Captain America:
First Avenger director Joe Johnston met the challenge of adapting the adventures of superheroes with the most patriotic touch to make a film uninhibited and having his own style.

It is difficult to describe the theme of this film, its both history film and a fantasy movie. Captain America is built perfectly in the dream universe set up by the fantasy movies like Iron Man, Hulk and Thor.

Taking place almost entirely during the Second World War, Captain America tells the dark period of history from a different angle. Imagine a secret division of the army of Hitler was in charge of looking for artifacts to turn them into legendary weapon and win the war.

This organization called Hydra will get their hands on a wealth of Odin (Thor’s father): the Cosmic Cube, which we have already seen in the post-credits scene of the movie Thor. The United States should respond, and the super-soldier serum will be the answer to the Nazis to take over in this war. This is how Steve Rogers, a young whippersnapper from Brooklyn, will be chosen for its qualities and thus become the super-soldier.

I was amazed by the performance of Chris Evans, early in the film he was digitally retouched to lose at least 20 pounds of muscle and 30 centimeters high,and later in the shoes of Captain America performing stunts impressive. His relationship with Peggy Carter is also handled quite well.

We all know a Peter Parker, bitten by a radioactive spider, became Spider-Man or Bruce Banner, a scientist exposed to gamma rays that will forever change his life as a worse human. However, the first to have undergone a transformation into a superhero is Captain America.

The hero often called the first avengers is also the first human to become a superhero.To become a super-soldier, it will take courage in our character Steve Rogers (Captain America). Asthmatics, lean but bold, the young man still manages to include a battalion rather special. For the colonel Chester Phillips, although it makes war with weapons, it is thanks to men as we win. But Steve will he measure up?

“Captain America represents not only the ideals of the time, but it is also an archetypal hero – he was not born heroes: he has become – whose courage is flawless. “

Jake Lonergan wakes up in the middle of the night, without having to remember anything: neither his name nor how he came to this place, and certainly not why he wears this strange metal band.

In the next place he makes a stir when he recognizes himself as the spoiled son of the local livestock wholesaler. The sheriff finally recognizes him as a wanted criminal and imprisons him.

But when a horde of aliens suddenly attack the village and kidnap several people, for Lonergan. They offer a chance for rehabilitation, because the bracelet turns out to be a powerful weapon. Together with the remaining residents, he goes on to hunt the aliens.

If nothing else, Saw is proof that you can make a professional-looking film without a lot of money. Purportedly shot for a paltry $1 million, it nonetheless features a potent atmosphere, a polished sense of confidence, and a marquee of modest stars in Cary Elwes, Monica Potter, and Danny Glover. It’s a testament to solid craftsmanship and a promising start for first-time director James Wan. Unfortunately, a big part of that trick also proves Saw’s undoing. For the image and tone it so efficiently creates is nevertheless fairly shopworn, and though it has its share of unsettling moments, it’s not nearly as scary as it wants to be.

Certainly, Saw owes a great deal to Seven and similar works… perhaps too much. It succeeds in recreating the grungy, fluorescent-lit nihilism of David Fincher’s seminal thriller, and posits a scenario whose essence, at least, has some punch. But despite that, and despite yeoman efforts by Wan and his team, it never really finds its legs. Too many logical gaps rear their ugly heads; too much of the plot is half-baked and awkward. And while the suspense sometimes works, it can’t help but feel like leftovers from earlier, better movies.

