BLACK PANTHER

BLACK PANTHER comes to our screens freighted with the self-appointed weight of political history. It's as if action movies starring Denzel Washington, Will Smith or Wesley Snipes never happened. It's as if nuanced black action heroes like Lando Calrissian never happened.  This, we are told, is a watershed moment where a major franchise blockbuster not only stars a single male action hero, but a whole cast full of amazing black male and female talent.  I can't but agree - there's a qualitative leap when you have an entire film full of black actors, with African accents, with most of the action set in Africa.  This is all to the good, and it's great to see black representation go to that next stage, but I can't help but feel that that tide of goodwill toward the film - goodwill that I too shared - has clouded critical attitudes toward it.  I am hugely excited that such a project has come to our screens, but I think it would be patronising not to review it critically.  I sense in a lot of the excitement in the tweets since its preview screenings began, at best conflation between excitement that the project exists vs its content - and at worst virtue signalling.  Because let's be clear, this is an entirely disposable occasionally very funny, but often rather dull and overly complicated film.  And its titular character, as portrayed by Chadwick Boseman (GET ON UP), is the least interesting thing about it.

The story has so many strands it's hard to know where to begin.  We have a thinly veiled version of Rwanda blessed with a rare metal called Vibranium which gives their king, Black Panther, extra-ordinary power, and the country futuristic technology.  The film takes from this premise the following concern:  

1) Should this tech be hidden to prevent its exploitation by others;

2) Shared with the world for good;

3) Or be used to get revenge and achieve domination over the rest of the world? 

Broadly speaking, Black Panther starts off believing the first, and this story is his coming of age story, a classical Greek tale of a son learning to confront his father's assumptions and become his own man.  His wariness is made credible by the existence of a nasty white South African thief called Ulysses Klaue, who's being chased down by a CIA agent called Everett Ross.   By contrast, and despite seeing all this, Black Panther's little sister Shuri, who is a tech genius, believes the tech should be shared, tradition thrown off, and modernity embraced.  Finally, Black Panther and Shuri have a cousin called Erik Killmonger, who as his name suggest with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, is angry at being rejected by his family, the death of his father, and wants to overthrow Black Panther and use the Vibranium for evil.

Where the film works well is in its opening 45 minutes.  The prologue nicely sets up some of the mythology and origins of the Black Panther/T'Challa, and the emotional ties between father, uncle and son as well as the Panther and his love interest. The action is fast paced, we are introduced to the the man we think is the antagonist, and also the character who truly turns out to be the real threat.  And we get the surprise of two of the least well known members of the cast - Letitia Wright and Dalai Gurira - being by far the most charismatic and funny.  The problem is that after that we get a middle section that is extremely bogged down in all the intricacies of the cumbersome plot. And a final section that is your typical Marvel action set-piece with bad CGI.  Someone in the screening I attended, who evidently loved the film, shouted "Rewind!" as the credits rolled, and I just wanted to shout back "Edit!"  There's a decent 100 minute action movie struggling inside this over-blown 134 minute running time.

The problems for the film are worse than just a baggy script though. Chadwick Boseman is a charisma-less lead. Perhaps the most charisma-less lead since Henry Cavill's Superman.  And he plays the role not just with a South African accent, but with an almost pastiche version of a Nelson Mandela impression.  His entire acting range seems to be to bite his lip, and look concerned. He's acted off the screen by Daniel Kaluuya (GET OUT) as W'Kabi, his fellow Wakandan, not to mention Michael B Jordan (CREED) as his troubled cousin Killmonger.  And that's before we even get to the women. Lupita N'yongo is anonymous as the love interest - an early attempt to rescue Boko Haram kidnapped women makes you think she's gonna be feisty, but no, she really is just there to look adoring and be supportive. And so she in turn is acted off the screen by Letitia Wright's smart, irreverent Shuri, and by the Black Panther's General Okoye (Danai Gurira). And to be honest - and I'm not gonna be popular for saying this, the entire bunch of them are outclassed by Andy Serkis cameo as the evil Klaue, and he seemed to be having far more fun on screen than I did in the cinema. 

The tragedy of this film is that having waited so long for a black-led ensemble action movie the result is so anodyne. Take a Bond-like villain here, a character that's like Q, your typical Marvel action scenes and tech, an indifferent score and special effects.... And then for no reason at all, chuck in a cataphract rhino and a cliche of tribal strife. The result is a film that isn't half as good as BLADE and middling by the standards of the MCU.

