords, registering and controlling enhanced activity. Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr, who seems more this character than himself at this point), shocked by the results of his actions and possibly grieving the end of his relationship with an unseen Pepper Potts, supports the deal and tries to sell it to the Avengers, who are split. Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), bruised by following orders that he disagreed with in his last film and his experiences with powerful men in WW2, refuses.
At the same time, Zemo (Daniel Brühl, sinister in a way I never suspected he was capable of) is busy incriminating Cap's old friend Bucky/the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) for the attack on a Viennese conference established to ratify the accords.
That attack effects the life of King of reclusive African country Wakanda, T'Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman, excellent), and suddenly it is a race to find the Winter Soldier. That in turn leads to a battle between the forces amassed behind Stark and Rogers, which include the likes of Avengers members Vision (Paul Bettany, doing well with his few big moments), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), but also newcomers Ant Man (Paul Rudd, stealing every scene he's in) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Meanwhile Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) do their best in different ways to stop Rogers from getting himself killed.
Miraculously, the movie gives each of these characters at least one big moment without ever losing focus on the friendship between Rogers and Bucky or the conflict between Rogers and Stark. The big airport super-hero free-for-all involves more or less every character and uses them beautifully. In fact, one of the real pleasures of this movie is its action sequences. Using John Wick directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch as a second unit team here really pays off in some incredibly brutal, imaginative action scenes. The airport fight allows everybody to use their specific powers to best effect, but there are smaller moments that have just as much impact - Rogers and Bucky fighting a German SWAT team in a stairwell and trying not to kill any of them is notable, as are any of the fights involving Black Panther.
This is also the first film to get Spider-Man perfectly right: introduced as a a geeky teenager in a small Queens apartment, Holland captures the character's motormouthed humour but also his moral certainty, and his scene with Stark in his bedroom is a definite highlight. He also shines in the action scene, both for his ceaseless chatter and for the way the movie captures his superhuman athleticism and amateur technique.
But that scene comes with the final act just beginning, and it ultimately reduces the action to just Stark, Rogers and Bucky, in an intense climactic battle. And it works because these are characters the audience has come to know and care about, and the Russos have shaped this narrative enough that their conflict is made personal and painful.
And underlying all this is a level of geek-pleasing detail which is frankly awesome. From Wakanda's Vibranium (which is what Black Panther's suit is made from) to William Hurt returning as General Thunderbolt Ross, to the references to Hulk and Thor and Loki, to the spark between Vision and Scarlet Witch, Ant Man's (and Spider-Mans) starstruck response to Captain America, the moments involving Peggy Carter and her niece Sharon (Emily Van Camp), which culminate in a kiss with Rogers and a brilliant bros-giving-respect look from Falcon and Bucky, whose own relationship is similarly deftly observed, to Spider-Man irritating everybody he fights through his constant talking, and Martin Freeman as a smarmy Everett K Ross, together with the Howard Stark references and the Vision's theory that the heroes power has invited challenge, the texture of ideas and details here is so thick and rich that it becomes its own sort of text.
Captain America: Civil War is all the best of Marvels films, and some of the worst too. Which means its a superior piece of blockbusterdom, and then some.

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

(Joss Whedon, 2015)

This is a film which is so dense and crammed - with gags, one-liners, action sequences, characters, easter eggs, plot twists and cgi - that it is curiously exhausting. It feels like watching an entire season of a tv series in one sitting. But crucially, it's a really entertaining, fun tv series, made by a writer-director who understands and loves the genre he's working in.
Setting the Avengers up against a villain partly created by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr, as comfortable and funny in this role as ever) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo, still finding new depths in this character), Whedon manages the tricky job of balancing storylines and arcs for each of his principals while also keeping an epic, propulsive guiding narrative in ceaseless motion.
That involves Ultron (nicely voiced by James Spader), an artificial intelligence with multiple bodies whose ultimate goal is the usual destruction of the world. He enlists twins Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who give the Avengers a bit of trouble with their respective "he's fast, she's weird" abilities before eventually switching sides to fight against Ultron.
Whedon loves and understands these characters, which is why this film is always better during their conversations and exchanges than it is during the many cgi-heavy action scenes studded throughout the two-and-a-half-hour running time.
Perhaps most interesting is the relationship between Banner and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow. She talks him down out of his Hulk state, and reveals an unexpected vulnerability to his dorky integrity, which terrifies him, so afraid of hurting anyone around him. Their tentative romance is the emotional core of the film, and gives the ending much of its sting. Jeremy Renner is given much more to do this time around, revealing a solid, warm, normal home life with a wife and children, while also acting as the human glue bonding the "Gods" around him together. Evans and Hemsworth as Captain American and Thor do more of what they have done with aplomb across three films each at this point, their highlights mainly coming in their banter with Stark as Whedon ensures much of the focus is on the trinity at the heart of any decent Avengers story. There is a little set-up done for the next big film involving the characters, as the idealogical differences between Cap and Iron Man are emphasised, the battle lines subtly drawn.
That is the strangest thing about the Marvel films: because they are all part of one big ongoing narrative, it sometimes feels like nothing can ever really matter. We know another film is just around the corner, another villain, another threat, another epic battle. This is written in the DNA of the comics, but they are structured around it, whereas the architecture of a motion picture is different and built to supply a certain amount of third act catharsis or satisfaction that the Marvel films by necessity are unable to deliver.
Another problem is action. For an action genre, super-hero films generally don't handle action all that well. It is the achilles heel even of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy (which do splendid spectacle but fudge combat consistently until the third film), and has been uncertain in most of the Marvel films so far. Captain America: The Winter Soldier perhaps fares best here, but Avengers: Age of Ultron struggles. Whether it is down to Whedon's limitations as a director - unlikely, given that the fight scenes in Serenity are pretty good - or, more likely the overuse of cgi and accompanying spectacular camera movements to track it, many of the big action sequences here are visually incoherent and chaotically choreographed.
Luckily: there are ancillary pleasures and many of them.
Whedon has always had a gift for one-liners and Avengers: Age of Ultron is stuffed with them, from the others chiding Captain America for his dislike of bad language, to Thor and Vision discussing the perfect balance of Mjolnir. Of the newcomers, Bettany is most arresting as Vision, ably handling some great gags and action beats, while Olsen and Johnson act as crucial new blood to the mix.
The details here are crucial and brilliant: from the Irish accent (Voiced by Kerry Condon) of F.R.I.D.A.Y to Stark's asides during his battle with Hulk to Ulysses Klaw (Andy Serkis) being involved in supplying Vibranium from Wakanda, to Stark and Thor bragging about their girlfriends and War Machine's (Don Cheadle) angst that his story does not impress the Avengers they all play well and give the story and the world more texture and life.
The cast is filed out with some unexpected class in tiny roles: Linda Cardellini, Julie Delpy, Idris Elba, Anthony Mackie and Hayley Atwell all pop up alongside Serkis and Cheadle, again making this world feel populous and lived-in.
For all its flaws, as summer blockbusters go, this is a sumptuous piece of purest entertainment; funny, exciting and consistently impressive.

LUCY

(Luc Besson, 2014)

Besson has always had a knack for establishing a simple, gripping high concept dramatic device quickly and economically. The first 10 minutes of Lucy features two examples of this talent; in the first we watch Lucy (Scarlett Johansson, beautifully cast), plainly a bit of a party girl studying in Taipei, as she argues with a newish boyfriend who is trying to persuade her to drop off a mysterious briefcase in a hotel. Of course this errand leaves the boyfirend dead and Lucy in the hands of a Korean gang run by Mr Jang (Choi Min-Sik) who want to use her as a mule, an experimental new drug surgically concealed inside her stomach ready to be transported to Europe. Secondly there is the scene where a terrified Lucy is forced to open the the briefcase she has delivered while Mr Jang and his men hide behind cover in case it is a bomb.
Besson shoots these scenes simply and classically. Some of the style - we must remember that the "movement" of which Besson along with directors like Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax belonged was known as the "cinema du look" - which so enveloped his earlier work seems to have dropped away, and though Lucy always looks good, there is nothing all that distinctive or remarkable about its visual style.
Instead - and this is new for Besson - the content is fascinating. The ideas in Lucy about human beings only using 10% of our brains and the possibilities if we ever accessed more may be half-baked sci-fi, but at least there are ideas. And Besson expresses them visually, or at least tries to. His film has passages that recall a lobotomised Tree of Life, others that suggest 2001 and Koyanisqatsi. And yet, sometimes the effect is like nothing so much as an extremely well-shot and cut Powerpoint presentation. And that is without mentioning the dissonance created by juxtaposing all that with the international crime drama (the kind of thing Besson's Production company, EuropaCorp, specialises in) that the first act suggests Lucy will become. It never quite becomes that. Instead, that story - of Lucy's attempts to track down the rest of the drug that has allowed her to access more of her brain and hence given her what are in effect superpowers - runs alongside the changes Lucy is registering within herself and how they are effecting her.
As she begins to transcend time and space the film has one foot bogged down in a familiar, predictably violent action film. While Johansson is excellent - this role suggests a sort of dumber companion to Under the Skin - this strange schizophrenia is both the films strength and its great weakness. It makes for a movie that is entertaining, weirdly self-aware, and utterly brainless.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

