She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: Is This Not Real Magic?

 "You can't own magic!"

This is, essentially, a sitcom. And, despite Jen's frequent fourth wall breaking ways, we're not talking WandaVision. This is a straight sitcom.

So both story strands here lampshade the suer-hero genre. We begin with a rather good magic show falling flat, because this is the MCU, and people hear magic all the time. We then learn that the magician is a failed student of the Mystic Arts, using just a little crap real magic. The joke is, of course, that Wong wants to sue him. And it's fun. Wong- played with nuanced excellence by Benedict Wong- is a funny character while also being dignified and heroic, not an easy thing to pull off.

The other strand is, of course, the tragedy of Jen's love life. All the men she meets are self-obsessed losers. At last, as She-Hulk, she meets a seemingly perfect man... and he takes right off as soon as he sees her as Jen. Ouch.

I'm loving this, despoite the Sopranos spoiler. But I suspect those less humour-inclined may not be.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law- The People vs Emil Blonsky

 "I don't know about you, but I'd smash."

This is where She-Hulk really hits it's stride. I love everything about this episode, from Jen's little fourth wall breaking asides to the last minute, unexpected appearance of what is surely the Wrecking Crew. But the best bit is, of course, when Wong gets told he's confessed to unlawfully helping a prisoner escape... and promptly teleports away.

The A plot with Emil Blonsky's parole hearing is fun, with the inevitable comedy with Tim Roth being superb, and Wong's dramatic late entrance. There's also a nice little linked thread of She-Hulk's reputation being generated by the stupidity of the media and online world, with its incels and pathetic little boys. So she submits to an interview, which, er, goes well.

The B plot, with a shape changing Asgardian elf and Jen humiliating Dennis to win his case, is hilarious. But I'm sure Dennis will do somewthing nefarious before the season is over.

What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?

 "Stephen, this path only leads to darkness and the end of this reality."

This episode is very good: a timey-wimey tale of another universe's Doctor Strange, one who lost not his hands in the crash, but his beloved Christine, and whose obsession to bring back his love eventually destroys the universe in exactly the sort of hubristic act we know Strange is pretty much capable of- that's the tension that makes the character so bloody good.

There's so much to enjoy here. Strange's desperate Groundhog Day moment as he attempts to save Christine again and again, only for every conceivable alternative to result in her death. The revelation that the Ancient One has split Strange into two. Strange's horrified realisation of what he has done. And, for the first time, an interaction with the inscrutable Watcher as he begs for help only to be told the Watcher, as ever, "cannot interfere".

Well, except when he can. I bet we will ultimately see that happen.

Overall this is an excellent bit of telly, full of heart and imagination. It is, perhaps, just a little too reminiscent of Steven Moffat's writing, particularly on Doctor Who, not to have been quite clearly influenced, but nevertheless I very much enjoyed this.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

 "This time it's gonna take more than killing me to kill me."

Well, thgis film blew me away. It's a huge fanwank treat. It's very Sam Raimi indeed. I love its continuation of the whole vibe of magic being really trippy, man, in the MCU, almost as thought it was some king of metaphor or something.

But, although very good, this film isn't great. It doesn't quite have the swagger and smooth greatness of the best Marvel films but- let me stress- this is no great critiscism. Merely being very good indeedcis no crime.

Plus, this film may be fanwank, but it's fanwank of the first degree. Rintrah! Clea at the end! A brief CGI hint of the Living Tribunal! Chthon! Earth 616!

But this is about the full realisation of the Multiverse- Black Bolt! Captain Carter! Reed Richards! Confirmation, for those of my generation, that Monica Rambeau is THE real Captain Marvel. And we have Professor X... played by Patrick Stewart"! This is a blatant tease about the former Fox properties, using the concept of the Multiverse to the full.

Yet this film is very human as well as high concept. We explore, through different realities, Strange's relations with Christine, and his rather lovely fatherly relationship with the orphaned America Chavez, presumably a comics character from after my time.

Yet also, after WandaVision, we meet Wanda... and she's the baddie, plausibly yet tragically: she's a loving parent, able to see her beloved children only through snatched, one dimensional, dreamlike moments which are better than nothing but no replacement for everyday physical parenthood. I get exactly where she's coming from. It means a lot that she does the right thing, in the end, through love of her children.

No, this isn't a great film. But just being bloody good is no crime.

Moon (2009)

"I want to go home..."

Well, it's the fiftieth anniversary of the Moon landing so I'm blogging this splendid film- what else?

It’s a wonderful film, of course. Bowie’s lad done good; it can’t be easy being the offspring of a genius, and Duncan Jones did well to eschew music, where expectations would have been impossible, in favour of another art form. He chose directing and, whatever happens in his career from now on (his career since 2009 seems to have been variable), he has this splendid achievement to his name.

Sam Rockwell is also superb and, indeed, has to be; he’s the only actor to have more than a cameo here, amusing and disorienting though it is to see Matt Berry as his boss. But the other character is the ship computer, Gerry, whom I shall try not to compare to HAL- oops- and who is creepily voiced by a pre-scandal Kevin Spacey. Gerty is creepy; not least because of those smileys.

These are all just surface things, though; what makes this film sing is its ideas and themes, of corporate ethics in a world where private corporations mine Helium-3 from the Lunar surface, yes, but mainly about- how shall I put it- themes of self and consciousness. This is serious science fiction with a twist, a Tharg’s Future Shock, if you will, or an rxtended episode of Black Mirror. And it’s wonderful.

Doctor Strange (2016)

"What's this? My mantra?"

"It's the wi-fi password. We're not savages."

This may not be the best Marvel film ever, perhaps. It's not even the second best I've seen this year. But you know what? It doesn't need to be. Yes, it may be a fairly standard fantasy/sci-fi plot to the point that you know the Ancient One's going to die because Obi-Wan Kenobi, but it's standard stuff done very well, shot superbly with some splendidly trippy and Ditko-esque magic special effects and the perfect Stephen Strange in Benedict Cumberbatch, who not only plays the character superbly but looks exactly like him. There's no witty dialogue, which is odd for a Marvel film, but the brilliantly stylised and trippy direction and effects really elevate the film visually.

The Escher-esque weirdness with the cityscapes of London and New York is what I'll probably remember most from a film with a deliberately predictable plot, but the film just looks and feels exactly as Doctor Strange should. It feels trippy, Ditko and as psychedelic as the snippet of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" that we hear at the start. It doesn't feel like a Marvel film, but then Doctor Strange never felt much like the Marvel Universe anyway.

So, yes, an average Marvel film, if very far from a typical one. But Marvel set the bar high, and an average film of theirs is well worth seeing.