AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON: Satisfyingly More Of The Same

Now playing at every multiplex in the galaxy and beyond:



AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

(Dir. Joss Whedon, 2015)

If you live on planet Earth, you’re aware that today the Marvel machine is rolling out the biggest super hero movie of the year - sorry, ANT-MAN, but, c’mon!

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (from this point on, A:AOU), the sequel to the biggest superhero movie of 2012, THE AVENGERS, and the 11th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise that began with the first IRON MAN back in 2008, is here to officially kick off the summer 2015 movie season - sorry, FURIOUS 7.

But if you’re reading this, you most likely know all that, and just want to know if this highly anticipated, star-studded, and CGI-saturated production lives up to its huge hype.

I’ll say - yeah, it does. I had a tremendous amount of fun watching the reunited team - Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America/Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), The Hulk/Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) – working together with lots of wit and energy to defeat the powerful robotic villain Ultron (voiced by James Spader).

This adventure begins with an already-in-progress action sequence, involving the comic book crew storming the castle of Hydra leader Baron von Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann) in the icy terrain of the fictional European nation of Sokovia.

Amid the standard chaos and wisecracks (most of which are pretty funny) we are introduced to a couple of new characters, brother and sister duo Pietro/Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). “He’s fast, she’s weird,” is what SHIELD’s Maria Hill (the also returning Cobie Smulders) says of their powers, which means that Pietro can move at supersonic speeds, while Wanda can manipulate minds with magic.

The Avengers rescue Loki’s scepter, one of the McGuffins of the series, and return to their headquarters at the Stark Tower Complex in Manhattan, where we actually get to hang out with the guys as they party, and engage in a game of taking turns trying to lift Thor’s hammer. Meanwhile, Stark’s Ultron project, which is supposed to be a global peacekeeping program, is co-opted by the scepter and becomes sentient.

That means Spader, who in addition to providing the voice, performed on set in a motion-capture suit, takes over as the movie’s major villain, and sets out to wipe out humanity (“There is only one path to peace... your extinction”).

As if he thinks we don’t have enough characters to keep up with, Whedon keeps piling them on. We meet Barton’s (Renner, in case you forgot) wife (Linda Cardellini of Freaks and Geeks and Mad Men fame) and kids living at a “safe house” farm where the Avengers lay low between battles, geneticist Helen Cho (Claudia Kim) who gets co-opted by Ultron, arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, a motion capture master himself), and the re-occuring role of Stark’s A.I. companion J.A.R.V.I.S. (voiced by Paul Betttany) is expanded via a red and green android body (Bettany in the flesh).

There’s also the many cameos from the MCU including Don Cheadle getting in a few good one-liners again as as James “Rhodey” Rhodes/War Machine and Anthony Mackie getting in a few glaring grins as Sam Wilson/Falcon, along with appearances by Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, Idris Elba as Heimdall, and of course, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, who no Marvel movie should be without. And yes, there’s a Stan Lee cameo, but, c'mon, you knew there would be.

Yes, A:AOU covers every single fan-pleasing base it can in its 2 hour and 21 minute running time and is a pretty bloated affair because of it, but it swiftly juggles all these strands until they collide in the big climax set on a ginourmous hunk of a Sokovian city land mass that Ultron has lifted from the earth and is planning on crashing down. The Avengers try to save the city's people while warring with the armies of robots that are all forms of Ultron (in a MATRIX sort of way I guess).

The special effects, of course put together by thousands of digital artists, are flawlessly top notch, but it’s the human moments that give a lot of heart, soul, and humor to this enterprise. A romance blooming between Ruffalo’s Banner (another invested portrayal - where's this guy's Hulk movie?) and Johansson’s Romanoff adds a thoughtful touch, and while Downey Jr.’s Stark is still full of snark, there’s an unmistakable conscience behind it. The rest of the gang also have their moments, but Hemsworth's Thor is still my least favorite Avenger.

Spader, even with only a mechanical presence, makes for a powerfully worthy foe, one who gets his share of well delivered quips and takes delight in destruction.

If this is Whedon’s final fling with the super hero franchise, he went out with a multitude of big bangs. Maybe they’re all riffs on the familiar formulaic tropes of the genre we’re all used to, but that doesn’t make them any less effective. 

A:AOU is winningly and satisfyingly more of the same; it’s everything a superhero superfan would want out of a Marvel movie. Non fans who haven’t been won over by any of the movies in the series before won’t be converted by it, but I seriously doubt many of them will have read this far into this review anyway.

