Review #1,460: 'Captain Marvel' (2019)

It says a lot about the mammoth universe built by Kevin Feige and the folks at Marvel over the past 11 years that merely the glimpse of a modified pager displaying the colours of their costume is enough to generate a huge amount of buzz around the arrival of a new superhero. Captain Marvel's introduction was teased during the traditional post-credits stinger of last year's Avengers: Infinity War, and now, just under a year later, Brie Larson's Carol Danvers finally makes her bow. Black Panther became a cultural phenomenon, and Infinity War delivered and then some on its promise to bring this breathtaking (first) saga closer to an end, so the small-scale and light-hearted Ant-Man and the Wasp was a welcome, if underwhelming palette cleanser. Captain Marvel is the studio's first female-led superhero film, so there's a weight of expectation behind Marvel once again.

There has been a wave of ugliness online in protest against the idea of female empowerment and Brie Larson's pro-feminist comments before the film even premiered, but an opening weekend of north of $500 million has silenced the haters and, with any hope, brought us closer to a future when a hero's gender or sexuality is irrelevant to a film's success. Captain Marvel is far from perfect. In fact, it relies heavily on Marvel's tried-and-tested origin story formula we saw a lot of when this universe was still in its first phase, although directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck toy around with the structure enough to keep things slightly less familiar. Anyone who was keen to write Captain Marvel off as an example of forced diversity should take the time to actually watch it. Don't get me wrong, the film takes a strong pro-feminist stance and tackles issues plaguing our modern world, but it does so with subtlety. Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel is strong, confident, even arrogant at times, but just like Tony Stark or Dr. Strange, she is also flawed, troubled and - despite the mystery surrounding her ancestry - recognisably human.

The warrior known as Vers (Larson) is a member of Starforce, an elite band of soldiers operating within the Kree Empire tasked with infiltrating the Skrulls, a race of shape-shifting aliens they have been at war with since before they can remember. Vers is troubled by dreams that feel like memories she does not remember, but her commander Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) trains her to put aside her emotion to focus on the enemy. During a mission to rescue one Starforce's own, Vera is captured by Skrull leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), who proceeds to dissect her memories before they all crash down on a strange, primitive planet. That planet is Earth, and the year is 1995. It isn't long before an eager, two-eyed agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. called Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is drawn to this mysterious stranger and is caught up in her desire to uncover the secrets of her past, along with learning of an intergalactic war that may one day threaten his home. With the help of old friend Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) and a cat named Goose, Vers discovers that she was born Carol Danvers, and that everything she has been taught about who she is and what she's fighting for may actually be a lie.

Although Marvel have done period before with Captain America: The First Avenger back in 2011, Boden and Fleck were clearly having fun revelling in some 90's nostalgia. Although some of the music choices are a little on-the-nose, the appearance of a Blockbuster store and the sound of a dial-up internet connection will delight those, like me, who grew up in the decade. The big joke is that while Carol embarks on galaxy-hopping adventures with the Kree, down here on Earth everything takes an age to load. Captain Marvel switches seamlessly between these two extremes with good humour, and for a character that is destined to become the franchise's next cosmic powerhouse, the low-key approach to her origin actually works in the film's favour. It also allows time for Larson to develop the character, whether it be bouncing off Jackson's one-liners or discovering her old self with her best friend. Larson is great: strong but not over-powered, cocky but endearing. Despite Mendelsohn's scene-stealing, Larson ensures that it'll be Captain Marvel's appearance you'll be eagerly awaiting in the upcoming Avengers: Endgame. Formulaic? Certainly, but Marvel knows how to entertain, and they can't exactly re-define the genre with every film.


Directed by: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Annette Bening, Lashana Lynch, Clark Gregg, Gemma Chan, Rune Temte, Djimon Hounsou
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,417: 'Choke' (2008)

If you've ever had the fortune of reading a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the novelist behind the likes of Fight Club and Invisible Monsters, you'll know that attempting to envision the writer's nihilistic style and sketchy characters for the cinema screen is a monumental task. It takes a master director like David Fincher to make something truly wonderful, as he did with 1999's Fight Club, and to understand that simply plucking the best scenes from the book, stringing them together, and hoping it'll somehow flow, simply won't work. Choke, based on Palahniuk's 2001 novel, is written and directed by Clark Gregg, the actor now best known as Agent Coulson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and TV's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It's a commendable effort, and Gregg certainly gives it his all, but Choke is all over the place, and is ultimately forced to hack the complex novel into a collection of vignettes that don't really fit together.

Our protagonist is Victor Mancini, a sex addict and theme park employee whose ultimate goal seems to be to piss off anybody he comes across. His only friend is chronic masturbator Denny (Brad William Henke), a fellow underachiever who is almost saintly when compared to Victor. To his credit, Victor pays frequent visits to his hospitalised mother Ida (Anjelica Huston), although she doesn't recognise him, so Victor spends much of the time pretending to be somebody else or trying to bang any of the many nurses in the ward. If Victor wasn't already loathsome enough, he earns some extra cash on the side by pretending to choke on food at restaurants. The con is that a good Samaritan will perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on the blue-in-the-face stranger, and when the airwaves are clear and the food flies across the room, they will feel responsible for the person they have just saved. As a result, Victor frequently receives cheques from his saviours. In anybody else's hands, Victor would be too much of a scumbag to bear for 90 minutes, but he's played by Sam Rockwell, and the great underappreciated character actor somehow makes him sympathetic.

