Thunderbolts (2025)

I think Florence Pugh is great as Yelena Belova, the main character in a thrown-together-by-chance superhero ensemble called "Thunderbolts", a sort of rough-around-the-edges Avengers group ('the Bvengers') whose first movie outing cleverly takes on movie audiences' superhero fatigue by trumping it - the characters here are worldweary, eye-rolling rejects, and that includes the always terrific Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the cumbersomely named Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, an unflappable corrupt agent navigating career turmoil of her own callous creation.

★★★★☆

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Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Every scene involves an orchestral fanfare as another superhero steps forth from behind something and is introduced to a troupe of other superheroes with whom he or she has an interrelationship that you, the viewer, may know something about if you've pledged allegiance to the Marvel Universe and have studied the myriad releases in the series - if you get off on discovering the minutae of these relationships (like the fact Thor's new eyeball came from Guardians of the Galaxy or that Steve Roger's new uniform makes him more 'Nomad'-like, etc., etc.) then this mega event ten years in the making is just for you, but if Avengers: Infinity War feels to you like a dizzying three-hour fight scene and scene to scene you can't remember who is where or why, then like me you probably want to snap your fingers and have the whole marketing exercise simply stop for a while.

★★★☆☆

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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

You'll need a degree in Marvel to follow exactly the whos and whys and whats of this busy sequel which has enhanced twins - a freakishly fast moving boy and a mindwarping witch girl, both boring - wreaking havoc with the Avengers, causing each of the umpteen of them to experience worrying visions including of the world destroyed by an artificial intelligence; the answer, unbelievably, is for the Avengers to increase their number even though there are already too many of them to really be able to care much about their burgeoning romances (wooden), family lives (corny), backstories (meaningless) and idiosyncracies (no longer funny).

★★☆☆☆

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The Avengers (2012)

See Marvel's The Avengers and marvel at how a superbudget superhero movie with not one but six superheroes manages to fit in all the requisite superhero movie things (mega set pieces, backstories, thrills, bad guys, humour, sass) into one coherent, fun, funny, not-to-be-missed mega movie event.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS