Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Original Theatrical Release: April 4, 2014
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) struggles with the morality issues that accompany the new world he’s awakened to. He finds the United States Government takes a back seat to the power of S.H.I.E.L.D. and he wonders if he should continue the fight or step away from the underhanded dealings of his new employers. However, after Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is targeted by a mysterious assassin known only as The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Rogers must team up with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) to get to the bottom of the new assassin’s identity and motives before it’s too late.

This film was an excellent sequel to the first film, Captain America: The First Avenger and a nice follow up to events in The Avengers.

Action, action, action – there was a ton of it here and since the film wasn’t primarily set in the 1940’s, we really get to see how Cap handles modern day threats….and he sure looks cool doing it.

Anthony Mackie gives an impressive performance as Sam Wilson/Falcon, and he pretty much stole the show as far as I’m concerned. I hope he shows up for Avengers 2! He’s that cool. Sebastian Stan also impressed with his portrayal of Winter Soldier, who provides a great antagonist to Cap and his team. Scarlett Johansson, of course, sizzled as Black Widow. She’s been doing a great job in that role. And on top of all that we get to see ROBERT REDFORD in a Marvel film? What? That’s so cool! One curious omission was Hawkeye. Where the heck was he in this film? As a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. I would’ve thought he’d be called in for all this governmental hullaballoo.

There was a lot of focus on Hydra in this film, so it was nice to re-touch on where they ended up in the modern world after the events in World War II.

This is a great film overall,  so go see it and make sure to stay for the extra scenes after the credits. There are a couple of teaser after-credits shorts, so make sure to stay for ’em all if you want to get all the tasty Cap morsels you can for your money. This film should tide everyone over until Guardians of the Galaxy comes out – I’m beyond excited for that movie to drop on us.

JOE Rating: ★★★★★

Movie Trailer For Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Original Theatrical Release: July 22, 2011
Director: Joe Johnston

It’s 1942 and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) wants desperately to join in the fight for his country during World War II. The problem is, he’s too scrawny and sickly. However, Doctor Erskine (Stanley Tucci) sees within Rogers something special and offers to change his sickly demeanor. Eagerly, Rogers accepts and changes his life forever as he is injected with the Super Soldier Syrum which enhances his strength, speed, stamina and agility. Steve then becomes Captain America, and must go up against the evil Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) with the fate of America and the world hanging in the balance.

Overall, I think they did a good job with Cap in this rendition of his character. Joe Johnston directs something that feels appropriately pulpy and 1940’s-retro-nostalgic.

The supporting cast is amazing, with talents such as Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci and others. Sometimes, I felt their individual talents were put to waste on such minor roles, but hey…it’s great that they’re even in the film to begin with.

I’m still not really sold on Chris Evans as Captain America, even after Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers. I guess I’ll have to see what I think once Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes out. I still really think of Evans as The Human Torch/Johnny Storm from The Fantastic Four. He was perfect for that character, but Steve Rogers had a lot of good-guy charisma, where Evans has cocky-guy charisma.

The action was all pretty decent and the special effects were neat for the most part. Most notable was how they managed to work their CGI magic and camera tricks on Evans to turn him into the 90 lb asthmatic he portrays at the beginning of the film. It looked really convincing for a good portion of when they showed him onscreen, even while he was shirtless.

If you love Marvel movies, you obviously have probably seen this…but you can also get behind this if you like action flicks or war movies or are just curious. I don’t think it’s really as good as Iron Man was, but it can hold its own (and sadly, might be better than Thor in some ways).

JOE Rating: ★★★★

Movie Trailer For Captain America: The First Avenger

Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow (2008)

Original Theatrical Release: September 2, 2008
Director: Jay Oliva, Gary Hartle

It’s been around twelve years since the Avengers were defeated and scattered by the villainous android known as Ultron. Captain America, Wasp, Giant Man, Black Panther, Hawkeye and Black Widow are all dead. Thor (Michael Adamthwaite) is in Asgard and Hulk (Fred Tatasciore) is missing. Iron Man (Tom Kane) and Vision (Shawn Macdonald) are the only ones left but Iron Man is in charge of protecting the children of the original Avengers: James (Noah C. Crawford) – the son of Captain America and Black Widow, Torunn (Brenna O’Brien) – the daughter of Thor, Pym (Aidan Drummond) – the son of Giant Man and Wasp, Azari (Dempsey Pappion) – son of Black Panther and….Hawkeye (Adrian Petriw) – son of, well….Hawkeye.

It starts out a little slow and depressing, what with some of the kids (Pym especially) being annoying and all the cool Avengers being dead or gone.

The animation and action sequences were fairly well-done, but it might be a little too “cartoony” for some older viewers. It’s very reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon special, but depending on how you look at it, that could be a good thing, too.