BLACK PANTHER has a running time of 134 minutes and is rated 12A for moderate violence, injury detail and a rude gesture. It goes on global release on Wednesday 14th February. 

DOCTOR STRANGE

DOCTOR STRANGE is a patchwork quilt of a Marvel movie.  Pleasant enough to watch, but undeserving of a second view, in which almost every character, action sequence or funny line echoes another film, and the only originality comes not from the central character but from Tilda Swinton.  It's visually arresting but emotionally hollow mid-tier Marvel of a kind that - with a release calendar chock full of B-grade comic book characters -  I have become rather bored by. 

As with IRON MAN, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a rich materialistic egotistical genius brought low by a severe accident, who supplements his physical healing process with "super powers".   As with SHERLOCK, Strange has a perfect memory and a fondness for being right.  As with StarChild, Strange has a fondness for cheesy seventies hits.  Strange was a successful but cocky surgeon who texts while driving and ends up in an horrific car crash that renders his hands unfit for surgery.  In desperation, he journeys to Nepal where he finds a mystical Jedi Master, sorry, Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), who puts him through a training regime straight out of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.  I kid you not, there's even a "judge me by my size, do you" sequence. It turns out that, quelle surprise, Strange has a rare aptitude for astral projection and drawing energy from other dimensions of the multiverse to cast magic spells.  He even gets a cool gadget that allows his to reverse time.  (Do you think that will be significant?!) He also gets a HARRY POTTER style set of magical gadgets, including a sentient cloak that actually reminded me a bit of Terry Pratchett's luggage.  So armed, he goes off to fight the Ancient One's former pupil turned evil villain (Mads Mikkelsen) who wants to open Earth up to an eviller villain whose name sounds like Dormouse.  Oh yes, I forgot that Strange has an ex-girlfriend played by Rachel McAdams who's also a surgeon but she has nothing to do but simper.  He also has sidekicks at his zen school played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Benedict Wong who exist to show a moral centre and comic relief respectively. 

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

Joss Whedon had an almost impossible task to pull of in his AVENGERS sequel.  He had to give enough time to the storylines and character arcs of all the major superheroes we've come to know and love in the increasingly complex Marvel Cinematic Universe.  He had to also make room for new additions - not one, but three bad guys, and a nebulous almost a-ethical good guy.  He had to create enough CGI heavy wow moments of action and stunts. But he also had to give the movie heart. And all this in just over two hours.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2

Yeah so we all know the deal with Spidey, no?  He's was bitten by a mutant spider and got spidey-powers with which he solves minor league crime in New York City.  In this reboot sequel he's played by Andrew Garfield as a mumbling charismatic nerd which is just about perfect.  He's in love with Gwen Stacey but thinks they shouldn't date because he might put her in danger - foreshadowing anyone?  Meanwhile his friend Harry Osborn is dying of a genetic disease and wants to inject himself with Spidey-blood to save his life. Because that will go well. Meanwhile, Harry's employee, a nerd played by Jamie Foxx, has had a massive electric shock that has turned him into, you guessed it, Elektro!

Everything about this Sony produced sequel feels second-rate when compared to Marvel comic book movies.  It's not that it's bad. In fact, it's a lot better than the Tobey Maguire movies. For a start it has an amazing cast - everyone just feels more committed and acting their pants off - just compare Dale deHaan as Harry Osborn with James Franco, who looked bored and embarrassed to even be in a comic book movie.  It's just that it feels a bit mechanical - a bit Tab A into Slot B.  The effects are all big and glossy but left me uninvolved.   The only reason to watch this movie is the Gwen-Peter relationship which really is heartfelt.  And that suggests to me that what you need to do is wait for this film to come out on DVD and then fast forward through the action sequences.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 142 minutes.  The movie is on global release.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER 3D brought to you by proud sponsor, Edward Snowden

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER is an utterly satisfying comic-book summer blockbuster but I wonder how certain members of the audience will view its earnest liberal political agenda.  Which is to say that I agree with absolutely everything this movie says about the trade-off between freedom and security, but even I found the messaging rather heavy-handed. So much so that this movie could've been sponsored by Wikileaks or the Edward Snowden defence fund.  That said, it's the most politically engaged, elegantly written Marvel movie, so I'm really not complaining.

