Captain America: Civil War

Review by Bob Ignizio

After all the mass mayhem, destruction, and death of the previous Marvel Cinmeatic Univers movies, most notably the two AVENGERS films, some people in that fictional world are justifiably concerned about super powered individuals taking the law into their own hands. The last straw is an incident in which The Avengers fight a bad guy who sets off an explosion to kill Captain American (Chris Evans). Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) uses her powers to move the blast away from Cap, but several innocent bystanders are still killed.

The United Nations wants oversight of these costumed crusaders. Tony Stark aka Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), riddled with guilt after being confronted by the mother of another casualty of a super powered throw-down, thinks this is a good idea. Steve Rogers aka Captain America (Chris Evans), while recognizing the responsibility the heroes bear for this collateral damage, doesn’t.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Review by Ric Nimrod

The first thing to cross my mind when I left the theater after watching Marvels AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON was ‘I cannot wait to watch this again’, but then again, I am that kind of nerd. I then looked at my 6-year-old son who had accompanied me and asked him how he liked it, and he replied with a smile and the word ‘awesome’. But after a moment of consideration he finished with ‘but it is not better than GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (Marvels last big screen adventure). Out of the mouths of babes, the kid is right… but not by much.

The Judge

Review by Joseph Anthony

Imagine the guy who directed FRED CLAUSE, SHANGHAI KNIGHTS, WEDDING CRASHERS and helped write R.I.P.D., David Dobkin, made a courtroom drama. Okay, imagine no longer. It’s happened and it’s called THE JUDGE.

To call THE JUDGE a courtroom drama isn’t totally fair though. Most of the drama revolves around a broken family, the Palmers. Son, Hank Palmer, played by Robert Downey Jr., is a big-city lawyer who thrives on defending society's most corrupt. His father, Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall) has presided over a small town in Indiana for over four decades. Unlike his son, Judge Palmer is guided by principle. While both father and son have turned to the law in their professional lives, the bonds that tie them together as family had been severed for years. Hank calls his father “Judge” as lovingly as a military recruit calls his superiors “sir.”

Iron Man 3

Review by Matt Finley

Marvel Studios is devouring filmgoers’ money with all the appetite and efficacy of Ego the Living Planet… but it’s not as if they haven’t earned it. Among other successes, they’ve made a fantastic show of thoughtfully matching their classic comic properties with star-crossed cinematic soul mates.  Who better than Kenneth Branagh to unleash the proscenium-rattling mythic heroism of THOR? Or Joss Whedon to embody the fragile and volatile ad hoc family that composes THE AVENGERS?

And who better than Shane Black (LETHAL WEAPON), self-conscious and overblown action auteur, to capture the smarts, ‘splosions and swagger of Iron Man? Did someone just say Paul Verhoeven circa 1988? Okay, maybe – but let’s pretend the question was rhetorical and focus on how totally fun IRON MAN 3 turned out.

Marvel's The Avengers

Review by Bob Ignizio

Ever since 2008's IRON MAN, Samuel L. Jackson has been popping up in the Marvel Studios films as Nick Fury, leader of the government security agency S.H.I.E.L.D., to talk about his plans of putting together a group of superheroes. He finally gets around to it in MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS, bringing together Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) to, as Fury puts it, “fight the foes no single superhero could withstand.”

The foes in question are led by Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the same guy who caused trouble in THOR. Still smarting from his defeat in that film, Loki returns using his powers of deception and manipulation to get his hands on something called the Tesseract. This glowing McGuffin has seemingly limitless power, but its main purpose here is to open a gateway to another dimension so that an army of CGI space aliens can come through and attack the Earth. After the obligatory fighting amongst themselves, partly caused by Loki's manipulations but mostly due to their own arrogance, the aforementioned heroes come together to face this threat as a team, tearing up large portions of downtown Cleveland (standing in for New York City) in the process.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

Review by Matt Finley

In SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS, the flash-bang deductive kineticism of Sherlock Holmes’ intellectual prowess is once again overshadowed by the blam-kaboom of Guy Ritchie’s hyperactive explode-now, think-later actioneering. If anything, there’s even less sleuthing here than in the original, as Robert Downey Jr. lurches and slouches from action set-piece to action set-piece, slowing down only long enough to once again presage a fistfight, blow-by-blow, or narrate an expositional flashback to off-screen detective work that he supposedly performed in the cuts between gunsmoke and flames. Granted, the dedicated momentum means it feels marginally shorter than its two hours and change, and the action itself isn’t without carnivalesque flare (on these merits alone it beats the pantaloons off every PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN sequel) – still, it’s just , well, sorta dumb.