Avengers: Age of Ultron (2nd Trailer)

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Arleigh

“Everyone creates the thing they dread.” — Ultron

New Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer has dropped during the inaugural College Football Playoff Championship game between Oregon and Ohio State.

For all the underwhelming reaction that the Ant-Man teaser trailer got after it premiered last week it looks like this latest trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron just builds on the immense buzz and hype created by the leaked trailer from November 2014.

No need to say more. Just watch the new hotness as we wait for May 1, 2015 when Avengers: Age of Ultron shows us something beautiful.

For Your Consideration #8: Captain America: The Winter Solider (dir by Joe and Anthony Russo)

Posted on December 16, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I would estimate that, when it comes to the movies, Ryan the Trash Film Guru and I agree with each other perhaps 95% of the time. What’s interesting is that the 5% of the time that we have disagreed, it’s always been the result of an entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As Ryan has documented many times on this site, he’s not a fan of the MCU. (The title of his review of the second Thor film is probably one of the best that’s ever appeared on this site.) As for me, I’m the exact opposite. In fact, I am such a fan of the MCU that I am about to suggest that Captain America: The Winter Soldier — along with being one of the best action films of the year — deserves serious Oscar consideration.

(Ryan’s opposite take on the film can be read here.)

Now, unlike some of the films that I’ve suggested deserve your consideration, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, along with receiving critical acclaim, was also a major commercial success. What made The Winter Soldier unique was that it deserved both the acclaim and the money. There was a lot that I liked about The Winter Soldier. In the role of Captain America, Chris Evans was both likable and, most importantly, believable as a hero out of time. And while I would have never guessed that her character was supposed to be Russian, Scarlett Johansson continued her streak of kicking serious ass in the role of the Black Widow. Samuel L. Jackson brought his customary style to the role of Nick Fury and Sebastian Stan was properly intimidating as the Winter Soldier. The action scenes were exciting, the dialogue was sharp and witty, and the film worked both as a stand alone film and as a part of the overall Marvel universe.

But, for me, what truly elevated Captain America: The Winter Soldier was the film’s subtext. (In that way, I would compare it to another surprisingly intelligent genre film, The Purge: Anarchy.) For those who may have forgotten, the villains of the Winter Soldier are all members and pawns of Hydra, a secret organization that has so infiltrated the American establishment that it has literally become something of a shadow government. Hydra has also infiltrated SHIELD and plans to use their intelligence capabilities to not only preemptively identify possible threats but to eliminate them as well. In fact, by taking control of the SHIELD helicarriers, Hydra can anonymously deliver death and destruction from above.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?

What truly makes this subtext come alive is that fact that the main villain — Hydra’s double agent in SHIELD — is played by none other than Robert Redford. Any student of American film knows what Robert Redford represents. Early in his career, Redford was the idealistic, ambitious, and frequently laconic protagonist, the perfect symbol of American exceptionalism. In the 1970s, Redford was the audience surrogate in classic paranoia films like Three Days of the Condor and All The President’s Men. Lately, as the man behind the Sundance Film Festival and a frequent director, Robert Redford has been the epitome of bourgeois, establishment liberalism.

Hence, when we hear Redford say, “Hail Hydra,” it’s more than just a catch phrase. It’s also the film’s way of saying that we’re all fucked. If even Robert Redford can be a villain, the film seems to be saying, then how foolish do we have to be to fully trust anyone or anything? If Robert Redford can order people killed and then justify it by claiming that he was acting for a greater good then why are we so shocked when governments do the exact same thing?

We live in paranoid times. In the future, historians will recognize that few films captured that paranoia as perfectly as Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

For Your Consideration #7: Snowpiercer (dir by Bong Joon-ho)

Posted on December 16, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It is perhaps a sign of the times that 2014 saw the release of several dystopian films. Whether it was the Purge: Anarchy, Mockingjay, The Maze Runner, Edge of Tomorrow, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, or even Interstellar, all of these films shared a similarly bleak view of the future. Filmmakers everywhere seemed to agree that humanity is basically doomed.

