ANT-MAN, JURASSIC WORLD, SAN ANDREAS - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - MySummer of 75 versus My Summer of 2015: What a Difference 40 Yearsmakes! Ant-Man also opening night gala at 2015 FANTASIA INTERNATIONALFILM FESTIVAL in Montreal

What a difference 40 years makes! My Summer of Love in 1975 was replete, as per usual, with going to the movies every single day. My three favourite films that summer also happened to be big box-office hits. JAWS, of course, made history with its humungously wide release (the largest of its kind back in those days) and lineups round the block for every show, for every day. The picture itself was a roller coaster ride (and then some), but it also had a plot, characters, great performances and a morbid sense of humour. LOVE AND DEATH filled smaller specialty houses that summer in all major cities. Woody Allen's hilarious take on Ingmar Bergman and Russian Literature had me rolling in the aisles. Then, of course, the horrifying eye-opener MANDINGO by Richard Fleischer, the movie set against the backdrop of a pre-Civil-War slave-breeding plantation and so brutal and ahead of its time that even now it makes the dull Oscar bait 12 Years a Slave look like a Sunday Picnic. Not only was Mandingo huge (lineups round the block), but it was aimed squarely at - GOD FORBID - adults.

In fact, all three pictures had far wider appeal than any blockbusters released this summer, the sad summer of 2015. Taking inflation into account, 1975's summer pictures had far more bums in seats in far fewer cinemas for longer periods of time than anything supposedly breaking box-office records this summer. Watching my three favourite blockbusters this year (Ant-Man, Jurassic World, San Andreas), all pleasantly entertaining, all very competent, but generally safe for anyone's consumption has proven to be especially disappointing. (I don't really include Mad Max: Fury Road in this list as it's a real movie and far more in keeping with pictures released during my 75 Summer o' Love.) These three films with their superhero, dino and earthquake shenanigans, are ultimately missing the kind of personal voices of filmmakers like Spielberg, Allen and Fleischer. The "Safety" factor with these films (and most movies out of the studios today) is borderline sickening. I can assure you, "Safety" was never an issue in the 70s. The more dangerous the pictures, the better - even those in the mainstream.

Ant-Man (2015)
Dir. Peyton Reed
Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lily, Michael Peña

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is yet another Marvel Comics Superhero extravaganza, not as awful as the others and relatively inoffensive. In this one, ne'er do well Daddy (Paul Rudd) gets out of the hoosegow and hooks up with old buddy (Michael Peña, as the de rigueur Spanish-American sidekick comedy relief) and agrees to pull a cat burglar job to get enough dough to win his daughter back from his ex-wife. Another ne'er do well Dad (Michael Douglas), an old scientist who abandoned his daughter when his wife died and allowed his assistant to take over his corporation is worried sick that his secret experiments will be discovered and used for nefarious purposes. The two Daddies team up to fight the power and a new superhero is born.

The movie is amiable enough, not without some laughs, a nice light leading man turn by Rudd and Michael Douglas is allowed a few sprightly moments. The direction of the action scenes is better than most of these things, but not once is there a moment where we feel the slightest hint of danger in the proceedings and the picture's denouement is as predictable as ingesting a Big Mac. There's certainly nothing genuinely dark, nasty or cynical in the film which, of course, is always the problem with these things and it's certainly lacking the magnificently manic Looney Tunes hi-jinx Sam Raimi brought to the Spider-Man franchise before the recent and utterly negligible reboots (and it is most certainly bereft of Zack Snyder's breathless visual aplomb and his hilarious destruction of humanity via collateral damage in Man of Steel).

Finally, like all recent superhero pictures, the predictability factor reaches a point where the whole movie starts to become dull and exhausting (though less so than the awful Avengers/Captain America/non-Raimi Spiderman efforts). If anything, Ant-Man comes a bit closer to the first Iron Man and the first hour of Thor, but is lacking those film's occasionally cynical sense of humour.

Safety and competence are the order of the day. Ho-hum.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **½ Two-and-a-half Stars

Jurassic World (2015)
Dir. Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Steven Spielberg's Jurassic franchise is interesting on a number of fronts. The first film in the series featured astonishing special effects - so real and tangible that today's reliance upon digital magic seems fake and ugly. Oddly, Spielberg eschewed the grim, grotesque, ultra-violent nastiness of Michael Crichton's novel and he delivered a movie that safely played to anyone and everyone. It was no Jaws. Kids were not eaten, the dinosaurs weren't especially cruel in their torture/decimation of their victims and there was nary a real character amongst the entire all-star cast. How one missed the likes of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. The Lost World took a lot of heat from critics and audiences for its derivative nature, but frankly, it was an improvement over the dullish Jurassic Park, featuring plenty of feeding frenzies which were closer to the nastiness inherent in the Crichton books and though lacking the genuine edge of Jaws, was still plenty vicious.