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The Brutally Brilliant SNOWPIERCER & The Striking IDA

SNOWPIERCER (Dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2013) 

In case you haven’t heard, the best action movie of the summer isn’t at the multiplexes, it’s at the art houses in the form of the South Korean-American sci-fi thriller SNOWPIERCER, opening this weekend in the Triangle area.

Based on a French graphic novel, the English language debut of Bong Joon-ho is a hell of a wild ride aboard a 1,001-carriage super train traveling on track that spans the globe. It’s 2031, long after a failed experiment to curb global warning has left the Earth in a new ice age. Most of the world's population has been killed except the inhabitants of the train, who are separated by class with the poor in the back and the rich in the front.

A bearded, almost unrecognizable Chris Evans (CAPTAIN AMERICA) leads a revolt to take over the front of the train (“If you control the engine, you control the world” he figures) resulting in bloody axe battles with masked thugs.

Evan’s band of battered rebels, including Octavia Spencer, Jamie Bell, and Song Kang-ho, capture Tilda Swinton (outfitted with scary false teeth, thick glasses, and a crooked wig) as one of the political stooges for the train’s creator and self appointed savior, Wilfred, and force her to help them make their way through the carriages. Kang-ho is convinced that conditions outside are improving, and that they should use explosives to blow the side of the train open so they can escape.

But Evans is determined to confront Wilfred, especially after witnessing the outlandish opulence that the elite have at their disposal. There’s a lot of social satire in these sequences, most notably in a rich kid’s schoolroom scene, in which a perky teacher played by Alison Pill (The Newsroom) leads her students to sing a song with such lyrics as “What happens when the engine stops? We all freeze and die!” in their happiest voices.

Ed Harris, tracking in traces of his God-minded Christof character from THE TRUMAN SHOW, appears as the supposedly all mighty Wilford, in a conclusion that philosophically brings all the film’s chaos together.

Although I wouldn’t call it visually stunning, the film’s imagery, courtesy of cinematographer Kyung-pyo Hong, is vividly gritty, and looks convincingly lived in.

The brutally brilliant SNOWPIERCER never stops moving. It has an intensity that most summer blockbuster wannabes can’t dream of matching (certainly this year), and its hard edged take on class warfare is so much more compelling than in the HUNGER GAMES movies.

So bypass the weekly onslaught of superheroes, monsters, machines, and all the sequels at the multiplex and seek out the cinematic surprise of the summer.

Writer/Director Bong has not only topped his stellar work in THE HOST and MOTHER here, he’s made a film that can stand up next to such dystopian classics as MAD MAX, BLADE RUNNER, and BRAZIL. A cult crowd is sure to dig it, but here’s hoping it will be embraced by a much bigger audience.

IDA (Dir. Pawel Pawlikowski, 2013)

Set in the early ‘60s, this Polish period piece authentically evokes its era by not only being in black and white, but also in the old-fashioned boxy “Academy ratio” (also recently used in Michel Hazanavicius’s THE ARTIST and parts of Wes Anderson’s THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL).

In her film debut, Agata Trzebuchowska portrays Anna, an 18-year old nun, who is told by her Mother Superior that she has one last living relative, and that she should meet them before taking her vows.

So Trzebuchowska’s Anna travels to meet her aunt Wanda (Polish actress Agata Kulesza in a stand-out performance), who tells her niece that her real name is Ida, she’s Jewish and the rest of their family was most likely exterminated by the Nazis in World War II.

Kulesza, as a boozy former Stalinist state prosecutor, travels with Trzebuchowska to their hometown to find out the truth about the fate of their relatives. The two woman clash a bit because of their vastly different lifestyles, and a charismatic jazz musician (David Ogrodnik) that they pick up hitchhiking may be too big a temptation for our heroine to handle.

Within the square frame, writer-director Pawlikowski, via cinematographers Ryszard Lenczewski and Lukasz Zal, sets up shots in which the top half of the screen is largely bare with the actors’ heads often occupying the bottom. Trzebuchowska, when alone in close-ups, consistently inhabits the lower corners of the image in many compelling compositions throughout.

These touches are artsy, but not self consciously so, as the dramatic weight gets beautifully conveyed by them. I often felt like I was flipping through a collection of grim historic photographs of these events, with the added perspective of these real-seeming characters dealing with difficult decisions about their past and future.

IDA is a striking masterwork of quiet tension. Its pace and power may be extremely restrained, but it still seeped in and haunted me for days after seeing it. For a film that’s this spare, small on the screen, and only 80 minutes long, that’s something to write home about.

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