Unfortunately, with so many different and competing views of our sucky future, I fear that a lot of people may have missed one of the best of them. When taken along with all of the usual Academy biases, I fear that means that Snowpiercer is pretty much out of the running for a best picture nomination. It’s true that Snowpiercer did win best picture from the Boston Online Critics and there’s always an outside chance that Tilda Swinton could pick up a best supporting actress nomination. But, for the most part, Snowpiercer has been overlooked.

And that’s a shame because Snowpiercer is one of the best of the year.

The premise of Snowpiercer is, in its way, brilliant. After environmental scientists go a bit too far in their effort to battle global warming, the world suffers a second ice age. (I have to admit that I enjoyed this development, just because heroic environmentalists are such a cliché.) With the entire world frozen, what is left of humanity ends up on a massive train known as the Snowpiercer. For the next twenty years, the Snowpiercer rushes up and down a track that spans the entire planet.

A new society forms on the Snowpiercer and, not surprisingly, it’s a lot like the old society. The rich live up at the front of the train. The poor live in the tail section. All laws are set by the rarely seen Wilford (Ed Harris). Wilford’s will is enforced by faceless soldiers and his blandly monstrous second-in-command, Mason (Tilda Swinton).

Twenty years later, the people in the tail section attempt their latest revolt. This time, they’re being led by the charismatic Curtis (Chris Evans, proving that he’s capable of playing a lot more than just Capt. America). Taking Mason hostage, Curtis leads his people through each car, slowly making their way to the front. Along the way, they meet a lot a violent resistance and Curtis discovers that his rebellion was not quite as virtuous as he originally assumed…

Snowpiercer was one of the most imaginative science fiction films that I saw in 2014, a triumph of acting, direction, and design. Each car has its own unique personality and look. Perhaps the film’s best scene is when Curtis finds himself in the car that serves as the train’s school. He and his grimy rebels listen as a perky and friendly teacher (Alison Pill) indoctrinates her students about the benevolence of Wilford. It’s a surrealistic and tense scene, one that ends with burst of sudden and unexpected violence.

Perhaps what I most appreciated about Snowpiercer was that, despite all appearance to the contrary, it was ultimately a humanistic and optimistic film. This is the rare action film where violence is not designed to look fun. Though many character may not survive, the film never celebrates or cheapens their death. Even the film’s most unsympathetic characters are still allowed moments of humanity. This is a film that not only ends on a hint of hope but which earns that hope as well.

Snowpiercer is one of the best films of the year and it’s one that definitely deserves more consideration than it’s been given.

Trailer: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Extended)

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Arleigh

“I know you mean well. You want to protect the world, but you don’t want it to change. There’s only one path to peace…your extinction.” — Ultron

Marvel has released a new extended version of the teaser trailer they released a couple weeks ago. While it’s pretty much similar to the first teaser trailer this extended version has a new intro with Ultron in his initial form confronting the partying Avengers in Avengers Tower. The voice-over by James Spader as Ultron also sounds much different in this trailer than the first. We also get more lingering shots of all the Avengers from Iron Man all the way to Hawkeye rather than the rapid-fire cuts we saw in the first teaser.

May 2015 cannot come soon enough.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is set for a May 1, 2015 release date in North America.

Embracing the Melodrama #56: Fierce People (dir by Griffin Dunne)

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Much as how Inside Out is a perfect example of how one bad plot twist can ruin an otherwise good film, the 2007 sin-among-the-wealthy melodrama Fierce People shows how one good actor can partially redeem a really bad movie. That actor’s name is Donald Sutherland and Fierce People is worth seeing for one reason: his performance.