As the movie opens we see the formerly cryogenically frozen super soldier Captain America unfrozen and working for SHIELD  As well as catching up on fifty years worth of pop culture, he's also struggling to reconcile his earnest no-nonsense good guy values with his current job enacting secret missions in a world without clear-cut enemies. His boss, Nick Fury, isn't helping by being all paranoid and on the verge of launching three super-fighters capable of taking out terrorist threats before they happen, with the co-operation of World Security Council chief Alexander Pierce.  But soon Fury is the subject of an assassination attempt, Captain America himself is under attack, and Hydra is rearing its many-heads once again.  His only allies are the newly contemplative Natasha Romanoff aka The Black Widow and the similarly earnest Sam Wilson aka The Falcon.

There's a lot to love here without the politics. The dialogue is smart, if not as constantly wise-cracking as an IRON MAN movie.  I love the genuine chemistry between Chris Evans' Steve Rogers and Scarlett Johansson's Natasha.  I love the elegant way in which the scriptwriters (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) give us the prequel backstory by way of a museum exhibit.   The plot has a pleasing complexity without seeming wilfully obscure, and it allows minor characters a chance to shine - not least Sebastian Stan in what could've been a thankless cameo role as The Winter Soldier but drips with melancholy.  I even love the behind the scenes stuff - particularly the subtle ageing make-up on Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter, the gorgeous hand to hand combat choreography, and the cinematography from Trent Opaloch (DISTRICT 9) that's less than the motion sickness of Bourne but still engrossing enough to keep us on the edge of our seats. So kudos to the unlikely directors, the Russo brothers, for pulling it all together.

But this movie ultimately stands or falls on how you feel about its politics because, believe you me, this kind of earnest engagement with a highly contemporary issue is bold and brave, not least because of its ramifications for SHIELD within the real-life complex commercial universe that Marvel has established.  I love that beyond all the fighting this is ultimately a thoughtful, provocative and bold film - one that, like Captain America himself, has the courage of its convictions and a kind of audacity that is rare in a summer blockbuster.  That audacity caps itself off in the anti-casting of arch-liberal Robert Redford as a hawk, and the wonderfully subversive final scene involving Jenny Agutter.  We've come a long way from THE RAILWAY CHILDREN!

CAPTAIN AMERICA was a great summer blockbuster.  Its sequel is something more than that.  A great entertaining movie but one that also has the courage to pose serious questions about our world and doesn't patronise the audience with easy answers.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLIDER has a running time of 136 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK for infrequent moderate violence.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER is released this week in the USA, France, the UK, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, South Korea, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Argentina, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore and Spain. It is released on April 3rd in the UAE, Australia, Greece, Hong Kong, Macedonia, New Zealand, Russia and Thailand; on April 4th in Bulgaria, Canada, China, Estonia, India, Iceland, Lithuania, Mexico, Peru, Romania, the USA (wide release) and Vietnam; on April 9th in Serbia; on April 10th in Brazil, Hungary and Cambodia; on April 11th in Turkey; on April 19th in Japan.

THOR: THE DARK WORLD

Hi honey, I'm home! After nearly a month's movie detox after the BFI London Film Festival, I'm back with a review of what is arguably the final in the long tail of summer blockbusters or the first in the holiday season - THOR: THE DARK WORLD aka THOR 2.

I've always found Thor to be one of the least exciting of the Marvel heroes - a quite literally ham-fisted hammer-wielding macho god improbably in love with an earthling astrophysicist, Jane Foster.  British luvvie Kenneth Branagh got around this portentous Norse nonsense in the first movie by injecting a sense of knowing camp and kitsch that nicely balanced the over-designed mythical space-world of Asgard and the usual Marvel over-loud over-long effects-heavy action sequence.  As much as Kenneth Branagh - champion of Shakespeare - was a left-field choice for THOR, somehow it just worked. Whereas Alan Taylor - mostly a TV director who works on dark character-led dramas - The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones - is also a left-field choice who kind of doesn't.  There's none of the kitsch comedy that Branagh brought to THOR in THE DARK WORLD, and the action sequences are dull, ill-conceived and just bizarre in their programming. But I wonder if the problem really lies in the script, penned by Marvel TV writer Chris Yost as well as Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (CAPTAIN AMERICA, which let's not forget benefited from the Joss Whedon running the slide rule over it.)

Their plot hinges on the conceit that the nine realms are about to enter a "convergence" - a planetary alignment that allows matter to pass between worlds or something.  An evil elf (I kid you not) plans to use some WMD called the Aether to cause interplanetary chaos at just this point. Problem is, that space-WMD has been magicked into Thor's girlfriend Jane, and when he takes her to Asgard for safe-keeping, the elves lay waste to his home planet.  He then teams up with his evil brother Loki to defeat the elf, which for reasons not entirely clear culminates in a huge battle in London complete with a seemingly mad Professor Selvig running around with no pants.

The problem with THOR: THE DARK WORLD is that Professor Selvig running round in his pants in pointless but also one of the funniest and most touching parts of the film.  Poor Natalie Portman has very little to do as Jane, basically fainting from the Aether and being rescued. Chris Hemsworth's Thor is all muscly and earnest but as little to do.  And you guessed it - Christopher Eccleston as the evil elf - is all heavy duty make-up, evil stare and, little to do.  The movie is hijacked  - thank the Norse gods - by the tricksy evil brother Loki played with delicious malevolent glee by Tom Hiddleston. He's the only actor given anything to get his teeth into, and is an absolutely magnetic presence - second only to Heath Ledger's Joker as the comic book evil villain par excellence. He injects the film with good humour, ambiguity and true charisma.  It's only a shame there isn't more of him.  I wanted more humour. I wanted more odd-couple comedy - more Thor getting jealous of Jane's human love interest - more of Thor getting on the Tube asking the way to Greenwich - but sadly this movie was too dark and gloomy and bang-shouty to let that in.

THOR: THE DARK WORLD is on release pretty much everywhere except Japan where it opens on February 1st 2014.

IRON MAN 3

I had a great time watching IRON MAN 3. What I love about the movie is that after the Whedony alien-esque craziness of AVENGERS ASSEMBLE, we get a much more intimate, personal film, in which a handful of key relationships underpin the story. I mean, the evil villain has a personal motivation.

All of this is down to writer-director Shane Black, the guy who wrote the Lethal Weapon movies and trademarked his brand of authentic buddy movie action comedy. He hasn't directed anything since his cult comedy-noir KISS KISS BANG BANG., which not unco-incidentally also starred Robert Downey Junior aka Tony Stark aka Iron Man. Taking over from the franchise's original director, Jon Favreau, Black makes the story smaller, funnier, less action dependent (although there are still some exceptionally good set pieces) and more anchored in the performances. The result is a movie that has some of the psychological depth of Christopher Nolan's Batman with none of its turgid self-congratulation. 

So, down to business. The movie picks up where AVENGERS ASSEMBLE left off. Tony Stark has saved New York from aliens, but he's suffering from PTSD and a girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow) seriously unimpressed by his withdrawal into tinkering with his Iron Man suits. Meanwhile, the US is apparently being threatened by a nasty Bin Laden like terrorist (Ben Kingsley) although the fact that the suicide bombers can regenerate Terminator style, hints at the involvement of an Evil Scientist (Guy Pearce). 

So far, so predictable. Where the movie gets interesting is when it undermines the importance of the suit. Still a prototype, it repeatedly malfunctions at key moments, leaving Stark to fall back on his core skills: making cool simple stuff. It's in this middle section that the movie's at its best: as Stark goes all McGyver aided by a smart kid with whose he has real chemistry.

In fact, the movie can be seen as something of a buddy film in three parts. First, Stark has good banter with his Knight Rider style posh English computer cum valet, Jarvis (Paul Bettany). Then he meets his emotional and verbal match in the cute kid. And finally we some brilliant wisecracking with Don Cheadle's Iron Patriot.

I guess the overriding theme of the flick is that suits are cool but that having a few good mates is better. That, and that science starts out pure but ends up weaponised. The latter has been heavily done already in this franchise. The former is a refreshing change. And despite the epilogue, I certainly hope we see more. 

IRON MAN 3 is on release in the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Taiwan, Argentina, Bolivia, Bosnia, Chile, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Peru, Portugal, Macedonia, Singapore, South Korea, Brazil, Bulgaria, Estonia, India, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Romania, Spain and Vietnam. It opens next week in Germany, South Africa, Thailand, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine and the USA. It opens on May 9th in Poland.

IRON MAN 3 is rated PG 13 in the USA and the running time is 130 minutes.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

To state the obvious, there is no need for THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN to exist other than that Sony needed a superhero movie for their 2012 production slate. A mere ten years after the critically and commercially successful Sam Raimi revamp is too soon for a reimagining.  And director Marc Webb ((500) DAYS OF SUMMER) seems to acknowledge this with has artistically cowardly retread of Raimi's first film.  There are superficial differences.  Andrew Garfield's Spidey is more emo and Method than Tobey Maguire's.  There's no Daily Bugle. Emma Stone's slightly bored-looking Gwen Stacy is substituted for Mary-Jane Watson. But a lot of the beats of the film - the individual scenes - seem to safely restate what was established by Raimi, especially in its first hour which retells the origin story.

In the second half of the film, Spidey tries to investigate the death of his parents - an event taken for granted in Raimi's version.  Apparently papa Spidey was a genetic scientist - a fact that sits oddly with me. I had always thought Spiderman was compelling because he was a blue collar hero, battling small-time crime, in sharp contrast to his better educated more moneyed superhero peers such as Batman.  Anyways, it is what it is. Following the trail of his father's research leads Spidey to Dr Curt Connors aka the Lizard (Rhys Ifans) - a pretty weak two-dimensional villian more from a cheap pantomime than a modern superhero movie.

The best I can say about the new Spiderman is that it's pretty harmless. And I guess it would've been to much to have expected a genuine reboot along the lines of Nolan's Batman.  Maybe my disaffection stems from the fact that Sony seems to be pitching this film at a younger audience than the typical superhero fare.  There are just too many juvenile jokes - Spidey shooting web at a guy's crotch - Spidey using his superpowers too skateboard better - Spidey biting on FOOTLOOSE in the boat-yard -  for me to take this film seriously, no matter how Method Garfield goes.

Meh.

THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN is on global release.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

Once THE WIRE re-up was over, life seemed pretty empty. So empty that I submitted to a Buffy Re-Up, courtesy of two friends of mine who are super-fans of all things Joss Whedon. I was intially sceptical. Vampires? Teen angst? Lo-rent make-up effects? Seriously? However, I'm half way through series 2 and I have to say I'm really starting to enjoy Joss Whedon's wonderfully witty use of the English language - the energy and plasticity of it. I got that same sense of playfulness as I watched CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER. What gave it away? Characters uttering dead-pan cool witticisms rather than screaming when a big bad man blows up shit. The tone was anachronistically, inappropriately US-teen-cool for a movie supposedly set during World War Two. 

And then it all clicked! Joss Whedon had been given the script penned by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (the NARNIA movies). According to IMDBpro he is meant to have done a light re-write to tie it in to the wider Marvel universe, and in particular THE AVENGERS movie that he's directing. But I suspect that Whedon did more than just tie up some narrative threads. Because when this movie is at its most entertaining, and its most emotionally real, it simply DRIPS Joss Whedon.  You can see the impact of Whedon on the success of the final film. It works best in the first two thirds, where it really is all about character and relationships. It works least in the final third when it descends into a pretty much super-hero-movie-by-numbers final battle scene....

But anyway, enough of my current Whedon-kick and on with the normal review. CAPTAIN AMERICA is the latest feature-length incarnation of the comic book hero created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in the 1940s - a deliberately patriotic and wholesome character designed to boost morale during World War Two. The superhero is really Steve Rogers - a physically un-prepossessing but morally upstanding young man desperate to enlist and fight the Nazis. Dr Abraham Erskine, a German-Jewish refugee and Papa Stark use a serum and some Vita-Rays (TM) - to turn Rogers into a buff super-soldier. 

Interestingly, rather than kicking Nazi ass immediately, the lone super-soldier takes a side-turn, and is consigned to marketing war bonds - a parody of his future super-hero status, and highly reminiscent of the subtlety and post-modernity of Alan Moore's WATCHMEN. After this false start, Captain America start to fight in earnest, under the direction of Colonel Chester Phillips and his attractive protégée, Peggy Carter, not to mention Papa Stark. Captain America also has a bunch of mere mortal side-kicks, including his best friend Bucky, but rounded out with a Japanese-American, an African-American, an Irish-American, a Frenchman and a Brit. This isn't so much tub-thumping jingoism, then, as the United Nations. I would love to know from anyone who has read the comics whether this rainbow-nation of do-gooders is, as I suspect, a highly modern and politically correct re-write.

Steve Rogers' journey to becoming Captain America makes for a fascinating origins story. Chris Evans (FANTASTIC FOUR) gives a fine and convincing performance as the sensitive young man fiercely opposed to bullies, and he is ably supported by Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, Haley Atwell and Dominic Cooper as Phillips, Erskine, Carter and Stark respectively. Stanley Tucci's Erskine has a wonderful comic interchange early on with Rogers over a bottle of schnapps that quickly and efficiently establishes a bond that pays off a few scenes later. It's a shame no comparable emotional bond was created between Rogers and best friend Bucky (Gossip Girl's Sebastian Stan). 

