"The Avengers", superheroes' all-star game

The Avengers

That's the last superhero movie I'm watching in a long while, promise. Too many in the last two years, the majority of them being quite mediocre. "The Avengers" is not going to be any landmark in these overexploited sub-genre, but at least achieves its ultimate goal: being a pleasant entertainment.

After watching "The Avengers", I think I resolved myself a question regarding superhero/action movies. I prefer to have a no-brainer but quite spectacular, and for the most part, entertaining film than a supposedly more serious, but eventually more pretentious and sorry to say, tiring film like the last Batman. After all, a superhero film is not author's cinema and, if the material you are working with doesn't allow you to do so, maybe is better to concentrate in what you can offer: a couple of hours of fun. Besides, Marvel's factory has never been known for its adult/very mature pretensions, something that is completely reasonable, if you keep your coherency. So director Joss Whedon probably realised he had the potential (and budget) to film the most spectacular superhero film ever made. And decided to go for it, leaving the most substantial elements of a film (namely the plot or the premise) in an obvious second place. He probably chose well.

So, if you expected an intricate and tortured villain, look somewhere else. The bad guy is that kitsch version of Loki we saw on the laughable Thor, who by the way, looks exactly as silly as it was on that film, more likely to be participating on Smack Down/RAW than understanding what's going on Earth. If you were thinking on an elaborated major crisis that would force to assemble such a superhero "all-star game" this is not your film: the evil comes from another world, and with no other goal than provoking total war. Basically, "The Avengers" is that battle, and the so-called plot is the excuse to keep you waiting for it.

Well, the good part is that "The Avengers" doesn't pretend to take itself very seriously either. No one really cares about the Tesseract, and that extremely long scene on S.H.I.E.L.D. awesome headquarters, where scientists Bruce Banner and Tony Stark try to find a solution about the energy issue while they discover the real reasons of Nick Fury's behaviour, has the only purpose of being funny.

No, the questions on "The Avengers" are who would win in a fight: The Hulk or Thor? Who will be do the last action, who would be the one that saves the world? Can Captain America pair alongside the powers of the other superheroes? And what are the real motivation of the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers? The sort of questions to please the comic fans, providing a feast of amazing scenes of action, the mother of all battles and quite a few hilarious moments (best one being The Hulk hitting Thor by surprise). Actors doesn't have a lot to prove. Scarlett looks sexy as anyone can expect, but her character doesn't have an important role. Chris Evans has the same lame character as Captain America as their solo film. And Samuel L. Jackson is quite ridiculous again as Nick Fury. The only ones remarkable are Robert Downey Jr's impersonation of the cynical hero as Iron Man and the good actor Mark Ruffalo mutating into the green beast.

"The Avengers" combination is pretty engaging. Pretty silly, understanding silly as some kind of compliment, as it refers to its lack of pretensions. So it's a good, fun option, for having a couple of entertained hours at least. 

SCORE: 6/10

"Eva", Spanish robot drama under the snow

Eva

Even for a person like me, not really interested in the science-fiction genre, it's obvious Spanish cinema needs three or four directors like Kike Maillo, brave enough to propose a very different type of film than the ones usually produced here, and spectacularly ready to translate them to the big screen. "Eva" is his first work, and despite its flaws, it has to be praised as a much needed breath of fresh air in Spain.

"Eva" surprises you at first. The future it presents, the atmosphere, with this sort of snow-white, melancholic and isolated locations integrated with cybernetics and robotic, puzzles and intrigues the viewer. This is where Alex, a mysterious, hermetic character, returns, performed by Daniel Brühl, in order to take part in a very challenging project. Artificial intelligence artifacts (one performed by the Goya winner Lluís Homar) and quite cool special effects are used elegantly within the story, which soon reveals itself as a more traditional drama, despite the robots.

Indeed, my problems with "Eva" might have to do with the mixture of a not-so-original sentimental love triangle, plus a father-daughter relationship and the human vs. machine topic also presented. I applaud Maillo's decision to opt for a drama in which science-fiction is basically the context, asking metaphysical questions about existence, but then his story is conventional and rather flat.

For a drama, we miss too much information, especially regarding Alex's disappearance from his previous project and the motivations for his return. The sentimental side of the movie is also quite sloppy, not intense enough to compel the spectator, not documented enough to understand their actions. By the time the end of the film arrives, the final twist doesn't produce the shock is aiming for. Maybe because rage explodes too late to rescue us from that sense of coldness, distant viewing, or maybe because it was predictable (the opening scene already unveils part of the mystery), despite its curious sci-fi envelope.

Overall, a film that despite all its flaws and feeling of underachievement, needs to be praised as it opens a new path to explore for Spanish cinema.

SCORE: 5,75/10

"Captain America", the patriot, retro and shallow hero

Captain America: The First Avenger

Even as a kid, I found Captain America's comics quite boring. And as teenager, the superhero became evidently ridiculous, then something even worse when I learnt, like "Casablanca", the creation of the hero had only a political purpose, to increase the number of US recruitments for the II World War.

Of course, you grow and things can be approached in a different way, so the good reviews of the film, the references to Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", one of the best books of the last 15 years, and the praise of the film in terms of aesthetics and fun made me curious about it. Hey!, a few reviews even pointed out there was much more than action and blockbuster 3-D special effects. It must be me then, 'cause I feel I watched a different "Captain America".

Because this film is nothing more than a blockbuster in the same vein of "Thor". The same amount of silliness and absurd situations that makes you wonder if director Joe Johnston really wanted to do a comedy, or a mockery on superheroes. Yes, I got the whole point is not taking the story so seriously, go for a pulp style and recreate that period of time, when a superhero was born as a propaganda tool, allowing some ironic distance with it. There are some scenes, when Captain America (Chris Evans) is used to make some advertisement across the country to help raising funds for the war, when the movie achieves that goal. But they are few in a two-hours long film.

Instead there's a general indigestible mixture of not very well made special effects (in some fighting scenes you can easily see the computer design), a carefully made retro looks in the costumes, characterizations and filming, but at the same time anachronistic machines and guns, and a lame use of secondary roles, in particular Peggy Carter (gorgeous but dumb character played by Hayley Atwell) and Colonel Chester Philips (Tommy Lee Jones). The villains, Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) and Dr. Arnim Zola (Toby Jones), are just caricatures that, again, work fine at the aesthetics level, but are pretty lame aside from that. If they, at least, served for the purpose of having a good action film that would have been something, but I can't recall any remarkable scene except maybe the one in the train.   

Well, if you are looking for a superhero movie where the good guys are patriots, extra-pure good guys (one can also say that not very far away from Johnny Rambo's stupidity) and, of course, winners, where the bad guys are the incarnation of evil, where the girl can kick some ass without ruffling her hair, where the pivotal pre-action scene or the final fight has always time for the "memorable" joke (perhaps the most recognisable trademark of American mainstream cinema), you'll probably enjoy "Captain America" a lot. For the rest, at least the film is enjoyable, gets going with fluidity, entertains, and it doesn't annoy... but if you want something more, you might consider look somewhere else.

SCORE: 4,5/10