There's lots to see in "Captain America: Civil War," but not much stands out.

In Captain America: Civil War, the Avengers are forced to sign a treaty with the United Nations that will prevent them from interfering with bad guys unless specifically conscripted by individual nations. This causes a rift between the Avengers, some of whom (including Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson) consider it a necessary evil, while others (among them Captain America, played by Chris Evans) see the treaty as a form of surrender that will tear the Avengers apart. The latter eventually happens, and we see multiple Avengers fighting each other in a mostly light-hearted sequence. It’s lighthearted because so little is at stake: we know that none of the Avengers is actually going to be killed. Usually in any narrative, low stakes are a reason not to care about what’s happening, but in this case, the low stakes are a relief.

I found myself enjoying this scene all the more because it wasn’t an excuse for rampant destruction of whole city blocks. Instead, the writers and directors punctuate this scene, which takes place at an airplane hangar, with a flurry of mini-conversations between all these characters (Captain America, Iron Man, Falcon, Hawkeye, Black Widow, etc) as they spar with each other. Ant-Man (played by Paul Rudd) cuts every moment down to size with a dumb joke. (He may be the least respected and most undervalued of all superheroes.) And the sequence showcases the amusing, cocksure arrogance of a young Spider-Man (Tom Holland).

Of course, the great heretofore unacknowledged joke of most superhero movies is that the heroes end up destroying the city in an attempt to save it. We see some all-powerful evil agent smashing cars and toppling buildings, and the heroes are forced to add to the destruction, though we assume it’s out of necessity. These movies gleefully stage enormous battle sequences that should kill thousands of human beings, but because the films are targeted at kids, we’re supposed to be okay with it. And, conveniently, nothing too horrible ever happens to a discernable human being. (Don Cheadle does get hurt pretty bad in this one, but he’s one of the heroes, not some innocent bystander.) It’s nice that Captain America: Civil War incorporates this joke/problem into its story.

The rest of the film vacillates between mindless, sped-up action sequences and little dramatic exchanges reminiscent of The Young and the Restless. The Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) is traumatized when she uses her powers and accidentally destroys a whole building. (This is the impetus for the disputed U.N. treaty.) Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is still haunted by the deaths of his parents. Captain America has a little romance brewing with CIA agent Sharon Carter (Emily Van Camp, who has a real screen presence). There are others, but I’ve already forgotten them. These dramatic moments don’t ever really pop, perhaps because they’re cloaked in sameness. The film certainly has a rhythm, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo are smart enough to give the audience little breaks between all the fighting. But they seem to have only two approaches to a scene: make it fast or make it slow. Perhaps we wouldn’t need so many breaks from the action if it were meaningful and not mindless, if it were artful and clever and exciting and not merely overwhelming and predictable.

I tried hard to discern what was going on during those moments of fighting between multiple characters. The action is sped up so much that it’s impossible to sort out what amounts to a jumble of images. Is this supposed to be entertaining? Don’t people find it chaotic and therefore impossible to connect with or enjoy? I realize that these films appeal to viewers as mindless entertainment, but how is it entertaining when you can’t even tell what’s happening? Whenever filmmakers overly rely on shaky cameras and rapid editing, my assumption is that they’re covering up their ineptitude, hoping we’ll give them credit for putting something up there, whether it possesses visual logic or not, whether it’s well-choreographed or not.

Action—whether derived from a comic book or not—doesn’t have to be this way. See John Wick, and you’ll see how to make a mindless action movie with real visual elegance. Of course, John Wick is also R-rated, and it’s likely that the need to make a PG-13 rating prevents movies like Captain America from reaching the glorious heights of violence that John Wick enjoys. But sanitizing the violence in order to make it kid-appropriate is actually worse: it diminishes the shock factor. A movie like John Wick never ceases to shock me, to convey the reality that violence can wreak havoc in people and places and cause real physical pain. What we need are more real, sharp comic book movies and less of this vague, “cleaned-up” drek.

