Doctor Strange Review

Story: Dr. Stephen Strange's (Benedict Cumberbatch) life changes after a car accident robs him of the use of his hands. When traditional medicine fails him, he looks for healing, and hope, in a mysterious enclave. He quickly learns that the enclave is at the front line of a battle against unseen dark forces bent on destroying reality. Before long, he's forced into choosing between a life of fortune or a life of being the only defence for the world as the most powerful sorcerer in existence. 

The 14th film in the ever growing Marvel saga, we now see magic introduced to the cinematic universe. You are spellbound from the moment the movie starts, even with the new logo for Marvel they had my heart pumping.

 A new origins story now having come after one of the biggest hits of this past summer, Captain America: Civil War, Strange had a lot to live up to, and it did its part. Coming into Doctor Strange I really was unsure of where the film would go. I went to see the film in both IMAX 3D and 3D so I have seen the film twice now, it is a joyride of a film. But, on first viewing, I found the film was going so far into the recesses of unknown realities that my own mind started to bend.

Visually, the film is astounding, strange and scary at parts (one should note that the director is known for his horror films such as Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose), man does Marvel know how to pick them. The sequence where Strange is first given a taste of the ancient one's abilities, its like going on a roller coaster. Hold your breathe and prepare to be flown across the known universe. So much visual creations are thrown at you that it was hard at times to keep focus. If you keep your eyes from melting you'll see some visual references to the work of Steve Ditko (Spider-man, Doctor Strange), who did some crazy designs within the comic book that they included them in the film. The bending of realities and the way they are able to visually portray magic is beyond amazing. Every time they fight its like re-watching Inception. Yes, there are some huge fight sequences that seem to take visual cues from that amazing mind bending film by Christopher Nolan. I am sure it was all just coincidence, its great anyways too and makes the fight scenes even crazier. The end battle is also flipped on its head and is another visual achievement, Doctor Strange and The Jungle Book defiantly deserve Oscar nods for their work. An note to the director, get out to New Line Cinema about doing A Nightmare on Elm Street, with what you've done on Doctor Strange and Sinister I am sure you'd be able to make Freddy scary again.

   Let's get the whitewashing controversy over with shall we. Tilda Swinton plays the ancient one, there has been more than one ancient one, so there are different ethnic groups who take on the role of the ancient one. Tilda is terrific, amazing and was a thrill to watch. She brought a smile to my face as her and Ben meet. Its a great back and forth. Benedict is by far a unique choice to star in a film such as this. He brings a certain melancholy  to his role, and his accent is actually pretty good. He trys to make Wong (played by funny enough Benedict Wong) to laugh, get into Beyonce. He does do both, when he laughs its at a surprising moment. Rachel McAdams, who stars as Strange's estranged lover and college plays her part with great strength and realism. Its the scenes she and Ben share that I loved the most. The two have a very powerful scene in Strange's apartment when he accuses her about wanting to get back with him. Christine trys to tell him that there's more out their than just his hands and then he bluntly asks "what, like you!" The power in this scene is so real, so emotional. It just proves the strength and pure talent these actors have. Its not like that scene in Spider-man 3 between Mary Jane and Peter, the actors play to their strengths and play the characters with real push.  Chiwetel who plays Mordo, friend to Stephen, goes mysterious with his role and does a great job at keeping Mordo from going too evil or too good. He's in-between, neutral. He sides with what he believes the ancient one stands for. He and Wong are powerful in their roles, they play their characters with true strength. As with the whole cast not one of them plays it hammy or sloppy or cheesy. Again, going back to Spider-man 3, the scene where Peter and Mary Jane are on the bridge as she has to break up with him, they both are crying but it feels forced, it doesn't feel real. What I wish happened was that Tobey played his part less with forced tears and more power, some angst. Again, I love that movie but in Doctor Strange the actors are serious, no funny business. They play the parts like their life is on the line.

    Mads Mikkelsen (who played Hannibal Lector) plays Kaecilius, that goes against the ancient one in order to bring the dark force Dormammu in order to keep people from dying. He plays his part, like the rest of the cast, with true strength and vulnerability.  I felt Mads played a great role and was the most engaging villain since Jeff Bridge's turn in Iron Man. It has been an issue that Marvel never seems to have any villains that are very engaging or interesting. I feel Mads does break the chain, he's an astounding actor and thats what is needed more of. A good villain consists of either one who was a friend or ally to the hero or a very character driven actor. Here's my list of favourite villains: Jeff Bridges from Iron Man, Tom Hiddleston from The Avengers, Robert Redford from Winter Solider, and Sebastian Stan from Winter Solider/Civil War.

