Deadpool 2 (4/5 Stars)

Deadpool 2 makes such a big deal about its sub-class of superheroes. In one scene, as Deadpool wanders about the X-Men superfortress, he wonders where everyone else is. Didn’t this movie get the rights to anybody other than Colossus and what’s her name!? (A room full of the important X-Men quickly close there doors upon a glimpse). That is unfair. Deadpool does not lack for great superheroes. Well, perhaps not great but at least very fun superheroes. Take Deadpool, just by himself. Here is a man who that cannot die and does not care whether or not he lives or even gets hurt. Demonstrating how indestructible he is, he attempts to kill himself by incineration at the beginning of the movie. He literally lies on a bunch of gas barrels, drops in a lighter, and blows himself up into many pieces. No doing. He can’t die and just how he survives these sorts of things is fodder for many jokes, most made by Deadpool himself, an accomplished wisecracker.

The next most fun is Domino (the more diverse and genderfied version of Longshot, my favorite superhero who I guess will never make it into a superhero movie now). Domino’s superpower is luck. She just gets lucky all the time. “Luck is not a superpower” retorts Deadpool. Well, what if you gave a dumb excuse to a movie production team and several screenwriters to make sure you escape in the most profound and unexpected ways from many many dangers. Yes, that just might be a superpower. Then there are the big guys like Colussus and Juggernaut. At one point they use their big metal fists to pound on each other. It’s fun.

You have already seen the plot of Deadpool 2. This engagingly humorous derivative product of superhero movies basically copies the twists and turns of two great prior movies Terminator and Looper. Terminator concerned a bad guy from the future who was on a mission to kill a hero before he became great. Looper a derivative of Terminator with a twist concerned a good guy heading back to kill a future bad guy, who at that point was still an innocent child. Deadpool 2 has the same exact plot, and it speaks to the power of these particular story-lines that they continue to have such power. It certainly works here. Why? Because time-travel is about regret, and that is universal. Deadpool is an ugly outcast second rate superhero (regret). Deadpool failed his loved ones (regret). Deadpool wants to help a child be a better person than he turned out to be (regret). Deadpool is one of us, just immortal and with a far more developed sense of humor.

I confess I did not like at all the first twenty minutes of Deadpool 2. A deep tragedy occurs in that time and, no, the sarcastic opening titles could not make me feel any shallower about it. Not until did I realize that time travel was going to be involved did I start to feel like I was allowed to have a good time. When Cable (played by Josh Brolin a fine straight man counterpoint to Ryan Reynolds wild and crazy Deadpool), a Terminator knockoff, finally shows up trying to change the past, I was finally okay, nothing matters, they’ll figure out how to change the past at some point here. Of course they do, and many other things that did not need to be changed at all.

I want to give a shout out to the soundtrack of Deadpool 2, the songs of which the movie would have you believe it is playing ironically. Yeah right, these guys obviously love Celine Dion and Barbara Streisand. And why wouldn’t they, they’re the best. Deadpool 2 also contains an extraordinary acoustic version of A-ha’s “Take on Me”. I had to mention it to the people I saw this movie with around 3-4 times before I got them to admit that they too believed it was great. There is no shame when your heart is in the right place, that’s what Deadpool 2 teaches us about life.

Disobedience (3/5 Stars)

I confess that I wanted this movie to be worse. Part of the reason I saw it at all had to do with the promised outrageous scandal of the Hasidic Jewish lesbian love affair between actresses Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. A bad movie might have been hilarious and/or sexy. Unfortunately and fortunately this turned out to be a good movie about the forbidden romance of two Hasidic Jewish lesbians. Sexy at times yes, but not hilarious, and at some points rather touching. In fact, for the first time in an untold amount of movies, the conclusion to this particular type of story had a conservative bent. For once, sexual liberation does not get the upper hand in its age old war against traditional community values.

We find Ronit Krushka (played by Rachel Weisz) in New York. She works as a photographer. She ice skates. She drinks. She has casual sex with strange men. Then she receives a phone call. Her father, a venerated rabbi in a tightly bound Hasidic Jewish community in London has died. She has been outcast for some time.

She returns home. Everyone is surprised to see her but greet her with politeness. She first comes to the house of Dovid Kuperman (played by Alessandro Nivola). The funeral ceremonies are being held there because he was an important pupil of the rabbi. Its awkward though because Ronit and Dovid were in a relationship when she left for good. A further twist develops when the reason she the leave enters the room as Dovid’s now wife, one Esti Kuperman (played by Rachel McAdams). Esti it is established is lesbian. Ronit seems like she is bisexual. In any case, their relationship was frowned upon and Ronit simply left the community. Esti married Dovid.

For the most part, this movie follows the forbidden love genre track. It is a Romeo and Juliet storyline: the two lovers against the unjust world. Until, quite amazingly, it doesn’t follow through. There is something strange about this community. For all its stifling conformity, it is apparent that Ronit misses being apart of it. Witness her trying on a wig and keeping it on for a day. Look at the way she enviously eyes those she has left behind in the coffee shop. Then there is Esti. She finds Ronit more attractive than her husband, but she doesn’t want to elope to New York. She likes these people. There is even a scene where the husband is teaching Torah to some pimply faced teenage boys. They are studying a passage in which sex is the main feature. The boys interpret the passage as simply expressing physical pleasure. But, points out Dovid, isn’t there a type of love that is more than that?