There's no viciousness in Jurassic World, save for the fun supporting performance of Vincent D'Onofrio as the park's crazed militaristic director of security. Here director Colin Trevorrow jockeys the camera with relative efficiency as this reboot of the franchise has the park up and running successfully. We get a pleasing leading man by way of the raptor expert and dinosaur trainer (Guardian of the Galaxy's Chris Pratt) and though there are plenty of children to die miserable deaths in the jaws of the romping Dinos, no such kiddie buffets occur.

All we get is the plodding predictability of the new hybrid of dinosaur escaping and Chris Pratt rescuing two fucking kids who deserve to die.

Seriously, who wants to see a movie with Dinosaurs where no children get torn to shreds (a la Jaws or even Joe Dante's hilarious Jaws rip-off Piranha)? If there are going to be bloodthirsty dinosaurs we want to see as many innocent children (and adults) being eaten and crushed as possible.

No such luck, though. We're living in kinder, gentler times where the new generations of movie viewers are the progeny of wimps.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **½ Two-and-a-half Stars

San Andreas (2015)
Dir. Brad Peyton
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Paul Giamatti

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When the San Andreas fault genuinely wreaks some real havoc, the level of death and destruction is going to be so massive and vicious that I was hoping to see some delightful over-the-top (and, of course, hilarious) carnage in this contemporary disaster film. Given that the picture is directed by the crazed Edward-Gorey-Tim-Burton-influenced Canadian Brad Peyton, I had every reason to suspect the kind of nasty, funny dollops of humour he infused Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island with.

No such luck here. Peyton handles all the derring-do of helicopter rescue man Dwayne Johnson with expert efficiency and effortlessly juggles the melodramatic sub-plot of our hero re-connecting with estranged wife Carla Gugino and rescuing his daughter Alexandra Daddario from certain doom. Yes, we get to see mega-destruction of property, but frankly, the movie is lacking the kind of super-delightful up-close-and-personal deaths of live humans which, of course, one demands from a disaster movie.

A year earlier than my aforementioned Summer of Movie Love, the huge 1974 summer blockbuster was Mark Robson's magnificent Earthquake which not only had lots of gruesome deaths and on-screen body counts, but also featured a 59-year-old Lorne Greene playing 52-year-old Ava Gardner's father and Charlton Heston playing her 50-year-old husband. This insane casting allowed us plenty of time to do the math twixt the carnage and realize that Lorne Greene was about 7-years-old when his wife gave birth to Ava Gardner.

Herein is my disappointment. Peyton's first two Hollywood efforts were chock-full of personal touches and his unique voice that he established in his legendary short film Evelyn The Cutest Evil Dead Girl and What It's Like Being Alone, his madcap Canadian comedy series (all rendered in stop-motion animation) and set in an orphanage full of FREAKS!!! Yes, FREAKS!!!

So here he's doing a disaster movie and I was definitely expecting carnage and insanity to rival that of Earthquake since Peyton is a clear lover of all the right retro stuff. But no, nothing of the sort. Just "The Rock" stalwartly rescuing his goddamn daughter.

Where, pray tell, was the equivalent to the delectably offensive running gag of an alcoholic played by Walter Matthau, giddily surviving the disaster whilst belting back booze as everything crumbled around him? Why, do we see "The Rock" using his steely resolve and expert training to rescue people? Couldn't Peyton have found it in his heart to include a moment a la Earthquake where Lorne Greene ties a hysterical woman to a chair, then lowers her to safety with - I kid you not - PANTYHOSE!!!??? And horror of all horrors - was it not possible to create a role for the legendary George Kennedy (who not only starred in Earthquake, but has the distinction of having starred in all four Airport movies)? Hell, even though Kennedy's 90-years-old and might not have been up to a major role in San Andreas, surely there was an obvious choice here. Given the ridiculously huge amount of CGI in San Andreas, was it not possible to render s digital version of George Kennedy to be "The Rock's" cigar-chomping sidekick?

