Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) Theatrical Release

Rating: 5 out of 5 Secretive Government Assassins

Review:  I'm sure by now you've heard all the hype and the movie lives up to that hype so there isn't much I can say about it.  The movie is excellently paced, the action set pieces are awesome, the plot is rock solid and the acting is stellar.  I've heard people say that it's the best Marvel movie ever.  This is certainly in my top 3 but I really like Avengers and the Thor movies, especially the first one, is endlessly watchable to me because of the balance between comedy, drama and action.  We'll have to see how many times I watch it when it comes out on DVD because my opinion of it may go up.  I just want to touch on two things.

  First off Anthony Mackie as Falcon is just totally badass.  He owns his screen time and has made that version of the Falcon a really desirable character to me.  I now want more Falcon, I want the Falcon action figure, I want a Falcon movie, I want a Falcon poster, I want everything Falcon.  I never really gave much of a shit about Falcon but now I can't wait to see more.

  Secondly I just wanted to touch on something I read from Sebastian Stan.  In one interview he evoked Heath Ledger's name and Ledger's Joker as a major influence.  I just didn't see that in his own performance as Winter Soldier.  As the Winter Soldier Stan doesn't really have a whole lot of lines but holy shit does he pack in a whole of emotion in his smallest action and especially in his eyes.  Right from the start Winter Soldier is established as a threat, he is a credible threat to Captain America.  You wonder how Cap could possibly go up against this guy and win.  He is shown to be capable, fearless and relentlessly violent.  The people that challenge him barely escape intact, nobody gets a clean win over him and it makes you afraid any time someone gets into direct conflict with him.  He is just pure, focused hatred and anger not really the anarchist psycho that Joker was.  What I'm saying is his performance is excellent and the character is really well done (stay until after the credit for probably the best non-action Winter Soldier scene).  As far as a Joker-level tour de personality?  I just don't see it.  I do look forward to seeing more Sebastian Stan though, I really hope he has a long Marvel career ahead of him.

  Well, that's Winter Soldier, go see it, it's awesome.  The plot will definitely affect the Marvel cinematic universe from here on out but what I'm MORE interested in seeing is how it affects next weeks Agents of SHIELD.

The Darkness II (2012) Xbox 360

Behold greatness!

Rating: 5 out of 5 Perfectly Executed Fight Sequences

Plot Synopsis: Jackie Estacado got control of The Darkness and managed to suppress it. Suddenly a mysterious group of people show up and start a war with Jackie, his mob and his Darkness.

Batman: Arkham Origins (2013, Xbox 360)

At no point do you play as the asylum

Rating: 5 out 5 Batman Ass Whuppings

Review:  I've been seeing some negative press on this game so I thought I would weigh in with a quick review that's more in the vein of my opening weekend movie reviews.  I'm also very tired as I literally just finished the game after a lengthy couple of sessions, it's pretty much all done except finding a few location files and the challenge maps.

  The game is good.  The game is really good, I would say it's the best game in the series when it comes to pretty much everything.  My still-in-progress Arkham City review puts that game at a 6 out of 5, if this is better then why does it only get a 5.  Well we'll get to that but for now we'll focus on why I think it's better.

Man of Steel (2013, IMAX Real 3D)

Man of Badass

Rating: 5 out 5 people from another world

Review:  I was a little hesitant about this movie, most of the early previews looked like this was going be some kind crab fishing dramatic documentary type film.  There wasn't a whole lot to grab on to up until the "You Are Not Alone" trailer.  When I saw that I suddenly got very hyped up for it and it exceeded my expectations.

Batman: Dark Knight Rises (2012) Theatrical Release

Rating: 5 out of 5 billionaire playboy orphaned vigilantes

Review:  First off I want to say that this totally lived up to the hype for me and was a great conclusion to the trilogy.  It's sad, with how the movie ended, that it is the conclusion because there would be some awesome future movies coming from this franchise if it were to continue.

  That being said this is definitely now my second favorite of the trilogy.  Better than Begins but not as good as Dark Knight.  Begins will always sort of be the red headed step child of the franchise to me.  It's sort of necessary to see it to get a feeling for the series, to be introduced to the characters in order to give those characters more weight going into Dark Knight.  But you could almost skip Begins entirely and go directly to Dark Knight, seeing Begins accentuates Dark Knight but Dark Knight just has something these other movies don't.  And it's more than just Joker.

  Dark Knight Rises manages to deliver to us something totally different than the previous two movies while still using the movies and building blocks and somehow managing to be in tone with the other films while also being something totally its own.  The plot is intriguing with several twists, some of them I saw coming, some of them I didn't and one that I thought I saw coming early but the the payoff was so long I thought for sure I was wrong until I was proven right, which just made it more awesome when it happened.  It's a great movie about people, the crime and the crime fighting are sort of secondary.  The characters are all just so great, the returning characters get deepened and the new characters really get established well.  No one feels wooden or phoned in.  Michael Caine put's in such a fantastic performance, when he get's emotional about Bruce you really feel it, he is the stand out.  Commissioner Gordon continues to be awesome and well played by Gary Oldman and new comer (to the series) Anne Hathaway is hypnotic as Catwoman.  She plays the character with a lot of depth and you can see that she feels trapped and empathize with her desire for redemption.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Policeman Blake is great as well in the role of frustrated but passionate cop.  Christian Bale, as always, does great and bring passion to every role he's in.  As Bruce he can still look amusingly dumbfounded in his playboy persona but is still intimidating as hell as Batman.  He's toned down the Bat Voice quite a bit for this last performance and it's probably at its least distracting here.  Finally Bane is well done by Tom Hardy.  He plays him as a cold blooded, brutal terrorist.  This comes through in everything he does, his actions, his words, his body language, he looks incredibly intimidating in just the way he stands and walks.  My only problem is with the voice.  I eventually got used to it but it sort of sounds like Sean Connery with a cold talking through a tin can and string which can lead to a problem understanding every word of his dialog.  I lost some of it, especially in the fight with Batman (spoiler: Batman fights Bane).  It was weird at first but I was on board by the end of the movie.

  Dark Knight Rises is a great movie and well worth seeing but it's just missing something that Dark Knight had.  In my opinion Dark Knight had the more intriguing characters in Harvey Dent and Joker, had better action and a better plot.  It was just a more interesting movie and despite its, at times, heavy handed messages it was a perfect Batman movie.  This is close, this is really close but just something in me can't give it more than 4.  I will definitely be buying this when it's released on Blu-Ray and I'll probably watch it several more times but it won't replace Dark Knight as my go to movie.

Punisher: War Zone (2008) DVD

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Avengers Earth Mightiest Heroes Season 2 premiere (2012) TV series

Rating: 5 out 5 Invading alien races

Plot Synopsis:  Doom shows up like a baller and starts taking down chumps.