Doctor Strange has astounding 3D visuals, a great musical score, a strong cast and a brilliantly original well written origins story. This film is the best movie so far in the marvel series. I love DC and their movies too, Man of Steel was a grande action packed superman movie and suicide squad gave us the cinematic representation of Harley Quinn!!! Plus Batman v Superman, while the battle was short it had a great performance by Ben Affleck, but Marvel sadly started out sooner, 2008, and while they have had films that are mediocre (Thor: The Dark World, The Incredible Hulk) but they learned from their mistakes and kept trying to make better films, Thor Ragnarok looks to improve on what went wrong in Thor 2, Iron Man 3 mostly made up for Iron Man 2 and Winter Solider defiantly improved on Captain America: The First Avenger.

Rating - A

Inferno Review

Story: When famous symbologist Robert Langdon (played by Tom Hanks) wakes up in an italian hospital with amnesia, he teams up with Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) in the hopes of gaining his memories back. With the government hot on their tails Robert and Sienna race against time to stop a madman (Ben Foster) from releasing literal hell on earth. 

It's been 7 years since we last saw the cinematic appearance of the symbology professor Robert Langdon, too long in fact, and it has been with great excitement and glee that I was overjoyed to find a new follow-up has been unleashed.

 Based on the 2013 novel of the same name Inferno, the 4th book in the Robert Langdon series, we see a different side to Robert as events spiral out of his control and we are lost in the dark as he is. The difference, he's suffering from amnesia. Its an interesting change to a character who has been known to use his brain a lot. Another difference from previous instalments is the change in from religious undertones about the church and a focus on Dante's inferno and over-population.

Ron Howard returns to direct Tom Hanks in this third adaptation, I could never imagine one of these without Ron Howard. He gives these films a quality that you don't get in most franchise pictures. While these films are not oscar worthy, they are fun packed action thrillers that make you think.

I will start with the major changes this film adaptation makes, it does have a bit of a more hollywood feel as its gained controversy for its change to the ending. With past films/books Dan Brown's books have endings that leave you thinking. Ron Howard's adaptations do take some liberties with the material, Angels & Demons makes a small alteration having a character who died in the book survive in the film. The virus that is set to be unleashed is more of a threat in the film than in the book and while in the book its more tragic, the film sets itself with a more less darker ending. The change will have readers of the books up in arms. I, however, feel the change does not effect the story and does still provide an ending that can still be talked about.

Inferno is a very interesting and fascinating beast as it deals with the subject of over-population and how the main antagonist seeks to decrease it. The twist in the book is that prior to anyone's knowledge the virus had already been released before the events of the novel and there really was
nothing anyone could do. However, this version does not kill but upon release will make half the earth's population infertile. The overall new ending, making the virus more of a deadly infection and W.H.O being able to seal it before exposure, I find is even more tragic as without the said infection life on earth will end for us. It is true, our species has grown immensely with more animal species going extinct and the ever coming true fear that one day humans may go extinct the way of the dodo bird. Inferno's new ending is more tragic in the way that we just sweep the problem under the rug when something like this can have one of the worst impacts in human history.

Compared with the first two films Inferno has a less bigger budget, having being made on a 75 million, and it is the best thing to happen to this series. Why? The previous films used a fair amount of CGI and I felt this took you out of the movie. Its true that it had to be done in order for the sets to look like the locations in the books and a cast of highly well known talent (Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina, Ewan McGregor) In the end I found that the lower budget gave the film a more grounded, realistic feel. The cast (Felicity Jones, Ben Foster, Omar Sy, Irrfan Khan) is not as famous but is very talented and multi-cultural, diverse. One major aspect of the film that I loved was no CGI. This added to the overall realism. It made the film even more enjoyable in IMAX as the scenery is a wonder to behold.

One quick aspect of Inferno is that Hans Zimmer did return to score. I'll go into more detail about the score on my other site but will give a quick rundown of my feelings. I was not fond of the electronic aspect he took with Inferno and preferred the orchestral flow he did with Angels & Demons. Hans brings back themes from the first two films and does have tracks without the electronic tunes.

Inferno is a perfectly solid adaption, with the returns of Ron Howard as director, Tom Hanks as the lead, Hans Zimmer as the composer and Brian Grazer as producer. Cinematographer Salvatore Totino also returns, continuing to give the series its epic scope.

The sad news is this will probably be the final film in this franchise as even with the lower budget the film only made barely over 150 mill, the budget of Angels & Demons. Tom and Ron do a fantastic job though in closing the doors as we finally get some insight something we never learned, his love life. I was also pleased with the nightmare sequences as they were a perfect treat and another part of the film I had been looking forward to.

Goodbye Professor, you took us on a marvellous journey and as one great writer once said;

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end - Ernest Hemingway

3 1/2 out of 4