We are joined by alumnus Eileen Bunch and almost alumnus Aubrey Kirchhoff to discuss their love for the most twee of directors, Wes Anderson.  Enjoy as Henson flounders having only seen Moonrise Kingdom.  

Click here to listen!

Not rated.  Okay, this one should be R.  It's a documentary, which automatically ramps any example of blood to R-level.  There's some blood.  I'm not saying that there is a wealth of blood, but someone really bleeds in this movie.  Also, there's a fair amount of sharing, mostly from Klaus Kinski, which makes it sound even more intense than a regular f-bomb.  Finally, and this is what this analysis is going to focus on, this is fundamentally a movie about exploitation without ever really addressing that exploitation.  This should be a hard movie to watch at times.  Not Rated.

DIRECTOR: Les Blank

See, now I'm all conflicted.  Since I feel the need to pad out my reviews with an explanation of why I watched this movie, I should probably get this out of the way first.  My buddy Dan gave me a copy of this a million years ago for my birthday.  He knows my irrational obsession with collecting as many Criterion DVDs as possible.  (It gives my tastes relevancy.)  He got me this used copy of Burden of Dreams without the box and told me to watch it.  The friend in me graciously thanked him, but the snob in me immediately followed it up by saying, "You know I want the fancy box for my shelf, right?"  I'm a bad person.  The good news is that I didn't buy Burden of Dreams for the pretty box.  The bad news is that I have since gotten married and had kids and I had yet to watch Burden of Dreams because it didn't have a fancy box.   Yup.  I'm a monster.

But really, it's Werner Herzog who is the monster.  (You see that seemless segue?)  I have always liked Herzog, both his films and the man himself.  He's the weirdest guy ever.  If you want a good time right now and you know who Werner Herzog is, YouTube "Werner Herzog's Ant-Man".  It's perfect.  The guy is just super weird and I kind of love it.  His movies are weirdly watchable and pretentious too, so he gives me all kinds of film street cred.  (I'm accidentally doing a week of Criterion releases as a subconscious response to binging the entire MCU.  I'm very snobby and I want this page to have a degree of validity.)  I also have always had the idea that the creation of art involves sacrifice and that an artist must do anything to express his art.  Burden of Dreams kind of undoes all of that.  Now, I'm writing about 1982's Burden of Dreams in 2018.  We've all become much more woke.  We're not better people; we're just more vocal and obsessed with appearing to be the most moral.  But I'd like to think that I've kind of evolved over time.  Werner Herzog went too far.  I knew the basic premise of this movie.  Someone had summarized it for me and I knew what this documentary was about.  This movie, like Hearts of Darkness, is a video documentary about the making of a movie.  In the case of Burden of Dreams, it follows Herzog's epic journey to make Fitzcarraldo, a very good movie in its own right.  I liked Fitzcarraldo a lot and, when I told someone that I owned Burden of Dreams, they revealed that a lot of this movie focuses on getting the boat over the mountain.  If I'm speaking jibberish to you, don't worry.  I'll explain.  

Fitzcarraldo surrounds this maniac who wants to push a 30-ton / 300-ton ship over a mountain.  It is the story of how obsession and selfishness gets the better of this man, leading to his ultimately tragic end.  I say "30-ton" because in reality (this is a true story), the original boat was 30 tons.  The one in the movie weighted 300 tons.  Now, this is where the world gets stupid and I now question my love for Werner Herzog.  Herzog, in the making of a movie about selfish obsession, eclipses the true story and one ups the real Fitzgerald / Fitzcarraldo.  When I watched Fitzcarraldo, I simply assumed that the boat was a special effect.  Don't get me wrong.  The scene looks great.  But this is a scene that is very capably done with practical effects.  This is 1982.  Special effects were already looking awesome since 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Kubrick himself was an obsessive personality.   Herzog, in his attempt to make this movie, ruined lives and led to the death of a native over the course of the movie.  Now, I understand that sometimes things happen on set.  Stuntmen have lost their lives in the past.  But these were controlled environments.  These were honest mistakes that happened, despite a team of people trying their best to ensure the safety of everyone on set.  Fitzcarraldo is a master class on how selfish filmmaking is done.  There are so many moments that I'm going to talk about right now.  SPOILERS because I need to talk about them really badly.  None of the hard to shoot stuff had to happen the way it did.  I know Herzog's logic while making this movie.  It is a movie, in his mind, about authenticity.  But his authenticity comes at a price that was not his own.  It would have been very reasonable to shoot this boat going over the mountain if he really wanted to do it.  If he was shooting for authenticity, there would have been a place where it would have worked.  But to Herzog, that part of the jungle didn't look cinematic enough.  Instead, he moved heaven and earth to get the boat to a spot that would have looked better, but nearly impossible to move.  That's where it bums me out.

Herzog is all about being authentic.  He gets this intense boat and wants to do it right.  But he ignores that authenticity for the sake of the artificiality.  The real Fitzcarraldo moved the ship over the mountain (and this was considered dangerous as well) in pieces to make it more reasonable.  Herzog didn't.  He thought it looked cooler as one piece.  The real ship was 30 tons.  The new ship was 300.  The very notion that he is picking a place that looks more cinematic is testament to his love of the artificial.  He couldn't get shots because he wanted a lot of it in the magic hour.  I love when filmmakers are that attentive to their craft.  That's awesome.  But he's not paying for his craft with his own sacrifices.  Instead, he is exploiting the native culture and that's kind of sick.  The movie stresses all of the trials that the native population goes through, but it almost does so in a way that admires Herzog for doing it.  These people are kept away from their families for months.  A guy nearly dies on camera.  I honestly thought he was dead.  Everyone warned Herzog that someone was going to die doing this. But Herzog never endangers himself.  It almost feels like he sees these native dwellers, whom he vocally admires / I question that, as less than he is.  He isn't risking being flattened by a 300 ton boat.  He hires a prostitute for these people to deal with their sexual needs.  When the bulldozer breaks, he flies out parts from Miami but doesn't get them another soccer ball?  There's health issues all over this film that don't really need to happen.  This should have been filmed in a studio.  It would have looked great.  I know.  It's not authentic, but only Herzog would have known that and he's already not being authentic with his choices in filming.  He's just showing the world that he can do this.  I don't think I've ever seen such a screaming example of privilege than this movie.  These aren't stuntmen who know the risk. These are people who are earning slave wages that are only considered fair because it is double what they normally make.  It's kind of sick.

I don't know if I can enjoy Fitzcarraldo again.  I'll rewatch it someday.   It's just that I don't know when art goes too far.  The movie itself is compelling.  I'm going to be a huge hypocrite because I might have the ability to separate my morality from what I'm watching.  The movie almost stresses that Herzog is a man of constant endurance.  Fitzcarraldo is this movie that seems doomed from the beginning.  It's weird to think that Mick Jagger was in this movie originally.  Everything that could have gone wrong with this film actually went wrong.  I'm looking forward to seeing The Man Who Killed Don Quixote for the exact same reason; it is the tale of a movie that was constantly being plagued with troubles and problems.  But Herzog kept on pushing.  Now, I'm writing this from an ergonomic chair on a keyboard that I rather like.  I have a giant tumbler of water in front of me and I choose not to turn on the air condition because I have a nice breeze going.  Herzog is doing all of this from the remotest jungle.  He is speaking at least three languages in this film and is waist deep in muck and sleeping in filth.  Klaus Kinski is a nice juxtaposition to Herzog because Kinski is reacting the way I would to a lot of this stuff.  But Herzog is just having another day at the office.  I have to believe that Herzog probably had a few meltdowns during the filming of this movie.  So much stuff is going badly that he would have had to have lost it at one point.  But he keeps pushing. But this comes back to the original question.  Is Herzog wrong for making Fitzcarraldo?  I have to say "Yes, he is."  He is exploiting the culture.  He had alternatives and suggestions and he doesn't collaborate whatsoever.  If I had to look at one of the seven deadly sins, Herzog epitomizes pride.  He doesn't change his plans because his pride would be wounded.  He sees changes in filming techniques as a sign of failure.  Again, I can't stress this enough, I had no idea that the boat sequences wasn't filmed as a special effect in a studio.  That means that all of this stuff was for nothing.  If it meant something to future generations, I still couldn't justify that Herzog was willing to sacrifice anyone for his own personal gratification.  

