#the MOMENT i saw the trailer i wept like a baby

[p4nishers]

best mcu characters in order:

1. t'challa

2. doesn't fucking matter cause he solos everyone ever

(3. the moon knight system)

[natsuxlucyfanfiction]

Superhero Part 3 (nalu fanfiction)

Yo so what’s good, this is Superhero Part 3 but like...what I wanted to write is a longer idea which in no way I could have written with one post. So basically there’s gonna be a part 4 and possibly a part 5. If you read this and think, “wait, how is this related to Superhero?” it’ll all start to make more sense with the upcoming chapter(s).

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“Congratulations, your highschool days are officially over! Please leave already!” Everyone’s graduation caps flew up as people cheered with excitement, joy, and jubilation. The caps came down in a flurry onto the ex-students. The celebration continued, everyone too caught up in the moment to make a complaint.

Lucy and I did our secret handshake to celebrate while everyone screamed and hugged and cried and leapt for joy. Through our entire lives, we always knew it would happen one day but now it was real. Neat, I guess.

“We did it, we did it, we did it,” Lucy chanted jovially with a sing-song tone. She was the fourth in our class.

“We did it,” I nearly wept with relief.

“This is the start to a whole new chapter of our lives!”

“tHiS iS tHe sTaRt tO a wHoLe nEw cHaPtEr oF oUr LiVeS,” I mocked her. “Lucy, you realize you’re gonna wake up tomorrow and you’re gonna feel zero different and then feel dumb for acting all cliché at your graduation.”

“I hate you!” Lucy whined, hands on her hips. “Why can’t you just let me enjoy the moment for once?”

“What moment? We’re graduating! Why are we all pretending that we liked school? You know how many times I’ve heard people complain about this dumb place?” Giving her a hard time was the best. Her nose always scrunches up and she thinks she looks intimidating, which makes it like 10 times better.

“You are literally the worst, you’re making me want to move to Crocus more and more by the second,” she joked. Freaking Crocus.

“You think you’re soooo much better than me now since you’ve been accepted into Crocus University.”

“No, of course not! Just because it’s the second most prestigious school in the entire world and is extremely hard to get into especially with a scholarship like mine, doesn’t mean that I’m gonna flex that privilege.”

“Very reassuring, thanks,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. It’s not even the best school, it’s the second best. I don’t know why she cares so much. She should just stay here.

“You’re just salty that in less than two months I’m moving hours and hours away,” she said again to tease me, but she wasn’t wrong. There are good universities nearby. Sure, attending Crocus University was a great opportunity for Luce, but she’s leaving everything behind. Even me.

“Yeah, sure. Maybe when you’re gone I can finally get myself a girlfriend,” I said.

“That’s as likely as you attending Crocus University,” Lucy giggled. “It’s the second best university in the entire world, just a quick reminder. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m going there.”

“All bow for Lucy Heartfilia!” I’d miss our little banter.

“You’re kinda right though, I’m over this. Wanna go get wings?” Lucy was bouncing up and down with her typical boundless energy. She’s always so excited and full of happiness.

“Tonight, we eat ‘till we drop.” We bumped fists and left graduation in my truck. I gave her the aux cord and hoped she wouldn’t play trash. To my great fortune, the sweet music by Queen flooded my ears. Lucy grabbed the fake microphone we always kept in the back and began singing along.

“Get your party gown and your pigtail down

And get your heart beating baby

Got my timing right, got my act all tight

It’s gonna be tonight my little school baby”

These are the moments I’ll miss. Her next to me, carefree and happy. It’s not like she’s dying, I don’t know why this is affecting me as much as it is. There’s social media which will keep us connected. And she’ll be happy there. She’s been nothing but excited since the second she read “Congratulations!” on her acceptance letter. I spent all my time hoping she would make it in, so I was surprised by how much my stomach dropped when she read the letter to me.

I need to forget about it right now and savor the time I have left. I sped up, way over the speed limit, and lowered the windows. The wind blew through our hair as we both blurted the lyrics to the next song, Hot Blood by Kaleo. I looked cool as heck, but Lucy’s hair flew in every possible direction because it was so long.

Life is good.

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The airport was freaking huge. It took us forever to find Lucy’s terminal. Maybe this was a sign that she shouldn’t go to Crocus. Stop being selfish, Natsu! I kept reminding myself.

“Flight 442, first class passengers please board.” That was Lucy’s flight. Soon they’d call for coach or economy class, whatever it was called.

