Clearing the Backlog...

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4. The Imitation Game

This was one of the movies that was somewhat ruined by me already knowing much of the story of Alan Turing.

I thought some of the acting was a little uneven at times, as did the characterisation of Turing seemed - for such a socially awkward individual, he could be remarkably 'socially unawkward.' The 'Turing test' in the interrogation was a bit ham-fisted. It was almost like the producers decided to stick it in there because the 'Turing test' is perhaps the only thing people might have heard about regarding Alan Turing.

It is a bit strange, although not necessarily historically inaccurate, that the government did little to protect the likes of Turing after the war, especially given the potential extent of Communist witchhunts

 

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5. Captain America: Civil War

The villain was largely a sideshow, although given that this was just a one-off movie rather than something that has been built up to over a very long period of time, Zemo was required to manufacture some trouble between the Avengers

For once, this 'standalone' did not go too far down the road of conceiving convenient plot points to have certain characters missing from global events. To that point, this could really have been an Avengers: Civil War. The only things missing are the Hulk and Thor and they could easily have been put in this, one on each side and have them fight a stalemate at the airport.

That said, this movie already had the problem of 'what to do with the overly powerful Vision' and does not do a particularly good job, largely forgetting about him in the airport fight. The sooner he gets depowered the better as he is a walking potential deus ex machina. At least with Thor and Hulk, there have been believeable reasons for them not to be around - the former doesn't live on Earth and Banner remains concerned about his rage getting out of hand, but Vision (and his spiffy wardrobe) is just there all of the time. They could rather simply have it that he cannot spend extended periods of time around other people as he is having trouble controlling the power of the Mind Stone, accidentally bending people to his will/point of view and so he banishes himself to the far side of the Moon,

Spiderman and Ant-man added some nice levity, but I still have no interest in another Spiderman movie. Really, for me, it is now pretty much all about the ensembles - Avengers and Guardians - in the lead up to Infinity War. The only standalone I might care about is the introduction of a new character… and no, not Black Panther. Did not see anything interesting in him at all.

 

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6. Ant-Man

I thoroughly enjoyed this. It was a bit strange to have watched this after Civil War given that Ant-man appears in the latter, but then the post-credits scene was a good one, locating the story of Ant-man in the Marvel timeline. And actually, that out of order viewing made little difference. Indeed, if you viewed in the same way, Ant-man could be easily be viewed as a prequel - a testament to the joined up planning of Marvel.

I liked the comparison between Hank Pym and the villain, in that the former got halted in his potential drift towards trouble by love and tragedy, while the latter had not only the extra incentive of knowing that the technology was possible but was being withheld by a mentor who was essentially disowning him. Like with Picard and Shinzon in Star Trek Nemesis, perhaps Cross is what Pym would have been had he lived the same life.