I'm glad I saw this.  I know it doesn't sound like it.  I guess I'm also glad to have seen Jim & Andy.  Both are tales about artistic obsession and how it should be glorified.  But I also know more about these people and what it really means to put art in front of everything else.  Art needs sacrifice, but it should be one's own sacrifice.  Either way, it was fascinating and eye-opening.  

​TV-MA and it totally should be.  When Jim Carrey decided to wear Andy Kaufman like a suit, he took on everything that Kaufman did.  Kaufman himself was pretty raunchy.  He swore.  He hung out with naked ladies.  He drank and he smoked.  He was mean and kind of a jerk.  Jim Carrey, in the few times that he was Jim, also swore a lot and got angry a lot.  So this movie is a well-earned TV-MA.

DIRECTOR: Chris Smith

In college, I got into Andy Kaufman hard.  Okay, it was probably junior year of high school, but I think it was because of the movie Man on the Moon.  I saw that the movie was coming out and it looked so interesting.  Before the movie came out, and I now realize that this is very telling of my personality, I found out everything I could about Andy Kaufman.  I got so many bootleg tapes of Kaufman's performances and I just read up as much as I could about the guy.  When the biopic came out, I remember annoying everyone explaining what was really going on in certain scenes.  I kept up this obsession for a long time after this movie.  While I ended up owning the DVD for a while (because I owned everything.  This is the era of me stalking the $5.00 bin at Walmart with reckless abandon), but I had consumed everything that Andy had done in a very short amount of time.  (Oddly enough, I never watched Taxi because Kaufman hated it.)  But you could count me as one of the surprised to hear that there was a documentary that was turning heads about the making of Man on the Moon.  I didn't rush to watch it.  I just finished watching it minutes ago.  And I'm not sure that this is a documentary about Jim Carrey's relationship with Andy Kaufman or an excuse for Jim Carrey to dive deeper into madness.

Jim Carrey's been weirding me out lately.  I saw that Fashion Week thing he did.  While I love the message that he is saying, he is coming across like an absolute madman.  Jim & Andy might be more of a study exploring where Jim Carrey started going absolutely nuts.  LOOSE SPOILERS: During the filming of Man on the Moon, Jim decided to try method acting.  We're talking deep-end-of-the-ocean method acting.  He was going to pull a Daniel Day Lewis and stay in character as Andy Kaufman / Tony Clifton the entire time on set.  He mostly succeeds.  I get the logic behind this choice.  Andy Kaufman was a performance artist.  He loved subverting expectations with stunt performances.   But this is where things start falling apart.  Jim Carrey becoming Andy Kaufman all the time was the public Andy Kaufman.  He was the guy who messed with people and intentionally wanted to make people mad at him.  That was his performance.  Yes, I believe that he carried that darkness into his real life.  How could you not?  But Andy Kaufman created something that was genius and Jim Carrey wanted to live in that.  The movie is mostly about Jim Carrey making everyone on set miserable.  Prime example:  one of the things that I really enjoyed about Man on the Moon was the fact that they got a lot of the original people involved in Andy's life to recreate the moments on set.  That was super cool.  One of the people in Andy's life was Jerry Lawler.  The bit that was always televised and discussed was the fact that Jerry Lawler and Andy Kaufman were bitter enemies and that Lawler would physically assault Andy Kaufman after being provoked by Kaufman.  The thing is, it was a bit.  Both Lawler and Kaufman were in on the gag.  Lawler talks about that in this documentary.  He considered Andy Kaufman a good friend.  That's why he agreed to do the movie.  But Carrey (as Andy --and let me tell you it is annoying to hear Jim Carrey refer to "Andy" being in charge) would harass Lawler on set constantly.  He would drop eggs on him.  He'd put signs on his back.  Every time that Lawler walked into a room, "Andy" would be really mean to the guy.  The reason that Kaufman worked is because you never knew what was real and what was fake.  Yeah, there's a chance that the Lawler / Carrey stuff was fake.  It would be wildly meta if it was.  But there seems to be no indication of that.  There's a scene where "Andy" apologizes to Lawler and I think that Lawler begrudgingly accepts.  But it is complete manipulation.  He does this so Lawler really hits him on screen.  The studio didn't want Carrey manhandled, so Carrey made fake amends to do something that the studio wouldn't like.  It's stupid.  He did this with everyone.  The problem with this is that the documentary stresses how great this thing is.  Everyone hated Jim Carrey on set, but were so glad that he did this.  Malarky.  

MAN ON THE MOON / HISTORY SPOILER:  Andy Kaufman died of cancer.  In those last few months, Kaufman was desperate for a cure, so he traveled to experimental treatment centers to find help.  During this time, "Andy" / Carrey would be escorted everywhere in a wheelchair.  He acted infirmed and in pain.  People would cry and hug him, worried about losing their friend Andy.  I can't believe that life can just be an impersonation.  I refuse to believe that.  I have a theatre degree.  You know I do because I spelled "Theater" with "R-E".  I'm actually a big fan of the method, but there is a line in the sand where you have to completely believe in the character, but still compartmentalize the character at the same time.  Carrey, in the framing interview, discusses how he met with Kaufman's real daughter who was given up for adoption.  She never got to meet her father, so she had a sit-down with "Andy" for a little over an hour.  They talked about how much they loved each other.  They didn't love each other.  This is the equivalent of seeing a medium.  If someone did a really good impression of my father, I would just leave mad.  I don't care if they got every nuance and really looked like him.  That's messed up.  By the way, this anecdote is one of the only kind of positive things that came out of this whole experiment.  Honestly, "Andy" was really an excuse for Jim Carrey to do whatever he wanted and to say whatever he wanted without repercussion.  That wasn't Andy Kaufman.  People had real relationships with the man.  It got even worse when he played Tony Clifton.  For those who don't know about Kaufman's history, Kaufman had a character named Tony Clifton, a raucous lounge singer who would taunt his audience.  He insisted that he was never Tony Clifton and that Tony Clifton was a separate person.  I love that.  He also had a double for Clifton, his friend Bob Zmuda.  But Clifton is Andy Kaufman's antagonism ramped up to 100.  "Clifton" is so mean to everyone in this film in the name of art.  I'm sure that Andy Kaufman did stuff to people, but c'mon.  

A lot of this speaks to privilege.  Like, seriously.  This is becoming a thing.  I think the whole "method" thing is getting to finally be disdainful.  Marlon Brando was a huge jerk to everyone because he didn't want to do his job.  Jared Leto was a bad person.  That wasn't the Joker.  The Joker is a comic book character who wouldn't send condoms to people.  Jim Carrey being mean to people as Andy Kaufman both sullies Andy Kaufman's name and kind of ruins Man on the Moon for me.  (I totally didn't realize that Milos Foreman directed that movie.  He's a saint and I still love him.)  If I was in a community theatre (there it is!) production of Man on the Moon  (which might actually get me to act again), I couldn't go around and harass everyone in my daily life and do whatever I want because I was channeling someone else.  I would get fired and arrested.  People wouldn't be friends with me anymore.  The fact that he does all this stuff just indicates that Hollywood is a different place.  Literally yesterday, I was defending Hollywood to my brother-in-law, but watching everyone losing their minds over Jim Carrey's genius just got my blood pumping.  The only thing that might give Carrey a bit of a pass is the fact that some of the people who knew Andy thought this was genius.  Still, they showed Carrey's audition tape before he decided to become "Andy" and his impression was great.  Would it have been the end of the world if he just became "Andy" for the scenes and went back to being a human being?  Or be "Andy", but like how "Andy" would be during the downtime?  You know, like eating a hamburger?  Hanging out with friends?  That Andy?

This movie.  It's not awful.  I enjoyed watching it.  It was enlightening, but I kind of hate that this kind of stuff goes on.  It just made me think about how much of a turd Jim Carrey was and kind of is.  Also, I really like vaccines.  Take that, Jim Carrey and your Alan Moore beard.  Finally, the connection to the song "The Great Beyond" is really forced.  The movie really tried making the R.E.M. song important and had Tony Clifton singing it over the credits.  It does nothing.  The title came first. The documentary came second.  I have to believe that.

PG, for "Porco Gordo".  This was always touted as one of the more adult "PG" movies and I call shannigans.  I was afraid to show this to my kids, but they would love it.  Sure, they wouldn't catch the fascism references.  But there's little to no blood.  The language is fairly tame.  Oh, wait!  That final fight sequence, while humorous, is pretty violent.  Okay, I still think my kids could handle this one.  Again, Henry would complain, but that's Henry.  PG.

DIRECTOR:  Hayao Miyazaki

Speed run!  I don't have a lot of time to write this one today, so we'll see how good this gets.  I started watching this one when I was doing the podcast episode (which you can listen to here).  Once I recorded it, I realized that I had watched way too much to possibly discuss on a podcast episode.  But if I have ever been criticized for anything, it's being over-prepared.  Regardless, I felt bad --I ACTUALLY FELT BAD --that I didn't get a chance to finish Porco Rosso before recording.  It is one of the Miyazaki big ones (a formal film term). It might be the least viewed of the major movies that he made, but it is still considered one of his masterpieces.

I was actually kind of warned against this one.  People were telling me that "It was good, but it is his weakest movie."  I don't know about that.  I really liked it.  Admittedly, the movie was something very different from what I expected.  I know that Miyazaki goes pretty anti-war on stuff, so I was thinking that this was going to be more Grave of the Fireflies (I know, it's Imamura.  Shut up.) than what it actually was.  I honestly thought that this was going to be heavy handed and the pig thing was going to be something out of Animal Farm where he represented something much much darker.  Nope.  He's a pig because he was pig-headed as a human.  I didn't mean to talk about this now, but since I am there and I'm flying without constraints.  I really like the pig storyline, but it is so odd that it is in this movie.  The movie, tonally, is just a war action movie.  It follows Porco, who used to be named something else when he was human (Mario?), who is just this amazing mercenary pilot.  He's really cocky and fights air pirates, of which we can now add to the Miyazaki motifs.  He is being chased by the Italian army for being a deserter and he doesn't like the war, despite the fact that he kills for money.  What part of that is fantasy?  Instead, Miyazaki adds this whole bizarre element of fantasy to this story.  It's very cool, but I'm sure that every one of the people in the production of this movie asked "So why is he a pig again?"  The rest of the world isn't inundated with fantasy.  It's not like there are trolls.  I totally get magical realism, but this is almost taking it a step further because Porco is the only mythical creature in this world and everyone is very cool with it.  In fact, they are not taken aback that a man with a pig head walks through a door.  They are intimidated by his amazing flying prowess.  Good job, progressive future.  You finally did it.  It's just such an odd thing.  But this also ties into the fact that, while I love both directors I'm about to mention, they might have hints of one-trick ponydom.  I always think of Woody Allen as a genius of limited talent.  If you take offense to that, remember, he's a terrible human being.  He keeps making the same movies over and over again.  These movies mostly are great.  The framework is a solid one, so he can keep retelling the same tales again and again, but it does get tiring after a while.  I haven't gotten tired of Miyazaki, but I keep seeing the same things time and again.

The metamorphosis element is there again.  When the character is doing something altruistic or his self-esteem is healthy, people see him as a dude again.  The same thing is true in Howl's Moving Castle.  The air pirates?  Both of these can kind of be seen in The Castle of Cagliostro and Castle in the Sky.  The nerding out over airplane plans (this could really cover his entire work) can be seen in The Wind Rises.  There's a fine line between motif and him making the same movie while swapping parts.  The Wind Rises might not be fair because that movie feels very different from his other movies, but I think it still bears scrutiny.  I don't want to condemn Miyazaki though.  I love when people get passionate about what they love.  Every time I see him do airplane stuff, it does seem like he is having a lot of fun with it.  Porco Rosso might be the most indulgent over it, considering that the whole movie is about a flying ace.  It is very fun.  For a guy who is so anti-war, he really enjoys a good dogfight.  It's so odd that he made the American the villain.  I'm not used to that.  I'm used to the American stereotype and I think it works here.  The thing about the American villain is that we do make a solid villain.  We're looking at the Gaston traits from Beauty and the Beast.  (I know, he's French!)  But the idea that the braggart is automatically the villain is pretty typical and Jungian and all that nonsense.  But then I realized, and I think the movie realizes this too, that Curtis isn't all that bad.  Yeah, he makes a pretty solid antagonist.  He's very cocky and toxicly masculine.  Okay, but so is Porco.  (It's very weird that Porco is constantly referred to as a womanizer, but is still seen as heroic.  This was another time.)  Like I said, Miyazaki kind of realizes this too and resolves the character showing that there really isn't an antagonist in this movie except for the fact that Porco Rosso is constantly fleeing a life of service in exchange for freedom.  His goal is to maintain the lifestyle of his choice.  If anything, the antagonist is military service.  That might get some people angry.

One of the more uncomfortable elements in the story is the objectification of a seventeen-year-old girl.  I know.  Different culture, different time, but it seems like Miyazaki is aware of how gross this is.  Fio is constantly defined by her age and her gender in this movie.  Her archetype has shown up before.  She's our genius character, despite expectations.  The juxtaposition of what is expected out of an aviation junkie and what we actually see is where the story lies and I like that a lot.  Fio is Kaylee from Firefly.  It's a great character.  I like it.  But the character instantly becomes sexualized both through the art of the film and the way that people treat her.  She is instantly described as forbidden fruit to Porco by Fio's grandfather.  He then comments on Porco's infamous womanizing and Grandfather constantly reminds Porco of her age.  Admittedly, Porco respects that boundary, but he is constantly flustered by being around this girl who may or may not be attracted to him.  I think that's neither here nor there, so I'm going to move on.  But then Claude comes into the picture and is instantly smitten by her.  Part of that is because he thinks he is stealing something from Porco, but also he seems like he views Fio as a prize to be won.  If this was Fio's objectification in isolation, I would say "Fine, that's what makes Claude the antagonist.  He's gross."  But no.  The rest of the air pirates also view Fio as something to be obtained.  It's a weird choice to do with this trope, especially considering that Miyazaki seems to be aware of the character choices that he gives Fio.  It's gross.  All I'm saying.

I really had fun with this one.  Again, I talk about objectifying little girls and anti-war themes, but it is really just one of Miyazaki's more fun movies, especially if you are into dogfighting and aerial acrobatics.  I do actually recommend it and I'm glad I watched it.  I might even let the kids watch it one day. 

I got criticized last month for having too many offensive films that I've reviewed.  That was not a choice then; this is not a choice now.  I have been reviewing green colored movies time and again.  This one is PG and that's pretty accurate.  I was weirded out how well Henry took this one because there's some creepy owls in the movie. There are visually haunting moments and the little girl in the movie seems like she is dying for a lot of it.  But besides that, it is a fairly tame movie.  PG.

DIRECTOR: Tomm Moore

I have a cup of tea ready for me right now.  I'm remarkably sleepy and have lots of distractions in front of me.  But I should review.  Once I get writing, things tend to work out fairly well.  I clear out some cobwebs.  I feel productive.  So this is going to happen.  I actually have a happy-accident story behind this one.  We had too many library books at home.  Our library pile was overflowing and they were all due back.  I was planning on just dumping them in the book return and speeding out of there, but Henry really wanted to go inside.  I know he wants movies, so I let him get a few.  He normally gets crap, but this was in his small pile that he grabbed.  (The other stuff was still crap.)  Ever since I saw The Breadwinner, I wanted to see the other movies that were from the same studio and production team.  While I absolutely adore The Breadwinner as one of the best animated films I've ever seen, this movie is pretty darned solid as well.

I know that I'm going to be blasphemous again when I say that I'm not that into Celtic mythology.  I'm not into mythology as is.  This is odd, considering that I just wrote a really long essay about mythologies influence over Neil Gaiman's Sandman.  But I really just never got on board with Celtic Mythology.  Norse stuff I kind of like.  Greek stuff is fine, I guess.  The Celtic stuff, the only thing I really know is the story of the selkie.  Good news for me, I guess, because that's what The Song of the Sea is all about.  My wife cried pretty hard at the end of this movie.  I can see why.  I mean, I got nowhere close.  I'm that toxicly masculine, I suppose.  But there's a lot going on here.  Fundamentally, the story is about family and what it means to love one another.  There's a heavy theme of mortality running through this story.  I lost my dad when I was a kid, so I tend to gravitate to these stories.  Unfortunately, this also means that the story really has to be aces to get me to break down.  I will say that there are levels going on here.  I don't know why kids' movies feel like they have to be the first group to conquer mortality for kids.  I mean, Bambi did a pretty good job.  But these stories are all about parental trauma at a young age.  I guess the Jungian archetype of the orphan automatically gives us a sense of sympathy towards these characters.  I suppose Ben and Saoirse are artificial orphans, sent away from their fathers.  Okay, I keep going back and forth about whether I should do SPOILERS, but I'm just going to go deep into spoilers because I need to explore some stuff.  Ben and Saoirse's mother dies early in the movie.  In fact, she dies giving birth to Saoirse.  Automatically, the dynamic between Ben and Saoirse is skewed because Ben sees Saoirse as the cause of his mother's death.  That's actually an interesting dynamic for the two characters because Ben is a full on jerk to Saoirse.  At its roots, it's about the two learning to bond, which is extremely difficult because Saoirse doesn't speak.  She's a selkie, which is only explained after we see her turn into a seal.  (I told you that there would be spoilers.)  But the movie teases something a little unfair about mortality, especially from the point of view of a viewer who actually lost a parent at a young age:  Ben and Saoirse get to see their mother again very briefly.  This is the part that destroyed Lauren.  

That's not how that works.  There are so many times that I just want to see my dad, even for a second.  I know that it would destroy me, but it doesn't mean I want it any less.  Presenting this in a story about mortality might be a bit misleading for kids.  Mom returns for an instant.  Yes, Mom makes the right choice.  (Although Lauren yelled at the TV, "Just stay!  Why don't you stay?" amidst tears.  She's a selkie through and through.  She literally can't.  But I get what she is saying.)  This story is so heavy with the dead-mom overtones that this moment, while functional narratively, is completely unfair.  But why am I letting The Lion King off the hook then.  Or Star Wars?  It just seems really rough.  I see these two kids who learn to love each other over the course of an hour-and-a-half movie.  They have become their family that they couldn't have before.  I don't mind watching from above or from the distance, but to have Saoirse make a choice between her life on land and the sea, while emotional as crap, almost depreciates Mom's value.  Again, Mom makes the right choice.  But even presenting that option is unfair.  In a weird way, Mom becomes the villain of the piece.  (After all, the previous antagonist sees the folly of her ways and repents to help the protagonists.)  I know.  This is only a moment and I'm probably putting my own hangups over the whole story.  But I do like the story about a boy and his sister.  Saoirse is genuinely worthy of sympathy.  We've seen the Scrooged Tiny Tim, right?  Calvin?  Anyway, I have such pity for the nonverbal.  Saoirse, in this case, is remarkably happy.  She is a lovable character and the idea that she is the center of this confluence of mythology is just perfect.  It's actually Ben who comes across as annoying.  Tomm Moore isn't doing this by accident.  Ben is a punk and he really toes the line of being truly obnoxious.  I have to credit Moore for smoothing out some of those rough edges on Ben though.  Ben reminds us that he's just a kid who likes what he likes quite often.  His knowledge of the songs, possibly, might be the thing that sells him as a character.  It's the same thing we saw with Lex in Jurassic Park.  Her knowledge of the UNIX system completely redeems her character.  Ben has the same thing.  He's a horrible kid who is just a bully, but then he does these wonderful things to remind us that he's just a kid.

I can't believe I've held off this long when it comes to talking about how pretty this movie is.  I know the visual look from teasers, but this is a gorgeous movie.  Again, this is coming from a guy who doesn't give a lark about Celtic mythology, the beauty of this movie does inspire me to like it.  There's something ancient and modern at the same time.  Moore makes these beautiful comparisons with his antagonists and the people in Ben's life.  The look of these characters in both human form and their mythical forms are so cool.  It's not very subtle with the choices, but that's great.  (I admit, it took me a few characters in to figure out what he was doing with the character designs.)  The grandmother owl is perhaps the most compelling looking characters.  I mentioned in the MPAA part that the owls are terrifying.  They are, but they are super cool as well.  (It doesn't hurt that their motivations are actually somewhat compelling.  Being free of pain isn't the worst idea in the world and the movie sells this in spades.  But the look of the characters is only one element to this visual feast (I hate myself).  There is something ancient and important about the entire mise en scene.  It's not just the setting. That is awesome.  But the way that the movie plays with the mythical elements of normality is inspiring.  Like, the movie is very trippy.  Moore had to communicate to his team a very weird idea.  I'm sure that there were drawings and reference points.  He probably had books upon books about stylistic / historic references and the movie was built around that.  But there are runes and mysticism everywhere.  I looks genuinely awesome.  Yet, the movie never feels too removed from what we consider reality.  The movie is technically a fantasy story, but it treats us as negligent for not noticing the magic in the normal.  That's the best.  There are times in the story that Ben and Saoirse explore the underworld and that is when the movie becomes full on fantasy.  But this underworld is a stone's throw away from the mundane city.  There are statues everywhere and it gives Ireland this ethereal quality.  I've been to Ireland.  It's great.  I still want the Song of the Sea version of Ireland.  

I enjoyed this movie more than most of the stuff I watch with my kids, but I was really hoping for The Breadwinner.  I know.  The Breadwinner is great because it deals with heavy themes and I know that I couldn't watch it with my kids.  But this movie really holds its own.  If I hadn't seen The Breadwinner previously, I would probably be gushing about this one a lot more.  Regardless, a good watch.

PHASE ONE
Iron Man
The Incredible Hulk
Iron Man 2
Thor
Captain America: The First Avenger
The Avengers
PHASE TWO
Iron Man 3
Thor: The Dark World
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Guardians of the Galaxy
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Ant-Man
PHASE THREE
Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Thor: Ragnarok
Black Panther
Avengers: Infinity War

BONUS:  Podcast Episodes!
Spider-Man: Homecoming (Episode Four)
​The Defenders (Episode Seven)
​Thor: Ragnarok (Episode Fourteen)
​The Punisher...with other stuff (Episode Sixteen)
​Black Panther (Episode Twenty-Seven)
Jessica Jones: Season Two (Episode Thirty-Two)
​Avengers: Infinity War (Episode Thirty-Six)

Did you know we review Fast & Furious movies?  You did?  Huh.  You're kinda sick of these episodes?  Well, we actually like his one, so it's a lot less of us griping.  

Catch our most recent episode here!

It's PG-13.  That part isn't surprising. What is surprising (not really) is how bleak this movie is.  Listen, I don't really get upset that people bring their little kids to the Marvel movies.  They are marketed to kids despite being PG-13.  (See, MPAA, your rating system can really be arbitrary.)  But the movie outside of having messed up content is just dark looking.  I love this stuff, but I would really pre-screen this one for your kids before bringing them along.  There's language.  Your kids' favorite superheroes get wrecked on screen.  That's a lot to process.  PG-13.

DIRECTOR: Joe and Anthony Russo

I saw this one Thursday night when it came out.  I don't know who decided that midnight openings now start at 7:00, but as a parent and as someone who is gainfully (kinda) employed, I appreciate it.  But then I had a million reviews to get through and I have to talk about Avengers: Infinity War now?  I mean, there's so much in this movie.  I know I have forgotten so much, but that might not be the worst thing in the world.  There's still a billion things that I need to discuss because this movie rocked my face off.

Okay, it's not my favorite Marvel movie, but it might be my favorite Avengers movie.  (If you want to hear my immediate reactions to the movie, you might want to check out the podcast here!)  But I can tell you that this is an amazing film.  It might be the gutsiest, most film-y film ever.  (Remember, I can say that because I teach film.  Also, no one reads this, so I could just slam on my keyboard for a while and get the same reaction.)  When the Russos joined the MCU for The Winter Soldier, I was pleasantly taken back.  I don't know why I was so pessimistic about these guys.  I also probably confused them for the guy who directed The First Avenger, who I think also directed Jurassic Park III and that's it.  But The Winter Soldier melted my face off.  Then Civil War came out and they showed that they could juggle.  Remember when Civil War was announced?  Remember when everyone thought that no movie could juggle that many superheroes in one film without feeling overstuffed?  They did it, despite what my friend Pat says.  (Sorry, Pat.)  I don't think I really wrapped my head around the Herculean task that the Russos had in front of them when they announced the movie.  It wasn't until the first official trailer came out that I realized that this movie seemed like it was impossible to make.  There were too many characters, all of who had gigantic plot points that needed to be addressed.  I thought there was a good chance that this was going to be the moment that Marvel dropped the baton and called it quits.  I know I wasn't alone in this.  But that trailer looked so good.  I mean, I haven't been that excited for a superhero movie since Spider-Man 2. But there it was.  I couldn't help but be hyped for the movie.  It just looked so pretty and Thanos has been teased for so long. And it looked just straight up fun.  This is a weird thing to describe.  The stakes were huge in this one.  Marvel events tend to disappoint a lot of people in the comics because they can't get the balance between apocalypse level stakes and fun at the same time.  But this movie looked like it took itself deadly seriously while still being a good time.  And it really pulled it off...slash depressed me for a while after I got out of the theater.

The reason that Infinity War works when it absolutely shouldn't is the fact that Marvel accidentally Game of Thrones'd itself.  The movies act like episodes of a season of television.   Maybe it is more realistically two seasons of television.  But you get what I'm saying.  On Game of Thrones, the stories intentionally had major characters never interacting or having limited interactions.  Each character's story was fully fleshed out before ever encountering another character.  I always wondered what it would be like to show up at a Game of Thrones event for the actors who were part of the same TV, but never saw each other on set.  The MCU is kind of the same thing.  Infinity War has been teased since the first Avengers movie.  There are a lot of MCU movies between here and there. Some of them have Infinity Stones in them.  Some of them have Thanos in them.  But they are all telling stories in the same universe.  These characters are being constantly drawn together, despite their individual stories.  By the time that anyone actually meets on screen in Infinity War, there's no need to catch anyone up.  I have friends who really haven't seen many Marvel movies and are wondering if they could go see them.  I try giving them a stack of movies to see before this one because this is the first movie that is absolutely unforgiving of new audiences.  That seems crappy, but it is oddly refreshing.  When a studio makes a sequel, they really want new audiences to see these movies.  I can't blame them.  There's a lot of money being sunk into these movies and they depend on fresh blood to keep growing.  Infinity War, with its unapologetic attitude towards rookies, has done something seemingly insane.  Rather than simply distancing new viewers, it is getting new viewers through binging.  There are so many people who are binging the MCU right now to catch up to Infinity War because the movie is just that monumental.  Imagine that sequel number 19 is the one that drags everyone to the theater.  That's silly, but I absolutely love it.  But back to the Game of Thrones thing, when these characters meet, it is the moment that you are waiting for.  People, for the most part, get the screen time that they need to tell a cohesive story because their scenes aren't being bogged down with these heavy infodumps.  They all have a common threat that has somehow interacted with their lives up to this point and they all know what they must do.  Then the Russos take it a step further and combine the least likely couples.  We've gotten Cap and Iron Man.  Yeah, that story still needs to be told again, but I'm far more interested in Iron Man and Doctor Strange or Cap and Groot.  (That line, guys.  That line.)  These dynamics are the opposite of Thor and Hulk fighting.  We want to see that.  We've seen it.  We're not going to one-up it, so let's go in a totally different direction.  That's the smartest choice ever.

The insane thing is that they made Thanos as a villain work.  I didn't see it coming.  I always find Thanos dull.  He keeps creeping up into my comic book reading and I don't care for him.  But the movie made him great.  I don't know how you can get a guy who wants to murder half the universe with his magic glove relatable, but the Russos did it.  A lot of that falls on Josh Brolin's shoulders.  Man alive, he is great as Thanos.  My little nitpicky thing that I'm not sure has been discussed before is that I don't know why he didn't do this earlier.  Thanos is a machine.  He's pretty hard to beat in the comics and the cartoons, but that's because the drawings never really communicate that he's just The Hulk + Batman.  (That opening fight scene with him told me everything I needed to know about the character because that was a great litmus test.)  I also binged the MCU (duh!  I just wrote a million reviews on them) and Thanos seems pretty passive about the Infinity Stones.  He sends Ronan the get them, which is just silly.  LIGHT SPOILER:  But Thanos seems to get the stones pretty quickly.  Why go through all that planning if you can just strong arm your way to some Infinity Stones?  I don't care because it's pretty typical storytelling.  But I just want to put that one the table.  In an interview, Brolin was really nervous about playing Thanos.  He thought he'd be a digital mess and that it wasn't worth his time.  I mean, he still did it, so so much for his artistic sensibilities.  But he acts the crap out of that.  I remember when I saw The Fellowship of the Ring the first time, I was blown away by the fact that a digital character could have a performance.  Brolin as Thanos is perfect.  He also mostly looks really great.  Okay, yeah.  He's digital.  Everyone knows it.  But c'mon.  He's a very watchable digital.  I wonder if that's the new way to think about digital characters.  His design never really gets in the way.  Okay, there was one moment where I just gasped at the Thanos design.  There was a time when a vein in his head pulsed.  It was so subtle, but my jaw just dropped.  I realized that Thanos had a circulatory system and that made me pretty happy.  While his Black Order is a little less developed than he is, I did absolutely love them as characters.  The opening fights with Tony Stark and Dr. Strange are just fantastic. ​ 

It's so weird how funny this movie is despite the fact that it really doesn't have the tone for funny.  There's some well written lines and some pitch perfect deliveries.  My students keep quoting the movie and giggling in the halls.  I agree. The lines are funny.  But I also can keep in mind that the movie doesn't really aim to build around funny.  Ragnarok is the last home video release and that movie is built around being hilarious.  The jokes land harder because the movie is meant to leave you in stitches.  The Russos allow for all of the jokes, but don't build around them.  It's a really smart choice, don't get me wrong.  But the way this movie is filmed just screams intensity.  The movie just looks cinematic.  The colors and the brightness just scream that this movie should be taken seriously.  Christopher Nolan made The Dark Knight super cinematic in scale.  While I think that Nolan edges out the Russos in terms of cinematography, the Russos really aren't that far behind.  So there are jokes that always made me chuckle and I love, but I also never lose a moment in the film to an outright belly laugh.  I can't think about how tempting some moments had to be.  There have to be all these jokes that are left on the cutting room floor.  These guys worked on Arrested Development.  They get funny.  But there had to be times in the making of this movie that they had to cut some genius material to keep the mood exactly where they wanted it.  I can't even imagine the stuff that was left behind. 

One of the things that kind of scared me with the reviews is that there were comments about too much action.  That is a red flag for me.  I get bored with too much action a lot of the time.  (Stay tuned.  I plan to review Bond films this summer.)  The scenes they are talking are the last act of the film.  It's a Marvel movie.  I'm not spoiling anything by saying the last quarter of the movie is insane.  It is insane.  It is a lot of action and I loved it.  But again, I know why it worked.  There is one other massive action piece that I can compare it to and I'm ashamed that I'm making a second comparison to this franchise.  The final fight sequence is the Battle of Helm's Deep from The Two Towers.  That sequence is so riveting and full of so many characters that we care about that it never feels gratuitous.  There are other fight sequences in this movie and only one feels like it was thrown in there for pacing.  I love Age of Ultron, as I've established a few times in these reviews, but I also know that the entire bus sequence is for pacing issues.  The final battle is the most well earned fight sequence I've felt in a while.  I also like the fact that there are multiple battles going on at the same time, not unlike Star Wars.  It's pretty great.

Thank God I've only seen this movie once or I'd go on forever.  I still have things I want to talk about, but there is a tipping point to these reviews.  I'd love to praise Tom Holland's performance.  I'd like to talk about how much I like Banner and Hulk's relationship in this one.  I want to talk about fake trailer footage.  I want to talk about the few times that the special effects slipped a little.  I'd love to discuss theories for the next one.  I'd like to talk about cameos and deaths.  There's a million other paragraphs I am itching to talk about and I just can't.  I've written more than enough.  All I know is that I can't wait to see this one again.  It is a very full film without ever getting overstuffed.

I don't know why I have to keep saying this.  PG-13.   What do you expect from Ant-Man?  A hard R?  No, sir or madam!  It's a story about a guy who gets tiny.  Now, I can possibly see a PG in this one.  There's a little language holding it back, but we did have a very similar movie in terms of content with the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.  Like, ants really big get kind of creepy.  There's a whole bunch of huge ants.  Also, one of the major things about making a shrinking movie is that things that are innocent at our size get to be absolutely terrifying when they are huge.  That still holds true in this one.  PG-13.

DIRECTOR: Peyton Reed

Ending my binge on this one before watching Infinity War kinda stings (kinda pun not intended).  I have a tumultuous relationship with Ant-Man.  For a while, I thought it was my least favorite movie in the MCU because I still enjoyed The Incredible Hulk.  Now, The Incredible Hulk is my least favorite, but this is my second least favorite.  This was supposed to be the movie.  I was supposed to be talking about this movie until my dying day.  This was going to be Edgar Wright's Marvel movie.  Honestly, this was in the pipeline forever.  When the news broke that this movie was getting made, I had a healthy dose of skepticism.  After all, Guillermo del Toro announces a million movies and only makes one of them.  For those not in the know, Edgar Wright is my favorite contemporary director.  I seriously get obsessed with every Edgar Wright movie.  They are tight and well thought out.  They turn left when everyone else turns right.  They also make me belly laugh.  Then Paul Rudd was going to be the Scott Lang version of Ant-Man (admittedly, I would have preferred Hank Pym, but whatever) and I thought that was brilliant.  A great comic presence in an Edgar Wright version of a fairly underrated superhero.  I was all on board.  Then he quit.  Like, I knew the movie wouldn't happen.  But it got well into the movie before he quit.  We're talking about years of updates.  I read every news article about how great the movie was coming along.  I knew Wright's schedule and the movie kept getting pushed back because he wanted to get the visuals right.  I watched the proof of concept stuff that he shot and I got really excited.  But immediately before production, he dropped out.  After years of talking about it, he was no longer involved with the movie.  Come.  On.  

I know that his name is all over this movie.  They used the framework for his script, but not his script.  That is disappointing.  I heard he hasn't even watched the movie.  That's how removed from this film he is.  So I had to go in and watch Peyton Reed and Adam McKay's Ant-Man.  Adam McKay can be a rock star sometimes, but this felt like he was brought in as a patchwork punch-up writer.  I know that I have to take it from face value and I think I did a pretty good job of that, but the movie is one of the weaker movies in the franchise.  I do own an Ant-Man shirt because the concept here is somewhat solid.  But this movie is fairly weak overall.  I've kind of come around on it a little bit.  I went in watching it as kind of a travesty.  Now I somewhat enjoy it, but also know that it isn't all that great.  In fact, I've probably watched Ant-Man more times than the other movies in the franchise besides Guardians of the Galaxy Parts 1 and 2.  I want the movie to be better than it is.  I will also say that it is the most easy to watch because the movie requires almost no investment whatsoever.  So the thing that makes the movie watchable is also kind of the most damning thing about it.  Because it is such fluff, I can just put it on and not think critically about it.  I fully know my thoughts about why it works and why it doesn't work.  It's a fun movie and fun movies need to exist.  I say this with full confidence because I'm really jazzed for Ant-Man and the Wasp.  Why am I jazzed?  I think Ant-Man needs to work.  Ant-Man does work.  My favorite parts of Captain America: Civil War were the Ant-Man things.  There is something about the character that is really great and it isn't really in this movie.

I do actually show a clip from this movie all of the time.  (I know!  I'm all over the board with my review this time.)  The opening of this film is perfect.  After Rogue One brought back Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin (I don't even consider it a spoiler at this point), everyone kept on losing their minds about how good he looked.  I didn't think so whatsoever.  My wife, in the middle of the movie, said, "That's a digital character, isn't it?"  Yup.  Yup it was, Lauren.  Don't get me started on anime eyes Carrie Fisher.  But then there is Michael Douglas at the beginning of Ant-Man.  I would say "Young Robert Downey, Jr." in Civil War, but the digital effects on the beginning of Ant-Man are some of the best things I've seen. His digital performance?  Also awesome.  The rest of Michael Douglas's performance is...not so good?  When Robert Redford did Winter Soldier, that dude committed.  He's giving his all in every scene.  Michael Douglas really looks like this is beneath him.  I'm watching trailers for the new one and he looks better.  I don't know if he just became aware of what he signed up for and only realized that this is a big career move, but his performance is so much better.  It kind of makes me dislike Michael Douglas.  I don't know if I was in love with him before, so it's not much of a selling point.  But that opening sequence looks like Douglas as a young Gordon Gecko.  How cool is that?  Then there is Evangeline Lilly.  I really liked Lost for a while.  (Other things you shouldn't get me started on: my devotion to Lost after everyone told me that it was going to suck and then it did suck.)  She was fine in that show and I really wanted to support her other endeavors.  She's really bad in this movie.  Like, her performance is jilted and weighing heavily on character tropes.  I don't know if this is Peyton Reed or if everyone thought that they were on a sinking ship with the exception of Paul Rudd and Michael Peña.  But I just got the vibe that Evangeline Lilly might not be a good actress.  I try to like everyone.  Okay, I couldn't stand Timothy Olyphant and Julia Roberts for the longest times.  But then Olyphant was in Justified and Roberts was in Confession of a Dangerous Mind and I started to like them again.  But Lilly is completely blah in this movie.  There's nothing compelling or interesting about her performance or her character and that's a real bummer.  Paul Rudd constantly looks like he's doing all of the heavy lifting in a scene.  I don't know.  Maybe I'm over-reading into everything I watch, but he looks like he's over doing it in every scene to compensate for the amount of blah going on camera.  Was the set a toxic set?  I don't know, but Rudd is giving his all.  The Pyms are boring as get out.

Then there's the crime of the century.  Ant-Man is the biggest step backwards for the MCU.  Honestly, Yellowjacket as a villain is the criticism that the franchise has received since the end of Phase One.  I can't believe that Feige allowed this to happen.  It has to be because the film was delayed far too many times for them to completely come up with something original to move forward with.  I learned something about television while reading about the production of Smallville.  (No, not that Allison Mack was really creepy.  That's a whole new one to me.)  It is fairly common for an intern to get an episode every season to write.  This episode always sticks out like a sore thumb.  It isn't too tied into the mythology.  It often harks back on tropes that have been abandoned long ago.  It's because this script was being worked and reworked over the course of years to get it up to snuff.  Ant-Man feels like that.  This script isn't completely devoid of mythology, however.  It still has to fit with the current canon, so there's a B-story that's kind of inserted in there that may not tonally match with the rest of the episode.  In the case of Ant-Man, it was in development around the same time as Iron Man.  Iron Man was really successful and the mythology went forward.  Remember how I love the opening sequence?  This scene feels like it was added to feel more part of the MCU.  The other scene I love is the attack on the Avengers compound.  That scene is also great.  I'm not saying that there aren't other fun parts to the movie.  I think the creativity that comes with battles on a small scale are very clever, but these two parts of the movie stand out as being part of the greater MCU.  Also, getting Anthony Mackie to show up as the Falcon seems like just the right amount of preparation needed to feel part of it without blowing their entire budget by having Ant-Man take on the Avengers.  This is the setup needed for Civil War.  (By the way, the after the credits sequence just being a scene from Civil War feels really weak compared to the stuff they do with the other movies.)  It's just that these moments feel fresh and not a step backwards.  (OH MY GOSH, I LOST MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT!)  I was really complaining about Yellowjacket as a villain.  In Phase One, the biggest criticism of the series was that the villains were too much of the same thing.  Iron Man fought Iron Monger, a bigger version of himself.  Thor fought his brother.  Cap fought other super soldier, Red Skull.  Having Yellowjacket have the exact same origin story as Iron Monger Obidiah Stane while having an evil version of the suit is just the same thing we've seen before.  That's weak.  I really like that actor from House of Cards.  Corey Stoll's got the acting chops, but there's not much to work with here.

But I did start by saying that this movie was fun.  The things that work, and I think are going to be repeated in Part 2, are the things being the wrong size.  There's a whole fight sequence in a falling briefcase.  I love it.  It's hilarious and has solid action and that's what Ant-Man should be.  Everyone remembers the Thomas the Tank Engine stuff and that's pretty solid.  It is a really memorable joke and that's pretty fun.  The Ant-Man suit itself looks awesome.  There's really no bad special effects here.  Maybe the giant ant, but that's even pretty solid.  And Michael Peña is great!  I haven't stressed how good his team is.  His little burglary team is the anti-Pym to this movie.  They are used extremely effectively and Michael Peña just looks like he is having a blast in this movie.  I know that the easier job is the comic relief, but they make the movie.  If the movie was about the Pyms and Yellowjacket, you could probably hear my eyeballs rolling back into my head.  But the heist stuff?  That's totally fun.  I love that.  I laugh at the Baskin Robbins bit, but I kind of wish it wasn't in the movie.  Regardless, this movie is solidly more than meh.  I'll keep rewatching it in hopes that it gets better.

But it won't.   It really won't.

PG-13, I think just because James Spader is incapable of being in a PG movie.  Heck, the fact that he's a digital creation is what stops this movie from being a James Spader R-Rated movie.  They swear enough in this movie that Captain America feels the need to comment on it...oh so hilariously.  There's lots of violence because Hulk is more present in this one.  Also, there are some nightmare sequences that, while awesome, can be a little scary.  PG-13.

DIRECTOR: Joss Whedon

I'm so sleepy, guys.  My baby...she keeps us awake at night.  I have a large mug of tea that's too hot to drink and my email sound won't stop coming through my phone.  I don't know why my work needs to send so many emails.  Very few apply to me.  I might snap and completely abandon the focus of this review in strict condemnation of work email.  Anyway, I have mentioned multiple times that I love this movie despite the fact that not many people do, including its director.  I'm going to be in sleepy defensive mode, which means I'm just going to strike anywhere with my mighty keyboard of sleepy justice.  (My wife actually offered to let me take a nap in the basement, which sounds heavenly.  But A) she deserves sleep more than I do and B) I know that the first thing on the chopping block for today's list is this review, so I can't nap.  Excelsior!)

