EARLY MAN

Like it or not, soccer (henceforth referred to as "football") has never really caught on here in the United States.  So when a kid's comedy largely revolves around football humor (even the title refers to early Manchester football fans), it can fall flat.  This is a problem for the Aardman Studios' stop-motion animated comedy Early Man.

Dug (Eddie Redmayne) has a simple but happy life with his caveman tribe and pet hog Hognob.  They live in a lush valley, hunt rabbits (with limited success), and all have their own quirks.  Dug would rather hunt larger animals, like mammoths, but Chief Bobnar (Timothy Spall) wants to continue hunting rabbits because that's what they've always done. 

Cultures clash when bronze-armored mammoths invade the valley, driving the caveman out of the valley and into the desolate badlands.  Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston) is obsessed with bronze and decided to mine the valley for it, not caring what happens to the cavemen.  When Dug ends up in Lord Nooth's city, Dug learns that Nooth's people are obsessed with "the sacred game" of football -- and Dug realizes that his tribe's cave paintings showed his ancestors playing this game. So Dug challenges Lord Nooth's championship team to a game of football: If Dug's tribe wins they get to live in the valley in peace, but if Lord Nooth's team wins the tribe works in the mines.

This would seem to be an impossible task, considering Dug's tribe has never played football before.  But Dug remains optimistic because their ancestors played.  He also gets help from Goona (Maisie Williams), a football fan from the city who's told she can't play because she's female -- so she plays with the tribe.  And there are a few twists, lots of football jokes, flagrant cheating, and a dinosaur-sized duck.

Early Man is more cute than funny.  The cast is game with their voices, but most of the football jokes just fall flat and there aren't many surprises in the story.  As a result, this movie is another kids' movie that just does the minimum to try and entertain.

Overall grade: C
Reviewed by James Lynch

THOR: RAGNAROK

Who'd have guessed a movie with such strong apocalyptic themes would also have such a large amount of humor?   Thor: Ragnarok is one of the sillier movies in the Marvel cinematic universe, though there's plenty of action as well.

Things begin well enough for Thor (Chris Hemworth).  He slays the demon Surtur, who was foretold to have brought abour Ragnarok, the destruction of Asgard.   He exposes Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who had been pretending to be Odin, and the two brothers find the real Odin (Anthony Hopkins) on Earth.

That's when things start going bad.  Odin passes away, and with his death his previously unknown daughter Hela (Kate Blanchett) is released.  Hela is the Goddess of Death, and she is tremendously powerful: casually flinging weapons from her body, slaying Asgardian soldiers by the dozens, and even shattering Thor's hammer.  Her goal: conquer Asgard, then use the Rainbow Bridge to conquer the Nine Realms with her army of undead soldiers and giant wolf.


As for Thor and Loki, they get lost in transit, winding up on a war-planet, where Thor is captured by the Asgardian warrior Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and forced by the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum) to fight in gladiator-style combat.  Worse, the Grandmaster's champion is the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), who liked being there and has no problem fighting his fellow Avenger.

Thor: Ragnarok is one of the lighter Marvel superhero movies, but it's still enjoyable.  There are numerous cameos from Marvel characters from the movies and comic books, plus humor coming from seemingly everywhere.  In addition, the cast is quite good, and Cate Blanchett makes a very menacing villain, fine with slaughtering anyone to get what she wants.  The action sequences are good (if very CGI-filled) and this ties into the overall Marvel cinematic universe without overdoing the connections.  This is far from the best superhero movie of 2017, but I enjoyed it.

Overall grade: B
Reviewed by James Lynch

THOR: THE DARK WORLD

How do you provide a challenge for Thor, one of Marvel's mightiest beings?  In the first movie, they took away his powers.  In Thor: The Dark World there's an ancient threat that could destroy Earth, Asgard, and just about everything else.  There's almost the entire cast of the first movie, plus a little too much humor.

At the start of Thor: The Dark World, big things are happening on Asgard and Earth.  Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is battling armies stirred up by Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and being urged by Odin (Anthony Hopkins) to prepare to be king -- and to romance the Asgardian warrior Sif (Jaimie Alexander) instead of pining for the human Jane Foster (Natalie Portman).  Loki is imprisoned, urged by his mother Frigga (Renee Russo) to think about what he's done.  Back on Earth, Jane is investigating a strange anomaly with her intern Darcy (Kat Dennings) when she's transported to a strange realm and infected with a reddish energy.  And Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) has been arrested for running around Stonehenge naked with some scientific equipment.

It turns out that a race of dark elves (I'm not sure why they're called that, since they're pale white) want to re-create the universe as a place of darkness -- and their leader Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) wants to use a convergence of the universes to accomplish this task.  He transforms an ally into the hulking Kurse (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and plans to use a nigh-indestructible energy called the Aether to destroy our universe and create the new one.  But the Aether is what's infected Jane -- and what's slowly killing her.

Thor: The Dark World is high on energy, with numerous battles ranging from a desolate wasteland to a trippy fight as things pop in and out of dimensional portals.  The movie has a bit too much comedy from start to finish, possibly because of Kat Dennings' popularity on the show 2 Broke Girls.  The bag guys have imposing physical presences (especially Kurse, as a stony Hulk-type monster) but little personality, and Hemsworth's casual swagger is about the same as the first movie.  Not surprisingly, Hiddleston steals every scene he appears in, knowing Loki isn't to be trusted and reveling in that fact.  And there are some nice cameos, not to mention two post-credits scenes.

Thor: The Dark World may skimp on character development (and use Loki's illusions a few too many times), but it's pretty exciting and entertaining.

Overall grade: B-
Reviewed by James Lynch