The Avengers

The huge crossover film which the Marvel movie continuity has been building up to, The Avengers is a Joss Whedon blockbuster about Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) teaming up to fight Thor's evil brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who is poised to take over Earth. However, "teaming up" is easier said that done, and Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has to do a lot of managing to keep the team from tearing itself apart before Loki and his allies from another dimension can.

Finally, we get a movie that depicts superhero comics accurately: you need to know the central characters and premises of about half a dozen different stories to understand anything that's going on. Yay!

I was kind of wary about this film because of two things: The trailers mostly focused on a huge metropolitan battle that was cut so that it looked like it was taken right out of Transformers 3, as well as Robert Downey Jr. doing his thing, which I feel is starting to get old. Well, screw marketing, because once again it has done a great job at making a good movie look bad. Not only is that action scene they hyped way better when you don't have to butcher it to keep the invading army from appearing on screen, but they picked the worst jokes in the movie for their adverts. Not only does Downey get a lot of good lines, but everyone does. There's a surprising lot of comedy, and every character gets to crack jokes, not just the clown.

Thor and Captain America both had pacing as their biggest issue. Cap had way too little stuff happen in between his becoming a superhero and the final battle. Thor took its sweet time starting, and then had way too much build-up to a way too small climax. Avengers gets this just right. We already know these characters, there's no need to establish them any more. Let's just start off with the crisis presenting itself, then get the characters together, and then see what we can make happen with them. I'll admit I was getting worried about a quarter way in that the movie is going to suffer from having too many subplots, but thankfully most of them are resolved by the way the final action climax hits home. The movie is two hours and a third, but it accomplishes so much that you'll swear there's no way they fit all that in one hundred and forty minutes.

The performances are really good. I never saw Ed Norton's Hulk for comparison, but Mark Ruffalo is a fantastic Bruce Banner. He has the body language of a person who's trying really hard to keep themselves in check. All the returning cast keep up the high quality up, but to my surprise the standout star of the film was Tom Hiddleston. I was kind of indifferent toward Loki in Thor, because he was way too obviously evil but they tried to play him as this tragic character. Here, he's past being sympathetic, so Hiddleston gets to be a straight-up villain, and it works greatly. He does his slimy villain speeches, he addresses the people he wants to rule, he gets arrogant and he gets furious. It's just a really good basic evil villain, who is still kept fresh with expert writing.

The action is really well-done. All the characters get to shine, and their individual superpowers are used well together and never conveniently discarded to fit a scene better. The big battle scenes flow well, and you can keep track of where everyone is and what they're doing. There's this really great sweeping battle shot that I can't really describe to you all: it has to be seen to be believed. I think that Loki's evil army allies are maybe a little bit too... Stormtroopery, though at least unlike Stormtroopers, they don't get taken down by teddy bears (who would be the New York police department in this allegory, I guess).

The 3D was... okay, I guess. There was one scene early on where I had trouble telling what was happening because it was so dark, but other than that I was never bothered. There were a couple of cool 3D shots, mostly having to do with Hawkeye's crazy arrow skills, but I doubt you'll be missing much if you see it in regular 2D.

Overall, it's just a damn good film, with a tightly packed and well-crafted plot, lots of interesting and memorable characters, some good humour, great action and superhero goodness. Dark Knight Rising has to work its ass off to surpass this for the best superhero film of the summer.

2011 as a movie year

'twas all right.

I can't help but be underwhelmed by a year that didn't supply anything to my list of favourite films of all time. 2009 gave me The Princess and the Frog and 2010 introduced me to Scott Pilgrim. This year didn't really have a definite stand-out best film for my tastes.

As far as drama goes, Drive and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo were the best that I saw, representing the opposite virtues of minimalism and... blockbuster-ism.

In action, Tintin was the best. Captain America gets a honourable mention for managing to do well worldwide, while apparently North America couldn't care less for Tintin.

Even my more optimistic movienut friend was willing to admit that this was a poor year for comedy. Paul was the best that comes to mind, and though it's a pretty good film, the general level of humour was low. Midnight in Paris gets the honourable mention for Adrien Brody as Salvador Dalí, the best one-scene performance of the year by far.

Immortals was the shittiest film I saw. Transformers 3 was really bad too, but somehow I can't really get emotional about a Transformers movie being bad anymore at this point.

I don't really care that much for Oscars, myself, so no comments about my guesses or bets regarding the nominations and victories there.

Well, that's it for 2011. Let's see what 2012 has in store! Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit and Prometheus seem to hold a lot of promise.

PS. 13 Assassins was left unmentioned in this post because it saw its original Japanese release in 2010. If it was a 2011 movie, it'd be the best one.

Captain America: The First Avenger

"I've knocked out Hitler two hundred times."

I can't believe it took a month for this movie to come out in Finland after its so-called "world premiere". I don't mind the cold weather or high taxes here, but the movie release dates suck. At least this didn't take as long as the Disney movies do...

Captain America: The First Avenger is the fifth installment of the Marvel Movieverse, but takes place before any of the others. Aside from framing scenes at the beginning and end, the movie details the history of the eponymous superhero during the early 1940s. Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans) is a frail but idealistic Brooklynite youngster who is denied recruitment to the U.S. army time and time again due to his asthma. During one of his attempts at recruiting he is overheard by Dr. Erskine, the leader of a supersoldier program. Rogers is recruited to become the prototype of a new generation of soldiers, but ends up being the only one of the bunch.

Stuck with a single supersoldier with no combat experience, the army decides to do what any sensible organisation would. They make him a mascot for their propaganda machine. Rogers in discontent with dancing and singing, though, and strives to get to real heroics. Meanwhile a grim Nazi mystic named Johann Schmidt, or Red Skull (played by Hugo Weaving), who has a connection with Rogers, uncovers an object you might have seen in Marvel's earlier summer release and uses it for his own ends.

Now let's get something out of the way: I personally have almost no patience for nationalism in movies, and even less so for Yank nationalism. It should be an indicator of something when I say that this movie never made me groan or roll my eyes. Braveheart was more overbearingly American than Captain America is, and Braveheart was supposed to take place in freaking Scotland. So to my fellow Europeans or what have we, I implore you: give this movie a chance. It never tells us the importance of liberty and freedom and the apple pie. It's written for everyone, not just for Yanks.

With that said, I liked this movie. It wasn't perfect, but it was probably my favourite superhero movie thus far. Like with Thor, the structure of the plot is its weakest component. The time in between Cap's first mission and the final battle is too short. The movie could have been ten minutes longer, with the time used to either add in some slightly more subtle action or a scene with Rogers visiting his neighbourhood and reminiscing about old times or something. As it is, the movie's speed keeps picking up after the superpower injection, and it suffers from not slowing down enough before the third act

The performances are good more often than not. Chris Evans manages to be idealistic and righteous without being arrogant or holier-than-thou, and he emotes really well. I'm not sure (and am too lazy to check) how they accomplished the differences between his appearance before and after the injections, but whatever the effect, it's really convincing. I kinda wanted him to pull out a skateboard at some point, though. Hugo Weaving could be a bit hammier for increased enjoyability, but I think it would have just turned Red Skull into Agent Smith, which would have been distracting. Hayley Atwell plays the British love interest well enough, though I found the character a bit bland. Tommy Lee Jones does his usual thing as Colonel Totally-Not-Patton, finally redeeming himself for agreeing to do Men In Black 2. Dominic Cooper tries to measure up to Robert Downey Jr. as Howard Stark, but he's kind of forgettable.

The action is great, and there's a wide variety of it. We get sneaking around, fist fights, shield-throwing, gunfights and chase scenes. Some of the bigger action scenes are a bit confusingly written, though, such as a scene where the bad guys' lair isn't in alert while the good guys are swarming around and blowing shit up until Red Skull himself notices it, or when the allied army forsakes all contemporary military tactics and does a WW1-style charge toward the enemy.

I recommend Cap to anyone who likes superhero films or action films. It's a movie about the little guy getting a chance to do big heroics, and despite the name and the setting, it's applicable to all nationalities (yes, even Germans). If you've never seen or read Captain America before, then this is a great way to introduce yourself to him. Don't miss the film.