This morning my sweetie-wife, a friend, and I went and caught an early show of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the most recent addition to the ever growing franchise that is the Marvel Cinematic universe.

Starting with Iron Man, Marvel Studios has been building a shared universe setting for some of their hero properties which culminated with the end of ‘phase one’ The Avengers. Last year saw the start of ‘phase two’ with Iron Man 3, and that phase continued with Thor: The Dark World and now Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

If you are one of those people who have seen all the cinematic universe films to date, then you will likely be pleased with this film. It builds nicely on the material established before hand and extends and reshapes the direction of the cinematic universe. If you have not seen the preceding movies, then this one may have a couple of section that feel overly expository, but you will still be up to speed on critical backstory.

Captain America: The Winter Solider continues the evolving story of Steve Rodgers, 5’4” 95lb 4-F war volunteer transformed into the world’s first super hero by the serum/process that made him a 6’3”, 210 lbs epitome of human ability, Displaced from his own culture and time by a prolonged ice-nap, and now having found a place in the world after the alien invasion of New York City, Steve is a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. specializing in hostage rescues and other heroic feats. A man with a simple worldview and believing that things can still be classified into right and wrong, he’s out of place amongst spies and assassins.

The film is a success in that it manages to be two sequels in a single story. It is a sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger, the elements of that movie are critical background to the plots and obstacles  Steve faces, both physical and emotional, while the story is also a worthy continuation of the alien invasion from The Avengers and the after-effects of that disaster on S.H.I.E.L.D. and the World Security Council. This balancing act of simultaneously serving two masters is admiralty well done, something the other films of phase two have not done as competently.

In addition to Cap, The Black Widow, and Nick Fury,  this film also introduces a number of new characters to the cinematic universe, including The Falcon, a high flying war veteran.

The movie moves quickly, the two hours and fifteen minutes speeding right on by as one set piece action scene leads into another. However there is enough plot and character to carry a real story, so in my opinion this film avoided the dread, “we fight, then we fight some more, and we end it with a bigger fight.’ There are a few fairly predictable turns to the plot, and I for one would like to see a little more originality in the idea of politicians both good and bad, but I suppose that will have to wait for my own material.

The films small faults and missteps are far from serious and I would recommend seeing this one in the theater, though nothing in the visual work screamed a need for 3D.

p.s.

I have no idea how the television show ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ is going to deal with the fall out of this chapter in the cinematic universe. It’s really big. I mean like blowing up Vulcan big.

So this morning, after losing the requisite hour of sleep the time regulatory gods, my sweetie-wife and I went to the local cinema to take in a movie. My sweetie-wife wanted to see 300: Rise of an Empire, the sequel to 300, a highly stylized retelling of the Spartan stand against the Persian Empire at Thermopylae. Now if you have seen 300, based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, then you know it wildly took liberties with the history and the culture of the Spartans.  300: The Rise of an Empire is true to the Hollywood tradition of a sequel being less intelligent and less well made of a film that the one it is following.

In this movie the physical are more at odds with reality, the characters as even more two-dimensional, and the story is much thinner. This is truly a film that should be shown to aspiring writing, both screenplay and prose, as an example of what not to do.

I had forgotten my watch at home so I am unable to tell you when the story starts, as the movie is front loaded with what looks to be at first a prologue, but turns out to be long tedious minutes of exposition. I am not taking about 3 or 5 minutes, I am talking about 10, 20 maybe more. When the story does start, it often stalls again for more exposition. At one point they literally give you a flashback to the opening of the movie as though you may have forgotten what happened a mere 60 minutes earlier.

This movie also is a prime example of everything that is wrong with digital effect as they are used today. While digital artists can create anything that can be visualized, that does not mean that everything that can be visualized should be created. In this film there are many shots of ships at sea, moving up and over large waves, throwing spray, and the characters aboard these vessels at standing stock still. Often these are not, or at least do not appear to be, digital doubles for the actors, but rather the actors standing in from of a green screen, lacking any realistic motion at all. In one battle the seas are so heavy that vast waves more than thirty feet high loom and present themselves as oceanic hills. Of course in reality ships if the era would be in serious danger of foundering during a storm like that, but in this movie they maneuver and attack with ease.

There is the now standard, falling damage doesn’t apply, digital stunt work, and the impossible animals. (Seriously the lend-lease with Mordor and Persia must still be in effect because the Persian war elephant or more like Oliphants, looming larger an than real land animal.)

My sweetie-wife noted that several times throughout the presentation I suppressed laughter. I assure it was not due to the filmmakers intent to impart humor. In fact this is a fairly humorless movie, and that studious effort to be meaningful and utterly failing is one of the many sources of mirth.

This movie is MST3K ready, right out of the box.

No Sunday Night Movie this week, too tired to make it through any film and I watched part of Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.

So instead I have a mini review for you of a film I watched view Netflix streaming Saturday afternoon with a couple of friends and my sweetie-wife; Cockneys vs Zombies.

You have to pity someone wanting to making a zombie film these days. The vein was never very thick and it has been throughly mined. We have seen Zombie at Night, at Dawn, in the Day, Nazi Zombies, fast zombies, indestructible zombies, Zombies on a boat, zombies on a plane, Zombies on an island, Zombies in Spain pretending it was the Uk, rom-com zombies, Romeo and Juliet zombies, Sex-slave zombies, and pet zombies, so it’s getting pretty  hard to find a new angle on the genre.

This film builds its humor on when the lower class, and stereotypical seen as criminal, London east-enders, Cockneys face the Zombie a apocalypse. The plot is barebones, a group of cockney youths are pulling a bank robbery to have the funds to keep their grand dad and his pals in the east-end when the pensioner home is demolished. Thanks to greedy and archeologically ignorant construction workers, the zombie plague is loosed on modern London, specifically the east-end. Both the youths and the pensioners fight the zombies, as the the crisis worsens.

Like Shawn of the Dead this si player for laughs, but more regional that rom-com. It is bloody and it is graphic as one should expect from a zombie film, but it is funny and touching, and has more than a touch of satire.

I recommend it.