Ah, the disappointment. The shame. Peyton was the one director with the genuine potential to drag us through the 70s muck of blockbusters from 40-years-ago and instead we get a safe, efficient disaster movie instead.

Whatever is this world coming to?

THE FILM CORNER RATING **½ Two-and-a-half Stars

Full disclosure: Brad Peyton was a student of mine at the Canadian Film Centre. Not long after he was snatched up by Hollywood in 2009, Peyton revealed the following in the National Post:

"[Peyton] credits director in residence John Paizs and producer in residence Greg Klymkiw with being particularly helpful. "I went in with a very distinct idea of what I wanted to do," he says, "and they were supportive of my creative risks. I was handed the strange stuff because I was considered the weirdo in residence."

He laughs, "I was doing Coen brothers homages to Gone With the Wind on a $500 budget in a small room . . . they embraced what I wanted to do and supported me wholly as a creative person." Peyton further paid homage to his old mentor by creating a character for his TV series called "Greg Klymkiw" (an actual stop-motion doll resembling me in every detail, although representing my circus freak days when I was 300 lbs. heavier than I currently am) who shows up as an expert on all things cinema-related to render advice during a filmmaking competition within the orphanage of freaks.

Ah, surely you understand my pain.

Especially the George Kennedy thing.

All three films are in mega-wide-release worldwide. Ant-Man enjoys its premiere as an Opening Night Gala at the 2015 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL in Montreal. For Times, Tix and Dates Visit the festival website HERE.

MAN OF STEEL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Best Superhero Comicbook Movie Since Raimi's Spider-Man Series

Man of Steel (2013) ****
Dir. Zack Snyder
Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, Laurence Fishburne

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I've never understood why director Zack Snyder is looked upon as a hack. Yes, he's humourless, but so is Christopher Nolan who frankly, isn't one pubic hair the director Snyder is. Snyder, you see, can direct. Nolan can't. Snyder has a natural affinity for shooting action. Nolan has little affinity for anything - especially action where he's a total tin-eye with no sense of composition or spatial geography. Stylistically, Snyder has genuine flair, but Nolan is possessed with little more than obvious, ham-fisted fakery that bamboozles the Great Unwashed as well, and rather inexplicably, all the others who simply should know better.

And now, here we be, at sea, with a new vessel containing yet another superhero franchise reboot. However, in spite of the clear divide between the two aforementioned men of the cinema, they're working as a team on it. Not a bad team, either. Nolan's got producing and co-writing duties whilst Snyder helms and results, happily, in Man of Steel, the best superhero comic book movie since the Sam Raimi Spider-Man series.

It's not as gobsmackingly phenomenal as Spider-Man 2 (which unleashed Raimi's mad sense of humour in all its glory), but Man of Steel does come closer to the dour sensibilities of Spidey 1 & 3. Frankly, this doesn't at all bother me. Great superhero comic books are, at their core, rife with darkness and when or if humour creeps in (not tongue in cheek, mind you), then it's a few extra maraschino cherries on the choco sundae. That said, if one's ice cream is rich, flavourful and drizzled with taste-bud bursting syrup, the cherries are nice, but not necessary.

Snyder hasn't attained the heights of Raimi's "Master" status, but I suspect he eventually might - albeit in his own unique fashion. Here he directs David Goyer's script with the same resolve he brought to bear on 300 and his compulsively obsessive flourishes on Watchmen (and lest we forget, the criminally underrated Sucker Punch). It results, in the parlance of a crotchety and late lamented old film distributor I knew, "One helluva good show!!!"

By now, we're all familiar with the ins and outs of this tale from both the comics and previous big and small screen incarnations. Krypton is a doomed planet. Scientist Jor-El (Russell Crowe) puts his newborn babe on a spaceship bound for Earth before the planet explodes. Like Baby Moses in the bullrushes, the child is discovered in the cornfields owned by the All-American Kents (Kevin Costner, Diane Lane). The childless farm couple adopts the baby as their own, christen him "Clark" and hide the evidence of the space craft. They know this is one special baby and fear what the government might do if the kid is found to be an alien.

Baby Moses grows up to be Baby Jesus and with the threat of world wide annihilation at the hands of the evil Krypton war-monger General Zod (Michael Shannon), Clark (Henry Cavill) becomes Superman and enters into all-out battle to save mankind whilst getting all google-eyed with intrepid Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams).

