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Avengers: Age of Ultron – Review (NO SPOILERS)

age of ultron poster

I’m going to keep this review short and spoiler-free for those of you who haven’t had a chance to see Avengers: Age of Ultron yet. A longer, more detailed review will follow shortly.

Are you asking yourself, “Should I see Avengers: Age of Ultron?” The answer is yes. I wouldn’t rank Avengers: Age of Ultron as the best Marvel Studios movie; that distinction belongs to either Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Guardians of the Galaxy depending on what day you ask me the question. But Avengers: Age of Ultron is good, perhaps as good or just shy of being as good as the first Avengers movie.

The action in the movie is fast-paced and the fight scenes are superbly choreographed. Marvel is really killing it with their fight scenes lately between this movie and the Daredevil Netflix series. The movie is full of great character bits, and introduces us to new interpersonal relationships between the characters. Plus we learn some secrets about one Avenger that completely threw me.

Ultron as a villain was excellent. Ultron is both menacing and creepy. While I liked Loki as the villain in Avengers, I felt like a lot of that movie was the team fighting endless hordes of facelss aliens. But here, we get a central villain that isn’t the pawn of another villain. Ultron is his own man, as he likes to point out repeatedly in the movie.

ultron

If you’re a fan of the Avengers comic, I think you’ll be very happy with the way the characters are portrayed. Quicksilver is brash. Cap’s shield bounces off things and returns to him (with a better answer than Cap just being great at throwing it).

Avengers: Age of Ultron is excellent. Overall, I would give it an 8 or 9 out of 10. See it in the theater, and see it in 3D. The 3D in the movie itself is cool, but not game changing. But if you see the movie in 3D, you’ll also see the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer in 3D and that alone is worth the price of the upgrade.

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The World’s End – Review


the worlds end poster

Just in time for New Year’s Eve, I watched The World’s End, the latest movie from Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright. Thankfully, I somehow managed to avoid the plot twist that the movie hinges upon. To protect anyone who hasn’t seen the movie yet and has also been lucky enough to not be spoiled, I won’t spoil it here in this review.

The basic, pre-twist premise of The World’s End is that Simon Pegg’s character, Gary King, has a mission. He wants to reunite his high school friends to reenact their epic pub crawl through town from their teenage years, a pub crawl that they never technically finished. That night was the best night of Gary’s life. Gary, it should be pointed out, is that friend of yours from high school (or college) who never changed…and not necessarily in a good way. The eternal pan, Gary is now nearing middle age, but dressing exactly the same as he did in high school. He’s like a British Al Bundy, but instead of throwing four touchdowns in one game, Gary’s crowning achievement is that he almost drank at every bar in town one night.

Gary is that friend.

Gary is that friend.

Gary’s friends have all moved on from their home town, and from Gary, but in a Machivellian scheme, Gary gets the gang back together. If Gary put the effort he put into organizing this pub crawl to making positive changes in his own life, he probably would be in a much better place. But that’s neither here nor there.

I’m glad I watched The World’s End before the end of 2013, because this will definitely be in my Top 5 movies of the year. It is such a perfect mix of action and comedy. The special effects are great. ‘There was definitely a budget jump with this movie over Hot Fuzz. But back to the action and comedy combo for a second. There is a scene where The People’s Elbow gets used a fight. I almost fell out of my chair laughing.

If you liked This is the End, another hilariously funny movie from 2013, I think you will also like The World’s End. The World’s End almost seems like the British answer to This is the End. It’s almost funny how similarly they are named and that they were released around the same time.

I’ve seen Wright, Pegg and Frost’s other two movies, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. If I had to rank them, I’d rank them Shaun of the Dead, The World’s End and Hot Fuzz. But really, they’re all great, and The World’s End keeps the winning streak going for these three.