But at least there are lots of familiar faces that unexpectedly pop up. Jeremy Renner appears (as Hawkeye) in the last third of the movie. As irritating as it is to see a character (played by such a great actor as Jeremy Renner) introduced so late in the film, his presence filled me with gratitude. And Tom Holland makes a good impression as Peter Parker. (Even though Andrew Garfield was terrific in the role.) The scene where Tony Stark enlists Spider-Man’s help is the best one in the movie: it’s funny and revealing and has some shape to it. We see Peter Parker coming to grips with the nature and the implications of his power; we see Tony Stark at his most desperate, making a trip to Queens to ask for a high school kid’s help. (But aren’t we all tired of Robert Downey, Jr.’s shtick by now? He’s been playing the smart-ass smart guy for over a decade.)

Somehow, Scarlett Johansson gets lost in all this. She’s a terrific actress, and certainly skillful in her many fight scenes, but she—like so many others—gets relegated to the sidelines as the film introduces more and more characters. The end result: it’s forgettable but intermittently amusing. Anthony Mackie, who plays Falcon, is a pleasure to watch. Mackie has charm to spare, and he always seems to be having a good time whenever he’s on screen. With Don Cheadle, Paul Bettany, Chadwick Boseman (as the Black Panther), Sebastian Stan, Frank Grillo, William Hurt, Marissa Tomei, and Daniel Brühl.

Chef

It's the most conveniently worked out movie I've seen in a long time, and yet Chef is the most fun movie I've seen this year (so far). It's an utterly joyous, unashamed foodie road trip movie about a once celebrated chef named Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) whose public meltdown (when he confronts a food critic who trashed him) goes viral and ends up completely uprooting his life. Casper was once the darling of the culinary world, but now he's old hat. For the past decade he's seemingly been in an ideal position as head chef at a well-known restaurant in California, but secretly it's confined him, made him unhappy and forced him to settle for a routine. Moreover, things are not great between him and his 10-year-old son Percy (played with delightful matter-of-factness by Emjay Anthony). Percy hasn't adjusted to his parents' divorce, even though they have the most amicable broken marriage in history.

But then, Carl gives in to his ex-wife's suggestion that he purchase a food truck and start making the recipes he's good at and wants to make. This suggestion--which Carl predictably balks at initially--proves to be a winner, and provides a framework for a new bond between father and son. They all go to Miami to grab the truck, and then Carl, his son, and Carl's long-time colleague (John Leguizamo) who also conveniently shows up to join in their grand foodventure, trek across country making Cubans, beignets, and assorted other delicious delicacies as they head back to California.

Jon Favreau wrote and directed Chef, and he captures the zeal of a foodie in this movie: We get to see the mouth-watering recipes that Carl cooks up, and the delight that appears on his face when he discovers a new, delicious dish, and the art that food can conjure up. It's perhaps the most accessible art form there is.

But I can already hear the critical voices in my head. I heard them last night in the theater about an hour into the movie. I looked at one of the friends with whom I was sitting and both of us were thinking, "something has to go wrong, right?" We were waiting and waiting for a problem to arrive. Granted, the film did have an initial problem, that being Carl Casper's embarrassing viral video fiasco and the subsequent destruction of his career. But things pick up very fast, and everything is all the more convenient for Carl because his ex-wife is supportive in a way that seems totally unrealistic. My inner-critic and my movie-watching past had primed me for some other contrived conflict to be inserted into the narrative. That moment, that conflict, never came. And we were left thinking, should we be okay with this? Is Chef too easy on its characters? Does everything work out too conveniently?

Oh right. It's a movie. And thank you Chef for giving us a movie that is a freaking movie. It's just so rare these days to find one that doesn't want to throw millions of contrived obstacles in its characters' paths. Yes, the events in Chef, the people in Chef, are perhaps unrealistic. The ex-wife (played with verve by Sofia Vergara) is so obviously still in love with Carl (and he with her) that you just know they're going to get back together. It's like The Parent Trap. And the son so desperately longs to be a part of Carl's world, that Carl's myopic inability to get to know his son (at first) seems to be the only real contrivance here. In fact, it was Jon Favreau's character that threatened to be the one annoying thing about this movie. For the first twenty minutes, as we watch him self-destruct, he's very obviously his own worst enemy. And that did get on my nerves. But things quickly change for the better, and this movie won me over thoroughly. And at least there were big things at stake in this movie: Carl's career, his relationship with his son, his own belief in himself.

