Captain America: The Winter Soldier

            This movie offered a fresh approach to superhero stories in the fact that it was more of an adventure/spy movie than a science fiction movie. The plot was good, though I was lost at some points, but that might have to do with the fact that I watched it very late at night. It was also nice to see a more laid back and carefree Black Widow, as apposed to her closed-off portrayals in the Iron Man and Avenger movies. I liked to watch her character development, and I’m hoping that we will get to see a Black Widow movie in the future.

            Along with the complicated plot, I also thought that the movie took too long to introduce the villain. I understand that this film is different than other superhero movies, but I think it’s important to have strong villains in a Marvel movie, and this one did not. That’s just my opinion, however. The movie is also called The Winter Soldier, but I felt like he barely had twenty minutes of screen time. The character seemed more like a subplot. That was probably my biggest disappointment. I was promised The Winter Soldier, I expected to see The Winter Soldier for more than a few fight scenes. I can only hope that the character will be featured in many more Marvel films to come, let alone Captain America films. I could see him becoming another flip-flop character like Loki, where the audience never knows if he is good or evil. More Sebastian Stan, please!

            Although I had my complaints, I have to like it because it’s a Marvel movie, especially a Marvel movie connected with the Avengers universe. I’m hoping that this film is a stepping-stone to more great Marvel movies to come.

IMDb rating: 7/10

Non-Stop (2014)

            One does not simply skip watching a Liam Neeson movie. At least I don’t. Not to mention that I’m also a huge Downton Abbey fan, so the fact that Non-Stop has Michelle Dockery in it was another incentive for me to watch it.

            When the film started, I thought it was going to be exactly like other airplane movies I had seen, like Flightplan or Red Eye. It had all the key characters: an obviously grief-stricken (and alcoholic) main character, a child flying by themselves, pretty stewardesses, someone who is afraid of flying, and a few passengers who are jerks, who also turn out to be helpful later. As the story continued, it seemed more and more like the plot of Flightplan, with the main character getting blamed for a hijacking. I did like the twist of (*Spoiler) Liam’s character being the one who killed the first victim, at exactly the same moment that the hijacker said someone would die. That took a lot of planning on the hijacker’s part and made for an interesting movie to watch.

            They also did a good job with not cluing the audience in to who the hijacker was. I predicted that it was going to be Julianne Moore’s character, since she would be the most surprising choice. Even though she was sitting next to Liam while the hijacker was texting him. I thought that maybe she had an accomplice (which turned out to be correct, because there were two men hijacking the plane). I was disappointed when she was not the culprit, because then her character was just kind of useless. I’m still trying to figure out why she was in the movie, other than to provide a pretty weak romantic storyline between her and Neeson’s character.

            I was also disappointed when the hijacker turned out to be someone who had already been suspected earlier in the movie. It kind of felt anti-climactic to me. I also was confused when the computer programmer was also involved in the hijacking. Wasn’t he helping earlier in the movie when he told Liam and Co. how to track the phone that he hijacker was using? I know that his partner dumped the phone onto someone else before they could discover it on him, but couldn’t the programmer just have lied and said that he did not know how to track the phone?

            The film may not have been perfect, but I was still very much entertained throughout. Like I said earlier, I would watch anything with Liam Neeson in it, even though he always seems to play such depressed and troubled characters in movies (i.e. Taken, The Grey, etc). Poor Liam.

IMDb rating: 7/10