Colm McCarthy's The Girl with All the Gifts, written in novel form and for the screen in tandem by Mike Carey,seems to have aspirations of greatness: To be that great British horror movie many of us are waiting for, and harking back to iconic pieces of horror/science fiction literature such as Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. McCarthy, who has mainly worked for television (directing episodes of Ripper Street, Doctor Who and Peaky Blinders amongst many others), certainly makes a valiant effort to help distinguish the film from a seemingly endless wave of zombie movies, but the plot rarely strays from the tropes of the post-apocalyptic road trip.
The titular girl with all the gifts is the exceptionally intelligent Melanie (Sennia Nanua), a child who appears to live in a dark cell within an underground military bunker. She is routinely ushered into English lessons strapped to a wheelchair with her arms, legs and head restrained. We soon learn that such extreme measures are taken because Melanie is a 'hungry' - someone infected by a mysterious fungal disease responsible for turning most of humanity into flesh-eating zombies. Only she is one of a few born infected with the virus who is also capable of interacting with the uninfected, and she and her classmates are believed by Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close) to be the key to a cure. When the base is attacked by a hoard of the undead, Caldwell flees with Melanie, taking kindhearted teacher Helen (Gemma Arterton) and grizzled soldier Sgt. Parks (Paddy Considine) to find a safe place to finish the experimentation.
To her credit, Nanua more than holds her own against seasoned veterans such as Close and Considine, and Melanie's sweet, curious nature combined with her instinct to kill is the film's strongest suit. However, this is more of an ensemble piece, and by taking the attention away from Melanie to focus on explaining the epidemic and placing the group into a simple get-from-A-to-B storyline, it loses its edge. The sagging middle aside - which often feels like a better-filmed episode of The Walking Dead and offers only one memorable set-piece involving a swarm of sleeping living dead - events are book-ended by an intriguing beginning and thoughtful ending. The opening is successful in luring you in before deteriorating into a midst of exposition and gun-fire, and the final moments, which ponder a different kind of future, highlight just how great things could have been.
With the rights to Marvel's other vast array of T-shirt adorned superheroes, such as Spider-Man and the X-Men, firmly in the clutches of other studios (who are reaping in the gazillions), Marvel - now combined with the surprisingly un-meddling might of the House of Mouse - are finding themselves having to turn to some of their more left-field, obscure creations. They don't come as unfamiliar as the Guardians of the Galaxy, a group of rag-tag criminals and rogues who operate millions of miles away from Earth and the Avengers, a gang no doubt familiar to hardcore comic-book fans, but little more than a collection of strange looking aliens and one human to the rest of us.
It's a massive surprise, then, that Guardians of the Galaxy may be Marvel's best movie to date, eclipsing the unexpected charm of Iron Man (2008), the easy-going chemistry of The Avengers (2012) and the formula-flipping breath of fresh air that was Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). Director James Gunn, the man responsible for the fun Slither (2006) and the twisted Super (2010), knows that you probably don't know these people, but he makes sure you'll remember them. A combination of risky, but spot-on casting, a well-structured, incredibly witty script by Gunn and Nicole Perlman, and feast-for-your-eyes cinematography by Ben Davis, makes this the most fun to be had all year, perhaps even the decade.
After being abducted as a child shortly after watching his mother die, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) now operates as a space bounty hunter, working for space-hillbilly Yondu (Michael Rooker) and trying to go by the name of Star-Lord. When he steals a mysterious orb and almost getting killed in the process, he betrays Yondu and tries to rake in the bounty for himself. This draws the attention of Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the green-skinned adopted daughter of space tyrant Thanos (glimpsed in the credits of The Avengers, and here played by Josh Brolin), who attempts to steal the orb for herself.
Also in the vicinity and hoping to capture Quill for the reward money, are Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), a foul-mouthed, gun-wielding raccoon, and his companion Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), a self regenerating tree. The four get into a scuffle and find themselves imprisoned by Nova Corps, where they come across tattooed man-mountain Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), a man with a serious grudge against Gamora's boss Ronan (Lee Pace), who killed his wife and children. Though the group clash due to ego-fuelled personalities, grudges and personal demons, they may be the only thing standing between Ronan and the orb, the latter of which holds almost infinite power which Ronan plans to use to fuel his own genocidal tendencies.
The orb just may be the most obvious MacGuffin in cinema history (Quill even references The Maltese Falcon (1941), one of the most famous examples), and the plot sometimes whizzes by without giving you time to reflect or allow it all to sink in, but it's really hard to care when all you really want is to see these five characters in a room together, and if they happen to blow a lot of shit up at the same time, then all the better for it. The real success is the casting. Han Solo comparisons are obvious, but to lump Chris Pratt's star-making performance into the same bubble as Harrison Ford's iconic space cowboy is lazy and unfair. Quill is a loveable idiot, tough enough to face up to a fight, intelligent enough to always carry tricks up his sleeve, and flawed enough to make us care.
Racoon and Groot, one of the most adorable and effortlessly hilarious couplings in recent memory, will no doubt be the ones that the kids take away from the film, but it's Bautista, a WWE wrestler in his first major role, who truly stands out. He serves as the real emotional core in the film, initially fuelled by hatred and rage, but gradually learning the importance of friendship and camaraderie. Drax's failure to grasp sarcasm and metaphors also shows a deft comic timing, made even funnier by the man's imposing stature and gift of the scowl.
The film trips up on Marvel's usual struggle to deliver a climatic action scene that truly thrills or even offer anything original, but it's the first time I found myself genuinely concerned about a superhero's fate, all five of them in fact. It's a thrilling, beautiful, hilarious, and just plain weird movie, all scored to some great funky tunes from the 1970's (usually blasted through Quill's 'Awesome Mix Tape #1', which he listens to on his retro walkman, one of the few things he has left from Earth). The two hour running-time will feel like barely half the film has gone by by the time the credits begin to roll, and the inevitable sequel (the film is now the highest-grossing of a summer that involved the fourth entry into Michael Bay's CGI-ejaculation Transformers franchise) can't come soon enough.
The titular girl with all the gifts is the exceptionally intelligent Melanie (Sennia Nanua), a child who appears to live in a dark cell within an underground military bunker. She is routinely ushered into English lessons strapped to a wheelchair with her arms, legs and head restrained. We soon learn that such extreme measures are taken because Melanie is a 'hungry' - someone infected by a mysterious fungal disease responsible for turning most of humanity into flesh-eating zombies. Only she is one of a few born infected with the virus who is also capable of interacting with the uninfected, and she and her classmates are believed by Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close) to be the key to a cure. When the base is attacked by a hoard of the undead, Caldwell flees with Melanie, taking kindhearted teacher Helen (Gemma Arterton) and grizzled soldier Sgt. Parks (Paddy Considine) to find a safe place to finish the experimentation. 
