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.

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO

(Peter Strickland, 2012) A tweedy, buttoned-down Englishman (immaculately underplayed throughout by Toby Jones) arrives in Rome in the 1970s to work as the Sound Engineer on a Giallo horror film. He finds his Italian employers unhelpful, unpleasant and even somewhat sinister, but despite his initial reluctance, eventually embraces his role creating the gruesome soundscape of the film. But reality itself begins to shift, and, homesick and dislocated, he starts to lose his grip on his own sanity. Very much a love letter to the Giallo genre, Strickland's film is beautifully directed. It sustains a sense of mounting dread through bold cutting, powerful imagery and a brilliant soundtrack, but it is never quite itself a horror film. Rather it is an opaque, disturbing character study of a character assaulted by his environment. Jones' Gilderoy is a particular type of Brit abroad, clinging to his politeness and boffinry, reading letters from his mother, while the passionate, volatile Italians rage around him. Rome is unseen here; instead all we see is the studio, a corridor and Gilderoy's room, all lit by electric lights, emphasising the unnatural enclosure of this man, even as he recalls the natural life of his home. He even crunches twigs underfoot in the studio, as it reminds him of home. For all that, it is quite a chilly experience, easier to admire than it is to like. Strickland's brilliance is undeniably impressive yet also slightly academic, his films register precise but awfully narrow. The best moment is the most purely pastiched (and the only glimpse we are given of the film within a film, "The Equestian Complex", which we mostly see bathing the characters faces in red as they watch it's scenes of rape, witchcraft and an "aroused goblin"), a dazzling, blood-red credit sequence, soundtracked to sound like Goblin's work for Dario Argento, its wit and perfectly-calibrated tone highlight what's best about the film.

RED LIGHTS

(Rodrigo Cortés, 2012) There's something appealingly redolent of 1970s filmmaking about Cortés' Red Lights. It is determinedly downbeat and mostly done in a minor key, for one thing, insistent on it's own atmosphere, which is wintery, rainy, full of blurred, grim backgrounds and sad, broken characters. The sustained tone of quiet menace and off-key dislocation grows as the film proceeds to a big, climactic revelation which is no great surprise to a viewer schooled in the M Night Shyamalan brand of paranormal thriller. It is mostly a success, spinning a couple of genuinely tense sequences from it's premise. It follows paranormal debunkers from an American University, Doctors Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and Buckley (Cillian Murphy) in the run-up to the great comeback of America's most famous Psychic, the mysterious blind showman Simon Silver (Robert DeNiro) who reads minds, bends spoons and cures the sick onstage. Along the way they expose a few other frauds and hoaxes and Buckley begins a relationship with student Sally (Elisabeth Olsen), while rival Doctor Shackleton (Toby Jones) strives to prove that such phenomena are real. Cortés writes, edits and directs, and his talent is obvious. His film is always good to look at, depends on mood and a couple of old-fashioned edge of the frame occurrences and shock cuts for its big scares, and always feels solidly, earthily textured, from the car Buckley drives Matheson around in to Silver's creepy appointment room in an anonymous building. The narrative is less successful; losing steam midway when it should really be amping up, it is a little too familiar in the way it sets up then delivers jolts and in its plot trajectory toward final showdown and twist. But a strong cast helps make it absorbing; Weaver effortlessly suggests the baggage and anger driving her search for truth, DeNiro gets by on his presence and easy ability to intimidate, and Olsson (in quite a thankless "girlfriend" part) and Jones lend it some more class. But Murphy is the standout, his disturbingly piercing eyes and exhausted, occasionally manic presence compelling us to keep watching as he gets deeper and deeper.