Goyer, who wrote all of Nolan's lamentable Batman pictures, here delivers an engaging structure rooted in flashback with an accent upon the science fiction elements of the old chestnut that have never been adequately plumbed. Add to this, the near film noir post-war sensibilities, so prevalent in the original first season of the 50s Superman series with George Reeves and Man of Steel grandly delivers the goods and then some.

What sells the picture is Snyder's spectacular handling of the action pyrotechnics. It's everything one would want. He seldom stoops to the contemporary annoyance of too many close-ups and confusing machine-gunfire styled cutting. Great compositions, breathing room when necessary, plenty of wide, long and medium shots and a few terrific moments of nail-biting suspense all add up to "one helluva good show!"

Yes, Snyder employs a lot of rapid-fire cutting, but it smartly employs genuine PICTURE cutting so that everything serves the forward motion of narrative (even if the narrative often involves extreme pummelling and shit that blows up real good). The big difference between Snyder and his untalented colleagues (Christopher Nolan, J.J. Abrams, Sam Mendes, Justin Lin, Shane Black, Gary Ross, Joss Whedon and Marc Webb) is that his editors are never forced to resort to those awful cheats of using sound almost exclusively to propel a cut because the footage itself is so haphazard. Snyder's action moves furiously, yet seamlessly because we are responding to genuine visual cuts. Action - rooted in narrative and character, not just pyrotechnics - is what moves, so to speak, the action forward.

What Snyder has going for him here - in spite of the pseudo darkness Goyer slathers upon the story - is the pure joy he delivers in one stunning image after another. Snyder clearly loves the D.C. Superman series (from a variety of periods, it seems) and paints gorgeous comic book panels that spring magically to life and are never weighed down by either crushing portent nor, frankly, the utter moviemaking incompetence of the aforementioned list of non-directors who have nary a shred of ability to adequately render action sequences.

Narratively, the only scenes that weigh the film down are those involving the Daily Planet newsroom. Amy Adams is always wonderful and while I was happy to see her in the Lois Lane role, she's still well behind the gifts displayed by Phyllis Coates and Noel Neill in the 50s TV series and Margot Kidder in the Donner/Lester features. The worst element here is Laurence Fishburne as editor Perry White. He sleepwalks through his role and displays none of the snap, crackle and pop Perry needs (a la Jackie Cooper in the 80s). The result is an incredibly dull subplot during the action scenes involving the perils faced by the newsroom team. The last 45 minutes or so is devoted almost entirely to action sequences and the rhythm here occasionally sags under he weight of this stuff. It's not enough to destroy the climactic pyrotechnics, but one wishes the screenplay simply had excised the stuff for being one thread too many - especially since Fishburne is so dull here.

The cast, though, is generally first-rate. Henry Cavill is a fine Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman. George Reeves was, in the first truly great season of TV's Superman a bit more square-jawed, two-fisted and pudgier than Cavill; Christopher Reeve was funnier, more charming and imbued with nicely traditional good looks and Brandon Routh...well, he was...uh, well, he was Brandon Routh. Within the context of Goyer's revisionist take on the Superman legend, Cavill acquits himself very nicely in the bearded itinerant blue collar wanderer portion of Clark's life, transitions very well during the ice sanctuary sequence and once in full-blown vengeance mode, he's one kick-ass mo-fo. He seems less assured in the romance department, but part of this is how the role appears to be written and that I suspect he'd just come off idiotically if given a chance to shift gears into the almost Cary Grant-like charm of Christopher Reeve in Superman I and II. (Alas, we're given a hint in the Man of Steel coda-like dénouement that the sequel might well jettison this poor actor into that territory which, I suspect, he might not be up to.)

As for General Zod, are there better actors on this Green Earth than Michael Shannon? Well, maybe a few who are just as great, but none better. His varied character starring turns in Take Shelter, Bug, The Iceman, My Son My Son What Have Ye Done, not to mention his endless hit parade of astonishing supporting turns can now include a bona fide blockbuster villain. While he allows himself a few tastes of ham, his Zod is tremendously restrained (given the opportunities) and from time to time, we actually feel for his genuine passion for his planet and people, as well as experiencing the gradual shift to Hitlerian madness.

