Avengers: Age of Ultron

Spanks – 5

Director – Joss Whedon

Writer – Joss Whedon

Starring – Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, James Spader, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Cobie Smulders & Anthony Mackie

Release Date – 1 May 2015

MPAA Rating – PG-13

Run time – 141 Minutes

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a great movie. It has everything the first film has with more Avengers. The film starts with the heroes on a mission to retrieve Loki’s scepter from a Hydra base in Sokovia. When they take it back to to Avengers tower, Tony Stark finds an AI in the scepter’s stone. He and Bruce Banner then try to use it for Stark’s Ultron global defense system. It doesn’t work and the new AI attacks the Avengers and escapes and wants to destroy the world.

With so many characters you would think that the movie would be a big mess, but everyone has their stories progress. They did a good job telling more about characters who have not had their own films like Hawkeye and Black Widow which was really cool.

The movie has a lot of action scenes and the first and last one are a little long. If your not into all that you might get a little bored. I enjoyed it all! It had so much going on with the different characters that it wasn’t a repetitive sequence. This movie is funnier then the first Avengers film but the first one is slightly better. Still well worth the price of admission. Hopefully I’ll have time to go see it again this summer.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Spanks – 5

Director – Matthew Vaughn

Writers – Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn

Starring – Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Caine, Sophie Cookson, Sofia Boutella, Jack Davenport & Mark Hamill

Release Date – 13 February 2015

MPAA Rating – R

Run time – 129 Minutes

Kingsman: The Secret Service is like a rated R version of an earlier classic Bond flick. It is based off of a graphic novel called The Secret Service written by Mark Millar. The movie is about a secret spy organization called the Kingsman and at the beginning of the film one of their spies is killed and they then have to recruit his replacement. Each Kingman chooses a recruit. “Galahad” chooses a teenage who was the son of another Kingman who died saving his life 17 years ago. He then gets thrown into more then he was expecting in his training thanks to a plot to “save the world” by billionaire Richmond Valentine.

The film is awesome. It was full of action, had lots of suspense and it was very funny. However, there was one scene that got a bit gruesome and goes a little far, but it doesn’t take anything away from the movie. The story feels like the old spy movies from the 60’s and 70’s like the way they created the villain and the heroes use of ridiculous toys to “win”. Kingsman is a lot of fun, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. It is totally worth heading to the theater to see. I am hoping 20th Century Fox finances a sequel.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Spanks – 5

Directors – Anthony Russo and Joe Russo

Writers – Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely

Starring – Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan & Anthony Mackie

Release Date – 4 April 2014

MPAA Rating – PG-13

Run time – 136 Minutes

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the next chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Captain America is working for S.H.I.E.L.D in Washington D.C and adjusting to modern living. Everything is normal until a mission to free hostages on a S.H.I.E.L.D ship from pirates. While on the ship, he witnesses Black Widow download information from the ships computer. He confronts Nick Fury when he returns to Washington D.C and after that Nick Fury gets attacked by the Winter Soldier. No one is safe and Captain America has to figure out who the Winter Soldier is, who he works for and why are they after members of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The movie has everything a summer movie should have and Marvel continues to make awesome movies. The movie has a great plot and has mysterious characters that you can’t figure out. The film has a lot of story, very similar to Iron Man 3. Captain America and Black Widow have great chemistry together and it was cool that she finally got to have a large amount of screen time to show more of her character. They introduced a new character to the movies called the Falcon and he is another cool character.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is one of the better movies in the Marvel Universe. I am very impressed with how they link all these movies together and I hope that it continues to impress through Guardians of the Galaxy, The Avengers 2, and beyond.

Django Unchained

Spanks – 4

Director – Quentin Tarantino

Writer – Quentin Tarantino

Starring – Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington & Samuel L. Jackson

Release Date – 25 December 2012

MPAA Rating – R

Run time – 165 Minutes

Django Unchained is a good movie over all. Compared to Quentin Tarantino‘s other movies however, it is average. It is a very violent movie in the action parts. It also has many scenes that go on and on with lots of dialog (something Tarantino is known for). Christoph Waltz is amazing in the film and he makes the movie just like he did in Inglourious Basterds.

Django Unchained tells the story of a slave called Django who is recruited by a German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz. The bounty hunter needs Django because he knows what his next bounty looks like. Over the course of searching for his bounty they become partners and Dr. Schultz assist Django in the rescue attempt of his wife, who is still a slave, from a Mississippi plantation.

The film gets slow in the middle part of the movie. I never lost my interest in the story, but it could have been done quicker. There are parts that are funny, mostly because of Christoph Waltz.

One thing to give you a heads up on is the language in the movie. It is a movie about slavery so there is a lot of mean things said about and to the slaves that many people could call offensive if said in 2013. I would assume that the language is historically accurate, but I am not sure if any other part of the plot is.

The Avengers

Spanks – 5

Director – Joss Whedon

Writer – Joss Whedon

Starring – Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård and Samuel L. Jackson

Release Date – 4 May 2012

MPAA Rating – PG-13

Runtime – 142 Minutes

If you are a fan of superhero movies, then The Avengers is the movie for you. Joss Whedon did a perfect job of putting this group of heroes into one movie. It even felt like a team-up comic book crossover the way it was executed. That isn’t surprising since Marvel hired a writer/director who has written comic books in the past.

The movie uses plot points introduced in last years’ Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger. If you did not see the other movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe you don’t have to worry about being lost. You might not get a few jokes and little details, but you will be satisfied and entertained.

The Avengers are assembled for the first time after Loki uses an energy devise called the Tesseract to travel back to Earth. He then takes control of agents and scientist and steals the device. Nick Fury then calls the heroes to activate the Avengers Initiative to save the planet.

Avengers is in the top three comic book movies ever made with The Dark Knight and X-Men 2.