I loved the sepia-tinted 1940s production design, the costumes, the hair, and the sheer atmosphere of it all. And whoever CGI-morphed Chris Evans head onto a short, weedy body deserves much credit because the work is utterly seamless. I also loved the make-up that transforms Hugo Weaving's mad Nazi into the evil head of Hydra, Red Skull - intent on using the power of the Norse Gods to unleash war on the entire earth. In fact, just for the nostalgic look of the film - half Indiana Jones - half Watchmen flashback - this is probably my favourite superhero film of the summer, alongside the X-MEN movie. It turned out to be, rather to my surprise, a wonderfully well-made, beautifully-imagined, and Whedon-witty movie.

That said, the movie does have its faults. The Bucky storyline doesn't pay off in the way it should. The final third is dull. Peggy Carter has the beginnings of a great character - a feisty, bright woman. But what's she there fore apart from to look good? Stark builds shit; Phillips commands shit; everyone else fights shit; but Carter just pouts. I mean, what is this agent really meant to be doing? Is she a scientist? A military mind? What? Poor writing.  Similarly, the politically correct side-kicks are fine, but where is the moral clarity that should come with a fight against the Nazis. Oh but I forget. We're not really fighting the Nazis are we - but some weird ambiguous generally evil guy, who's harder to get a grip on, or care about. Speaking of which, I really do wonder at director Joe Johnston's (THE WOLFMAN, JURASSIC PARK III) indulgence in allowing Hugo Weabing to do the entire film with a German accent that sounds uncannily like Werner Herzog. It was so pitch perfect that is seriously took me out of the movie in every scene - undercutting the serious subject-matter and high emotional stakes.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER is on release in Canada, Italy, Poland, the US, Iceland, the Philippines, Argentina, Australia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, Armenia, Brazil, Colombia, Estonia, India, Ireland, Lithuania, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Taiwan and the UK. It opens next weekend in Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Portugal and Spain. It opens on August 12th in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It opens on August 17th in Belgium, France, Germany and Finland. It opens on September 1st in Greece, the UAE and Turkey. It opens in Japan on October 15th.

Ali D comments on THE INCREDIBLE HULK...

THE INCREDIBLE HULK - yet another disappointing summer blockbuster

I've been known to read a comic or two in my time but I never cared much for HULK. The story was just too thin: repressed scientist's arrogance backfires when his own gamma bomb explodes, irradiates him, turning him into his suppressed alter-ego - a seething, angry giant. I mean, that's pretty much it. Yes, there's a weak romance with fellow scientist Betty Ross, and yes, the Hulk is hunted down by her father General Ross, and yes there's an even more fucked up mutant enemy, The Abomination........But Hulk never had the psychological complexity of Batman or the sheer exuberant fun of Tony Stark.

Zak Penn and Ed Norton's script for the new HULK feature shoots itself in the foot by collapsing the whole origin story into the opening credits. What this means is that all we have left for the two hour run-time is the following.....

Bruce Banner hides out in Brazil.

Bruce Banner gets chased by US military: turns into Hulk.

Bruce Banner hides out in Culver City.

Bruce Banner gets chased by US military: turns into Hulk.

Bruce Banner hides out in New York City.

Bruce Banner gets chased by US military: turns into Hulk.

Bruce Banner hides out in Canada.........

This is not very interesting. It's especially not interesting because the ludicrously over-worked CGI Hulk looks nothing like Ed Norton. So, even though Norton gives a sympathetic turn as Banner, I didn't care what happened to him as Hulk. Contrast this with Peter Jackson's KING KONG. Thanks to deft motion capture and some lovely scenes between Kong and Ann Darrow I really cared when Kong was being attacked by the military.

But let's end on a positive note. This movie is not a complete failure. Tim Roth chews up the scenery and actually has some fun as Hulk's enemy, Emile Blonsky. Louis Leterrier puts in some stunning aerial photography of the Brazilian favelas and he certainly knows better than Jon Favreau how to direct an action scene. And the movie nicely sets us up for an AVENGERS movie, wherein the dull mediocrity of THE INCREDIBLE HULK will hopefully be leavened by the far from perfect but still much more entertaining spirit of IRON MAN.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK opens this weekend in the UK, the US, Australia, Greece, Hungary, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Brazil, Estonia, Finland, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Turkey. It opens next weekend in Egypt, Italy, Argentina, the Netehrlands, Iceland and Spain. It opens on June 26th in Belgium and Denmark; on July 3rd in Israel; on July 10th in Germany; on July 23rd in France and on August 1st in Japan.