“This is actually happening,” Lucy said with an out-of-breath tone. After months and months of excitement, it seemed as if reality just hit her. She looked pale and shaky. “Natsu, I can’t go, I’m not ready-”

“Lucy.” I took a deep breath. “Your dreams are coming true. No one ever feels ready to leap into a new era of their life. It’s the few who leap anyway that are the ones who live their happy lives.” I looked in her eyes and saw the same nervousness that I felt. “This is what you’ve always wanted. There’s nothing more that I could’ve wished for than this opportunity for you. I 100% think that this is a great idea.” I 100% want you to stay home, Lucy. Please don’t listen to a word I’m saying.

“You tryna get rid of me or something?” Lucy laughed while wiping unshed tears from her eyes.

“Am I making it too obvious?” I joked along. Of course I don’t want to get rid of her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that she’s going and about to live her dream. I just... wish I could be a part of it.

“Flight 442, economy class passengers please board,” the annoying flight attendant announced.

“That’s me,” Lucy whispered with a soft smile on her face. She wrapped me into a hug, squeezing tightly. I hugged her back, knowing this was the last one for a long time. Be happy for her, Natsu. Be supportive, stop thinking about yourself. It was our last moments in person together for who knows how long yet I was silent. I couldn’t think of what to say. Think, Natsu! Come on dude! She pulled away from the hug and I saw more unshed tears in her eyes. I knew she wouldn’t cry here, but the second she sat down in that plane she’d let the tears fall loosely.

Lucy picked up her carry on and pulled out her passport and ticket for the attendant to check. I just stood here and watched her like some creep as she waited in the line. Finally, she was about to go through the gate, I think it’s called, when I shouted out:

“Goodbye, Little Luce!”

She turned around and smiled, a gorgeous smile I’d never forget. “Goodbye my Superhero!” Lucy called out with no shame. She was probably too far away to notice the tears streaming down my face.

The plane left 20 minutes ago, but here I was still at the terminal, as if somehow the plane would turn around and she’d come back running into my arms. A boy could dream. It felt like I was mourning Luce, but she wasn’t leaving my life permanently. We’d still talk everyday.

I drove to my apartment. Usually I’d play some sort of music to fill the silence, but today I just wanted the quietness. Both in the car and at my apartment I just contemplated. What would life look like without Lucy?

A week later I’d start learning at some Automotive school nearby to become a mechanic. I’ve already been working on cars for years so it won’t be too much of a challenge.

I grabbed the remote and switched on Netflix. After a bit of scrolling, I found out all of the Indiana Jones movies were on Netflix. “Sweet!” I selected Raiders of the Lost Ark then grabbed blankets, snacks, and drinks for Lucy and I. It was only when I got back to the couch that I remembered Lucy wasn’t there anymore. Force of habit, I guess.

Man, getting used to this is gonna be tough.

———-

*9 months after graduation, 7 months since Lucy left*

The thing that surprised me the most was that I was actually learning a lot in school, I thought I knew everything. A mechanic at the nicest shop around took me in as his assistant. My schedule was full between school and the shop. When I get my certificate in a year and a half, I’d begin working there full time.

Lucy and I used to talk every single day for hours. We‘d constantly text or facetime or snapchat, but both our lives have gotten so busy. We still talk everyday (streaks) but not one conversation hasn’t been cut short due to one of us needing to do something.

“Morning Luce!”

“Good morning! Dude have you seen the trailer for the new Avengers movie?”

“No, it’s out?! I’ll check it out when I get home. Class is starting, I’ll call you later.”

Looking back at these past conversations made me realize how short and choppy they were. That wasn’t either of our intentions but that’s how it was turning out and it just really sucks.

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*11 months since graduation, 9 months since Lucy left*

My phone vibrated from the charger when I was watching Brooklyn Nine Nine. I checked it, hoping it wasn’t anything important and I wasn’t called in to work so I could enjoy my day off. It was an instagram notification from Lucy. Apparently she just posted something. After switching my phone off silent, I opened instagram to check it out but was stopped when I got a call from her.

“Sup Luce.”

“Did you see my post on instagram?!” She practically screamed. I turned down the volume a bit.

“You mean the one you just posted literal seconds ago?” She ignored my comment and continued on.

“Check out the post now! Do it! Open Instagram! Like the post so I know you saw it!” I opened up the app and her post was the first one on my feed.

“‘Mark the day, everybody,’” I read, “‘because today is the beginning of Mark and I’s relationship’? Lucy you have a boyfriend?!” She never even told me she was talking to somebody! I know communication has been tough with both of our busy schedules but I didn’t think we were drifting apart so much so that she wouldn’t tell me something like this!

“Yup, he asked me out today. We’ve been talking for a while now, if you know what I mean,” she said with a suggestive tone.

“Congratulations, though I don’t even know who this mystery Mark is.” Making sure to add a laugh so it didn’t look like I was calling her out, I awaited her response.

“If you did know him, you’d love him Natsu. You guys would get along so well.”

