The Avengers

At my screening of Marvel?s The Avengers, the audience couldn?t wait until the end of the film before erupting in applause. In the midst of a massive action sequence in the third act of the story, the entire Avengers team, including Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow, assembled on screen and seeing them together was too amazing to ignore. It was a tribute to how entertaining the film truly was; a reaction to a wonderful payoff moment built up by well-crafted characters, witty dialogue and a thoroughly thrilling script. And I won?t be surprised if happens again and again once the movie is released worldwide.

A direct sequel that follows the events of the previous Marvel Universe movies, the film begins when Loki (Tom Hiddleston) finds his way back to Earth and steals the Tesseract ? an alien source of pure energy ? and threatens to enslave the human race with the help of his extraterrestrial army (called the Chitauri). Seeing no other option, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the leader of the covert government outfit known as S.H.I.E.L.D., assembles the team of superheroes known as The Avengers (Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner) to stop Loki?s plans.

Rather than creating an uneven mix or trying to focus more heavily on any one specific character, writer/director Joss Whedon has constructed The Avengers as a balanced ensemble. In addition to everyone getting at least one great action sequence, all of the characters are fully fleshed out and given an arc to work with, whether it?s Captain America?s struggle to adjust in the modern world, Thor?s guilt about his brother, Iron Man?s ego and single-mindedness, or Hulk?s fear of his own power. Even Black Widow and Hawkeye, who were largely minimized in their previous appearances, are fully fleshed out and provided with backstories that give us a better understanding of their characters.

As fun as the other Marvel movies have been to this point, the action sequences have operated on a small scale, and The Avengers does more than compensate. Seemingly taking on a philosophy of ?go big or go home,? the action is not only pure spectacle, but perfectly paced and shot by Whedon, who makes frequent cuts so that we can see everything that?s going on with the different heroes. The final battle sequence between the superhero team and Loki?s army is better than all of the action in the other Marvel movies combined and multiplied by ten. It earns the buildup from all the preceding films by being the most epic title we?ve seen with these characters yet.

Over the course of his career, Whedon has become well known for his smart characters, quick wit, and emotional gut punches, and this film will only serve to bolster that reputation. Though never even coming close to spoof territory, the movie is actually very funny, both in dialogue (such as Captain America actually recognizing a pop culture reference from The Wizard of Oz) and physical humor (most notably a confrontation between Hulk and Loki). Though a tiny bit off towards the beginning, the pacing of the film quickly comes together as the writer/director is able to both tell the story he wants to tell and mix in multiple high-tension fight and action sequences.

As a lifelong comic book fan, I walked into The Avengers with the highest hopes and deepest fears. A little over two hours later, as the credits began to roll, I turned to the friend sitting next to me, smiled and exclaimed, ?They actually did it!? What Whedon and Marvel have created here is not just extraordinary, but one of the most entertaining and satisfying comic book movies yet.

For our To 3D or not to 3D guide to The Avengers, go Here.

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Lockout

Early on in Lockout, a team of special forces know-it-alls are debating how to solve a very particular kind of hostage crisis, in which the President's daughter is trapped in a jail that's in the middle of a mutiny, and that jail happens to be in space. The men are debating all kinds of solutions, SWAT teams and bombs and all that, until one particularly smart one pauses and says "Or? we could send in? one man."

That line is one of many make-or-break moments in Lockout, when you can decide as an audience to laugh at its audacity and keep going, or to shut down entirely to this movie's macho, hoo-rah appeal. The charm here is a little thinner than some of the other brash action movies to come from producer Luc Besson's hivemind-- it's no Taken, despite the presence of Maggie Grace as the kidnap victim once again, and it's missing the blunt-force dynamism of District B13. But it also has a trump card in the form of Guy Pearce, who unleashes a growling, muscular id as disagreed government agent Snow sent in to rescue the FIrst Daughter because he's got nothing left to lose. In his best scenes he makes Lockout feel special and vibrant, but when he's gone, the movie can be a surprising slog for something so silly.

For starters, it's a shame to see a futuristic sci-fi world so boring, in which Grace's character Emilie holds up the day's news on an actual piece of electronic paper (have they gotten rid of iPads?), and an early chase scene in the subway reveals trains as grimy and dysfunctional as the ones we have now. Directors James Mather and Stephen St. Leger are operating off a small budget, but a little more imagination could have stretched that money a lot further-- the sets and costumes and general vibe of Lockout feel like all the sci-fi of the past 20 years blended into an indistinct mud.