The centerpiece is yet another serial killer — this one named “Jigsaw” — with a dark agenda and the ability to outsmart anyone who dares to challenge him. He’s indicative of the film’s mixed bag; though part of an increasingly insufferable cliché, he’s had more energy and imagination invested in him than most. His specialty is placing his victims in horrifying circumstances, and then seeing how far they will go to keep themselves alive. The idea is to teach them how precious life is, though considering his body count, the lesson isn’t taking very well. Nonetheless, there’s a kind of eerie resonance to his methodology, which at times shows real imagination. Wan works hard to make the most of it, reveling in the ghoulish details of Jigsaw’s traps and — during Saw’s best moments — forcing us to contemplate what we would do under such circumstances.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening, one of the most harrowing parts of the film. In a filthy, underground bathroom, two men awaken to find themselves chained to the pipes. The feckless Adam (screenwriter Leigh Whannell) is jittery and on edge while the quieter Dr. Gordon (Elwes) is calm enough to start thinking of ways out. A dead man lies between them, having apparently shot himself in the head; the revolver is still clutched in his hand. A message from Jigsaw informs them that Dr. Gordon has eight hours to kill Adam; if he doesn’t, then both men will die, along with Dr. Gordon’s family. They each have a hacksaw, which isn’t strong enough to cut their chains, but will carve through flesh and bone quite nicely.

The setup plays into the film’s strengths, creating an atmosphere of confusion and paranoia with only a few ground rules — set by a madman — to which the audience can cling. More importantly, it allows its heroes to genuinely think their way through their dilemma, seeking creative solutions only to find the killer two steps ahead of them. The process is eerie and unsettling and Wan clearly has a knack for such mind games, resulting in several intense, horrifying patches where Saw really hits its stride.

Unfortunately, that promise never quite reaches fruition. The opening scene eventually gives way to an unwieldy flashback narrative, in which we trace the path of Jigsaw’s project and the police hunt for him (which centers around a then-free Dr. Gordon). The back-and-forth between these precursor segments and the chained men in the bathroom is unduly intrusive, and achieves more in piecemeal than it does as a unified whole. When things start to labor, Saw falls back on flat-out clichés, pushing well-worn buttons when it should be finding new ways to surprise us. Internal logic starts to suffer as well, and the “wait a minute, why can he just…?” questions pile up faster than the film can compensate for them. Wan tries to gloss it over with the usual cocktail of shocks and twists; but despite a gallant effort, they lack the punch to silence our doubts. An aimless subplot involving Glover’s unhinged police detective further compounds matters, leaving Saw with a final grasp achingly short of its reach.

Were it merely a routine thriller, such dashed hopes would be expected, but Saw’s disappointments cut deeper because the filmmakers clearly have more on their minds. This is not a film that wants to settle for second-rate status. It tries hard, it works overtime, and at times, you can see quite clearly where it wants to go. But its limitations prove too cumbersome, and though occasionally frightening, it never musters the juice to clear its hurdles. Saw shows all the ambitions of a great thriller — give Wan and his crew some time and they’ll probably make one — but right now, ambition alone just isn’t enough.

More than any comic-book franchise, the Blade films are dependent upon their leading man. Though other creative forces make their presence known (particularly in Guillermo del Toro’s superior second installment), this has always been The Wesley Snipes Show. The title vampire hunter is a custom fit for Snipes’ onscreen presence, and the actor clearly relishes every chance to indulge in his character’s badassery. It’s telling, then, that the third Blade film forces him to share the stage with a pair of newcomers — suggesting that there wasn’t enough to fill 90 minutes unless they tacked on some gimmicks and diversions.

That being said, the gimmicks and diversions have their share of charms. Once again, Blade is pitted against the legions of undead who control an unknowing mortal world through proxies and minions. He’s armed with plenty of hi-tech toys from his craggy partner Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), which the film has fun trundling out. The gadgets have always been a staple of this series, and director David S. Goyer — who’s been Blade’s screenwriter since the beginning — finds some keen new ways to update traditional vampiric banes into the 21st century. The best is a sort of gigantic cheese cutter married to a lightsaber, though the more pedestrian UV bullets and jet-black muscle cars carry plenty of effects-laden punch as well.

On a more human level, the new sidekicks are eminently watchable. Realizing that he can’t operate alone, Blade reluctantly teams up with the Night Stalkers, a group of fellow hunters whose principal members gobble up an inordinate amount of screen time. Their function in the film is obvious: Whistler’s bow-toting daughter Abigail (Jessica Biel) is there for sex appeal, while the wise-cracking ex-bad guy Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) provides comic relief. And they do those jobs as well as anyone. Biel is, um, healthy, and while Reynolds often comes across as unduly smug, he possesses fine comic timing and hoards the lion’s share of the best lines.

And yet, if they’re such strong additions to the proceedings, why do they feel like more of a distraction than an asset? Perhaps it’s because so much of the rest of the film is running on fumes. The vampires themselves lack the rotting magnificence of del Toro’s villains, content instead to sneer a lot and make the usual vague proclamations of doom. Their centerpiece is the ancient founder of the vampire race (Dominic Purcell), a Mesopotamian strongman known as Drake who’s gone by other similar-sounding names over the centuries. As a threatening presence, he’s merely adequate: not so much bad as supremely predictable. So too, do the action scenes and overall thrust feel overly familiar. Goyer keeps the pacing up, but cribs a great deal from earlier films and offers little new beyond the nifty weapons and some arch humor. The fights are decent, but unremarkable save for the fact that they hold our attention. In light of that, the new characters are essentially Band-Aids, covering up the otherwise stale expectations of New Line’s naked franchising.

But the final proof of the pudding comes in the simple fact that we don’t see nearly enough of Snipes. He’s in good shape here, aging but still possessing the right combination of physical grace and snarling charisma to keep us engaged. In too many scenes, however, he’s competing with Biel and Reynolds for his due share of the spotlight. At times, the movie shifts completely away from him, relegating Blade to the sidelines while the other kids play in his sandbox. Had he struck better chemistry with his co-stars — or had they not had such emphasis placed upon them — he might have pulled us through on force of personality alone. The Blade films kick-started Marvel’s line of adaptations, bucking the odds by becoming the first in that pantheon to achieve a breakout hit. But if Blade himself can’t carry a movie with his own name on it, then perhaps the time has come to hang up the stakes for good.

In his horror treatise Danse Macabre, Stephen King sums up the problem that comes with revealing the monster lurking behind the door in a horror movie: what’s behind the door is never as frightening as the door itself. As the door slowly creaks open, the buildup is always scarier than the payoff because what we envision behind the door is inevitably more terrifying than what is actually behind it. With the gut-wrenching Korean chiller A Tale of Two Sisters, that sentiment holds true in a superficial sense, but that’s okay — because what’s behind the door ultimately proves more deeply haunting than anything we’d imagined.

Upon returning home from an unexplained stay at a mental hospital, Su-Mi (Im Soo-Jung) and her younger sister Su-Yeon (Moon Geun-Young) cling to each other while dealing with their cruel stepmother (a wickedly good Yeom Jeong-A) and whatever horrible things might be hiding in the dark, shadowy hallways or in Su-Yeon’s closet. Their reserved, ineffectual father (Kim Kab-Su) isn’t much help, so Su-Mi becomes the fierce guardian of her younger sister, protecting her against their stepmother and whatever other horrors inhabit the house. With its floral-wallpapered interior drenched in earth tones and deep reds, the sprawling, mysterious house creates a suffocating atmosphere of dread and unease. Su-Mi has nightmares of a ghostly girl crawling around on the floor, Su-Yeon hears someone creeping into her room at night, and on the ride home after a shocking dinner at the house, a guest softly remarks, “There was a girl under the sink.”

Inspired by a Korean folk tale that’s been filmed several times before, A Tale of Two Sisters begins as a fairly straightforward mix of haunted-house chills and domestic drama. It’s heart-stoppingly scary — the ever-building sense of dread punctuated by several expertly orchestrated jump scares. But is the house really haunted, or is it the girls’ imaginations? And why were they in the hospital? While the domestic drama is a bit shaky (at least the first time around, before we know the whole story), our sympathies are always firmly with the two sisters. But then writer-director Kim Jee-Woon pulls the rug out from under us, leaving us dazed as we try to put together all the pieces of the puzzle. When the door finally opens and we see what’s lurking behind it, A Tale of Sisters reveals itself as more than a simple horror tale: it’s a beautifully crafted and quietly heartbreaking meditation on adolescent turmoil, sisterly devotion, and painful, haunting regret.