(Anthony & Joe Russo, 2014)

Marvel's confidence is startling; now that the universe they work in has been established, risks can be taken. So here we have a massive conspiracy action-thriller set mainly in the corridors of power in Washington DC. Only the hero who discovers the conspiracy happens to be Captain America (Chris Evans), and the organisation behind it is Hydra, the surviving Nazi dark science and occult division introduced in the first Captain America film. The Russo brothers reveal a genuine gift for action here; this film is stuffed with extended, brutal action sequences, most of which are nicely choreographed and thrillingly shot. We are shown Captain America as a sort of super-Bourne, an unstoppable fighting machine who cuts through most opponents with absolute ease. That only makes his clashes with the Winter Soldier - a mysterious Soviet assassin - more exciting and important to the story. Here our hero is facing an equal, introducing a crucial note of vulnerability to his character.
The plot finds him discovering that there is something rotten at the heart of SHIELD, the spy organisation at the heart of the Marvel Universe,  run by Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson). When there is an attempt on Fury's life, Cap and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) find themselves on the run from SHIELD, needing the help of a new friend, Sam (Anthony Mackie), better known as "Falcon,"as they race to stop the simultaneous launch of three immense, heavily armed helicarriers into the skies above America.
Alongside the blistering, relentlessly growing action scenes, Marvel casts its films impeccably, and the addition of the likes of Robert Redford and Frank Grillo in crucial roles just helps make this film play that much more satisfyingly. While there may be a couple of scenes of men in suits arguing in offices too many - indeed, the whole thing is about a half an hour too long - even those sequences contain their fair share of wit. The scene where Arnim Zola explains how Hydra has shaped the 20th Century until people are so willing to accept a surveillance state is darkly hilarious, as are many of the references to all the pop culture Cap missed while he was frozen.
But it is the principals who carry this. Evans nails Cap again, capturing his uncertainty about the modern world and his confidence in his own moral barometer, but also revealing a quiet sense of humour, and a melancholic sense of loss. Johansson's Widow is an altogether more complex creation, and the dynamic between the two characters is fascinating and nicely played by the actors.

UNDER THE SKIN

(Jonathan Glazer, 2013)

Part shudder, part sigh, Glazer's adaptation of Michel Faber's blackly satirical novel is not quite like any other film I've seen.
It follows an alien in the form of a young woman (Scarlett Johansson, always underplaying and correspondingly magnetic) as she drives a van around a grey, Autumnal Scotland on the hunt for lone men. She lures them back to a dilapidated house on the edge of Glasgow, where they are swallowed by a black liquid which seems to turn them into empty skin-bags. Another alien, in the form of a mute motorcyclist, monitors her activities, tidying up the occasional mess in ruthless fashion. But after an encounter with a disfigured young man, she appears to change, softening in her attitude to the people surrounding her, putting her mission at risk.
That makes the plot sound straightforward, which it never really is. Nor is it really the point. Instead, Glazer immerses us in a visceral mindfuck. That begins with the slow opening reveal of an eyeball being constructed in minute detail, Mica Levi's hypnotic, often disturbing soundtrack grinding on the nerves. The scenes of Johansson on the streets and in the clubs and shopping centres of Glasgow were largely shot with hidden cameras, and there are long montages of ordinary people walking, getting on with their quotidian business, unaware of any camera. Men chat to Johansson, oblivious to her celebrity, plainly shocked by her exoticism and beauty.
This conjures up a heavily atmospheric fog of place; somewhat reminiscent of Tavernier's Death Watch (also set in a crumbling Glasgow), Glazer teases it by juxtaposing these scenes with the bizarre sci-fi sequences. The scene where we follow a man down into the black pool and he watches as another victim implodes is horrifying, yet, like so much here, absolutely beautiful. All of this combines to create a dreamlike mood - Johansson moves through the real world, curiously removed from it, always watching, rarely understanding, her curiosity slowly awakening.  Her alien consciousness is thus implicit - we are seeing this world as she sees it, and it is flat, odd, abstract, and oddly, surprisingly beautiful, even at its ugliest.
And there are many haunting scenes - the scene where she watches a family die on a beach, the child left wailing. Her encounter with the disfigured man, tentative and sad in a way nothing else here is. Her interlude with a kind stranger. The final shot, of snow falling towards the camera.
Glazer is a visionary, something made increasingly clear with each film, and his control of atmosphere and texture is precise and beautifully utilised. Levi's sensational score and Daniel Landlin's lovely cinematography don't hurt.
This is a unique film; eerie, mysterious, stunning, unforgettable. It is still with me , vividly, a day later, something which rarely happens with modern films.