What saves this movie from being a simple polemic against homosexuality is the main theme of it. It does not present the question as just dogma: if you don’t do as we say you will go to hell. It presents an actual choice. You can choose self-fulfillment in this particular way that this community does not recognize, or you can choose this community. The movie suggests that the latter can be a real choice made by a real person who is not brainwashed and not being abused by this community. That is, being part of this community might actually be worth the sacrifice being made. The point though is that the morality of the question necessarily depends on the choice of the individual. It is a question so fundamental to one’s identity that it needs to be independently made. What I love about this movie is that it asserts a free-thinking individual can assert an unselfish identity. There is rightly much cynicism about this topic, but yes, ultimately I believe it too.

The Avengers: Infinity War (5/5 Stars)

The last time a movie franchise achieved something akin to what Avengers: Infinity War accomplishes had to be The Lord of the Rings. That epic multi-Oscar winning movie was itself the third installment of a cohesive and perfectly realized trilogy of movies based on revered source material. Avengers: Infinity War leap-frogs that accomplishment. This movie is the culmination not of a trilogy but a universe of interconnected movies that spans nineteen films. Perhaps the HBO series Game of Thrones is the closest thing, but that TV series is still not of the same scale nor found in so many variations as the Marvel franchises that have climaxed into Infinity War. No, there really is nothing quite like Avengers: Infinity War in the history of movies.

Avengers: Infinity War has seventeen credited writers. It has two directors, Anthony and Joe Russo. It tells a story that attempts to involve all of Marvel’s outstanding franchises. These include:

Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man); Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Pots); Don Cheadle (James Rhodes/War Machine), Samuel L. Jackson (himself)

Thor: Chris Hemsworth (Thor); Tom Hiddleston (Loki); Idris Elba (Heimdall); Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk); Peter Dinkalge (Eitri)

Captain America: Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America); Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow); Paul Bettany (Vision); Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch); Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson/Falcon); Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier)

Guardians of the Galaxy: Chris Pratt (Peter Quill/Star-Lord); Zoe Saldana (Gamora); Karen Gillan (Nebula); Pom Klementieff (Mantis); Dave Bautista (Drax); Vin Diesel (Groot); Bradley Cooper (Rocket); Josh Brolin (Thanos)

Dr. Strange: Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange); Benedict Wong (Wong)

Spider-Man: Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man)

Black Panther: Chadwick Boseman (T’Challa/Black Panther); Danai Gurira (Okoye); Letitia Wright (Shuri)

Any of these franchises can and have carried a great movie on their own. (In particular, since 2013 Marvel has made a stretch of great movies including Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor:Ragnarok, and Black Panther). So one of the great obstacles Infinity War had to overcome is how to fit all the above in the same movie giving each and every character their own moment to shine. Amazingly, this is done. All of the above share this movie in equal heft and have their own moments to shine. I’m not sure how seventeen writers and two directors go about doing something like that, but its time to start handing out Oscars.

What may to be the hardest thing to accomplish is how consistently funny the movie is. I say this because there are two big things fighting against it. The first is that the main villain, Thanos (played by Josh Brolin) is trying and succeeding throughout the movie to kill off half of the universe. It is heavy stuff and is taken quite seriously, not least by Thanos. Two important characters from the Thor franchise, Loki and Heimdall, die in the first fifteen minutes. Another important character from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise dies at the half-way point. At the end, well, it seems like half the characters die. I won’t tell you which half, that would be a spoiler. The second is that this is an action-heavy blockbuster and huge spectacles and jokes generally do not generally complement each other. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs working is the first Ghostbusters movie. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs not working is the Ghostbusters remake. But in Infinity Wars, every joke lands. Dr. Strange is funny, Thor is funny, Star-Lord and Drax are funny, Spider-man is funny. Some characters are generally funnier than others. For instance Captain America and Black Panther were never particularly humorous, but almost everyone has their moments. There is also the added pleasure of seeing various characters interacting for the first time. At one point Thor meets up with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Bruce Banner has a scientific conversation with Shuri in Wakaanda. Dr. Strange and Tony Stark have this dialogue upon meeting.

Tony Stark: Nice cape. What's your job, again?

Dr. Strange: Protecting your reality, douchebag.

Infinity War is supposedly only the first of a two part movie, the other coming out next year. In that case, it is hard to judge the overall story at this point. But really, given how well this movie did what it set out to do, how could it be bad? Marvel is at its peak and the movies it has been making deserve to start getting serious recognition and not just for special effects. I expect Black Panther will run away with a serious amount of Oscars next year. Perhaps the year after Infinity War 2 will take the ultimate prize. As far as I’m concerned, Marvel has already earned it. At this moment, They are the best in the business.