It's only the people wandering around those sets, working their way around the borderline incoherent dialogue, who give Lockout any spark. There's Pearce's gruff Snow, of course, equipped with round after round of one-liners and a disdain for Emilie that barely coalesces into the expected romance. There's Lennie James's Shaw, who chows down on nuts constantly and directs Snow on his prison-rescue mission with some one-liners of his own. And a lot of the prisoners themselves make an impression, with Joseph Gilgun going all bug-eyed psycho as Hydell and Vincent Regan leading the revolt with a terrifying presence as Alex. Every one of these characters can feel overwritten or frequently lost in the murk of the story, but each have their standout moments as well-- if you don't think too hard about how much more fun they could have been in a better movie, of course.

It's not one big flaw of Lockout that dooms it, but a bunch of small, slowly accumulating ones, from dialogue that leaps right over on-the-nose into complete nonsense to brazen plot holes, like a giant sign flashing "Nitrogen Warning" that nobody in the tiny room notices until it's too late. One of the central action scenes is almost identical to one in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, but executed far less thrillingly, and though the entire finale operates with a ticking clock in the background and crazy convicts after our heroes, there's no sense of urgency or drama. After starting with a funny, dynamic interrogation scene in which Snow has a retort for every punch, the air slowly drains out of Lockout-- a fun premise killed by a thousand cuts of slack direction and not a single original idea.

With a plot cribbed so closely from Escape From New York and such a frequent disregard for character motivation, logic or even the laws of gravity, Lockout is pure schlock in the usual Besson mode, but it never picks up enough steam to turn into something outrageous and great. Pearce's performance is both things, and if nothing else Lockout is a strong argument for him to take on more charismatic leading roles-- he comes so close to rescuing Lockout that who knows what he might do in an actual good movie. He's almost reason enough to catch it, but be prepared to be frustrated that the rest of the movie isn't nearly up to his level.

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Chimpanzee

Really good nature photography is a special effect that never gets old, especially when the camera is trained on creatures or climates inaccessible to the rest of us. So for all of Chimpanzee's faults as a people-pleasing Disney "documentary" hellbent on building a kid-friendly narrative, it contains enough stunning footage of the chimps and their jungle habitat to remain engrossing, even while it's insulting your intelligence.

Cribbing a bit too much from classic Disney narratives like Bambi and The Lion King to feel believably true, Chimpanzee chooses as its hero Oscar, a young chimp living in a pack of about 35 in the jungles of? well, it's never said where in Africa they are, but the credits mention Ivory Coast and Ugandan crews, so let's go with that. Through Oscar we learn about chimp rituals of grooming and playtime among the young ones, plus the intense bond between Oscar and his mother Isha, who teaches him how to crack nuts and forage for berries and all the other necessary chimp life lessons. Eventually we're introduced to a rival gang led by--no kidding-- a chimp named Scar, with a "mob" of "thugs" determined to cut into the territory of Oscar's crew.

This shameless setup of an antagonist is against pretty much everything more honest nature programs will tell you, and the careful focus on Oscar and his mother vs. Scar and his aggressive males outrageously tips the scales, giving no indication that Oscar will likely grow up to be an aggressive male himself. The cornball, jokey narration from Tim Allen is generally acceptable under the "kids will like it" clause, but every time he refers to Scar and company in menacing tones, it eliminates any sense of Chimpanzee as authentic. The photography makes up for a lot of it-- particularly sped-up shots of growing fungi to give a sense of nature's authentic menace-- and directors Alistair Fothergill and Mark Linfield clearly know their way around the jungle. But the lack of nuance is maddening if TV programs like Planet Earth or Frozen Planet have taught you to expect more.

A twist late in the film leads Oscar to an unexpected, and actually authentic, relationship with another chimp in his tribe, and that serendipitous bit of reality makes Chimpanzee worth it-- in the credits the filmmakers talk about how moved they were by the moment, and it's clear this is something they, and we, are lucky to witness. And Oscar himself is undeniably cute, his tight relationship with his mom undeniably touching, and the chimpanzee rituals undeniably fascinating-- with no embellishment from Allen or the directors needed. Chimpanzee gets credit for avoiding the obligatory "and here is how we are destroying this habitat" ending, and for giving the camera over entirely to the chimpanzees and their stunning world. But when a crew is given such incredible access, then masks it with lowbrow narration and a overly simple story, it's something of a waste-- even kids are up for something a little more sophisticated.

