Latest movies

Still watching TV shows On Demand, so I haven't watched any movies on video, but saw a couple in theaters:

The Avengers - I had no interest in this recycled pablum until I read a story about writer/director Joss Whedon (Firefly/Serenity) in Time magazine, which made it sound better than I had expected, and then I started to hear people my age saying that they enjoyed it, plus Larry wanted to see it, so I finally relented. It was entertaining, with some terrific humor well-delivered, but I found myself really rolling my eyes as the action ramped up along with the required level of disbelief suspension; for example, in the midst of the battle with overwhelming forces from space, several members of the Avenger team take time out to rescue some passengers stuck in a bus, apparently the alien soldiers took a little break from the assault during this; it just got sillier and sillier - the aliens would patiently wait to attack the Avengers one at a time, and every time an Avenger was about to be overwhelmed by the aliens, another team member just happened to swoop in and save them; it went on and on like this - the Avengers suffer nothing more than scratches despite plummeting from buildings and crashing airplanes.  Besides ignoring the laws of physics and logic, I thought they didn't use the potential of the feuding brothers (Loki and Thor) to any interesting degree, and there was minimal character development in general.  I also found it disturbing that the governing council Nick Fury meets with are treated with utter contempt (because the outcome is always better if all decisions are made by soldiers and the duly elected representatives are silenced). Plus there's not even a whiff of romance, which of course surprised and disappointed me. Not a bad movie, but it suffered from most of the ills that I expected, meaning that its target audience of fan boys were delighted, me, not so much.

The Five Year Engagement - I had the opposite reaction to this movie - I hadn't planned to see it because I heard some grumbling about it being anti-feminst and generally crude and not that funny; but I went with a couple of friends and was pleasantly surprised - they managed to avoid a few rom-com cliches, and the dialog was generally witty; the ending was actually a bit surprising as well. It didn't change my life, but it was an enjoyable movie experience.