Captain America: The Winter Soldier Movie Review

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Movie Review
by Brian Wezowicz

I have to admit that I have been excited for this movie since before the first Captain America film came out.  I am a big fan of Ed Brubaker's run of Captain America comics, which included a subplot involving the Winter Soldier... a nefarious Soviet super soldier with ties to Steve Rogers (Cap's real name).  Brubaker brought a sense of grit and realism to Marvel's most vanilla superhero. So you can imagine the nerdgasm I had when the title to the sequel to the unexpectedly satisfying first entry in the Steve Rodgers saga included "The Winter Soldier."

This movie did not fail to meet my already heightened expectations.  It is perhaps the most original, most unique chapter in Phase 2 (Post-Avengers) of Marvel's cinematic universe.  Admittedly, Captain America is a tough sell (they had to add The First Avenger in order to distribute the first film internationally).  How do you create a film that, on the surface, is so uber-patriotic in a world where the USA doesn't have many fans?  I thought the first film excelled because it took us back to a simpler time.  A time where everything was seemingly black and white, and we knew our enemies.  Post World War II, there was a clear sense of good and evil with each corner of the globe fitting neatly into this dichotomy.  This film, which like Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World, picks up after the events of The Avengers.  Captain America has gone back to work for S.H.I.E.L.D., and we meet him as he's getting ready to embark on yet another tedious rescue mission in a series of endless rescue missions.  You can see doubt start to creep into his mind.  He doesn't just blindly follow orders.  But this film differs from the first in that the line between good and evil has blurred in the 70+ years since Cap was frozen in ice, and you can see that represented in Cap's actions.

One of the major questions of this movie (and with the Captain America character overall) is how can a pure soul with unscrupulous morals exist in modern society with all of its flaws and corruption?  Well, he struggles to say the least.  He doesn't have any friends (he jokes that all the members of his barbershop quartet are dead), and he doesn't really know what to do with himself outside of his hero duties.  Black Widow (played by Scarlet Johansen, reprising her role) tries to get him to go out on dates when she's not helping him kick serious ass.  Cap keeps a list of all the things he's missed in the last 7+ decades (Star Wars, Steve Jobs, etc.) and hopes to get to if he ever has any free time.  You get the sense that he is married to his job, because that's the only thing that seems normal to him.

S.H.I.E.L.D. has changed since the events in The Avengers.  Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson, with his most screen time to date... which is a great thing) has to deal with a new power structure.  He must report to the Secretary in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D., Alexander Pierce (played by Robert Redford, in a rare blockbuster appearance).  Fury senses that the agency has been compromised.  Before you you know it, he's attacked by the villainous Winter Soldier (in a thrilling car chase scene)... a foreign trained super assassin.  Fury narrowly escapes and confides his beliefs in the only man he can trust, Captain America.  Shortly after this, Cap is on the run and viewed as a traitor.  He must piece all of the clues together to get to the bottom of this before it's too late.  You see, S.H.I.E.L.D. has now become the largest weapons manufacturer in the world.  They are creating weapons that will strike the enemy before the enemy can strike first.  There are a lot of parallels to today's world and America's role as the world's police force.  Captain America, along with his cohorts The Black Widow and The Falcon (played with charm by Anothony Mackey) is in a race against time before these weapons can be deployed in a preemptive strike.

What follows is a tense, fast paced political action thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat.  Yeah, it stretched in parts, and the handheld camera work was a little too frenetic, but for my money this was a top notch thriller.  It gives the original Iron Man movie a run for its money as the best in the Marvel cinematic universe.

I am giving this movie three and a half out of four stars.  I had to dock it for its overuse of handheld cameras and for a few other minor infractions (like, why doesn't he have The Avengers on speed dial?  I know it's a solo movie, but seems like a glaring fault of all these solo movies).   My complaints are really minimal.  I really enjoy how it contributes to the Marvel universe while also standing as its own film.  Chris Evans gives the right amount of humor and confidence needed to play a modern Captain America.  He's really grown on me.  I groaned when he first was cast as Captain America, but he really embodies the fish out of water nature of the character without making him too cheesy.

Stay through the credits for two extra scenes.  I won't spoil it, but they help set up next summer's superhero spectacular, The Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Divergent Movie Review

Divergent - Movie Review

by Brian Wezowicz

Before I get into my review, I have a confession to make.  I'm a closeted Young Adult (or YA as the cool kids say) fan.  I've read the Hunger Games, and Twilight series (although I'm not as proud to admit that one), and I've seen the movies.  They are fun because they don't require too much concentration, which is a key feature when having a six-month old child.  That being said, I always walk away from these stories thinking, "Hey, I could totally write one of these."  They all seem to follow a simple formula:  1) Strong (but not too strong when you really think about it) female lead.  2)  Future dystopian society  and/or 3) Supernatural features.  4)  Brooding, socially awkward male love interest (or two!  Love triangle alert!) with whom you can't quite figure out why the main heroine falls in love with.  5)  Brooding.  LOTS of brooding. Divergent, based on the worldwide bestseller, is no different.