Fierce People tells the story of a teenager named Finn Earl (Anton Yelchin). As a character, Finn Earl is almost as annoying as his cutesy name. He’s a permanently sarcastic 16 year-old who goes through life with the same judgmental smirk on his face, while the whole time delivering some of the smuggest narration ever recorded for a voice over in an American film. Finn’s mother is Liz (Diane Lane), a massage therapist with a drug problem. Finn’s father is some jerk who spends all of his time in South America, studying cannibal tribes. (Actually, he’s studying a real-life Indian tribe known as the Yanomami, or the Fierce People. However, I prefer to assume that he was actually studying a cannibal tribe because that means it’s entirely possible that he was eaten at some point and therefore, Finn will never get a chance to spend any time with father. That’s the type of reaction that Finn, as a character, inspires.)

Liz and Finn are invited to spend the summer living the guesthouse of the fabulously wealthy Ogden Osburne (Donald Sutherland). At first, Finn is weary of Ogden and assumes that he must be sleeping with Liz. However, in a scene that works only because of the performance of Donald Sutherland, Ogden very graphically shows Finn why he’s not interested in having an affair with Liz. Instead, Ogden is just a nice, rich eccentric. Unfortunately, the other wealthy people who live around Ogden are not quite as nice and they soon, they start to resent the presence of Finn and his mother. Finn does manages to befriend Ogden’s decadent grandson (played by Chris Evans) and even starts a tentative romance with Ogden’s granddaughter (Kristen Stewart) but the rest of the Osburne clan is not prepared to be so accepting. Soon, the film goes from being an annoying comedy to being an annoying drama with a burst of violence and murder.

Fierce People is not a very good movie. It’s based on a novel and, even if you didn’t know that beforehand, you would guess just from the way that the film tries and fails to present a lot of themes that undoubtedly work better on the page than on the screen. The film’s attempts to draw parallels between the Yanomami and the wealthy (They’re two tribes and they’re both fierce — OH MY GOD, MIND BLOWN!) are way too obvious and the film’s sudden lurch into drama is handled rather clumsily. It’s interesting to see Chris Evans before he became Capt. America and Kristen Stewart before she became Bella (and both of them, by the way, give good performances) but Anton Yelchin’s performance as Finn alternates between being smug and being whiny. (In Yelchin’s defense, he’s developed into a pretty good actor and I loved him in Like Crazy.)

And yet, Fierce People works as an example of what a truly great actor can do with so-so material. As played by Donald Sutherland, Ogden becomes the jaded moral center of the universe. Sutherland plays Ogden with a perversely regal air and yet also makes us totally believe that Ogden actually could be helping the Earls out of the kindness of his heart. It’s a great performance and every minute that Sutherland is on screen, Fierce People works.

If the film had simply been called Fierce Ogden, it would have been a hundred times better.

Trailer: Snowpiercer (Red Band)

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Arleigh

Bong Joon-ho is a name that genre fans know well. He has made a name for himself in his home country of South Korea with such critically-acclaimed films as Memories of Murder, The Host and Mother. In 2013, Bong co-wrote and directed the adaptation of the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige. The film is his first English-language film and it has garnered much acclaim when it was released in South Korea in 2013.

Snowpiercer as the film has been titled will now make it’s North American premiere this year and with months of buzz following it’s Asian release many genre fans have been awaiting its arrival. It’s premise is simple enough and involves a train that never stops moving that circles the globe that’s going through a new Ice Age that has killed off most of the planet’s population save those riding on the global train.

It’s a film that explores that ever-popular subject of the “have’s versus the have not’s”. It’ll be interesting to see what new idea Bong Joon-ho brings to an old idea.

Snowpiercer is set for a US release on June 27, 2014.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer (?) Blockbusters : “Captain America : The Winter Soldier”

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

I’m firmly of the belief that nobody my age has any business whatsoever using the phrase “WTF,” but nevertheless — WTF? Captain America : The Winter Soldier has been playing for two weeks now, there are, what, either or ten people who write regularly (or semi-regularly) for this website, pretty much all of ’em are bigger fans of Marvel’s cinematic product than I am — and I’m the first person to review this flick here, even though more or less the entire country saw the thing before I did yesterday? Well, okay, but somebody had better get busy on writing a rebuttal to this, because what I’ve got to say is going to piss a lot of people off.