In supporting roles, Costner and Lane are ideally suited to the elder Kent Couple. Costner, still one of my favourite screen personalities is easing gracefully into these types of roles whilst Diane Lane is gorgeous and appealing as she always is. If she's had any "work" done on her visage, I can't see it. I doubt she has. This woman is ageless, radiant and sexy as all get-out. Most actresses need only to look in Lane's direction to realize what freaks they're making of themselves with Botox and plastic surgery. Lane, I suspect merely eats well, exercises and perhaps indulges in nightly applications of Oil of Olay. Whatever she does, the camera loves her while she in turn, loves it with her continued fresh, appealing and winning work as an actress.

A word about Russell Crowe as Jor-El is in order since for me, the definitive portrait of Superman's Kryptonian Dad is STILL the King of Corpulence, Marlon Brando. Who will ever forget Brando's insanely overpaid extended cameo in the Donner/Lester Superman pictures? Even now, I can hear Brando as he intones in his trademark nasal-tinged drawl:

"They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son."

Given that Crowe is a might pudgy these days, I'd have preferred it if he'd been afforded the opportunity to deliver all his lines with his nostrils clipped. Alas, he is not Brando-ized, but it's also a solid performance.

All in all, I think Goyer and Nolan have delivered a fine coat hanger for Superman's derring-do. The "darkness" isn't glopped on like melted butter over a corn cob at the carnival. It seems to come rather naturally out of the science fiction elements of the tale. I especially appreciated the childhood sequences wherein Clark is horrified by his powers. When he begins to develop his x-ray vision is genuinely harrowing. Why wouldn't it be? The kid's sitting in the classroom, gets a mo-fo of a headache then starts seeing everyone's innards. This would be enough to mess a kid up and it fits nicely into the latter sequences where Clark becomes a wandering lost soul. It's dramatically appealing and hardly the doom and gloom drudgery Nolan crapped out in The Dark Knight trilogy.

This Diet Coke "darkness" is perfect for a comic book picture - especially given that Snyder has both visual gifts and an eye for action. Man of Steel is precisely what this genre needed right now. A real filmmaker.

"Man of Steel" is currently in wide release via Warner Brothers.

IRON MAN 3 - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Iron Man 3 (2013) *
Dir. Shane Black
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, Stephanie Szostak, Miguel Ferrer, William Sadler

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The best thing about this lame sequel in an increasingly tedious franchise is SIR Ben Kingsley's first scene as mega-villain The Mandarin where the character's true colours are exposed. Sir Ben prances giddily into a bedroom equipped with two half-naked babes and crows with delight over his satisfying 20-minute bowel movement. We (predictably, I might add) discover Kingsley's character is little more than a failed regional theatre actor engaged as a public front for the real villain, mad scientist madman Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce). Only a gibbering gibbon wouldn't figure out within the first ten or so minutes who's actually behind the acts of terrorism that send the world into high-panic mode. This is also the only genuinely funny moment one will derive from the sheer drudgery of having to get through all 130 minutes of this dull, bloated superhero picture.

What we get is this. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr. with especially grotesque facial hair a la Reveen the Impossibilist) is withdrawing obsessively ever-further into his experiments. Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow - looking less equine these days, but still clod-hopping about as if she were a nag willingly on her way to the glue factory) is left to run the Stark Industries Corp. Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) has been promoted to head of security and annoys everyone by insisting they wear I.D. badges. Aldrich Killian, Pepper's unrequited admirer from long ago brings a business proposition to her and is subsequently turned down.

The Man They Call REVEEN is Tony Stark - IRONMAN

The Mandarin begins hijacking the airwaves to deliver warnings of doom and present as-they-happen acts of terrorism. When Happy is a victim of one of the attacks and lies vegetable-like in the hospital, Tony Stark makes it clear he's out for vengeance. The Mandarin destroys Tony's mansion. Our multi-billionaire superhero goes into hiding to regroup and is befriended by a cute kid who also helps him. Pepper gets kidnapped. The President of the United states (William Sadler) gets kidnapped.

Will Tony be up to the challenge?

You bet he will.

With the help of second banana Col. Rhodes (Don Cheadle - acting more and more like a grim-faced Stepin Fetchit), the obnoxious cute kid and his robot Jarvis (Paul Bettany's voice in full C3P0-mode), Iron Man/Tony rescues everyone, but not before we're forced to endure endless de rigueur herky-jerky action scenes that feel like they were directed by a chimpanzee on Benzedrine.

Iron Man 3 is just as haphazard and dull as Iron Man 2, but seeing as the picture is more of a sequel to the utterly abysmal The Avengers, it might actually be the worst of the lot.