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Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope

The truth is that San Diego Comic Con is pretty hellish. It smells awful thanks to the 20,000 gallons of dork sweat, is insanely crowded every day, most of your time is spent waiting in line and everything is insanely expensive. Director Morgan Spurlock?s latest documentary, Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope, chooses to ignore all of this, though, and the result is a film that not only feels like a tourism video, but a dull tourism video.

All filmed during and around the time of the 2010 San Diego Comic Con, the documentary follows a small group of people, all of whom are traveling to the convention with different goals in mind. There?s Eric Henson and Skip Harvey, who wish to become comic book artists; Chuck Rozanski, who is doing his best to keep his comic book store alive; Holly Conrad, a costume designer with goals of winning the masquerade ball; and James Darling, who has plans to propose to his girlfriend, who he also met at Comic Con. The stories are interwoven with segments featuring some of the biggest names in geek culture, from Joss Whedon to Stan Lee to Kevin Smith, who try to explain just what it is that makes Comic Con so special.

There?s no real conflict at the center of Spurlock?s latest, but that?s largely because the film ignores all challenges in favor of simply being a love letter to the convention. Many patrons of the annual event have complained loudly about how it has changed over the years, becoming less about comics and geekdom and more about advertising and Hollywood, but that aspect is never fully explored in Comic Con Episode IV. Instead the movie is more concerned with the obsessive toy collector who wants nothing more in this world than an 18-inch Galactus action figure. It?s easy to appreciate that Spurlock never mocks his subjects ? instead authentically embracing their obsessions ? but the lack of any kind of real analysis makes the project hollow and pointless.

Spurlock is nowhere to be seen in this documentary, unlike Super Size Me, Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden? and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold where he was front and center, but in this film it serves as a detriment because it never feels like a real Morgan Spurlock documentary. Though the subject matter is fun and casual in the director?s style, there is a sense of emptiness watching the film due to his absence. Because we end up following multiple subjects instead of just one, the whole thing becomes rather episodic and choppy, never able to find real focus. While the director decided to stay behind the camera this time in order to better emphasize the story of the fans being followed, it doesn?t feel like a Morgan Spurlock movie and that?s a bad thing.

As proven by his previous projects, Morgan Spurlock is an incredibly talented documentarian and filmmaker, but his newest never really works. The movie paints the San Diego experience as some blissful nerd nirvana where you can go and have the geekiest time of your life, but casually breezes over or minimizes the large-scale problems that the event deals with increasingly every year. Perhaps the only way to enjoy Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope is to have never been at the convention personally. But then why would you care?

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Think Like a Man

Even if you somehow never saw the book Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man at the grocery store checkout line or in TV ads, there's pretty much no way you won't know everything about its contents, its message, or its author Steve Harvey by the end of the new movie based on it, Think Like A Man. Unlike He's Just Not That Into You, which adapted a self-help book into a bland and sprawling rom-com, Harvey's book is at the center of the equally bland and sprawling Think Like A Man-- the author and actor himself pops up frequently to dish out bits of wisdom, and all of the characters carry the book around as if it were the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It's unclear if writers Keith Merryman or David A. Newman simply couldn't think of a more clever way to adapt the material, or if Harvey himself demanded to hang over the moving like some advice-spewing Cheshire Cat, but Think Like A Man quickly becomes exhausting in adhering to its many lessons, all mostly about how women can manipulate the men in their lives to treat them better. There's the single mom (Regina Hall) who learns to be up front with her momma's boy beau (Terrence J), the frustrated long-term girlfriend (Gabrielle Union) redecorating her house against her boyfriend's (Jerry Ferrara) will, and the sly single gal (Meagan Good) who decides to wait a full 90 days before letting her new guy (Romany Malco) have the "cookie"-- come on, you know what this PG-13 movie means by that.

There's also a courtship between a high-powered executive (Taraji P. Henson) and an aspiring chef currently working as a caterer (Michael Ealy), the only relationship that breaks the mold by having the woman be the one who learns a lesson. All the guys hang out in a thrice-weekly basketball game, swapping dating advice and joshing around, which means their encounters occasionally focus on something other than the relationships we're seeing play out on screen (Kevin Hart, in a fast-talking comic relief role, provides most of that). But the women talk exclusively about the men, usually in platitudes cribbed directly from Harvey's book, and at two-plus hours Think Like A Man might take as long as actually reading the book yourself.