It’s not that DisMar’s latest blockbuster is “bad,” per se — it’s just that it’s exactly what you expect it to be, that’s all these things ever are, and sorry, but it’s not “the greatest super-hero flick ever made.” And that statement, in and of itself, is going to be enough to upset the die-hards out there because, to them, every Marvel movie is “the greatest super-hero flick ever made” — until the next one. Which is probably just as well because these things are entirely disposable and don’t hold up particularly well to multiple viewings. Be honest — once the initial “high” wore off, was The Avengers really all that great? Or Iron Man 3? Or Thor : The Dark World?

Of course they weren’t. Which doesn’t mean they weren’t fun, or that they didn’t hit all the right bullet points on whatever unofficial geek check-list you keep. It’s just that they do their job, get it over with, and move on — as you do, dear reader. Think about it : after watching your average Marvel movie (and if there’s one thing all of these films are, it’s aggressively average), you’re not necessarily pumped to see it again so much as you are pumped for the next one. And that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? The Marvel cinematic “universe” is a self-perpetuating organism at this point, whose primary function is to whet your appetite for the supposed “greatness” to come rather than give you time to reflect on the mediocrity of what’s already been/is going on. The hype surrounding the product is woven into the fabric of the product itself — in fact, it’s the largest part of it.

Don’t get me wrong — I had a reasonably fun time kicking back and watching Captain America : The Winter Soldier. Chris Evans does a reasonably good job portraying Cap/Steve Rogers as a guy who’s fundamentally decent, but not so holier than thou that you want to knock his teeth in. Robert Redford’s choice to play the treacherous Alexander Pierce as a believably nonchalant master manipulator is solid, and everything about him oozes “old movie vet” professionalism. Sebastian Stan cuts a strikingly mysterious pose as the (sub-) titular Winter Soldier. Anthony Mackie is likable in the extreme as sidekick Sam Wilson/The Falcon. And it’s cool to see Toby Jones “back” — after a fashion, at any rate — as Arnim Zola, this time in an iteration somewhat closer to how Jack Kirby originally envisioned him. The main thrust of the story is pretty engaging, too, revolving as it does around a massive web of Hydra “fifth columnists” within S.H.I.E.L.D. itself. It’s reasonably — though far from overwhelmingly — interesting, and keeps you guessing just enough.

But there are some pretty glaring flaws here, as well. Samuel L. Jackson seems tired and played-out as Nick Fury, and while it doesn’t help that his entire “character arc” in this film is lifted note-for-note from that of Jim Gordon in The Dark Knight, the fact of the matter is that Sam doesn’t seem to be putting any more effort into this gig than he does in his credit card commercials. Scarlett Johansson remains horribly miscast as Natasha Romanov/The Black Widow, and while that’s not such a huge problem in movies where she’s peripheral (at best) to the action, it stands out like a sore thumb here, where she’s called upon to be much more central to the proceedings. And for a supposed future love interest, Emily VanCamp is entirely forgettable in her brief time on screen.

Still, those are minor quibbles compared to the main problem here, which is how hopelessly generic, and indeed formulaic, this whole thing feels from start to finish. Joe Johnston’s Captain America : The First Avenger remains my personal favorite Marvel Studios film, but as with Kenneth Branagh and the Thor franchise, DisMar has opted here to show a veteran director with his own ideas and authorial stamp the door when it came time for a sequel and bring in “talent” from the world of television (in this case brothers Joe and Anthony Russo) to hammer things into the dry, predictable “house style” best exemplified by Joss Whedon’s Avengers and Jon Favreau’s first two Iron Man flicks. The end result is a multi-million-dollar, CGI-heavy, clinically-paced, personality-free zone.

