Avengers: Age of Ultron

This installment in the Marvelverse starts with Team Avengers raiding a Hydra base and being introduced to Quicksilver and Wanda Maximoff. The mission is successful in that they are reunited with Loki's scepter. Stark and Banner discover artificial intelligence buried in it and use it to come up with a global defense program. The program comes to life and decides rightly that humans are the biggest threat. What ensues is the usual inner bickering in the team and some good ass kicking as the Avengers struggle to defeat the Ultron menace. Definitely enjoyable for people who hate Abbas Kiarostami films.

Rating: * * +

Poster licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

The Avengers

The refrain of "Avengers Assemble" was echoing out of this film as Marvel, after years of setup with Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and Captain America, bring their iconic team on to the big screen. Technically the film should have been called The Ultimates with Joss Whedon liberally borrowing from the Marvel reboot of their Avengers franchise. Loki is up to mischief again as he steals The Tesseract (go see Thor) in return for an alien army from the mysterious Other to subjugate Earth. The story does not get deeper than that as the film focuses on the formation of The Avengers and the ensuing carnage against the invading alien force. Granted the plot could have been made complex if Whedon borrowed a tad more from the graphic novels. But sometimes action that causes enough adrenaline to pump is good enough excuse for enjoyment.

Rating: * * *

Iron Man 2

Take Iron Man down a few notches... well lets make that a dozen notches... and you have its follow on. The gist of the film is Whiplash (a wasted Mickey Rourke) coming for Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) when the reactor in his chest is acting up. The plot is thin and the jokes are forced. To make up for that couple of star characters from the Marvel universe, Nick Fury and the Black Widow have been thrown in. Except that Scarlett Johansson looks out of place as the Widow even with her 6 inch heels. Technically Samuel L. Jackson is a perfect fit for the Ultimate version of Nick Fury but it feels like Jules from Pulp Fiction was transported here. Plus if you have read the Marvel Civil War saga, Iron Man can never be in your virtual good books.

Rating: *

Sherlock Holmes

Had a bad feeling about this one at the outset, but decided to give it a shot since its Sherlock Holmes. We've recently seen many directors attempting a "new age" take on popular fictional characters of the past - while some have indeed given the characters a second life, a good lot of them have disappointed. Guy Ritchie's Robert Downey Jr's Sherlock Holmes belongs firmly to the latter. Big muscles, exaggerated action sequences and the usual GR humour dot the plot, but there is no intrigue as one would expect from with Arthur Conan Doyle's hero - whats the point then? 

Rating: * +

Iron Man

Marvel comic's Iron Man came to life on the screen over weekend. Robert Downey Jr. plays the suave genius Tony Starks, who creates / becomes the Iron Man under some stressful conditions in remote Afghanistan, goes from being a millionaire tomboy selling weapons to a robotic superhero with a conscience. It does sound rather cheesy but it works.

The slick action sequences does help in making it work, but it is the fringe characters like Stark's assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and evil Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) that lace the icing on the cake with cyanide. The heavy metal soundtrack was brilliant. It could have been even better if the birth of the iron superhero was fueled by the opening lines of Black Sabbath's Iron Man. And if the script writer had gone easy on the cloying orey funny lines, this could have been a perfect graphic novel film. But that would be asking for too much...

Rating: * * +

Fur : An Imaginary portrait of Diane Arbus

Slightly disturbing "imaginary" biography - kind of the movie makers to make it clear. The movie attempts to depict in an imaginative way the reason behind the legendary photographer Diane Arbus' passion for freaks - a word that epitomises Arbus' style. Nicole Kidman as Diane Arbus gets drawn to her strange neighbour and away from the mundane routine of home. Slowly as she realises her interest in the fringes, she falls in love with someone who belongs there.

As to why Nicole Kidman picks such disturbing characters to play is worth a story - and surely an inspiration for an "imaginary portrait" many years later!

Rating : * * +

Zodiac

This film was highly touted by ex-reporter K Kuppuswamy a.k.a the Vietnamese pimp 'Nek' and it indeed was a deadly recommendation. Based on the best selling novel by Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), the film chronicles the pursuit of the elusive Zodiac killer who terrorized the SFO area in the 60s and 70s. Good acting from the ensemble cast but the two who caught my eye were Robert Downey Jr. and Chloë Sevigny. Tightly directed by David Fincher with nary a wasted moment.

Rating: * * * +

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

One hour and forty three excruciating minutes of Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer trying to be orey funny.

Rating: *

A Scanner Darkly

This Philip K. Dick novel floats its way onto the screen with its wavy characters trying to weave a story... It is a world seven years from now. A drug called Substance D rules the minds of people. You see its effects and the people trying to fight it. But after a point you wonder who is on drugs? The director, the author, the actors or you...

Rating: * +