No, let me take that back. Nothing's worse than The Avengers save, perhaps, for The Green Hornet. Director and co-writer Shane Black has acquitted himself reasonably well in the past as a competent scribe for action pictures, but seeing as his best script is still Lethal Weapon (the acclaimed script for his directorial debut Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang is too aware of its "cleverness" for my taste), he's ultimately - when you do the math - little more than a hack.

Iron Man 3 is a long way down from Jon Favreau's first Iron Man picture - an amiable, somewhat fresh and very funny outing. This one is insufferable, but as it's in the same mould as most other recent superhero Goodyear Blimps that new generations of movie-goers are perfectly happy to embrace, it's poised and destined to rack up huge grosses.

I need a palate-cleanser after seeing this, so I'll probably slap on one of Sam Raimi's terrific Spider-Man pictures. At least he's a real filmmaker. (And if you are planning on seeing the movie, you can save some dough by seeing it flat screen since the 3-D is annoying and doesn't add anything - as per usual, really.)

"Iron Man 3" is in wide mega-release all over the planet.

THE AVENGERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Dull, poorly directed superhero picture will appeal to those desperate for all the state of the art spectacle money can buy. All the rest, can stay away.

The Avengers (2012) dir. Joss Whedon *
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Clark Gregg, Stellan Skarsgård, Gwyneth Paltrow

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Call me a curmudgeon.

Call me a spoilsport.

Call me a snob.

Just don't call me Shirley.

The Avengers bored me to tears.

Anyone with an attention span will, I hope, have the same response.

There's not much to say. Asgard's shamed, exiled Loki (Tim Hiddleston), hooks up with some aliens to steal a cube of power in possession of Earth. He hypnotizes Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Professor Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) into helping him. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) pulls in Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and The Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) to team up and fight the power from the outer reaches of the universe. The super heroes squabble. They kiss and make up. They fight the bad guys. They win. The Earth is free.

Television writer-director Joss Whedon tosses out a few marginally smile-cracking lines, a serviceable plot and typical contemporary blockbuster direction - the sort of thing TV directors and other filmmakers bereft of any real cinematic voice employ. Endless closeups, more shots than Sergei Eisenstein would have ever imagined being used (and he used plenty), a ridiculous number of cuts, no sense of geography, good fight choreography butchered by excessive cutting, a grating, pounding soundscape, a thunderous score and a whole lot of thunder signifying not much of anything.

The whole affair is executed with a cudgel. It's depressing to realize that audiences have become so numbed by bad filmmaking they'll have no difficulty embracing this generally loathsome effort.

I love a good superhero picture. God knows, Sam Raimi's magnificent Spider-Man trilogy was infused with the spirit of Marvel in the 60s, a big heart, a terrific sense of humour, great special effects and first-rate action direction.

Joss Whedon, however, is no Sam Raimi. That is to say, he is not a filmmaker.

Like the woeful J.J. Abrams, Christopher Nolan and others of this overrated, untalented ilk, Whedon is a hack. There's nary a single shot in the film that suggests he has a filmmaker's eye and though he apparently has a good reputation as a writer in television (I don't bother to watch television), he clearly hasn't got what it takes to generate a script with the sweep and true spectacle needed for a feature.

Iron Man and Thor both had miserably-directed action scenes, too. The difference, though, is that both had first-rate writing which allowed the casts of both to deliver fun, fully-fleshed out performances. The Avengers has a whole mess of good actors doing not much of anything. However, I did enjoy Hiddlestone as Loki - so deliciously pouty and mean-spirited and definitely an interesting departure from the usual suavely smarmy villain. His petulance is positively infectious - especially in a scene where he demands hundreds of people to bow before him. Ruffalo displays good potential to be Bruce Banner/The Hulk in his own movie, so this was also a nice surprise.

But Whedon is really not much of a director. At least the first Iron Man and Thor managed to make sure that the non-action sequences weren't directed with a whole mess of back-and-forth closeups, but had an excellent variation of shots - including, God forbid - medium two shots. The direction of these scenes allowed the non-action stuff play out in wholly engaging ways. Not so, here. The Avengers seldom lets up from the action - all of which is directed like a patchwork quilt, and the dialogue scenes are not only badly directed, but feature one piece of uninspired conversational regurgitate after another.

The whole thing just slams you with the force of Thor's hammer and the Hulk's fists - turning you into ground hamburger meat.

Speaking for cows the world over - it's no fun going through the grinder.