There's another side to Chef that makes it culturally very relevant, or maybe just culturally amusing, actually. The film taps into the way the internet has revolutionized how we live and interact with each other. Favreau paints himself as the typically technologically-inept grown-up, whose son runs rings around him with a smart phone and uses Twitter (a website which Carl often amusingly fails to understand) to advertise the whereabouts of their food truck. In fact, it is Carl's ineptitude that triggers the whole movie: what he imagines to be a private message (via Twitter) to the food critic who slammed him, is actually seen by all and eventually passed on to thousands and thousands of people. Perhaps this movie was funded by Twitter? It can be difficult to distinguish between a movie that plugs a giant social media site and one that shows us how it has affected us. Chef falls into the second category.

For some time now I've wondered how movies would change as a result of the cell phone age and the internet age, and how movies would depict characters interacting with their gadgets, and I think Chef does a fine job of this. It makes use of these new things that seem to be taking over more and more parts of our lives, and manages to show us the best and the worst about them with a sense of humor. Perhaps the best example of a movie critiquing our gadget addiction is Don Jon, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt comedy in which his character's sister is always glued to her phone, and barely speaks a word through the entire film.

Finally, I once again feel the need to defend Chef. Yes, yes, yes, it is too damned easy. Everything just works out so nicely. But it was such a pleasure to watch, such a happy, energetic, likable movie, that I don't care. I hope people will give this movie a chance and not resort to picking its story apart because we're all so used to something more cynical in our entertainment, even when it comes to our comedies. With Scarlet Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Amy Sedaris (in a very funny cameo as Carl's ex-wife's publicist), Robert Downey, Jr., Bobby Cannavale, and Oliver Platt (as the food critic).

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) is a movie that tries too hard to be clever. The script, by director Shane Black, is hack work trying to pass itself off as hip, post-modern, meta-noir. That's a lofty goal, considering this is supposed to be a tribute to pulpy crime novels and film noir. It's too carefully self-aware to work. (Black borrowed the title from a 1966 Italian spy movie, as did film critic Pauline Kael, for her second book of movie criticism. Kael observed that those words aptly described the appeal of movies, in a nutshell.)

It's not that Kiss Kiss Bang Bang doesn't have appeal. Robert Downey, Jr. and Val Kilmer are both fun performers, and they're well-paired: Downey plays an up-and-coming actor who's shadowing Kilmer, a gay private eye, so he can be better prepared for a movie role. Downey also narrates, and periodically his narration makes little ironic commentary that's supposed to make light of bad or unclear plot progressions. But instead it just feels like the work of an amateur. And the over-complicated plot, which is supposed to be an homage, feels thoroughly disengaging and disconcertingly practical. Every action seems to be a vehicle for a bad joke. (There's even a character whose name is Flicka, purely so someone can reference her as "my friend Flicka." If that's Shane Black's idea of being clever, I'm out.)

The characters vacillate between participating in the contrived murder plot, and commenting on it with facetious omnipotence. It feels like a cop-out. With Michelle Monaghan, Corbin Bernsen, and Larry Miller. 103 mins.

Weird Science

Risky Business meets Frankenstein. Two unpopular high school boys (Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan-Mitchell Smith) use a computer to design the perfect girl. To their surprise, it actually works. Kelly LeBrock's performance, as the man-made beauty who helps her makers become less uptight, is this movie's most obvious charm. She's a lot of fun, and when the movie takes a turn for the chaotic (during a big party scene, where a gang of mutants trashes the house), her casual, go-with-the-flow mood is a welcome respite. This isn't the smartest comedy writer-director John Hughes ever came up with. It's too much of a male wish fulfillment fantasy. But it's got some fun moments, and a few up-and-coming actors turn up here in supporting roles: Robert Downey Jr., Bill Paxton, Robert Rusler, and Suzanne Snyder. Followed by a short-lived television series. 1985

Zodiac

With Halloween nearing, I thought it appropriate to revisit a movie that's particularly chilling this time of year, the David Fincher-directed Zodiac (2007), which I think is one of the finest movies of its decade. Fincher is perhaps better known for directing the grisly thriller Seven (1995) and more recently The Social Network.

Zodiac is based on the book by Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle who's there when the first letter from the Zodiac, a serial killer who first struck in the Bay area in the late 1960s, arrives, confessing to a recent murder and to a double murder from a year earlier, and taunting the press and the police with a bizarre cipher revealing some important but ambiguous information about the killer's identity.

Fincher doesn't present the movie as a prying look into the deranged mind of a serial killer. Instead, the movie taps into the fascination of the public with true crime stories. Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) becomes obsessed with the case to the point of losing his job and alienating his family. Likewise, a reporter named Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.) languishes in a life of drugs and boozing after he is unable to figure out the identity of the killer (who begins sending him ominous letters--including a Halloween card containing bloody cloth from one of the victims-- after Avery suggests in an article that the Zodiac is a "latent homosexual").

One of the things that struck me about the Zodiac movie when I first saw it was the way it so meticulously recreates the look and feel of 1960's San Francisco--or at least, the way I imagine San Francisco looked in the late 1960s. (Not having been alive or in San Francisco at the time, I suppose I'm not the most qualified judge of Fincher's skill at period detail).

Watching it again, it began to register how much the movie focuses on the horror of obsession over the horror of the crimes. The crimes are displayed fairly prominently in the first hour, but Fincher doesn't revel in the violence. The editing and the lighting make it look real without the need for plunging knives and exit wounds--and our minds do the rest. We imagine the horror and pain of the victims, and it in turn horrifies us.

But there were a number of crimes the Zodiac confessed to that he didn't do (likely, more than the ones he did commit). The red herrings are in fact equally as creepy. (Gyllenhaal winds up in the home of a possible Zodiac suspect, and it's the most chilling moment in the movie). Mark Ruffalo, a San Francisco cop who's trying to solve one of the murders, is equally caught up in the sensationalism of the crimes, until he too is burned out by the labyrinthine angles and clues and possibilities and the bureaucratic miscommunication between multiple police departments.

At the end we have a movie that taints us with the fascination of the Zodiac--we are left with the elusiveness of the story, and we have shared in the obsession of the main characters. It's a terrific movie, and one I'm always eager to revisit. ★★★★

Sherlock Holmes

"'My dear fellow,' said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, 'life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.'"

-from "A Case of Identity," The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

As the saying goes: "Don't kill the messenger." The latest incarnation of Doyle's immortal British sleuth (Robert Downey Jr. here, upon whose performance and casting choice I remain undecided) is big and booming and loud...and a bit limp amidst all the frenzy of action, explosions, and the like. Perhaps Guy Ritchie was the wrong choice to direct this film. I found its scale disappointingly large, with all the more room to fall given its self-conceived grandeur. The mystery was less than mesmerizing in its attempt to cash in on the magic motif that has served other blockbusters so well of late. I have read some Sherlock Holmes, including the volume of short stories from which the above citation comes, as well as the classic novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, and I could never have imagined the behemoth that took place on screen coming from the pages of Doyle's work.

That said, the movie isn't terrible, just average. Good performances, particularly a well cast Jude Law as Holmes's amiable chum Dr. Watson and Rachel McAdams as a scheming American with whom Sherlock feels a slight romantic affection, made the film less irritating. However, there are just so many ridiculously unbelievable brawls and chase scenes and explosions one can manage. At just over two hours, the film should have been a lot more fun without trying so hard, and the mystery should have been more spine-tingling and less a pastiche of magical villains, superhero movies, and doses of the occult (which could have been explored with more historical perspective and curiosity given Victorian England's fascination with the subject).

The script was laced with humor, eliciting fairly frequent laughs; unfortunately the film was either too gimmicky and cartoonish or too reminiscent of something from Marvel comics. I was waiting for Dr. Watson to caution Holmes that old adage, "with great power comes great responsibility." Indeed. ★★