Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron officially kicks off the summer movie season.  Box office records for Marvel's eleventh entry to its venerable cinematic universe are insured.  After all, the Marvel brand is such a finely oiled, storm-weathered machine that it's nearly irrelevant to put much serious thought or intellectual weight over whether or not the movies themselves are good or bad.  Analysis is besides the point-- the approval ratings and billion dollar global business dictates Hollywood investments rather than artfulness, originality and aesthetic value.  This may sound horribly cynical-- the corporatist, overstuffed Age of Ultron can't not be iced with a little cynicism-- but that's certainly not meant to imply that there aren't pleasures to be found in Joss Whedon's second go as captain of the ship.  Nor is it meant to imply that there shouldn't be a place in the cinematic marketplace for the adventures of this rag-tag group of superhero misfits-- Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)-- learning how to form a team.  There's value in that, just as there is in Richard Linklater's effortlessly insightful 18-year spanning Before-trilogy.  I just wish slightly more people flocked to the latter and slightly less blathered endlessly at the former.

Hiring Whedon was Marvel's smartest move.  When he came aboard to write and direct the first Avengers, the Marvel universe was still an unsteady, risky venture.  Yet with Whedon's verve as a writer and willingness to work within the iron-clad Marvel infrastructure as a director, it was clear way before the iconic 360 money shot near the end of the 2012 film that franchise/brand was going to take over the world (whilst simultaneously showing the destruction of it in every movie).  Whedon already established on the great television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer a way to deconstruct, mold and sharpen genre pieces by attaching humanity, levity and relatable anguish while still respecting and holding true its mythology.  The first Avengers film was hardly a work of art but it was zesty and chock full of small, human-sized moments to savor on thanks to Whedon's sharp one-liners and gift with performers.  Avengers: Age of Ultron at times feels like a heated divide between Whedon's untethered imagination and Marvel's eternal task to retain the status quo.  Which again, isn't to say the movie is altogether bad (devotees will probably be happy, agnostics may continue to shrug), but perhaps marks a blessing that Whedon is handing directorial duties moving forward.

Godzilla

Gareth Edwards' Godzilla did something few recent films, especially epically budgeted summertime beasts, have managed to do...it surprised me.  In this increasingly homogenized, made-by-committee-Hollywood-blockbuster-filmmaking-of-now culture, there's become a routine formula of what to expect to see on the screen.  There's running climaxes, the expected strokes of the musical score and the typical beats of propulsion and exposition to keep it going and going and going, hopefully ending with enough of hook so that we will all return for more and more and more.  And then return again for the eventual reboot (what a hideous word.)  The machine keeps rolling, but this latest version of Godzilla, while totally within the franchise filmmaking game, plays almost at odds with the contemporary summer blockbuster structure-- it's almost anachronistic and plays as something not made by committee but by an imaginative, resourceful and singular artist looking to share a bustling and joyful artistic expression.  That this such expression involves monster vs. monster attack scenes matter not at all.

It's rather amazing that Edwards got the gig at all, considering he has but one feature film to name-- the micro-budgeted (approximately $500,000) 2010 import Monsters, but he proves just the right director to be tasked with a $160 million property, infusing a gorgeously rendered, humanistic design to the monster bash.  It would be silly to call his Godzilla a master stroke of artistry, but it sets a high water mark for the impending summer assault season.  It would also be silly to invite cinematic comparisons, but for a film that adorns its influences proudly and mightily, perhaps not as reductive a call as typically.  For this Godzilla of 2014, is in my eyes, the best summertime escapism since 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  The comparison is apt, as both film reshaped and gathered from the dust of properties that long ago were disregarded by the pop cultural mass and surprised with an astonishingly visual ingenuity and uniquely sharpened sense of popcorn utopia.  Both film evoked a child-like sense of wonder and wealth of imagination and glints of awe because they weaved surprising joy amidst all the bombast and (presumed) studio notes...plus they both pretty much (digitally) destroyed the tony city of San Francisco in the process.  Yet, for even greater measure, Edwards cites and rests his Godzilla on the great Spielbergian treats of yore.