Avengers: Endgame: Take a Bow

Based on the box office totals, it seems like everyone in the world has already seen Avengers: Endgame (some probably multiple times). I saw it on opening night in a packed theater and the atmosphere was electric. Every cameo and every character got a rousing cheer, every plot development was met with a whoop or a gasp, and towards the end, there was audible sniffling. All for the 22nd film in a superhero franchise that began in 2008. Bravo, Marvel, you nailed it. This post will be spoilerific so please stop reading now if you're one of the few people who have yet to watch this film. If you have seen it, however, let's dive into what made this movie quite so spectacular.

Firstly, let's look at that chronology again. The Marvel Cinematic Universe began with 2008's Iron Man. A vastly entertaining movie, it heralded an onslaught of superhero movies that would regularly dominate our summers, and then casually creep into every month of the year that Marvel deemed appropriate, so that last year, we had Black Panther in February, Avengers: Infinity War in April, and Ant-Man and the Wasp in July. Over the course of four years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) introduced us to Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who were all brought together in 2012's The Avengers as the original crew. Over the next seven years, the MCU relentlessly expanded, often in extremely quirky ways like Guardians of the Galaxy or Doctor Strange, or re-booting Spider-Man yet again with the delightful Tom Holland, or adding on more sequels to enrich the relationships and backstories of the original Avengers like Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Age of Ultron, etc. When Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) got two movies, it felt like overkill, but when you watch him serve as the catalyst to everything that goes on in Avengers: Endgame, you start to see how intricately plotted each phase of the MCU has been. It took 21 movies to get here, and when you view the final product, not a single one of those movies was wasted. There are callbacks to characters and storylines from all of those myriad movies, and watching them coalesce into one glorious whole is staggering.

Secondly, look at the casting. Marvel wasn't messing around. They started with Robert Downey Jr. and always insisted on getting the best of the best. Superhero movies are inherently dismissed as childish silliness but Marvel hired actors who knew how to make you care deeply about these characters. They were charming, they were witty, they knew how to fight, and they knew how to break your heart. The relationship between Captain America and Iron Man is the cornerstone of the MCU and Evans and Downey Jr. will leave you destroyed by the end of this movie. Are they swashbuckling superheroes wearing robot suits and skintight pants (all the better to showcase America's ass!) and fighting intergalactic battles? Yes. Are they also two men with differing ideologies but a strong sense of duty who are trying to reconcile their personal needs with the demands of defending the entire universe? Yes. Don't let the superhero antics fool you - we came for the action but we stayed for the characters.

Thirdly, look at the plot. Endgame begins precisely where Infinity War left off - Thanos (Josh Brolin) snapped his fingers and half of the universe's population disappeared, including many of our superhero friends. The remaining Avengers crew assemble and spend much of the first hour of the movie in distress. There's a five-year time jump, with everyone in an extreme state of numb helplessness, trying to move on but still desperately missing the ones they lost. And then, Ant-Man is brilliantly resurrected and kicks off Act 2 of the film, a time-travelling caper that essentially feels like the superhero version of Ocean's 11. Our heroes travel back in time to retrieve the Infinity Stones before Thanos ever got them, which means that they travel back to the pivotal moments of previous movies in the MCU. When Nebula (Karen Gillan) and War Machine (Don Cheadle) go back to Morag to the opening scene of Guardians of the Galaxy where Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is dancing to Come and Get Your Love? I don't think I've experienced such a thrill of cinematic payoff ever before. I've seen every single one of these movies, but over eleven years, I've forgotten most of what happened in them. But as scenes unfolded and characters arrived from the prior movies, I was instantly transported and so happy to see them.

Avengers: Endgame is simply marvelous. It fully justifies why Marvel has dominated movie theaters for so long, and gives them complete license to keep rolling out as many of these movies as they would like for the foreseeable future. I know there are people who simply do not understand, and at this point, it feels a bit insurmountable to catch up by watching 22 movies. But for those of us who patiently watched each movie as it came out in the theater and then went about our lives, this movie feels like an epic gift, rewarding us for our patience and proving that there was an endgame all along. What a thrilling conclusion, and what promise for the future. 

The Umbrella Academy: Superhero Sibling Drama

The best description of my opinion of The Umbrella Academy is, positive ambivalence. I didn’t hate it, and there are some unique and entertaining aspects to it, but it took me an inordinately long time to finish watching the first season, as opposed to other Netflix shows that cause me to binge watch for a day and lose all my senses.