The first Avengers is kind of boring. I've talked about this in-depth in my previous review of The Avengers.  I like it and everything, but most of the movie is them not being The Avengers.  It's the petty in-fighting and the fact that Hawkeye isn't even an Avenger until the absolute end.  This movie starts off on the absolutely perfect note.  In fact, it might be the only time in the MCU that the characters actually act like The Avengers.  They act like a team and they are extremely effective.  I know how storytelling works.  Characters need to be in conflict for a story to be interesting.  In the grand storytelling fashion that is Kevin Feige, we know that the characters need to be friends so that they can be enemies later.  Hey, I'm the biggest advocate of Captain America: Civil War.  When I heard that Civil War was coming, I lost my mind.  I also knew that this was going to be the movie that set up Civil War.  But it is so fun seeing them get along for that opening shot.  Most of the first Avengers movie, they don't like each other.  Less than an hour into Age of Ultron, they also hate each other.  That opening scene where they are all working like clockwork is what I wanted.  I know it is one moment in a very VERY long franchise, but I like that kind of stuff.  In this movie, I now realize that Tony Stark is all about the drama.  He's the guy who tears things apart and gets incredulous when people don't just fall in line.  Aw geez, I just realized that Tony Stark would make a horrible dictator.  He takes things so personally.   I am now so much more Team Cap than I thought I was before.  But going back to my initial argument, when I hear The Avengers, I don't want to think about disparate members who happen to be in the same movie.  I want to hear how they completely lay waste to their enemies.  I know that the final set piece in these movies should be The Avengers crushing the bad guy in a huge action violence buffet, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be teased either.  (By the way, you know that Avengers 4 is going to end with everyone just ripping bad guys apart.)  

I think I like what everyone hates.  Okay, I submit that the setups for the other movies gets to be a bit much in this one.  I love the teases, but this one has way too many of them.  Oddly enough, it is so odd to see the teases for Ragnarok considering that they had no idea what the tone of those movies would be.  But this movie teases Ragnarok, Black Panther, Civil War, and Infinity War.  That's too much.  Marvel, when an event is coming up or recently completed, tends to release a comic book that lets readers know what's going to be happening over the next few months.  These are little teases, sometimes new / sometimes not, but that's what a lot of Age of Ultron is.  That's really unfair to the film itself and I'm sure that this stuff frustrated Whedon beyond belief, causing him to be the supervillain of the MCU.  I'll give you that. I like them now that the MCU is out, but it gets to be a bit much.  But I do love Whedon's humor.  I noticed there were too many notes that the movie tried to be too funny.  Why is that a bad thing?  I mean, this movie is completely tame compared to what would be Ragnarok.  Age of Ultron really came at the worst time for Marvel fatigue.  People wanted something different and Age of Ultron is playing up the fact that it is just ramping up a bigger version of the first one.  I wanted that.  I know that Whedon came out and swore that Age of Ultron was going to be a smaller movie.  But the movie, for once, really worked better on a larger scale.  Normally, I'm all about Whedon's logic when it comes to character motivation.  But Age of Ultron teased that really well.  One of the best things out of the MCU is Scarlet Witch's nightmares.  For a while, there's been this outcry for a Black Widow movie.  Sign me up, because those hallucinations were awesome.  I want to see so much about the Red Room and the ledger that Widow is trying to clear.  The Cap stuff is fun.  It is interesting that Widow's nightmare affects her far much than Cap's does.  Cap's has a fun aesthetic, but it is also telling to his character that his nightmare is more of a wish that he had versus Nat's, which is a full on regret.  Her visions are so lined with grief.  And then there's Hulk's nightmare.  That sequence --and I even hear myself right now --is so perfect for this movie.   I remember the hype for this movie.  When they showed the first footage of the Hulkbuster, I lost my mind.  It lived up to every single one of my expectations.  I love the idea that this is Bruce Banner's greatest fear ramped up to eleven.  The Hulk becomes the monster that everyone is afraid that he might be.  He is ripping apart a major city with innocent civilians.  Stark is only making the damage worse, despite his best intent.  (I'm talking to you, Man of Steel.)  The Hulk is such a cool character because he's lovable at times but absolutely a horror film at other times.  Watching this is the scariest version of the Hulk, which is a bummer because my kid is obsessed with Hulkbuster armor.  I tried showing him a part of this sequence, but Hulk is absolutely terrifying in this sequence.  

There's a lot of elements to this movie.  A lot of the arguments involved that there were too many elements to this movie.  I think it is a tightly woven script, all things considering.  I mean, this is a major blockbuster movie that is coming out only a few years after the original.  The script is at another level.  The writing is really tight.  It's a very funny film, and that's all great.  But a lot of the humor comes from a character that is traditionally written as humorless.  Whedon's take on Ultron is somewhat inspired.  I know, a lot of people don't love James Spader and how jokey his robot overlord became, but Spader-Ultron is / could be more compelling than the 616 Ultron.  The comics version of Ultron was modeled after Hank Pym.  Douglas's Hank Pym is pretty boring.  I think I like the comics version even less.  Ant-Man wasn't a movie yet.  Ultron has always been a pretty standard Avengers villain, but his origin story needed to be changed.  Taking Ultron's origin and linking it directly to Tony Stark is a really smart choice.  Stark is the most fleshed out character in the entire MCU.  He's the guy who keeps making the cameos.  He's got the greatest character arc.  But most importantly, Tony Stark is the personality type that would allow Ultron to be created.  Ultron is the product of hubris.  Whedon built Ultron off of Tony Stark's personality.  Tony can finally hear how he sounds to people.  When Ultron goes off the rails on things, that's just an extreme version of himself.  It's a version of Tony Stark that we didn't get to see corrupted by the cosmic cube in the first movie.  Ultron gets so angry when anyone questions him and that's just Tony Stark and his need to be right.  On top of building a great Ultron, Whedon also made Hawkeye a completely compelling and new character.  I'm a little bummed that I'll never get Pizza Dog or the Hawkeye of the books.  The Hawkeye of the comics is a hot mess when it come to relationships.  But Hawkeye of Age of Ultron is a family man.  He actually has his life together.  He seems like a good man who has been forced into situations that he doesn't care for.  He's the Black Widow who figured out his priorities.  Whedon made such a smart choice for this, for Captain America's sake alone.  If Cap was ever going to fight for anything, it had to be the center of the family.  Clint's relationship with his wife (God bless you, Linda Cardellini) is so perfect because it lets us breathe out while learning something fundamental about  the characters.  As crazy as this movie gets, it is also about character growth.  Hawkeye is a far more interesting person than we thought.  Tony Stark is far more megalomaniacal than I thought.  Bruce Banner is kind of a pushover. 

And then we got Vision.  Paul Bettany's story of his life before the MCU is slightly heartbreaking.  I heard that he was going to quit acting because things weren't working out for him the way that he wanted to.  He agreed to do the voice of a computer in Iron Man, which seems so demeaning for an actor of his caliber.  But then JARVIS (let's establish that I'm really glad that Agent Carter introduced the biological Edwin Jarvis) became such a hit in the movies that he eventually became his own superhero?  Let's establish this right now: people liked the voice of a computer so he became a superhero.  I know that Vision is a character in the Avengers.  I like Vision a lot.  But the fact that Paul Bettany had no idea that taking this little voiceover gig was going to make him a superhero that people really love.  The Vision sequence with Mjolnir is one of my favorite character setups that I have ever seen.  That's super fun.   

Like I mentioned, there are a million little elements to this movie and I'm so glad that it exists.  I wish Joss Whedon could stand proud of this work.  I wish it didn't come out in Marvel burnout season because I really enjoy this movie.  Now that I've seen Infinity War, I don't know if I can say it is my favorite one.  But I really wouldn't mind watching this one every so often as a reminder to why I love The Avengers and the MCU so much.