If Choke sounds like a mess, it's because that's precisely what it is. Along with everything else going on, Victor finds some comfort from the chaos in his life in the form of nurse Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald), who comes up with her own theory about Victor's birth when Ida reveals that there's something she hasn't told him. Despite the haphazard nature of the story, Gregg just about pulls it off by getting the very best out of his actors. Rockwell and Huston are fantastic, but that's to be expected. Henke, an actor I don't think I've seen in anything else before, gets a lot of laughs out of his loveable schlub, and is so good that it often feels like his character has the more interesting story to tell. Macdonald is charming as the nurse with her own unique approach to dealing with the strung-out relative of one of her patients, and Gregg himself, in a smaller role as Victor's brown-nosing colleague, is responsible for some of the film's funniest moments. But in the end, that's all that Choke is: a collection of funny moments. It certainly captures the idiosyncratic tone of the novel, but doesn't quite know how to fit it all the pieces together.


Directed by: Clark Gregg
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly Macdonald, Brad William Henke, Paz de la Huerta, Clark Gregg, Bijou Phillips
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #461: 'The Avengers' (2012)

So here it arrives, at last, after five films, four years, and many an explosion, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) are brought together (with the addition of Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)) to become the third highest-grossing movie of all time (so far). While the individual films vary in quality, it is Joss Whedon who was chosen to handle such an big-name ensemble. The Avengers is hardly a masterpiece, but is one of the most effortlessly entertaining films I've ever seen, with a witty script, an extremely talented cast, and Scarlett Johansson's arse back in spandex.

Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor's Asgardi brother, arrives on Earth via a portal created by the Tesseract cube, and destroys the headquarters of S.H.I.E.L.D., an espionage agency ran by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Fury calls on Steve Rogers (Evans) to help against Loki, who is busy causing a distraction as a Loki-possessed Hawkeye steals iridium needed to stabilise the Tesseract's power, and Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) calls on Tony Stark's (Downey Jr.) expertise in understanding the power that Loki may now wield. Natasha Romanoff (Johansson) is sent to Calcutta to round-up Bruce Banner, while Thor moves in after Rogers and Stark capture Loki. Soon enough, the group are bickering on board S.H.I.E.L.D.'s giant Helicarrier, while's Loki's grand plan comes to fruition.

Joss Whedon clearly loves his comic-books. While the film in absolutely no way isolate's newcomers, this is a film for the geeks. Ever wanted to see the Incredible Hulk fight Iron Man? Or the Hulk punching Thor thity feet through the air? Iron Man mocking Thor with Shakespearian venom? What about the Hulk repeatedly smashing Loki against the floor (in possibly the most inspired moment of the film) by his legs? Well, nerds, you better start thinking about your gran before you spray your pants as The Avengers has them all and then some. It's a true indication of how the balance of power in Hollywood has shifted of late, with Internet chat-rooms providing a medium for many an uber-nerd to vent their opinions and approvals/disapprovals. With directors like Peter Jackson, Edgar Wright and Zack Snyder (as well as Whedon) amongst the directorial A-list, films no longer need to be bogged down with added romance or morality lessons to please the 'wider audience' producers thought existed, but instead go back to the source of what made the subject so beloved in the first place.

But the film is far more than great special-effects and action scenes (though they are here in abundance), and shows that a film doesn't have to simply ejaculate in your face a la Michael Bay to make mega-bucks. Whedon's screenplay is the key to the film and the scenes in which the group verbally interact (especially in the early scenes where they despise each other) provides plenty of wit and genuine heart. No character is forgotten either - Whedon has experience handling an ensemble with the tragically cancelled Firefly series, which led to the terrific film adaptation Serenity (2005) - and The Avengers' 140+ running time allows them all to breathe, without anyone being lost amongst the enormous personalities and emotional complexities.

Although it's not the best superhero film ever made, it's certainly the most fun. And with the darkness and psychological menace of The Dark Knight Rises still lingering in my mind, The Avengers offers a funnier, more care-free alternative in the genre (although The Avengers does have its share of genuine shocks). If there were any concerns about the film living up to its hype, they have been well and truly laid to rest, with Ruffalo's Bruce Banner providing yet another casting masterstroke after negotiations between Marvel and Edward Norton broke down (they can stop changing him now after three Hulk's in as many movies). Even though it does move a bit too frantically for its own good sometimes, Downey Jr. and co are just too magnetic for this to become a problem. The film offers yet another post-credits nipple-erecter, opening Marvel's universe even more, so hopefully there will be more of the same to come with The Avengers 2 (due 2015 according to IMDb) and Edgar Wright's Ant-Man (probably out next year).


Directed by: Joss Whedon
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Clark Gregg, Samuel L. Jackson
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie