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.

Steve Jobs (2015)

"I play the orchestra."

Five years after Aaron Sorkin scripted a biopic of Mark Zuckerberg he does the same for the late Steve Jobs, another scion of the Silicon Valley aristocracy, this time helmed by Danny Boyle, whose London Olympics opening ceremony has certainly not harmed his career. The result is gripping, full of quick-fire dialogue (that'll be Sorkin, then) and plenty of zingers and little nostalgic touches. Throughout it all is a portrait of a confident- nay, arrogant, bordering on unlikeable visionary who, while not an engineer or a programmer, is the conductor who cannot play an instrument but plays the orchestra superbly.

The film is structured around the preparation to three distinct big speeches in 1984, 1988 and 1988, all big product launches. It's a brave yet ultimately successful way of limiting the palette in order to produce a cohesive narrative. Michael Fassbender is spellbinding and the excellent Kate Winslet is barely recognisable; a leading Hollywood actress actually playing a role that isn't sexualised.

The emotional centre of the film is Jobs' relationship with his daughter Lisa, starting with his denial of paternity but ending with his actually delaying his speech- a big thing- for her sake. We also see his abrasive relationship with his underlings, but he inspires loyalty in spite of everything. In the end, his vision triumphs, although it's interesting that the film ends in 1997, before Jobs' biggest wave of successes.

I like the nod to the fact that you can't get inside any Apple device without special tools, the grainy picture, the nod to the iPad's origins in Jobs noticing the clinginess of Lisa's Walkman, but at its heart this is a masterful character study. It is an artfully constructed and fascinating little film.