To its credit, the movie is often much funnier than it could have been, usually thanks to Hart or some jabs amongst the guys that zing a little harder than you expect-- though Union and Good both take advantage of their straightforward characters to add spots of comic zest as well. Tim Story, who made Barbershop before a misguided venture into the Fantastic Four movies, directs with a quick pace and a willingness to cut his performers loose when necessary, especially Hart, whose storyline only develops near the end but pays off nicely. And the glossy production design gives the women fantastic outfits and every apartment, no matter how humble, a sitcom-y sheen-- no small compensation when the story stalls out in the second act and your mind may wander to wondering how Good maintains such a great manicure in every scene.

Early on in the movie two different characters take shots at Tyler Perry movies, setting them up as the kind of lame rom-coms that everyone in this world ought to be moving past. And if Tyler Perry's melodramatic tales-- in which love is only possible once you've undergone hardship and embraced Jesus together-- are really the only model for African-American relationships at the movies these days, then Think Like A Man really is something special, if only for being as zippy, bland and secular as any other studio romantic comedy. By relying heavily on gender stereotypes that assume every woman wants to get married-- unless it's Henson's character, "The woman who is her own man"-- and every man wants nothing more than to play basketball and drink with his buddies, Think Like A Man sets up easy sides in its game of love, then spends two hours pretending it's difficult to reconcile the two. As in any rom-com, no one's actual relationship is like this, but that doesn't mean we can't continue taking some very guilty pleasure in watching it all play out anyway.

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American Reunion

Try to imagine this. It?s 1999. Jim?s dad (Eugene Levy) catches his sexually curious son (Jason Biggs) raping an apple pie. Instead of disposing of the dessert, though, he places the molested pastry in a time capsule. The vault is sealed and buried in the yard, where the rotting slice grows stale, sticky and revoltingly indigestible.

Thirteen years later, the capsule is opened. The pungent stench of moldy fruit and crusty ejaculation is enough to make you want to vomit. What?s left of the soiled pie is scraped out of its filthy container, placed on a plate, and served to susceptible patrons as something edible.

If you hadn?t already guessed, the rancid pie remnants in the above analogy are meant to represent American Reunion. And Universal is handing you a virtual fork, daring you to scoop a mouthful of this wretched ?comedy? and choke it down. Please, God, tell me you?re not going to waste your time and ? more important ? money on prepubescent jerk-off humor that reeks of comedic flopsweat and gender-insensitive sexual frustration.

And yet, I honestly expected something better. What an idiot that makes me. Even though the American Pie brand has since devolved into a straight-to-video crap factory cranking out tepid sequels meant to titillate teenage boys (and keep Levy employed), I chose to believe that the producers wouldn?t bother dragging the series back into theaters unless it had something relevant to say about getting older and finding our way as post-graduate thirtysomethings who are wrestling with careers, children and aging parents. Nope. Reunion ends up being everything I prayed it wouldn?t be: Lazy, stupid, recycled, immature, predictable, unfunny ... a pathetic attempt by a dead franchise to scrape the bottom of an already filthy barrel and squeeze a few more dollars from audience members seeking clich?d nostalgia. The only thing that differentiates it from the aforementioned DVD sequels is that the original cast members from the 1999 installment all had time on their professional schedules to participate. Given their non-existent acting abilities, though, it?s easy to understand why they?re hardly in demand.

The story involves the Pie kids returning home to Michigan for their 13th high school reunion. (An unlucky number for them, and for us.) Each arrives with a unique emotional problem, all of which are resolved in stupefyingly boring fashion. The central conflict involves ?old? married couple Jim (Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), whose relationship is in a rut. Neither can stop masturbating, yet sex with each other sounds about as appealing as sitting through American Pie Presents: The Book of Love.

Jim blames their sexual frigidity on the couple?s young son, though never fear ? directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg jettison the child for long stretches of Reunion, prompting this parent to wonder why Jim and Michelle are never with their kid, or interested where he might be. Jim, in fact, hardly ever touches his child, if he even touches him at all. Maybe it?s because I?m a dad, but I tend to pay attention to stuff like that. The filmmakers should, as well, if they?re going to bother introducing a child into the equation. It would be remarkable, if only Reunion was one of those movies that concerned itself with details. It doesn?t.

Tell me, what is the point of American Reunion? As a comedy, it dwells on five unsatisfied man-children who despise their present, fear their future, and long for a past that wasn?t very enjoyable in the first place. You?d never celebrate the Pie movies for their sophisticated insights into the human condition or their inspired physical comedy. Yet even the one choreographed bit in the middle of Reunion, which finds Jim sneaking his naked teenage neighbor back into her suburban bedroom, is a tired exercise in sitcom chicanery.

Sloppy direction and pedantic screenwriting almost could be excused if Reunion had something to offer beyond sex-crazed punchlines that stopped being funny before American Wedding. Who?s still laughing as Scott?s unfiltered frat brat Stiffler pines for an oral-happy girlfriend he disgustingly dismisses as ?the mouth that got away?? But as the movie?s attempts at recreating its tailgating youth scattered haphazardly like buckshot, I felt sad for anyone who behaves like the frozen-in-time idiots of the Pie universe ? and for anyone who thinks spending time with these movies is entertaining.

?Maybe in high school it was funny. Now it?s just a felony,? one character reflects. He?s exactly right. ?

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The Five-Year Engagement

There are worse people to spend two hours with than Jason Segel's Tom and Emily Blunt's Violet, the persistently delayed couple at the center of The Five-Year Engagement. We meet them as Tom is ready to propose, and even when Violet accidentally ruins the surprise they go through with the proposal anyway, all good humor and jokey and believably warm to each other. But eventually Tom and Violet become less like your favorite friends than your favorite college friends who got off on the wrong path at some point, making mistakes and wallowing in them, turning into the kind of quiet depressives you eventually need to distance yourself from for your own sanity.

The Five-Year Engagement, which runs longer than two hours and invites all kinds of bitter jokes about the title, is another collaboration between writer/director Nicholas Stoller and writer/star Jason Segel in which they seem to have written and shot a movie that is four hours long, then awkwardly stuffed it into a still-overlong two-hour frame. For all the funny jokes and well-crafted characters and storylines that both surprise and satisfy, there are scores of comedians crammed into tiny supporting roles, plot turns that seem purely mechanical, and bits of comedy that everyone in the editing room liked too much to let go. Far more shapeless than Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Engagement isn't really telling the story of this relationship, but using it as a frame to set up some jokes and characters that would have worked even better with an actual structure to guide them.

What happens over the course of Tom and Violet's five-year engagement is about as eventful as what happens in anyone's life over five years: they get engaged, then Violet gets offered a grad program at the University of Michigan, then they move together to Ann Arbor, where their relationship suffers after Tom takes crappy job and Violet gets wrapped up in both her program and her suave professor (Rhys Ifans, surprisingly sexy, actually). Among the comedians who play their friends in Ann Arbor are Chris Parnell, Brian Posehn, Mindy Kaling and Kevin Hart, and though each gets in a few good lines or weird visual humor (including Parnell's hideous homemade sweaters), none seem to make the intended impact. The movie ambles along at a nice enough pace until it kind of crash lands in the second act, where Tom gets depressed about Michigan life and takes the audience down with him.

With all the movie's wild tonal shifts and pacing challenges, it's a relief that one part remains consistently great: Chris Pratt and Alison Brie as Tom's best friend and Violet's sister, respectively, who start up a surprising relationship of their own early on and act as a model of the marriage Tom and Violet could have if they just got their shit together. Both standouts on their respective NBC sitcoms Parks & Recreation and Community, Pratt and Brie are the only supporting players given the time to develop real characters, and though some of their scenes can drag as much as the others-- their wedding is probably the draggiest in the film-- you still start wishing the movie was about them instead. From Brie's Elmo voice to Pratt's terrible pretend-acting, each knows what works for them, and they play their hearts out on the sidelines while Blunt and Segel get a little lost in the middle.

That's not to say that both stars don't have their moments, and in the times when their rapport is allowed to play out without getting caught in weird comedic moments or plot contrivances, they once again feel like that appealing couple we met at the beginning of the movie. But for all the bright moments that break out of the muddle, and the zippy ending that almost rescues it, The Five-Year Engagement catches a bad case of the meanders and never quite recovers, leaving us to wonder what Segel and Stoller could do if forced into a tight 90 minute runtime, with only the really, really good stuff spared the cutting room floor.

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