AVENGERS: ENDGAME

For years the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been teasing the awesome power of the Infinity Stones, the Infinity Gauntlet, and the mad titan Thanos' mission to wipe out half the life in the universe -- and seeing that happen in Avengers: Infinity War.  So what happens next?  The conclusion of this saga in the epic Avengers: Endgame.

Following the events of the last movie, the remaining Avengers quickly track down Thanos (Josh Brolin), only to discover that he's destroyed the Infinity Stones.  We then jump ahead five years.  Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is providing counseling to those who remain, while the Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) is locked away trying to find a way to reverse Thanos' deed.  The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) has found a way to merge Bruce Banner's mind with his green-skinned ego, while Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has let himself go.  Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) has started a family with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), while Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) lost his whole family and takes his anger out by killing criminals.  Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) is working with just about everyone.  And Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) is helping other planets deal with the same thing that happened on Earth.

Then Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) shows up.  He's been trapped in the quantum realm -- but while five years passed for the rest of the world, for him it's been five hours.  Time works differently there, so he and the Avengers make a plan: Use the realm to go back in time, get the Infinity Stones before they were destroyed, and reverse Thanos' mass genocide.  But they only have enough Pym particles for one trip to the past and back -- and tampering with time has unforseen consequences...

There's a lot Endgame tackles -- and it does it very well for the most part.  We get to see new sides of characters we've known for decades, and the time travel element allows us to go back to many of the earlier movies, from revisiting characters who've died to characters running into their past selves.  There's plenty of humor spread throughout the movie, but it doesn't diminish the high stakes of saving half the life in the universe.  And yes, there's an epic battle, final deaths, and saying goodbye to staples of the MCU.

While Avengers: Endgame isn't perfect -- there are at least two paradoxes that go unexplained -- it is a very satisfying wrap-up to the storylines of the MCU.  I can certainly understand why the audience cheered during the movie.  This movie is exciting, nostalgic, and very satisfying.

Overall grade: A-
Reviewed by James Lynch

TAG

What happens when grown men obsessively play a kid's game well into their adulthood?  This is the basis for Tag.  Based on a true story (as the film reminds us at its beginning and end), this movie is silly, goofy, and often funny.

Five friends have been playing the same game of tag since they were nine.  As adults, every May even though they live in separate cities the group can use disguises, surprise, and whatever they can think of to tag each other.  At the end of the month, the last person tagged has to live with the "shame" of being it until they play again.

 This year Hogan "Hoagie" Malloy (Ed Helms) tracks down and gets together with his friends Bob Callahan (John Hamm), Randy "Chilli" Cillaino (Jake Johnson) and Kevin Sable (Hannibal Burress) with a mission: They all team up to tag Jerry Pierce (Jeremy Renner), the friend who's never been tagged and is retiring from the game after this year.  Hoagie thinks they have an edge: knowing when Jerry is getting married and using that knowledge to tag him.  But Jerry is insanely focused on winning (his encounters with his friends are slow-motion strategic battles) and seems ready for whatever the others come at him with.

While the five friends have a "no girls allowed" amendment for their game, most of the supporting cast is female.  Susan Rollins (Leslie Bibb) is Jerry's fiancee who supports the game but declares the wedding and related events off-limits for tagging each other.  Anna Malloy (Isla Fisher) is Hoagie's wife who's ultra-intense in helping her husband win the game.  Rebecca Crosby (Annabelle Wallis) is a reporter whose business article about Bob quickly turns into an article about this game of tag.  And Cheryl Deakins (Rashida Jones) is the former crush of both Bob and Chill, brought in by Jerry to distract them.

Tag is fun, if pretty light.  The movie doesn't delve into how a kid's game is so important to grown-ups, apart from a few scenes showing how the game intersects with big moments in their lives.  The movie also gets more serious and sentimental near the end, with a slightly-telegraphed twist.  But the comedic action scenes are pretty funny, and the cast's enthusiasm carries into pretty consistently funny scenes.  Tag is goofy -- and it's amusing too.

Overall grade: B

Reviewed by James Lynch

ARRIVAL

If there is alien life out there, what will our first encounters with them be like?  How will we communicate with them?  And how will both individuals and nations react to the unknown?  These are some of the issues addressed in Arrival, a very thoughtful science fiction film.

The movie opens with linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) remembering her daughter Hannah, from her birth to sad death as a teenager.  After that, she's teaching a class when it's interrupted by world-shaking news: aliens have landed on Earth, with 1500' oval ships landing at 12 locations on Earth.  And Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) recruits Dr. Banks to communicate with the aliens.

Louise is taken to the Montana location, where an alien ship is hovering above the ground.  Unfortunately, no attempts to decipher the alien sounds have been successful.  Fortunately, every 18 hours a hatch opens, allowing humans to enter the ship.  While physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) tries to figure out the properties of the aliens and their ship, Louise decides to focus not on speaking with them, but rather teaching them our written language.  The aliens -- giant squid-like creatures with seven legs, floating in a white fog behind a barrier -- respond with their own language: a series of circular symbols.

