Avengers: Age of Ultron

The Avengers assemble....again.

After the events of the first Avengers film and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Age of Ultron finds the titular heroes in Europe in an attempt to retrieve Loki's scepter. Though successful in their mission, The Avengers come across Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen) who prove to be successful antagonists to the team.

Once back on their home soil, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) discover within the scepter lies artificial intelligence. Keeping this secret from the rest of the team, Tony and Bruce try to complete the Ultron defense program. Unforeseen side effects from this tampering, though, create Ultron (James Spader) who becomes fully aware and sets about on a path to destroy all humans with the help of Pietro and Wanda.

Coupled with Ultron's plan of total destruction, The Avengers begin to fracture at the lack of trust and communication. After an attempt to stop Ultron in Africa fails, the team sets about on a second-act downward spiral at Clint Barton's (Jeremy Renner) house to try and get the team back together and reformulate a plan to stop Ultron.Tony, Bruce and Clint along with Thor, (Chris Hemsworth) Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) re-evaluate with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and reassemble The Avengers.

This film tries to go darker than the first, yet comes across jumbled and in need of another pass by the editors. While trying to couple The Avengers along with Pietro and Wanda along with Ultron, some characters get lost in the shuffle while others move to the forefront. This is both good and bad.

On the good side, Natasha sees a relationship begin to form with Bruce. It was nice to see the one female hero be strong and the only person that has a chance to calm Bruce when the Hulk is released (not meant to be perverted in any way). Though the relationship seems to begin out of nowhere, and the time needed to make their growing bond not there, it was nice to see an attempt be made for the human characters.

Along with that, Clint Barton actually gets the most humanistic role in the film. Instead of being a supporting player to the marquee names of The Avengers, we get to see Clint's personal life; including having a family. Even though, like listed above, not enough time is delegated to fully immersing the audience into Clint's life, the seeds have been laid if the filmmakers wanted to showcase Clint's personal life and history. Clint also gets the best speech in the film; near the end, Clint is trying to instill confidence into a character and Jeremy Renner's delivery along with the well-written speech create a satisfying moment.

On the other end of the spectrum, Thor ends up taking a backseat in the film. After the events in Africa, Thor takes off to meet with Dr. Eric Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) about nightmarish visions that Wanda put into Thor's head. This sequence comes off as rushed and feels like it was either written at the last minute or the editor had a fun time chopping the sequence down.

Though it may seem like I am being more negative than positive about the film, that isn't the case. What Avengers: Age of Ultron has is an entertaining mess of a film. The climax is the exact same as the first Avengers film (large scale destruction, heroes fighting multiple CGI enemies, etc.) yet was more entertaining to me. The rest of the film was solid if somewhat scattershot with trying to provide enough screen time for old and new characters along with telling a cohesive story  and trying to appease all audiences. With so much going on in the film, it would be almost impossible to tell a story without it feeling like a jumbled mess.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a jumbled mess, but a solidly entertaining jumbled mess.

6.8/10

The Judge

Living in the shadow of his father, Judge Joseph Palmer, (Robert Duvall) estranged son and hot-shot lawyer, Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) returns to his hometown to help bury his mother. While here, Joseph and Hank struggle to keep their dislike for each other to keep from boiling over. After the funeral, Joseph is accused of striking and killing a person with his car who he had, earlier in life, shown a great disdain for. Hank decides to try and help fight for Joseph's innocence as prosecutor Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton) pushes for Joseph to be charged for murder.

A passion project for Robert Downey Jr, as he is the star and his production team helped get the film made, The Judge tries to balance a film that wants to be equal parts dysfunctional family comedy and court room drama. Director David Dobkin struggles to maintain a solid balance in the film; resulting in a movie that never really knows what it wants to be. The only thing The Judge know what it wants is for every nearly every scene to be blown out with light as if they hired a second-rate Robert Richardson (sorry, Janusz Kaminski).

Hank is what you would expect Robert Downey Jr. to be playing, as of late. He is brash and fast-talking (is there any other lawyer in film?) while Joseph is stern and cold to Hank. Hank's brothers Glen and Dale (Vincent D'Onofrio and Jeremy Strong) are much closer to Joseph, having stayed in town while Hank left and went to law school. The strained relationship between Joseph and Hank fuels most of the film's verbal dynamics, yet comes off as more forced than a natural relationship.

While in town, Hank is going through a divorce and tries to rekindle a past romance with Sam, (Vera Farmiga) who owns the local diner. The constitutes an added subplot, along with Sam's daughter (another subplot) that feels shoehorned into the story to try and make Hank sympathetic, yet antagonistic at the same time. Sam comes and goes from the film as the screenplay needs and never pulls you in as it should.

The meat of the film comes from Hank and Joseph trying to reconcile their past differences in an attempt for Hank to adequately defend Joseph of the charges levied against him. Along with the previously-mentioned cliches in the film, Joseph also might be suffering from an illness that can cause him to forget pieces of information in his life (including whether or not he killed a person).

The Judge has the right ingredients for a solid film, but the paint-by-numbers screenplay sinks it. Every idea in The Judge rings false and never allows one to invest with the characters or story. Instead the film forcefully tugs on the heartstrings of the audience when they want you to cry or tickle your funny bone when they want you to laugh. The Judge tries to manipulate the audience into feeling what you should feel instead of just letting the film naturally flow and letting the audience share the film's emotions naturally.

4.1/10