Based on the Dark Horse comic book series by Gabriel Ba and Gerard Way, the show is about a group of kids who were all miraculously born to previously unpregnant women on the same day in 1983. Eccentric billionaire, Sir Reginald Hargeeves (Colm Feore), decided to adopt as many of these children as he could track down, and ended up with seven kids that he raised in his mansion. Each had a special power (except for Number Seven - though you can imagine this turns out to be an important fact later) and they were groomed to hone their skills and form an elite crime fighting crew. However, when you raise kids to be superheroes and only refer to them by their number than their actual names, you tend to sow a fair amount of discord and dysfunction. When the show opens, the kids are grown and have embraced alternative careers, apart from Luther/Number One (Tom Hopper), who by virtue of being Number One, was the only one who drank the Kool-Aid and embraced his “father’s” plan. In Episode 1, Hargreeves has died, and the gang return to the mansion for his funeral, as well as to investigate if there was foul play. At the same time, Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), who went missing when he was thirteen due to a miscalculated time jump, suddenly reappears and tells them the world is going to end in a week unless they can figure out the cause of the apocalypse. As superhero missions go, this one’s a doozy. 

You’d think with that kind of pressure, things would move fast, but nope. The show has a LOT of backstory to get through regarding each of these characters and their relationships with one another. Number Five is also being chased by assassins from the future, and explaining exactly what happened to him when he traveled through time is a head-scratching feat indeed. There’s a ton of plot, a ton of exposition, and everything seems to move as slow as molasses - this was not an instance when my trigger finger was ready to hit Play Next at the conclusion of every episode.

The show is shot spectacularly and I cannot fault any of the production design. I haven’t read the comic books, but I must imagine that the writers are grateful that the world they created on paper was rendered so vividly on film. The soundtrack of this show is also excellent - there are a lot of random musical interludes in each episode that do nothing to propel the story forward but feature absolutely fantastic songs that you will instantly want to download. And all of the actors are doing great work, bringing fully realized characters to life and playing off each other in fun and silly ways that make all the sibling rivalry feel very real and compelling. It's no accident that Ellen Page is playing the timid and powerless Vanya/Number Seven - by the end of ten episodes, that character has gone through a major arc that requires the skill of a consummate actress. 

The Umbrella Academy is probably a great show for devotees of the comic and for people who love masses of plot and character development. But if you’re looking for a zippy storyline with a compelling payoff, this will not satisfy. Indeed, I watched the entire season in the hopes that the conclusion would neatly tie up all the different elements and provide a satisfying finale. That did not happen. The end is a bit of a cop out, a promise of more seasons to come, and unless there’s nothing else on TV when that second season arrives, I might not make it. There’s a lot of TV out there, and this one, while beautifully produced, ultimately doesn't make the cut.

Free Solo: A Dizzyingly Dazzling Documentary

This year, Free Solo won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. I had seen and heard many glowing reviews of this film, but despite watching and loving Meru, by the same directors (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin), it took me a while to finally get around to this film. But am I glad I did. No matter how much you know about the movie going into it, it still manages to get your heart racing.

The movie is about Alex Honnold, one of the world's best free solo rock climbers. Free soloing is when you climb up a rock face without any equipment whatsoever - there are no ropes, just a bucket of chalk on his back and some really good sneakers as he uses his fingers and toes to seek out minute crevices and shimmy his way up a sheer granite cliff. As one climber describes it in the film, the sport is like seeking an Olympic gold medal, where the only other alternative is death. Either you make it, or you plummet with nothing to save you. It's utterly nerve-wracking to behold, and in this documentary, Honnold is seeking to climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, a feat that no one has ever achieved. 

The death-defying nature of this climb is of course the main attraction, and the final part of the film when he embarks on the climb is the most heart-in-your-mouth viewing imaginable. It's not just you as the audience who feels this way - the filmmakers themselves are in agonies of anxiety as they watch Honnold climb. One cameraman simply turns away and refuses to watch. And that is the most intriguing part about this film. There's a whole community of climbers who love and support Honnold, and Jimmy Chin, one of the directors, is terrified that by filming this climb, he may inadvertently affect Alex's concentration and lead to his demise. Honnold himself is less preoccupied by the notion of dying, but is mainly concerned about dying in front of his friends - if he's gonna fall off El Capitan, he'd rather do it alone than make his friends watch. 

Much like Meru, the movie isn't only about rock climbing, but also about the emotional backstory of the climber. The dynamic between Honnold and his girlfriend is extremely interesting, considering that he's a man who lives in a van and seeks death-defying stunts on a daily basis, while she would like a house and for him to stay alive. At one point, he has a functional MRI scan that reveals his amygdala, the part of the brain that elicits the fear response, simply doesn't activate as much as an average human's, which explains how he is so calm about his free solo climbs. But as we delve into all the preparation that goes into making this climb, it is very clear that this is not just a lark. The man is extremely diligent, climbing El Capitan numerous times on ropes and furiously journalling the exact combination of footholds, handholds, and climbing moves he needs to make at every step of the climb to ensure he is safe. He isn't going to do this climb until he feels 100% prepared, but that doesn't make it any less agonizing when he does do it.

Free Solo is brilliantly shot and compellingly told, highlighting the physical mastery that this feat requires but also the emotional and mental elements that go into free soloing. The relationships between Honnold and his climbing team and his girlfriend are wonderful, because here is a man who isn't great with the emotional stuff, but has still managed to find his tribe and gain their love. Watching Honnold scale El Capitan is awe-inspiring; but watching his friends watch him is just as compelling. It is frightening, exhilarating, and magical filmmaking, and I'm ready to watch anything else that these filmmakers make, though I have zero desire to ever climb a mountain. 

Cricket Fever: Inside the IPL

Yesterday, my dad was scrolling for something for us to watch on Netflix and stumbled across Cricket Fever: Mumbai Indians. I was barely paying attention, but as soon as that series started playing, I was hooked. An eight-part documentary series about the Mumbai Indians' 2018 season in the Indian Premier League (IPL), this show clearly presents all the reasons why cricket is so captivating.

First, I must confess I didn't pay that much attention to the IPL last year. As a result, I loved this series because I genuinely did not remember how the Mumbai Indians did in the tournament and needed to keep watching to find out what happened to them. We get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the team's inner workings and follow them match by match as they strive to get into the playoffs. The filmmakers were extraordinary lucky because the 2018 season was filled with twists and turns and proves to be a nail-biter until the very last episode. The second episode of the show is a masterclass in the art of creating TV for a binge watch, because when it ends, you will be screaming at whoever holds the remote to press "Play Next Episode" immediately. I already love the adrenaline of watching a close match in the IPL, but it turns out when you're showcasing these matches for a TV show, you can add tense music, amp up the stakes, have long pauses, and fade to black at exactly the most excruciating moment for maximum impact.

The edited cricket matches are fun to watch, of course, but only because of the fantastic background the documentary crew provide prior to each match. There are interviews with each of the players and some of their family members, carefully doled out over the course of the series so you only hear from them right when the team needs them to perform the most or they are facing a debilitating injury that could ruin their prospects for the rest of the season. And you get to hear from the coaches, who are ensuring individual players are fit, both physically and mentally, whilst also thinking about how to get them all to cohesively perform as a team. Head coach, Mahela Jayawardane, is constantly see-sawing between rallying the troops and telling them to go out and have fun, and then berating them after a crushing defeat and feeling increasing panicked. Captain Rohit Sharma is out to encourage him team whilst simultaneously dealing with his own poor batting performance. And physiotherapist Nitin Patel is my particular favorite, a go-between who has to have both the team and the players' interests at heart, which can mean telling someone not to play when they really want to, or gently nudging them to ignore the pain in their wrist because the team really needs them to open the batting order. It's a delicate tightrope to walk before every match, and as the team win and lose and the stakes keep getting higher, the mood keeps schizophrenically swinging from jubilation to despair and back again.

However, this series isn't just about the players and their coaches. We also get to see mother-son team owners, Nita and Akash Ambani in action. This is Akash's first year officially managing the team; he was previously sitting on the sidelines as an awestruck teenager, watching his mother rally the troops. Now he's making more decisions, and while it's clear that Nita is still the one who delivers the rousing (or crushing) speeches, you can watch the rich kid live out his childhood fantasies and enjoy some schadenfreude as he experiences some stresses in his otherwise privileged life (yes, I feel bad for judging, but come on, the episode where you go inside the Ambanis' home and view the ridiculous pleasure palace they've built for themselves in the heart of Mumbai makes it very hard to feel sorry for them). Of course, they are very media-savvy and you're not going to see anything in this series that they didn't sanction - in fact in one scene, Nita rather stridently tells Akash to stop talking because the cameras are on. Nonetheless, the filmmakers have done an excellent job of capturing the dynamics between the team and the owners and the sometimes tense relationship between people who just want to play cricket versus the people who hold the purse strings.

Finally, this is also a series about the fans, the people whose enthusiasm for the IPL is responsible for making it a lucrative global event in the first place. Every match features interviews with ordinary Indians providing their opinions on how the tournament is going, how the team's doing, who should be the opening batsmen, what the right number of runs would be on this wicket, etc. As the matches progress, every shot and wicket on the field is accompanied by a shot of a fan either cheering or crumpling up in horror. At one point, we see some men in a barbershop getting shaved while watching the match and they seem in great danger of getting nicked if the team loses another wicket. We also get more insights into the infrastructure built around this tournament with interviews with sports journalists who analyze every move the teams make, as well as listening to the the glorious DJ Rohini, a local radio DJ who offers up commentary about how each match went and calls out the hopes and dreams of the entire city across the airwaves.

You cannot watch Cricket Fever without being swept away in the love for this sport. There are so many different angles from which to appreciate its complexity - whether it's a conscientious nutritionist who is trying to force Ishan Kishan to go to bed at a reasonable hour, a translator trying to convince the team's sole Bangladeshi player to go out more, or Akash Ambani insisting on wearing red underwear because it's lucky for his team, there are so many different factors that affect the success of this team. By the time I finished, I wished I had twenty more episodes to watch, but I will definitely be re-watching Episode 2 to relive the excitement of its final frames. And then I will be cheering on the Mumbai Indians in the current 2019 season. This series is an excellent piece of propaganda, and I was completely bowled over.

Shazam! Superheroes Fly Past Puberty

I did not think I was going to watch Shazam! DC movies are not my jam, but after a number of critics posted reviews talking about how fun and goofy this film is, I was sufficiently intrigued. So I headed to the theater this weekend and yup. This movie is certainly a delight.

Imbued with a somewhat old-school 80's aesthetic, I wouldn't say this film is going to win a lot of awards for production or costume design (unless there's an award for "Best Nostalgia" in which case, go for it). But in terms of superhero origin stories, this is a fresh take on all the movies we've seen to date. Essentially, a young teenage foster kid, Billy Batson (Asher Angel) gets summoned into the eerie lair of a powerful wizard who needs someone who is "pure of heart" to transfer all his powers to. He's been searching for a successor for years but is now out of options, so Billy will have to do. He asks Billy to place his hands on his staff (*inappropriate giggle*) and say the word Shazam! Upon which, Billy turns into the adult version of himself, costumed in a ridiculously loud superhero outfit with a gigantic lightning bolt logo and white cape. He is goofily played by muscle-bound Zachary Levi, who proceeds to have a LOT of fun figuring out what his powers are and how to use these developments to his advantage. As he is still a teenage boy at heart, this means buying beer and gaining entrance into strip clubs.

This of course immediately brings to mind the wonderful Big, starring Tom Hanks, except with super powers thrown into the mix. If you're a fan of that movie, you will enjoy a little homage to it during a fight sequence in a toy store. But if you have no idea what I'm talking about, never mind, this is a fun superhero flick you can enjoy regardless of your 80's movie knowledge. Written by Henry Gayden, this movie is gloriously silly but also contains a LOT of plot. In fact, I was getting a bit impatient at the beginning as it took a long while for Billy to even turn into a superhero; he has a lot of other troubles on his plate. But once things get going, they chug along quick and there are plenty of epic battles, fun banter, and interesting plot twists to keep things fresh.

Shazam! seems like one of those films that's going to get popular by word of mouth, and I definitely encourage you to see it. I didn't think DC was ever going to learn to make a lighthearted superhero movie where entire cities didn't crumble into the ground, but they finally succeeded. If this movie does well enough, hopefully they will learn that this is the kind of superhero film that wins at the box office and we won't have to suffer through more Batman vs. Superman-esque dour shenanigans. This film leaves plenty of room for sequels and spin-offs into the DC Extended Universe, but even if nothing more comes of it, it is a fun romp to liven up your weekend.