IRON MAN was okay, but it could've been so much more

Tony Stark is a super-rich, super-clever, super-funny, super-handsome forty-something who just happens to enjoy selling the US Army cool weapons. After seeing those weapons turned on himself in Afghanistan (our enemy du jour), Stark decides to repudiate the arms trade and make the world a better place by......er....creating a weapon-laden flying suit and blowing up terrorists and stockpiles of his old weapons. Stark's epiphany is manifested in his personal life too. Instead of being a sleazy womaniser, he's going to mack onto his secretary, Pepper Potts, who is ludicrously shy and goofy given that she's a thirty-something.

All this makes IRON MAN's politics a better disguised version of the violent, radical utopianism at the heart of NEVER BACK DOWN. The message seems to be that arms dealers are evil when they sell weapons to terrorists who want to reshape the world according to their personal vision. BUT IRON MAN is GOOD when he acts according to his vision of justice - when he feels "in his heart" that blowing shit up and leaving bad guys to vigilante justice is good. Frankly, I've had enough of people blowing shit up because of "what's in their heart" rather than what's in the intelligence transcripts.

Am I taking this all too seriously? Well, I'd argue that this movie asks the audience for serious consideration. After all, it follows the graphic novels in ret-conning Tony Stark's story for the post 9-11 era. It positively winces as it sits on the fence of touchy-feely liberalism and patriotism that verges on jingoism. To that extent, this film is a perfect expression of the current American political divide.

So much for the flimsy politics, how about the actual entertainment? Jon Favreau has created a common or garden superhero summer blockbuster. The CGI special effects are suitably big and noisy. There's lots of product placement for fast cars and mobile phones. Robert Downey Junior is 100% fun to watch as Tony Stark and I wasn't bored.

On the other hand, I'm not particularly excited about the inevitable sequel. First off, Favreau shows none of psychological insight of Christopher Nolan in BATMAN BEGINS. There's nothing in his direction or script choices that make me think he's going to handle Tony Stark's descent into alcoholism sensitively. Second, I hate the way the script-writers short-changed pretty much every character bar Stark. Where's the flirting between Potts and Happy Hogan? And where was the substance to Stark's enemy, Obadiah Stone? Poor old Jeff Bridges was left to chew up the scenery. There was none of the conflicted psychology or back story we got in the comics. His motivations are thin - simply that "greed is good". Well, frankly, a super-hero needs a worthy opponent. Similarly, Terrence Howard is given absolutely nothing to do as Stark's best friend Colonel Jim Rhodes and there's no inkling that he'll become a character who'll question the Iron Man's vigilante actions and eventually don the suit.....

Basically, I'm annoyed. I love IRON MAN. This was one of the films I was most looking forward to this summer. Favreau's movie isn't a disaster. It's fun as far as it goes. But it could've been so much more.

IRON MAN is on release in Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, the UK, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, Venezuela, Australia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, the UAE, Canada, India, Pakistan and Turkey. It goes on release in Japan on September 20th.

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER - refreshingly simple

The new FANTASTIC FOUR movie is unpretentious, kind-hearted and fun. It won't win any awards, but after the bloated, god-awful summer blockbusters I've been subjected to this year, RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER is arguably the best summer movie I've seen this year.

You know the MO. The Fantastic Four are like a love-able family who happen to have super-powers. There's none of that secret identity, inner turmoil crap. The nearest we get to an emotional crisis is that Dr Fantastic (Ioan Gruffud) and The Invisible Girl (Jessica Alba) keep having their wedding interrupted by super-villains! And as for political allegory or delusions of grandeur, the only charge is a faint whiff of Gitmo in the interrogation of the Surfer, but this passes very quickly. Frankly, no-one's taking this moving too seriously. Chris Evans is clearly having a blast, Ioan Gruffud is making rain and the talentless Jessica Alba is proving that Hollywood really is an equal opportunities employer.