The world of Divergent is set in the not too distant future.  The remains of society are stowed away in a post-apocalyptic city of Chicago.  The surviving humans are divided into five factions based on their personalities.  Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless (The cool kids), and Erudite.  By adhering to the principles of their faction, in theory, society thrives and the violence that nearly wiped out the human race is vanquished.  There's just one catch (isn't there always a catch?).  A small group of society doesn't fit into a single mold.  They're called Divergent (Hey, that's the name of the movie!).  They are viewed as a threat the the very foundation that holds society together.  They are to be rooted out and destroyed, or so says our main villain (played wickedly by a slumming it in YA fodder Kate Winslet).

Back to the story of the factions.  On your sixteenth birthday, you take an aptitude test that determines which faction you should belong to.  There's an elaborate choosing ceremony (blatantly ripping off the sorting ceremony in Harry Potter, but whatever... young love and brooding!).  Our heroine, Beatrice Prior (played by Shailene Woodley) is part of the boring, government running, totally selfless Abnegation class (or was it one of the other factions?  I have trouble remembering).  She has bigger dreams that don't quite fit one faction.  She finds out during her aptitude test that she's Divergent.  She has to lie about this and choose a faction on her own.  At the sorting hat, er, I mean choosing ceremony, she enlists in the fearless Dauntless faction to the great disappointment of her square parents (Ashley Judd alert!).  The Dauntless don't abide by the normal rules of society. They're the thrill seekers, who jump on and off of moving trains, and climb really tall buildings, and get tattoos.  It's shortly after arriving at the Dauntless compound that Beatrice (now going by the MUCH cooler name of Tris) meets Four (not to be confused with Six from the famed 90's sitcom, Blossom), her distant but irresistible instructor.

This is where the movie takes a sharp left turn from interesting into boring town.  We're 20-25 minutes into the movie when this happens and for the next 3.5 (estimated) hours, we see the Dauntless train... and then brood... train... and then brood.  Sure, there's some interesting war games-style simulations, but this whole chapter of the movie could have been shortened with some cool training montages.  Instead, the director stays a little too accurately to the source material.  Do we really need every single training session?  I get it, Dauntless take risks.  By the end of the training/brooding section of the movie, Tris has transformed from skinny nobody into a skinny somebody.

Another issue I have with this movie is that there is an internal conflict building within the factions... only it's not fully developed enough.  Basically, the smarty pants faction feels that the selfless faction isn't fit for leadership and they develop a serum to turn the Dauntless into mindless soldiers to take over.  There's some whispering about the reasons for doing this, but they seem to take a back seat to the other more YA-ish parts of the film.  This is also where we learn the other aspect of being Divergent that makes them feared.  They are immune to mind control.  Anyway, long story short, there's some interesting action sequences at the end, where good must find a way to triumph over evil.  But, in my opinion, it takes too long to get there.  They focus too much on the training/brooding/star-crossed lovers section of the movie, so that when they get to the good stuff, I was slightly checked out of the movie.

That's not to say that this was a terrible movie.  It just felt like an overextended first act in a much larger story.  Divergent will get compared to the other, better YA trilogy (quadrilogy if you're being picky), The Hunger Games, because of the similarities in structure.  I just think that this series feels like a cheaper knockoff... A Challenge Of The GoBots to the Tranformers if you like.

I am giving this movie two out of four stars.  If you've read the books, you'll probably want to see it.  If you haven't read them, then you should just go rent a copy of the two Hunger Games movies.  It has some good parts to it, and it seems to be building to something bigger, it just takes forever to get going.

Accepting suggestions?

Today was my first day as a proud JCC member, which also means it was my first time at a real gym in over a year (home workouts not included).  I. am. out. of. shape.

That's to be expected after such a long layoff.  I'm here today soliciting suggestions for a weight lifting regiment.  I should mention that this is the JCC and not a crossfit compound.  There are none of the following:

1)  Kettlebells
2)  Giant tires to throw around.
3)  Tractor trailers to pull with my teeth.

There are a fine variety of free weights and nautilus machines, however.

So how about it?  Any suggestions?  Feel free to post away here on the blog or on my Facebook page.  The goal is to fit into some skinny jeans... not to make the cover of Muscle & Fitness.