Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Marvel Entertainment

Rated PG-13

Running time: 136 Minutes

Click below to watch the movie trailer of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.



In Marvel Entertainment's Captain America: The Winter Solder - Steve Rogers/Chris Evans - also known as America's Hero, Captain America - struggles against a high ranking conspiracy as well as a Cold War "ghost" assassin - The Winter Soldier/Sebastian Stan.

In the latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Washington D.C. and the World Security Council has the covert agency of S.H.I.E.L.D. empowered with the hardware for a Project designed to preemptively eliminate threats after the events of The Avengers. The Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury/Samuel L. Jackson, soon discovers a conspiracy after the recovery of classified data - and soon becomes a target from police disguised assailants, as well as the Winter Soldier/Stan. With the help of the Black Widow/Scarlett Johansson and his new friend, Pararescue war veteran and PTSD counselor Sam Wilson/Anthony Mackie - otherwise known as The Falcon - Captain America/Evans goes after the people responsible for attacking Fury/Jackson, the major conspirators and the Winter Soldier - who has a secret connection to Rogers/Evans.

With this film being more of a political thriller, I think that this is the best of the Marvel movies and debuted to a record breaking $96.2 million in North America as of 2014. While Captain America: The Winter Soldier was mostly a serious drama, most of the light comedy in the movie was of  the Black Widow/Johansson trying to set up Rogers/Evans with a date. This is even funnier when you consider that Captain America/Evans is such a piece of Americana that he is now an exhibit at a Smithsonian Museum. For Stan Lee fans, Lee's cameo is as a guard in the Smithsonian Museum.

Being a political thriller, the movie deals with hard core political issues, such as disorder and war, that deal with today rather than the more simplistic issues of disorder and war that Steve Rogers/Evans grew up with in the 1940's. As Rogers/Evans says, "This isn't freedom, this is fear." Having friends of mine who very liberal and are into conspiracy theories, the ideas in this movie hit pretty home to me, just as these ideas hit pretty home to Captain America/Evans. The scenes of the fake police using S.W.A.T. tactics against Fury/Jackson was especially disturbing for me to watch, as I have had classes with the police as a Citizens Academy graduate. Robert Redford as a senior S.H.I.E.L.D. official and World Security Council member as well as Fury/Jackson's mentor is an homage to Redford's 1970's thrillers and made the movie especially believable. Having bystanders running away to safety in the background in the various action scenes helped to ground this movie into reality and not just some comic book movie with no consequences.

I liked how we got to know more about Fury/Jackson and Rogers/Evans in this movie than we had in the other movies. Getting to know about Black Widow/Johansson and Falcon/Mackie made these four characters more of a family to me, despite their dysfunctional backgrounds. The relationship between political opposites Black Widow/Johansson and Captain America/Evans was quite interesting and pretty hot, despite the fact that these two character are supposed to get involved with other characters in the Marvel Universe, such as Hawkeye/Jeremy Renner and Agent 13/Emily VanCamp.

I saw the movie during a matinee and the theater was pretty full. The audience reacted positively to the kick-ass action. Seeing Captain America/Evans using his shield as both shield and weapon during the action scenes was pretty awesome. Black Widow/Johansson kicking ass is a given in the movie. A most welcome surprise is that Wilson/Mackie's action scenes as the Falcon were just as good, especially since the idea of the Falcon seems pretty cartoony in the comics to me and could have looked really bad. After watching how they did the Falcon with his exoskeleton wing pack in the movie, I am pretty confident that Marvel will treat all their comic book characters right visually. This is especially important as the Falcon/Mackie is an African-American superhero which is why Mackie wanted to do the movie in the first place, for his son and nephews and nieces. The S.H.I.E.L.D. technology was pretty awesome and formidable, particularly the helicarriers. The movie looks more realistic and more impressive to me especially during the action scenes, which is mainly because the movie was done mostly as live action with very little computer graphics involved.

