Captain America: The Winter Soldier easily tops its predecessor. There is more drama, there is more action and there are bad guys who are more than just make up. There is even some emotion here--you sort of get to caring about some of these characters. It is somewhat predictable but it is well paced and so doesn't give the audience much time to put two and two together between chases, fights and things blowing up.

This is starting to turn into a "broken record" sort of thing. Every time I write about a comic super hero movie I get into how Hollywood has this all down now.

Sure there was Green Lantern and Iron Man II (made bearable only by the presence of bad guy, Mickey Rourke). But by and large these films are now, at worst, bearable and at best they are solidly entertaining films. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is more in the latter category than the former. It isn't any of the Nolan Batman films nor is it like the first two X-Men movies but it compares favorably to Iron Man I and III (both surprisingly good) and is better than the also surprisingly good Thor movies.

It just works. But why does it work?

There are the usual reasons--the super hero films that work have tight, together scripts. The acting in these films is all top notch. In many films (can you say Robocop?) Samuel L. Jackson seems like someone doing a Samuel L. Jackson impression at a party. Here? He is a character distinct from that perceived persona. No one is allowed to phone it in in this film and no one even seems inclined to. The material is treated with respect even in its ultimately sort of silly when you think about it. 

Perhaps the most important reason this film (and these #2 or #3 super hero films) work is that the heavy lifting of character development and backstory has been done by the earlier movies. One of the things that brings a super hero down is back story--how did they become a super hero? This isn't always deadly to a film but it seems to be the area where films can get bogged down.

An uninteresting bad guy can also bring a film to a screeching halt. Sam Rockwell did it in Iron Man II. In part Rockwell did it because there was another, better, villain in the film and he just seemed mundane. His villain just didn't seem very interesting (he, in fact, seemed like someone imitating Sam Rockwell at a party). If you have more than one villain? They all have to be interesting in their own way. In this film they work--even if they are not terribly surprising. Who plays the villains also counts.

People also just like heroes, good versus evil. And there is very little chance in these films that evil will win. They are not horror movies.  We even like a chance at redemption and also stories of lost love. Captain America: The Winter Soldier offers a little bit of all these. It isn't a great movie but it is an entertaining one. For good or ill it does its part to keep us all interested in the various interconnected Marvel franchise films--for awh

The Raid: Berandal has a pretty high bar set being the sequel to 2011's The Raid: Redemption. While it doesn't quite measure up to the original  that isn't a knock on the new film. Anyone who says it does measure up or is better? They wanted "more plot" in the first  film which pretty much indicates they didn't get the point of the earlier film.

The point was ass whupping. Lots and lots of ass whupping.  There was a building full of bad guys and cops were going in to get them. That was pretty much it. It has about ten minutes of set up and an hour and a half of action.

This second effort starts on the day after the original ends. It has a great deal more set up before a punch is thrown. That isn't a bad thing in an adaptation of an Emily Bronte novel but in this movie? It is a slow start. The film also does a bit of jumping around in time and introduces a slew of characters, tries to develop them yet never really manages to make them, in any way, real. Again? In what is basically a martial arts movie? Not a terrible knock and the movie still does better than most in the genre in this regard (again that high bar set for this sequel).

Here, as in the first movie, what matters most is action and style. The jumbled story and the slew of characters doesn't ruin the movie or make it less enjoyable.  The fights are a little less spectacular but the film never tries to "top itself" or the fantastically over the top "Mad Dog" fight in the first movie. There is a fight in a moving car, in a muddy prison compound, in stylishly decorated hallways,  nightclubs, moving subway cars and more.  Where this movie may top the first is in the style. It has a great visual flair with its multiple locations. In this regard it calls to mind films by Korean director, Park Chan-wook.

Iko Uwais again shows he is an action movie star. He should have Hollywood beating down his door. He isn't going to win an Oscar anytime soon but his action movie chops are down. He has a presence beyond his obvious skill. It isn't just acrobatics.

The film manages--in a different role--to bring back one of the shining villains of the first film, Yayan Ruhian, another Indonesian actor, martial artist and stuntman. His fight in The Raid: Redemption, with Uwais and Donny Alamsyah, may well be the best fight in any martial arts movie, ever. His main fight in this film is also a little less impressive but, again, it can be pretty damned impressive and be less than his main fight scene in the first film. It would have been nice to see more of him in the film (and it would be nice to see him get some lead roles of his own).

One way the film solidly succeeds is in the acting. Many action films--wherever they are made--don't bother with requiring even the most minimal acting skills. This film isn't like that. No one is going to mistake the script for Shakespeare (and it doesn't have to be) so the actors have to be the ones selling it--often with looks and body language as much as words. You have to wonder if the martial artists in the cast are uniquely qualified to "speak" to an audience with body language.

Nothing here is ever cheap or overdone. Even some of the mini side plot points here have an actual purpose. The film is long--it runs just shy of two and a half hours but it never bores even when it sometimes confuses with its plethora of characters. There is a "video game" feel in the movie sometimes. Uwais battles scads of men one after another then there is a "boss battle" with a tougher opponent with unique armament. This is clever--there is a reason why these games appeal.

Fans should also be curious about where the already announced Raid 3 will take this international "franchise."

Noah starts with some promise. Never is this promise related to its adherence to the story's Biblical origin. In fact, the promise resides wholly in how much it initially resembles films based on myths (or fictional but mythic charcters). Clash of the Titans or Conan the Barbarian spring to mind readily.
The film never leaps feet first into this territory but it does seriously flirt with it.

And it is a shame it didn't do more than flirt.

The Noah story, and many other Bible stories could be readily rendered in this way. The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston has this sort of feel, is relatively close to the Biblical version and also stands the test of time. Unfortunately Noah doesn't keep on this path but veers off into familiar Hollywood territory. There is a "bad guy" that is very Conan-esque but that is also one dimensional and unnecessary.

There is even a Hollywood-style half-assed environmental message! The bad guys are into strip mining and Noah's family are vegetarians! One of Hollywood's worst neo-cliches is positioning  EVERYTHING as some "environmentalist" versus "despoilers of creation" dichotomy. It is cheap. Keep in mind I am not a fan of strip mining and am all for vegetarianism. I am not for ham-fisted phoney baloney use of these topics that trivializes them.

Noah is ultimately a trivial film though.

It draws no profound conclusion from the events and even seems fearful of being "too religious" as if anyone hostile to the notion of religion is going to see a movie called "Noah." If you are going to make this movie, grow a pair and believe the story. You don't have to LITERALLY believe it but believe it like you'd "believe"in Harry Potter if you were shooting one of the J.K. Rowling books.

The performances are not bad. Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly give it their all. Crowe in particularly does the best with what he has to work with. Anthony Hopkins even turns in a rare non-scenery chewing performance (a rarity in recent efforts from the great actor).

Another issue with the film is that, once on the Arc, it slows to a painful crawl and even turns Noah into something akin to a family annihilator. He runs around with a knife ready to murder babies for God. Don't recall THAT in Genesis (at least not in THIS Genesis story). Somehow this is even dull because you know it isn't going to happen. It does lead to great deal of screeching, however.

The film has its visual moments and isn't, in any way, terrible. It may even be better than people anticipate. It just is one of those films that holds promise before an audience and then repeatedly snatches it away.

Bad Words is a vulgar comedic effort, directed by and starring Jason Bateman. It almost works.

Deciding whether a comedy is a "good movie" is a simpler task than deciding if an action film, a drama or a documentary meets the criteria to measure up to that elusive word "good." Or it is an easier thing for me to determine.

If I laugh more than six times in a modern comedy I consider it to be above average. If I laugh into double digits it gets near what can be called "good" (good being, after all, a relative term).

Bad Words resides, in this regard, somewhere close to "good." It relies on a couple specific things to do this--one is the time honored use of children and vulgarity and the other is Bateman. The former usually relies on children saying bad words but, in this case, it is grown ups saying mean, vulgar things to children. The latter, Bateman, is the more effective comedic weapon here.

This movie wants to be Bad Santa but it never gets that vulgar or that funny. I am writing this a few weeks after seeing it and I cannot actually recall any of the gags. I can remember specific funny bits for REALLY funny films like 21 Jump Street, This Is The End or The Other Guys--months or years later after a single viewing. This an amusing but ultimately forgettable film.

This doesn't mean everyone aside from Bateman is BAD in the movie. They are all fine. In fact, Rohan Chand, as spelling bee contestant Chaitanya Chopra acquits himself well. He does recall the neglected kid from Bad Santa--except his parents are neglecting him in an entirely different way.

Likewise the film is fairly well-paced and directed. It doesn't need some unique plot twist to make it better it simply needs to be funnier. The idea of an adult competing in a kids spelling bee is full of potential and they use some of it--an adult in this competition would have a leg up if he wanted to rattle the other contestants.  It never fully mines all the possible laughs here, whether out of timidity or good taste is hard to say. There are other side plots such as Bateman's relationship with a reporter that have funny moments but never seem fully realized comically.

It is difficult to write about things a movie doesn't do--but sometimes it seems so glaring that it begs mention. Why does the razzing only go from Bateman to the kids and only ONCE back? A "tit for tat" series of retaliations from the kids seem like an obvious way to go when writing this comedy. And the resolution, the "why" of it all is so mundane that it is almost a suprise.

Bateman can direct and he is certainly funny. But the film is a little too safe to be a new Bad Santa.