Review: Marvel's The Avengers

The new superhero movie, officially titled Marvel's The Avengers, is unlike anything else in history. Never before have five summer blockbusters been made over the course of four years to set up the characters for one super-blockbuster. Fan anticipation has been intense, ever since IronMan and The Incredible Hulk hinted at the idea in 2008.

Now The Avengers is here, and, in many ways, it out-blockbusters them all.

The crucial element is writer/director Joss Whedon, best known for his beloved cult TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly." Whedon has an affinity for extraordinary misfits and affectionate humor, and a touch for balancing ensembles. This widely mismatched cast starts with the excellent thespians Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), and Tom Hiddleston (Loki), and touches on the awesome star power of Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), and Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury). 

Toward the bottom, there's Chris Evans (Captain America) and Chris Hemsworth (Thor), both of whom were arguably cast more for looks than for personality. Among several other familiar faces in walk-on parts, Whedon has made the sublime choice of shaggy, wounded Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner (and The Hulk), replacing Edward Norton. Whedon then works his magic and makes them all equals. If Downey steals one scene with dialogue, then Hemsworth gets a complementary scene of passionate rage. 

Of the five previous movies, last summer's Thor had the best villain, the impish Loki, and Whedon has effortlessly relocated him here. Loki's new plan is to use the "Tesseract" -- a glowing cube -- to invite evil alien armies to help take over the earth. The Avengers are called upon to stop him, but unfortunately, they don't yet know or trust one another.

Thus we get our very simple theme: all of these outsiders, each given a "terrible privilege," can become something greater by learning to work together. Whedon conjures up some beautiful moments of teamwork in the thick of battle, including one of Hulk slamming a piece of shrapnel into the neck of a giant monster, and Thor hammering it home.

This movie has it all: gorgeously clear action, humor, suspense, and even passion. It's not going too far to guess that no other summer movie will touch it. Yet The Avengers takes place in a dark world of heightened military fear, wherein a nuclear missile is launched as effortlessly as making a piece of toast. Fury admits that he has assembled the team as a form of stockpiling weapons against as-yet-unimagined threats, which ironically is a threat in itself. Oddly, this is quite the opposite of the themes in the two Iron Man movies. Whedon's reasons for treading this paranoid path are ambiguous and slightly puzzling.

However, the world needs its heroes for many other reasons. During their trials they find their true selves, coming away ever so slightly stronger than they were as individuals. And all those misfit audience members -- shy, awkward, uncertain... i.e. most of us -- know exactly what the movie is really about.

Review: The Cabin in the Woods

Traditionally, the horror movie has been relegated to visceral effects on its audience: mainly thrills and chills. After a while, scholars like Robin Wood and Linda Williams began examining these reactions on an intellectual level. This, in turn, led to horror movies that deconstructed horror movies, ranging from Scream to last year's Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.

Now Joss Whedon's The Cabin in the Woods -- a work of genius -- takes this deconstruction to a whole new, cosmic level.

The new movie begins with the typical group of teens, as seen movies as recent as Shark Night and Creature, that don't seem like they could actually be friends. There's the jock (Chris Hemsworth), the slut (Anna Hutchison), the pot-smoking comic relief (Fran Kranz), the gentlemanly scholar (Brian White), and the virginal Dana (Kristen Connolly). As usual, they gather together for a fun weekend of drinking, sex and other debauchery in a borrowed, remote cabin.

But this time, something else happens. Two guys in lab coats (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) show up for work and check into a clinical control room filled with switches and screens. It turns out that they are monitoring the teens in the woods, but why and for what purpose is best left undisclosed.

Whedon produced and co-wrote the screenplay, but leaves the directorial duties to a newcomer, Drew Goddard, a writer with credits on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel." Goddard nicely juxtaposes the two halves of the movie, while having fun with both. For example, all the tropes of this teens-in-the-woods subgenre are played out on cue -- including the sexy girl removing her top -- but performed with several layers of self-awareness. Though, sadly, this does take away from the genre's more primal shock and scare factor.

But since none of the teens fit too rigorously into their pre-assigned roles, they need a little humorous coaxing. Take Hemsworth, who also plays Thor in Whedon's upcoming Avengers movie. His character is actually smart and generous, but after a few hours in the cabin, he begins acting like an A-1 musclebound jerk. Meanwhile, Jenkins and Whitford clearly enjoy their playful dialogue, dripping with clues but performed like another boring day on the job.

The movie wraps up its mystery a bit early, but the final reel has a blow out in store that even the cleverest horror fans won't be able to anticipate. Overall, horror fans won't want to leave this Cabin in the Woods anytime soon.