Marvel tale that lacks a little heart

Speciality Theatre

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

***

Stars: Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson.

Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo.

Rated: PG-13

Showing: 3D unless stated. Fr 2:15pm, 9pm, 9:30pm, midnight (2d); Sat 2:15pm (2d), 5:30pm, 8:45pm, 10pm (2d); Sun 1:30pm, 5pm,  8pm (2d); Mon-Thurs 1:15pm (2d); 4:30pm, 7:30pm, 9:30pm (2d)

Runtime: 136 minutes

Action, adventure, sci-fi.

The superhuman efforts director Joe Johnston made to persuade Chris Evans to re-enlist in the comic book movie universe as Captain America pay more dividends in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Evans, that perfect specimen of American manhood, really sells the earnestness, the dry wit, the sense of duty and righteousness of the icon of American values that he represents in this sequel, even if Johnston isn’t around to direct it.

And it’s great that The Winter Soldier is actually about something, a comic book spin on privacy and civil liberties issues straight out of today’s data mining headlines. It’s a freedom vs. fear movie, liberty vs. “order”.

There are clever ways the story folds back into the first Captain America film’s world, great effects and a retro-future tech that is fascinating.

But The Winter Soldier lacks that lump-in-the-throat heart that Evans, Johnston and company brought to the first Captain America. The co-directors of You, Me and Dupree, Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, serve up a pretty generic sequel, with inconsequential villains and predictable flourishes, an epic whose epic effects lack grandeur.

It’s emotionally flat, a lot closer to Evans’ Fantastic Four films or the Thor sequel than it is to Captain America: The First Avenger, or The Avengers. It’s OK for April, in other words, but not up to the higher standards of a Marvel summer blockbuster.  

Muppets Most Wanted

**

Stars: Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell, Tina Fey

Director: James Bobin

Rated: PG

Showing: Fri 2:30pm, 5:45pm; Sat  12:30pm, 5pm, 7:30pm; Sun 2pm, 4:45pm, 7:30pm; Mon-Thurs 1:30pm, 4:15pm, 7pm.

Runtime: 107 minutes

Adventure, comedy, crime.

The new Muppet movie is as sweet as a bowl of tapioca. And about as interesting.

Putting Jim Henson’s beloved felt, fur and fuzz creations at centre stage, Muppets Most Wanted loses much of the charm generated by Jason Segal and Amy Adams in the series’ dazzling 2011 reboot The Muppets. 

Liberty Theatre

Noah

***

Stars: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson.

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri-Sat 2:30pm, 6pm, 9:30pm; Sun 2:30pm, 5:30pm; Mon-Wed 2:30pm, 7pm; Thurs 2:30pm. Runtime: 138 minutes

Adventure, drama.

Big, beatific and (more or less) Biblical, Darren Aronofsky’s Noah is a mad vision of a movie, an action/adventure take on The Flood that cleansed the Earth.

Aronofsky (Black Swan) envisions this epic through the lens of Hollywood, interpreting the Bible as myth and telling one of its most fantastical tales as a grand and dark cinematic fantasy.

And with Russell Crowe as his Master and Commander and shipbuilder, Aronofsky has concocted an accessible, modern and mythic version of this oral history that may make purists blanch even as it entertains the rest of us. 

Neptune Theatre

Divergent

***

Stars: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet

Director: Neil Burger

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri-Sat 7:30pm; Sun 5:30pm; Mon-Thurs 7pm.

Runtime: 139 minutes

Action, adventure, sci-fi.

At age 16, Chicagoans are forced to pick their lifelong path from one of five “factions” or groups: Abnegation, whose members are selfless; Amity, peaceful; Candour, honest; Erudite, intelligent; and Dauntless, brave.

The carefully constructed society is about to be upended by the darker side of some of the factions in this movie naturally being compared to the Twilight and The Hunger Games franchises. 

ALL REVIEWS BY MCT