In this episode of the franchise, the apparent villain is The Silver Surfer. He's silver, he surfs, he has the voice of Larry Fishburne and the body of Doug Jones. More importantly, he's not really a bad guy but the herald for the truly horrific Galactos. The plot arc sees the FF persuading the Surfer to help them battle Galactos and their old nemesis Victor Von Doom.*

Like I said, FANTASTIC FOUR 2 is not a great comic-book movie in the vein of the first Sam Raimi's SPIDERMAN movie. But neither is it an embarassment in the manner of SPIDERMAN 3. So if you want a good old-fashioned mediocre comic-book flick: this is the movie for you!

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER is on release.

*Minor criticism and spoiler: Bear in mind that I have never read a comic in my life.....But if the Surfer could destroy the Galactos all along, why didn't he do it in the first place? Surely that would have alleviated the threat to his home planet, his beloved, and left him free from being complicit in genocide?! Another unrelated questions for fanboys: does Von Doom look like the Emperor from Jedi in the comics too?

SPIDERMAN 3 - in which Spidey jumps the shark

SPIDERMAN 3 was a big event in Bina-world. I'd arranged a posse of like-minded individuals to go see it at the big fat Odeon in Leicester Square. There's nothing like a packed house of fans cheering the opening credits and laughing at all the gags - it's popcorn entertainment at its best.

The opening hour was fine. Peter Parker was back, even more nerdy that usual and a little self-satisfied at Spidey's popularity among New Yorkers. Sure, his best mate Harry wasn't speaking to him, believing Spidey had killed his dad. And his girlfriend Mary-Jane was getting panned by critics in her new Broadway show. Oh, and there was that annoying photographer, Eddie Brock, trying to muscle in on a staff job at the Daily Bugle. But basically, Peter was okay, the film zipped along happily and the higher quota of comedy was fun. In particular, there was some broad physical comedy in a restaurent scene where Peter attempts to propose to MJ.

But around half way through bad things happen. And I'm not just talking about the meteoric slime that attaches itself to Spidey and brings out his aggressive nature. Sam Raimi - a man whose judgement has previously been impeccable, simply lets Spidey jump the shark.

By which I mean that the ueber-confident "black" Peter Parker strutts down the street spoofing Saturday Night Fever. Raimi makes Spidey look bad-ass by making him wear his fringe forward and givin him black eyeliner! He dances with Gwen Stacey in a jazz club spoofing Jim Carrey in The Mask. The humour is broad and it really works. I laughed myself silly. But I was laughing AT the movie, and worst of all, I think Raimi et al were laughing at the movie too. They were sending the Spidey iconography up. Going for cheap laughs also totally destroyed the emotional credibility of the franchise. By the time we'd been through Tobey Maguire's moody teenager impression I was in no mood to hear him pontificate about moral choices and forgiveness, and I certainly wasn't emotionally invested in the movie's ending. An ending which, by the way, rivals LORD OF THE RINGS for its inability to pull down the curtain.

So, SPIDERMAN 3 still has all the cool CGI stunts, and some decent turns from Kirsten Dunst, J K Simmons and Bruce Campbell. Thomas Haden Church is perfectly cast as the Sandman - he has such sympathetic eyes you can't help feeling for him. There's also a woefully brief cameo role from Topher Grace as Venom. Venom is such a great character - a complete bastard - and Topher Grace gave such a fantastic performance that he should have had more screen-time or a movie where he was the only villain. Tobey Maguire proves he can play comedy. I just wished he hadn't proved it in this film. And I remain unconvinced about James Franco's ability to pull off a serious dramatic role.

Overall, I was highly disappointed. As were Nikolai, Movie Matt, Richard and Alan, who'd come all the way down from Edinburgh for this, the first Yippee-Kay-Yay Meet Up. (Although Matt thought it would be a fun night out for kids.) Swedish Philip also gave it the thumbs down. He makes the brilliant point that he expected Spidey 3 to be the most dark and psychologically penetrating given that it featured the Black Spidey. He was expecting the mood to be more BATMAN BEGINS than Broadway Musical. Swedish Lizzie thought it was "utter crap" (although she's so generally amiable and looked so happy I mistakenly thought she liked it). Ken and Graham thought it was okay (see comment below), John kind of enjoyed it, but John thought it ripped off SUPERMAN too much. (I agree. Over-wrought religious imagery up the wazoo, let alone a ridiculously cheesy shot of Spidey in front of the Star-Spangled Banner.) Rav liked it but thought it ripped off THE MASK and Stoogy actually thought it was better for the first one! So out of 12 "votes", we have 7 Nays and 5 ayes.

SPIDERMAN 3 is on global release.