Jojo Rabbit

Who would have thought that a movie about World War II Germany at the end of the war could be so darn funny. Taika Waititi is able to take the dark and disturbing topic of antisemitism into comedy with it's absurdity. Waititi even plays the main man Hitler himself as the imaginary friend of Jojo Rabbit (Roman Griffin Davis). Davis plays a sympathetic young boy indoctrinated by the Nazi propaganda. He eventually discovers that his mother (Scarlett Johansson) has been hiding a 18 year old Jewish girl Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) in their home. Jojo must grapple with the idea of someone he hates living in his house and how he can deal with it. His best answer is to write a book and interview the girl. Through this process he learns and grows wrestling with the differences and similarities between Elsa and himself. There are sporadic comedic appearances from Yorki (Archie Yates), Jojo's best friend who is an absolute delight to watch. His comedic timing is fantastic and his normalizing responses to the craziness that surrounds Jojo is fascinating. Another stand out performance is Sam Rockwell who plays Captain Klenzendorf, a one-eyed war veteran who is slowly disconnecting from the Propaganda and seeing it for what it truly is. Rockwell is a true highlight of the film and his play of of Alfie Allen, fresh off of Game of Thrones. Their sparing and care for each other is a welcome relief for all the hateful antisemitism, even if it is in parody, in the film.

Scarlett Johnasson. Wow. If there ever was a perfect example of what is wrong with the Academy Awards, she is it. She has almost the least amount of screen time and yet she is the one who gets the nomination. Thomasin McKenzy puts on a masterful performance as a lost in a world of hate Jewish girl while Johanson plays a happy mother trying to keep the cruelties of the world from her son. Don't get me wrong, ScarJo is not bad in this film, she is just not great. And for the amount of time she is on screen, it is not even close to worth an Oscar nod. McKenzy on the other hand does a wonderful job showing a wide range of emotions and depth. Where is her nod? And that is just to say in the same movie. There are many other performances in other films this year that are far better than Johnasson is here. The Oscars really need to reexamine themselves if they want to be relevant in the future because Johansson already has black marks to her name and if they continue nominating performances like hers over other truly masterful ones, no one is going to care if you get an Oscar or not.

Easily a B+ film with only minor detraction's from regrettable performances like Rebel Wilson. 

Avengers: Age Of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Let me start this off with if you remove this movie from the marvel universe and simply look at it as an action movie it is a fun adventure that is a little rushed but all around good fun. When you insert it in to the Marvel machine and examine what was promised and the thought that should have gone into it, the film is an incredible disappointment. To start the movie off the Avengers are storming a hydra base attacking human hydra members. Form this scene, and subsequent scenes involving battles with robots, it is incredibly clear that the humans are CGI. I mean it’s horrifically obvious. The avengers look like they are fighting with ragdolls with what these hydra members looked like. Having this introduce the movie to the audience seems to be a huge let down when they are trying to hype you up with a quick reunion battle. The audience is then rushed through the creation of the main villain of the film in a sequence where he goes from nonexistence to the most evil thing the avengers have faced in a matter of 10 minutes. It is difficult for me to take a villain seriously when he is rushed into the film at lightning speed, given little development and chooses a stupid premise to destroy humans. James Spader does his absolute best to bring out the baddie in Ultron and does a spectacular job when he is talking. But when it comes to action, Ultron is about as menacing as a wet towel. There is never a point in the film where I felt there was a chance that the Avengers would lose. Another poor decision by Marvel is the portrayal of certain members of the team. Black Widow and the Hulk are shoehorned into a romance that has little to no build up going from 0 to lets run away together in 10 seconds. Tony Stark makes a monumental judgment error and creates Ultron, only to decide to make the exact same mistake again later in the film hoping for different results. As was pointed out to me by an online critique, Captain America gets more ribbing and flack for telling Tony to watch his language than Tony gets for creating supposedly the deadliest Artificial Intelligence ever. There are a few scenes that start to build the tension between Tony and Captain for Marvels next film, Captain America: Civil War, but by the end of the film everyone is lovey dovey. Age of Ultron was billed as a very dark film with a prominent theme being death. As it turns out there is actually very little death and the few that happen have little to no emotional impact due to the build of the characters. This has mostly been a nitpicking of a decent action film; my disappointment comes from the expectations from marvel and what appears to simply be a placeholder Avengers film, keeping the fans appeased until The Infinity War. 2 ½ stars out of 4.