HER

(Spike Jonze, 2013)

Her feels, well...almost perfect.
Beautifully judged and finely emotionally calibrated, it manages to work as a simple, surprisingly conventional love story (following the arc of a love affair, from meet cute to emotional parting) while also indulging in an accessible, interesting investigation into modern communication, and how it has affected our relationships.
Set in a very-near future (with exteriors shot in Shanghai, making great use of that City's now Epic skyline), Her follows Theodore Twombley (Joaquin Phoenix), who works at a firm writing personal, emotional letters for clients. Recently separated from his wife (Rooney Mara), Theodore is isolated and lonely, but when he buys new software, he finds himself falling in love with his Operating System, named Samantha (voiced brilliantly by Scarlett Johansson). Samantha is evolving and intuitive, and their relationship has many difficulties, all of them compounded when she begins to grow beyond Theodore's understanding...
The future world of Her is only a few short steps from our own. Here is a world where everyone is in semi-constant communion with the device they carry around, where people appear to talk to themselves in public, and computers respond to voice commands (this is a world seemingly devoid of keyboards). The sublime production design and, more particularly, cinematography (by Hoyte van Hoytema) emphasise the flat, thin light of modern-day Los Angeles, and find personal spaces full of vibrant, earthy colours and lots of natural light. There are many witty little details - from the computer game Theodore plays to the LA transit system in which he travels and thinks - all of which help ground this story and enable Jonze and his more-than-capable cast to ensure it delivers an emotional experience.
And it feels more personal and emotional than any of his other films (which is saying something, given how oddly powerful his work can be). Much of this is down to Phoenix, now firmly ensconced as his generation's greatest leading man, here making Theodore vulnerable, interesting, poetic and also self-destructive. He is very much a "Character", but it is the film's greatest triumph that the audience can feel the universal emotions of his relationship with Samantha. The warmth and excitement of the early stages giving way to difficulty and complex growth, then the final, desperately sad stages. This film could be about any relationship.
But it is more interesting, funnier, more moving, because Jonze chose this setting, chose - in the era of Apple and Siri - to tell this particular story. Not many films can be quite so entertaining and beautiful yet just this thought-provoking. Her manages it effortlessly.

THE AVENGERS

(Joss Whedon, 2012)

I've long wondered how they could possibly make an Avengers movie work. How to contain all those big, mythic icons? How to give each character enough room and time to do them justice? How could any blockbuster possibly be Epic enough, huge enough to replicate the storylines the Avengers characters feature in in their Marvel comics adventures? And beyond that, how to stop it looking just a little bit silly when Thor, Captain America, the Hulk and Iron Man are all onscreen at the same time?
Joss Whedon has found answers to all those questions, and in doing so, he's fashioned one of the best summer blockbusters of the last few years, a massive spectacle shot through with wit, lots of action and the fun that should be present in any good Super-Hero film.
Part of the miracle of The Avengers is that it exists at all. Marvel Studios' ambitious long-range planning - using the Iron Man films, Thor, the Incredible Hulk and Captain America as prequels, each containing elements that linked in to the overall tapestry of the Marvel Universe - looked like folly from a distance, but it pays off handsomely here, as fans of those films will find deeper resonances in this one, with character arcs maintaining consistency with each of the stories of these heroes.
The plot involves Loki (Tom Hiddleston), vengeful brother of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his plan to use the Tesseract (last seen in Captain America) an ancient energy source, to bring an Alien Army to Earth in order to take over the planet. Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) Director of Super Intelligence-Espionage organisation SHIELD, reactivates an old plan to gather together various super-powered "freaks" to form a Strike Force in defence. Only these heroes are a volatile mixture; from the tension between man-out-of-time Captain America (Chris Evans) and flippant playboy Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) to the very existence of Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and Thor's links with Loki, they are, as Hulks human form Banner puts it, "A time bomb".
A film this big, with so many important characters and plot elements to line-up, needs a strong hand orchestrating it, and Whedon proves to be just that. He keeps the exposition short and snappy, sprinkles the first hour with solid action beats which also function as character development - the first meeting between Thor, Captain America and Iron Man establishes their differing approaches nicely - and gives everybody something to do. Nobody is lost in this ensemble. Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow may be the only two Avengers without powers, but they each get big scenes and moments to shine.
Hiddleston has a great time as Loki, playing him as a ripe old pantomime villain, fond of the sound of his own voice, in love with his own arrogance and so blinded by a vividly-suggested hatred he will stop at nothing to get what he thinks he wants. His explosions of brattish temper are nicely played.
Evans, Hemsworth and Downey Jr all have confident handles on their characters, giving their scenes - especially together - a pleasingly natural spark. Downey Jr gets most of the gags, and delivers them with aplomb, while Evans' Captain America is all about principal and old-fashioned heroism. He has one action beat at the climax which is beautifully done, giving some sense of what his character is meant to mean. Hemsworth's scenes play a little like scenes from Thor, but he communicates his character's bemused affection for humans and his horror at his brothers actions. Ruffalo is the only newcomer, and his Banner is subtly wary of everything, especially himself, but also dryly funny and fearful of nothing.
Team dynamics has long been a Whedon specialty, present in his work for tv on Buffy and Firefly, and that means that the scenes of all these characters standing around together, bickering and wise-cracking are justnas entertaining as the big action sequences. This may be the funniest action film vie seen in a while, with some beautifully timed one-liners to alleviate the mounting tension as the colossal finale looms.
And it is colossal; the final half hour or so shows alien army invading and their fight with the Avengers in the streets and skies and on the rooftops of Manhattan. This is everything a little boy or girl reading super-hero comics wants from a super-hero film. It is Epic, absolutely immense in scale and yet filled with character detail and brilliantly satisfying action beats. Super-hero films often struggle with endings, many devolving into vague, incoherent lightshows, others resorting to simple, brutal fisticuffs. Whedon seems to understand this, and his approach - treating this like a War film - really works. Seamus McGarvey's cinematography is key here; visceral and immersive, it ensures that this story is grittily human throughout, no matter how fantastic its treatment of gods and monsters may be. The sense of peril and involvement makes it more rousing than the climax of any other Marvel movie, and it contains so many rich geekbait moments it's dizzying. This is the Hulk done right, cutting loose in some awesome scenes of destruction while all the other heroes do too. The mix of tremendous spectacle and comedy - those gags never stop - is exhilarating.
There are weaknesses here; it is too long, the first hour slightly disjointed, the soundtrack is utterly forgettable, the cosmic stuff rings badly against the rest, and its all patently ludicrous. And yet, against all odds, it works. It really works.

WE BOUGHT A ZOO

(Cameron Crowe, 2011)

Cameron Crowe specialises in likeable films. Even the single unmitigated disaster in his career - Elizabethtown - flirts with a sort of cheery likableness many directors would struggle for. All of his work is set in a warm, pretty version of the real world, filled with interesting, witty, quirky people (often helpfully played by beautiful movie stars) and soundtracked to classic rock and alternative music.
We Bought A Zoo is no different. What makes it, and the best of Crowe's work, so interesting is the dissonances and tensions created by his tackling of bigger, darker themes than his world can really cope with. Almost Famous was about innocence and adulthood, Jerry Maguire about integrity, personal and corporate, and this film is about grief and loss.
It follows Benjamin Dee (Matt Damon) as he tries to help his 14 year old son and 7 year old daughter through the aftermath of their mothers death by relocating them and purchasing an ailing zoo, which requires maintenance and renovation if it is to reopen in time for the lucrative summer season, the profits from which will enable it to survive. The Zoo is staffed by an appealing bunch of eccentrics headed by the driven Kelly (Scarlett Johansson).
That's a pretty classically generic set-up, providing a stage upon which everybody can learn and grow and change in an appallingly touchy-feely way; and We Bought A Zoo certainly contains more than it's fair share of that sort of material. There are many cute animal scenes, an over-extended metaphor involving a tiger, unlikely bonding, and against-the- odds triumph over adversity scenes aplenty. It's all a bit too long, and not quite funny enough with all it's schmaltz and sentiment.
But it works.
Crowe ensures it charms, aided by a relaxed Damon and Johansson in her most girl-next-door role in an age. Then there is Thomas Haden Church, given all of the best lines as Damon's worried brother, and a nice soundtrack which mixes the usual Tom Petty, Neil Young and Pearl Jam with a new Jonsi score to good effect. Crowe still has no appreciable visual style, but he's not afraid of big emotional scenes; here are multiple conversations about mourning a loved one and coping with loss, children dealing with grief and adults trying not to. If that comes across mostly as a slightly pat, easy sentimentality, then the few scenes where it becomes touching just about make up for that.