Ant-Man and the Wasp: I want my multiplex superhero movies to be breezy fun and this one mostly delivers. Sure it feels like the plot was awkwardly massaged into shape in an editing booth but the jokes are funny, there's a gleeful joy in the shrinking and embiggening, and detectable romantic chemistry between the leads (even if it never sets off a fire alarm).
Black Panther: Ryan Coogler made a film as thoughtful and bold in its ideas as a Marvel movie is allowed to be. There are distinctive, stunning sets and costumes! Killmonger’s museum heist is genuinely provocative! It's such a shame that it's ultimately muddled and declawed. Sure, Shuri spits "Coloniser!" at Martin Freeman's CIA agent but he's a complete teddy bear and the script contorts itself to present his participation in a coup against the fairly chosen head of state of a foreign government as morally righteous. And the final big step forward for Chadwick Boseman's hero is leaving all the racist structures in place but... teaching black kids to code? Come on!
(Also the need to hit an M rating and make the action look "cool" really undercuts the tragedy of the civil war. The two title fights are compelling though - they have strong narrative arcs.)
Thor Ragnarok: Everyone says this is the quirky one but honestly it's only a fraction weirder than the Guardians films. It's allowed to be coyly queer - but not too queer! And a little - but only a little - shaggier in its plotting. (And that's to make room for a director cameo. Frankly I have never found Taika Waititi to be funny in front of the camera. His actual face isn't even on screen this time and yet somehow you can still see him wink and mug relentlessly, like some overachieving theater kid desperate to please.)
I will award it some points for Cate Blanchett going harder than most Marvel villains but I'd seen too many of these by this point and the increasingly prefab nature of the whole affair was beginning to get to me, especially since I'd been promised that this one was different.
The Avengers: It's fair to say that Joss Whedon has deservedly fallen off a pedestal that was always too high but... the man does write feuding family banter better than any other Marvel writer. And the plotting here is very slick while still leaving room for beats like The Hulk's heartfelt chat with Henry Dean Stanton. It's just a shame that the action is so static, so drearily televisual. (To be fair Marvel action is mostly a write-off until Winter Soldier.)
Guardians of the Galaxy: A bit like The Avengers insofar as the dialogue is actually somewhat witty but the climatic fight sucks. It tries to ape the multi-strand finale of The Return of the Jedi and the like. Unfortunately it turns out that watching a billion tiny ships piloted by nobodies form a shield is not even half as exciting as watching a single ship piloted by a named hero run the Death Star's defenses.
Also this time there's no villain as charismatic as Loki on hand. (I will allow that Karen Gillan has some spark and that her character's relationship to Gamora turns some of it to flame. But she's hardly in the movie and Lee Pace's glowering nonevent sucks up too much oxygen.)
Captain America: There's a definite charm to its period stylings and, oddly enough, how thoroughly conservative it is. It's like a nice boy in a Christmas sweater who wants to bring you home to his mum. Which is pretty much who Captain America is as played by Chris Evans so, um, that metaphor got weirdly literal.
The thing I can't get past is that it's a movie about fighting Nazis and it just kind of skips over the whole holocaust thing? You can see the racism in Red Skull's ubermenschen dreams but the movie is way more interested in drawing parallels between the Nazis and Steve's bullies and well, the Nazis are not just garden variety bullies! They are genocidal fascists! This is important!
Oh, of course it also earns points for the pec grab that isn't AKA the only time (afaik) that anything Marvel has ever been steamy.
Ant Man: I saw this after its sequel and was disappointed. The train fight is spectacular but the rest... I don't remember the rest. Also the romance was so gutted in the editing booth that they don't even kiss. What's the point?
Thor: I will cop to having only seen about 40 minutes of this but Branagh's sense of the dramatic here is so leaden and his desire to make every other shot a Dutch angle so bizarre that I found it all but unwatchable. It makes a perversely good argument for Marvel to keep all evidence of personality far, far away from its films.
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