While Loiuse and Ian work on figuring out why the aliens are here, pressure is building around the world.  Some populations riot in wake of the aliens' arrival.  China is leading a push to respond the aliens with military force.  And some of the Montana soldiers are ready to use violence...

Arrival is more measured than much science fiction -- there are no laser beams, aerial battles with spaceships, or creatures wandering among humans -- and that's both a strength and a weakness: This is one of cinema's most realistic approaches to first contact with alien life, but it also means at times watching people work on translations can get boring.  Amy Adams is fine as the professional who has to work on what could be the most important translation in human history while dealing with her personal devastating loss; and the rest of the cast is more or less just there.  The aliens are nicely otherworldly and mysterious, and there's a plot twist and concept that may not be fully satisfying but is unexpected.  Arrival is a solid movie about what happens when life from other world finally reaches us.

Overall grade: B
Reviewed by James Lynch

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

The Avengers may be Marvel's most powerful superhero series -- and with their movie, Marvel's biggest box-office hit and focal point for the plot threads begun in other Marvel movies.  Avengers: Age of Ultron brings the team back together for another round of saving the planet and battling their personal and team demons.

Age of Ultron starts with a bang, as the team -- Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), and Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) -- is attacking a Hydra base to obtain Loki's staff, and the Tesseract it contains,.  However, in addition to Hydra's weapons, they have a special project: the Maximoff twins.  Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) can move faster than the eye can see, while his sister Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) can throw energy bolts, read people's minds, and show them their worst fears.  The twins have a hatred of Tony Stark, and Wanda uses her power to show him the other Avengers all dead.

Thor wants to take the staff back, but Tony gets a few days to experiment on it.  He learns the Tesseract has a gem that has a sort of program, and he (with Bruce's help) wants to use it to make a program to protect the planet -- without telling his other teammates.  Unfortunately, it creates Ultron (voiced by James Spader), an artificial intelligence who wants to create "peace in our time" by driving the Avengers to extinction (and a lot more).

The rest of the movie is a combination of the Avengers fighting Ultron, his nigh-innumerable robot duplicates, and the twins -- as well as dealing with their fractured spirit after Wanda shows everyone but Hawkeye their fears.  There's also more fighting between Captain America and Iron Man, a possible romance between Bruce and Natasha, a lot mote character development for Hawkeye, and cameos from night-innumerable supporting characters from almost every other Marvel movie.  Oh, and Paul Bettany goes from being the voice of Jarvis to the character the Vision.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is both enjoyable and frustrating.  The regular cast is quite good as always, James Spader is suitably creepy as the evil robot, and the twins are decent (even if Olsen's character is almost all defined by her accent).  At the same time, the movie feels over-long at times, lots of characters "leave" when we know they'll be back for the sequel(s), and there's a bit too much slow-motion in the action sequences.  Avengers: Age of Ultron is entertaining, but it isn't as quotable, exciting, or fan-fantasy-fulfilling as, well, the last Avengers movie.

Overall grade: B
Reviewed by James Lynch

AMERICAN HUSTLE

The movie about the elaborate con is pretty routine in Hollywood, but American Hustle elevates this type of film with not only layer upon layer of deception and double-crosses, but also commentary on the corruption that comes with power.

Set in 1978 and loosely based on real events, American Hustle follows an unlikely collusion between confidence men and the U.S. government.  Irvin Rosenfelt (Christian Bale, unrecognizable with his extra weight and giant comb-over) runs all sorts of scams, from forged art to fictitious lines of credit for desperate people.  His partner and lover is Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), a meticulous con artist who uses a British accent to add a foreign element to their schemes.  Irvin's biggest weakness is his wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), a foul-mouthed and unstable woman who uses her sex appeal and her son, who Irvin adopted, as leverage to keep him with her.

Irvin and Sydney wind up busted by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), an ambitious agent.  He initially agrees to let the two go after they help him make four busts with their cons.  But Richie's hopes grow -- along with Irvin's fears -- as a con involving a rich sheik and millions of dollars gets the interest of New Jersey Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner).  Polito wants to use the sheik's money to build up Atlantic City, and soon congressmen, senators, and even the mob are getting involved.  And as Irvin gets more and more nervous, no one is really sure who's using who. Is the tension between Irvin and Sydney real?  Is Sydney falling for Richie -- or just playing him?  And will Rosalyn make everything fall to pieces?

It's hard to think of any way that American Hustle could be any better.  The cast is stellar from top to bottom, and director David O. Russell brings out an intensity and realism from everyone that propels the film from start to finish.  While the movie is gripping and dramatic, there's also plenty of comedy, from the opening shot of Irvin putting together his elaborate comb-over to Louis C.K.'s role as Richie's boss whose concerns are ignored more and more at the prospect of big takedowns.  American Hustle is intelligent, entertaining, and a great example of what a movie can be.

Overall grade: A+
Reviewed by James Lynch