Avengers: Age of Ultron

Had a look at Avengers: Age of Ultron a few days ago. Seems to be doing good business at the worldwide box office - around 1.4 billion at the mo but two thirds of that is from outside the US. Maybe this is why most of the action ISN'T set in the US (Eastern Europe, Southern Africa, South Korea - incidentally, Sokovia and Wakanda BUT New York and South Korea??). I like the fact that the leads are saving 'people' not just 'Americans' as is usually the case in Hollywood moolah spunk-fests.

A couple of new characters - Scarlett Witch and Quicksilver - slotted into the film well enough, though their back story differed from the X-Men one. Here they're referred to as 'enhanced', not mutants. This has something to do with legal wranglings between Marvel and Fox. Not sure about their casting, especially Taylor-Johnson as the fast one. He's super bland.

In contrast to Paul Bettany as The Vision. His entrance, including the hammer pay-off, is probably the highlight of the flick for me and he has a great riposte to Ultron near the end of the film. The Black Widow and Hulk almost-rom works quite well and serves as a nice humanistic aside to the smashy-smashy. In fact, the folk least well served in the first movie seem to get a lot more to do here. Barton (Hawkeye) has more depth and a few key scenes, including some self-deprecating stuff about his skill-set. Romanoff (Widow) and Banner (Hulk) have a number of nice scenes together as well. But of the three purported main characters - Iron Man, Captain America and Thor - Downey Jnr still steals the show. Thor is a little marginalised (the cave scene was curiously adjunct) and Cap is just bog standard-boring but he can throw a mean shield.

The action set-pieces are well choreographed and directed, Hulk v Stark a highlight. The introduction of Ultron at the end of Stark's soiree is quite well done too. But alas, this has another in the growing line of 'things falling from the air' climaxes, this time a city. And I'm getting a bit cocked off with the old 'last dog saved' and 'my child, my child! Somebody save him, please!' nonsense.You'll know what I mean if you've seen the film.

So overall, nothing new but bags of fun and I think I prefer this film to the first one. Some of the writing is top-notch and keeping something this big together must have been a fucking massive green headache for Whedon and his team. Kudos to them.



Nice little point of interest from imdb - 'In Avengers, Banner is shown becoming Hulk but is never shown converting back to Banner. In this movie, Banner is never shown becoming Hulk but is shown reverting back to Banner'. One for the nerds.

Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

A character in Birdman suggests to the titular figure that he 'confuses love for admiration' and this neatly sums up the film for me. Easy to admire, very hard to love. The admirable part mostly shows itself through the celebrated cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki. His hand-held, 'one take' style, though hardly ground-breaking, is technically brilliant. Lubezki has tried his hand at this kind of technique (gimmick?) before with that great scene in Children of Men.

Take this away though, and I'm afraid the film appears as something of an actors wankfest. Some of the acting is pretty good and I'm thinking of Emma Stone and Ed Norton mainly here. The others seem to be pushing things a little too hard (Galifianakis is shite). It may be that acting as earnest theatre types, so in love with their profession, rubbed off a little because some of the ham was actually sniffable.

The biggest problem was that I didn't give a rat's arse about any of the characters in the film. I don't demand a character to love, like, desire, enjoy, etc in every film, but at least give me someone to care about. Even the one the audience is probably expected to sympathise or associate with comes across as a spoilt, rich kid with an attitude problem. The script tries very hard to single her out as our 'proxy' - Norton blows sunshine up her arse, she has a scene with her father that's designed to make her seem 'real' and she's the only person in the final frame of the movie. But still.......

Admittedly there are some nice lines of dialogue. Keaton grabs at his half naked body and anguishes that he looks "like a turkey with leukaemia". Looking for a new actor for the play, the producer explains that Fassbender is "doing the prequel to the X-Men prequel". Much of the dialogue is snappy and clever but that's not the issue. The film is simply let down by a story that doesn't really go anywhere and characters that are very hard to identify with.

For a great film that wrestles with the topic of 'art' versus 'popcorn' (or movies vs theatre), see the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink. Wipes the floor with Birdman. A couple of scenes also reminded me of another superior film, Spike Jonze's Adaptation.

End of Year Report - 2014

No mid-year report this year as by the end of June, I hadn't seen ten films that were good enough. No worries for the year in full though. Here are the ten best films I saw in 2014.



1. Interstellar (2014)
2. The Hunt [Jagten] (2012)
3. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
4. Spaced: Skip to the End (2004)
5. Gone Girl (2014)
6. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
7. Philomena (2013)
8. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
9. Ace in the Hole (1951)
10. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)



And here are the ten worst. Really only the first on this list made me angry. The others were just mostly crap.


1. We Bought a Zoo (2011)
2. Riddick (2013)
3. The Best Offer [Deception] {La migliore offerta} (2013)
4. Les Miserables (2012)
5. Priest (2011)
6. Noah (2014)
7. Day Watch [Dnevnoy dozor] (2006)
8. The Inbetweeners 2 (2014)
9. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013)
10. The Wind Rises [Kaze tachinu] (2013)