Since everything in the Marvel universe is connected, the big scale events in Captain America: The Winter Soldier also affect the events in the TV show Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which is about a team in the vast covert agency of S.H.I.E.L.D. under the direction of Agent Coulson/Clark Gregg. After watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I now understand the events of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. better, which will deal with the consequences of the movie on the team's relationships on a very personal, intimate scale. Since Coulson/Gregg is so involved into Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., I miss having him appear in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and having Coulson/Gregg relate to his hero Captain America/Evans. Despite the lack of Coulson/Gregg, several S.H.I.E.L.D. characters, as well as several characters from Captain America: The First Avenger reprise their roles in this movie. An Easter Egg mention of Stephen Strange in the movie was of particular delight to me. From the lack of reaction, I think I was one of the very few people in the theater audience who knows the comic book character name of Stephen Strange - who is the title character in the new upcoming Marvel movie Dr. Strange.

There were only two movie trailers shown before Captain America: The Winter Soldier in the theater that I was in, Guardians of the Galaxy and Maleficent, both of which come from Marvel/Disney and both movies are movies that I really want to see when they come out.

I liked that during the end credits there were comic graphics of the movie with an iconic comic graphic of the stars in their roles of the movie. There are two movie scenes during the end credits. The first scene, in which Joss Wheedon directed, is after the credits for the movie's stars have been finished, in which the scene refers to Avengers: Age of Ultron. Most of the audience in my theater left after that scene - but there is another movie scene later after all of the credits at the end of the movie have been finished. The people staying for the rest of the credits were discussing Marvel as I was reading the credits and enjoying the music from the movie. The rest of the audience who stayed all went quiet when the final scene finally aired. I felt this final movie scene was quite moving for the movie.

The very last message before the Marvel logo appears is: Captain America will return in "Avengers: Age of Ultron."

Click below to watch another movie trailer of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.




Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

Pancho's Movie Reviews

THOR

Paramount Pictures

Marvel Studios

Rated PG-13

Running time: 115 minutes















Click below to watch the Thor trailer.



In Paramount Pictures Thor, the Norse Asgardian god Thor, Chris Hemsworth, is stripped of his power by Odin the All-Father, Anthony Hopkins, for being too arrogant and is banished to Earth/Midguard. After hitting Hemsworth with her car, Natalie Portman takes the strange Hemsworth home as she believes he is a key to her scientific weather research.

Based on Marvel Comics Thor, this film was much more interesting in the Asgard and other realms than while being on Earth. While Earth had all the jokes, with the main settings being in a desert and a small town, it was rather boring compared to the family dynamics between Odin, Thor, and his brother Loki, Tom Hiddleston. Not even S.H.I.E.L.D made up for a boring Earth as S.H.I.E.L.D was just portrayed as another secret government agency that takes over everything and nothing was really spectacular about it. The movie trailer made S.H.I.E.L.D seem much more sinister. Agent Clark Gregg mentioned that Thor made the S.H.I.E.L.D agents look like minimum wage mall cops which was easy to do as the agents did act like mall cops and not the elite special operations teams that they should have been. While back in Asgard, it was rather touching and sad to see a sweet young Loki turn into a bitter man jealous of his beloved brother Thor. This was a better telling of betrayal than Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader. With director Kenneth Branagh's  Shakespearean roots, this definitely helped the story which is basically a retelling of Shakespeare's Henry V.

The frost giants were much more agile than what I imagined from the comic books, so the battles between them and the Asgardians were more intense than what I expected. And it is the invasion of the frost giants during his coronation that causes Thor to be arrogant in the first place as he wants to insure the safety of Asgard by invading the frost giants realm with the Warriors Three.

As Queen Frigga, Thor's mother, Rene Russo was an unexpected addition to the movie as I recall no publicity concerning her being a part of the film. Actually I did not recognize her until I read the end credits, although I knew that she had looked familiar when I saw her. There is also a bowman amongst the S.H.I.E.L.D agents Jeremy Renner who is uncredited as the character Hawkeye.

In the spirit of Asgard and the other realms, the credits were rather cosmic. There is also a scene after the end credits which goes more into Samuel L. Jackson and S.H.I.E.L.D which, when combined with all the references in the movie, lead to possible sequels like The Avengers.

The band Foo Fighters song "Walk" is also in the film because the filmmakers thought its lyrics were strangely appropriate for the film.

Rated PG-13 for violence. Running time: 115 minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same langauge.