saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the sequel to the excellent 2011 film based on the Marvel Comics WWII era superhero, which was requested for review by Brett Haskell, Earl Gray III and Joel Wiener and was the winner of a recent poll he held on what his second film to see/review this weekend should be (to Amanda Shoemaker and Peter Myers, hell get to reviewing your choices, Divergent and Million Dollar Arm, eventually and plans on doing another poll like that again). And it was a good recommendation, because this is a well-crafted and entertaining follow-up to The First Avenger that has a similarly unique and appealing modern, yet nostalgic, aura and filmmaking style as the earlier movie, has some unique plays on the fish-out-of-water concept that the previous film left us with, some interesting ideas about the morality of and balance between preventing terrorism completely and still living an uncompromised life, great control of its differing tones (it goes between the lighter comedic/romantic material and the headier/heavier action stuff quite well), strong performances (and some great new talent, particularly Anthony Mackie and Robert Redford), tangible chemistry between Chris Evans and Scarlett Johannson, good references back to (and for newcomers, explanations of) events from the original movie and kind of brilliant build-up to its action scenes, which adds additional weight and some genuinely shocking moments that intertwine nicely with the action scenes themselves, many of which are exquisitely constructed and executed (he particularly loved the DC car chase, the highway showdown and the elevator fight). Unfortunately, the third act loses steam, as the pacing takes a noticeable hit, the climatic action scene goes on too long and isnt as exciting as those that came before and the story and its plot points become too much of a traffic jam. Still, the strengths are enough to make it well worth seeing, make it his favorite comic movie of 2014 so far and make it so that he wishes he could rate it higher than 3 stars (consider it a 3 1/4, if he used that rating, that could have been a 3 1/2 or maybe a 4 with 20 or so minutes lopped off).
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 04:31:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015