About a half hour into things here, you start to get the distinct feeling that you’ve seen all this before, and there’s good reason for that — you have. The action sequences are progressively bigger, louder, and more destructive, but not much else. They don’t become progressively more thrilling or suspenseful, and while the stakes are nominally raised every time, their execution remains largely the same. You could probably run ’em all in reverse order with no real difference to the story. And while there does, in fact, seem to be a kind of major shake-up Marvel’s “universe” at the end of this film, the fact that the Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series remains a going concern week in and week out is all you need to know to figure out that any “ramifications” from this story are apparently very short-lived indeed. In other words, Marvel’s doing on celluloid what they’ve always done in print — providing, in the words of Stan Lee (who it pains me to even quote, but in this case I must) “the illusion of change” — but no actual change at all.

In the end, in the eyes of this armchair critic at any rate, that’s what Marvel’s movies are all about at this point : the status quo. If you’re happy with that, then you’ll enjoy the heck out of Captain America : The Winter Soldier. But if you’d like to actually see something that takes a few risks, dares to break the mold a bit, and maybe even matters — well, you’ll have to look elsewhere. That’s not the point here. The point here is to get you all hot and bothered for Captain America 3, or The Avengers 2 — or whatever the hell else is in the pipeline — before this one’s even over. Viewed from that angle — the one that shows the goal of every Marvel movie is nothing more than ensuring that there will be a next Marvel movie — then yeah, this one’s gotta be viewed as an unqualified success. So what?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (4 Minute Extended Clip & Trailer)

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Arleigh

It’s just less than a month away from one of 2014’s most-anticipated films. It’s the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger and Marvel Studios has been kind enough to treat it’s fans to a 4-minute clip/trailer of the film.

This clip from Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes early in the film and helps in setting the tone of the film. This is not the gung-ho and patriotic first film. This follow-up shows the after-effects of the events from The Avengers and how it’s created a sense of paranoia and conspiracy surrounding the very group Captain America has now become a part of.

Where the first film had the nostalgic feel similar to Joe Johnston’s The Rocketeer, this sequel looks to tap the 70’s conspiracy and 80’s technothriller genres. It’s anyone’s guess whether the Russo Brothers succeeded, but just going by this extended scene and the previous teasers and trailers they may have just done that.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier arrives in North America on April 4, 2014.

Super Bowl Trailer: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Arleigh

It’s becoming a sort of yearly occurrence to have a Marvel Studios film premiere a special trailer during the live-broadcast of the NFL’s latest Super Bowl event. Last year, it was a special Super Bowl trailer of Iron Man 3 (an extended version soon coming out after). This year it will be Captain America: The Winter Soldier that will get the special Super Bowl treatment.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier has been gaining some major buzz since the release of its first teaser trailer from a couple months back. Where Thor: Dark World used fantasy as an overall theme for its look and story, with the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger the filmmakers have taken on the look and feel of a techno/conspiracy-thriller. The Winter Soldier looks to be like something that wouldn’t seem out of place if made during the cynical and distrustful era of the 1970’s when conspiracies and distrust of those in power dominated the headlines.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is set for an April 4, 2014 release date.

Also, we have the UK and Ireland version of the trailer which show a brief glimpse of Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) who is the descendant of Peggy Carter from the first film.

Trailer: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Official)

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Arleigh

We take a brief break from all things horror here at Through the Shattered Lens to bring to you the first official trailer for Marvel Studios second film in their Phase 2 of their Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier sees the return of Steve Rogers aka Captain America (The first Avenger) post-Battle of New York. He’s now an official member of S.H.I.E.L.D. but soon realizes that his 40’s ideals may not mesh well with the all-encompassing and super-secretive intelligence organization. From the look and feel of the trailer it looks like the film’s directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, are going for the conspiracy thriller tone for this new Captain America entry.

This is a good choice considering that the screenplay has been heavily influenced by Ed Brubaker’s run on the Captain America comics which also introduced the Winter Soldier of the film’s title.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is set for a Spring, April 4, 2014, release date.