Film Shapes

This is the sixth and final film in phase five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and by my reckoning, it's the second best of the phase (after the third Guardians film). It's certainly an improvement on the flaccid Captain America: Brave New World from a few months back. Kevin Feige has done a good bit of business getting the right team together here, not unlike the film itself. The reasonably unknown crew includes director Jacob Schreier, writers Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, and cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo. Schreier hasn't actually directed a feature for ten years (he's been involved in TV) but they all have some interesting credits to their names. The film picks up the story of Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), adopted sister of Black Widow. She's taking jobs for Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), mostly illegal cleanup gigs with high body counts, but is becoming disenchanted with all the drudgery. She's in a murderous malaise. A fatality funk...