The take on the Avengers’ kids was kind of a neat idea but some of the character motivations were a little vague and seemed thrown in there. (Thor seems to have basically let the Avengers be slaughtered). While we’re at it, for a kid’s flick, this is pretty dark. It deals with death and it deals with loss. Grown-up themes for the kiddos, in my opinion, but as long as a parent is watching with the kids and can explain all that stuff if they need to ask, it should be fine.

All-in-all, it was good to watch just as sort of a “What If?” type of thing.

JOE Rating: ★★★

Oh, and if you like The Hulk and all things Hulk-related, check out The Collectionary….where you’ll be able to find a HULKING (get it LOL) amount of merchandise for all your collecting needs.

Movie Trailer For Next Avengers: Heroes Of Tomorrow

Ultimate Spider-Man: Season 1 (2012)

Original Air Date: April 1, 2012
Stations Airing: Disney X D, Disney Channel
Number Of Episodes In Season: 26

Peter Parker (Drake Bell), was bitten by a radioactive spider which granted him spider-like powers such as the ability to crawl on walls and increased strength and agility, as well as an internal warning system he calls “Spider-Sense” which usually lets him dodge incoming attacks.

At the beginning of Season 1, Peter has been Spider-Man for one year. He’s still learning, and when S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (Chi McBride) offers to give him training that will make him into the “ultimate” Spider-Man, Spidey can’t refuse. The catch is that he has to lead a fledgling group of other superheroes including Iron Fist (Greg Cipes), Power Man (Ogie Banks), Nova (Logan Miller) and White Tiger (Caitlyn Taylor Love) and show them what ropes he DOES know, and he reluctantly agrees.

The show is a good mix of silly with the serious. Spider-Man has always been about the humor, and Deadpool has sort of taken that away from him in recent years…but Spidey, in this series, acts a bit more like Deadpool than is normal, with constant breaking of the fourth wall. To me, this is a good thing at least in context of the show because the show itself is kinetic and hyper-stylized, and is definitely aimed at a younger audience.

Older fans, don’t worry. I am a long-time Spidey fan and I actually really like this series. The team-up is a strange but cool concept, and there are constant throwbacks to story threads found in the Ultimate Marvel Verse. Spider-Man also teams up with other heroes in different episodes, like Thor, Dr. Strange, Iron-Man and others.

All the staple Spidey characters are there, including Aunt May, Flash Thompson, Harry Osborne and Mary Jane Watson.

The action sequences are really well-done, and the humor is usually spot-on. One thing I didn’t really like is how sometimes-annoying Spidey’s voice is. Otherwise, all the voice acting is good.

If you want more serious Spider-Man viewing pleasure, there are definitely other choices, but at least watch this one through the first season because you’ll get a feel for how the rest of the story’s going to go.

JOE Rating: ★★★★

Trailer For Season One Of Ultimate Spider-Man

Timeline (2003)

Original Theatrical Release: November 26, 2003
Director: Richard Donner

An archaeological team has been working hard, digging up the past. When their leader, Professor Johnston (Billy Connolly), goes missing – his son Chris (Paul Walker) wants answers. After discovering a piece of parchment along with the professor’s glasses and a signature that is carbon-dated to the year 1357, the group is told by a secretive company that they have accidentally sent Professor Johnston back in time. Armed with their wits and protected by a group of combat experts, the archaeology team must survive in the past long enough to find the professor and make it back to the future…but they only have eight hours before they’ll be stuck in the past forever, and they’ve landed smack-dab in the middle of a war between England and France.

Timeline. When I first heard about the film, I had extremely high hopes. It was based on a Michael Crichton novel of the same name. The premise was cool, for sure, but the film just didn’t have enough momentum for me. For sci-fi fans, the sci-fi is sort of weak and not done well and for action fans, there wasn’t really enough cool action sequences included for a movie about medieval war. Even the love story part of it was brief and didn’t have much meat to it.

The characters are basically “faxed” into the past so as far as time travel movies go, it was also weak. The premise alone was not enough to carry the film. The biggest turn-off for me was the acting. These characters, all archaeology students, WENT BACK IN TIME and witnessed history first hand. What did they do? Walk around like it was nothing. The whole thing felt like an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to me. (Meaning, there are all these crazy things going on, and in Buffy, the characters treated it like normal, everyday occurrences….same in this movie). Not only would TIME TRAVEL blow their minds, but getting to see things and how they were really done back then would give these people intellectual boners. Them not caring led to me not caring.

I think it’s worth watching at least once, but there are other, better movies dealing with time travel. I just wish that this one had been as cool as it could have been.

JOE Rating: ★★★

Movie Trailer For Timeline