“But I don’t know him.” My voice conveyed the frustration that was starting to stir in me, becoming a little louder and more aggressive. Luckily, it was subtle enough for Lucy not to catch.

“Stop being a little wuss,” Lucy joked. “He’s my boyfriend, not yours. You don’t need to know him.” Her tone was so lighthearted, yet I took the words so seriously.

Is that supposed to sting? This whole conversation really just isn’t doing it for me. Not only that, but for some reason now I feel sick too. My gut feels weird. “Well I hope y’all live happily ever after in that dream castle you’d always draw on the back of your tests. Wanna continue this conversation later? I gotta deal with a client for the shop.” I was currently sitting on my couch with a show on Hulu paused.

“For sure, see ya!” And with that, one of the hardest phone calls of my life came to a close. I don’t know how I feel about this Mark guy. Whoever he is, I don’t want Lucy dating him. It’s not my choice, that’s obvious, but I thought she’d at least consult me about whether she should date him. Or, you know, tell me about him! Is our friendship slowly deteriorating? Maybe I’m just thinking about myself too much, or like, being too possessive of a best friend. She doesn’t have to tell me everything. Lucy can do whatever she wants.

I ignored the tight feeling in my chest and continued watching Brooklyn Nine Nine. The episodes passed by but they didn’t register. My thoughts consumed me. Anxiety about my friendship with Lucy just made that already weird chest pain feel worse. I didn’t cry but boy did it feel like I was gonna. Was our friendship dying? All I know for certain now is that I’m the king of overthinking.

***************

As I said earlier, there will be more. Please leave a comment, for real, I legitimately wanna know what’s good and what’s not and how I can fix whatever to make the experience better for y’all.

[minaminokyoko]

Avengers Endgame: A (Late, Incredibly Long) Spoilertastic Review

Well, it’s done.

I did it. We did it. We all watched the original lineup of Avengers’ stories come to its end.

So what did I think?

It was phenomenal. A worthy ending to a more than worthy series of films and stories.

There are just so many things to go over and so many points to hit that I have to warn you this review is likely going to be just as long as Endgame’s running time, so strap in.

Overall Grade: A-

Naturally, spoilers below.

I’m taking a note from a friend of mine and have decided that due to the film’s epic length and its history, the best way to tackle my reactions is first per character, and then I can evaluate things like plot and story and action. Just a heads’ up. So here we go.

Tony

Christ. I…wow, where do I even start?

There’s just so much to talk about with this movie and the arc that Tony Stark has been fulfilling since his first film. I almost don’t know how I can even put into words what I feel for this character. Tony came to us as this swaggering, arrogant diva, and yet the first Iron Man breaks him down to his core character. Tony Stark is a man with everything and nothing. He has the looks, the intelligence, and the resources to have everything a person could want, and yet he has no family and no deep connections with others aside from Rhodey and Pepper when it all starts. The core of the MCU was very cleverly built around the theme of Tony’s heart, and that’s perhaps why so many of us are devastated to know his fate. We all saw it coming. There was sadly no other way Tony’s story would pan out if we wanted to stick to his full arc. Tony could not rest until he knew the universe would be safe, and he made sure it would be before he left us. His legacy is incredible. It’s so…hell, to use a bad pun, heartwarming.

I guess the best thing to do in order for me to not just recap every amazing thing he’s done since Iron Man is to recap moments in Endgame for Tony that leapt out at me as exceptional:

-The intro with Tony playing paper football with Nebula. Stab me in the heart. That was so cute. It’s so very like Tony to try and keep her strong and keep her spirits up when they were literally staring death in the face. It was unexpectedly adorable, and even without us having seen the days they spent together, you could tell that Tony treated her in a mature-ish fashion and that’s why Nebula appeared to be affectionate, or at the very least, respectful towards him when she is usually very distant. You could tell they totally depended on each other and it was an important partnership. I was very, very touched when she scooped him up and put him in the seat when they were approaching their final day together. It’s such a powerful thing to see how far Tony has come, through the lens of Nebula showing such compassion for him even in such a short amount of time. I love how the Russos are so good at conveying thoughts and emotions and story without saying it outright. It’s an amazing skill in filmmaking.

-Tony’s arrival back to earth, and his confrontation with the Avengers. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. My fucking feelings, y’all. Christ. I mean, the Russos already know how to gut-punch you and then kick you when you’re down, but Tony’s complete and utter break down still hurts like a mother. It’s just so raw and emotional, and it should be that way after a loss on this kind of scale. What really tipped me over into choking down frustrated tears was that Tony just looks at Cap desperately when he stumbles off that ship and says in this broken voice, “I lost the kid.” He can’t even bear to say Peter Parker’s name. The shame and loss and guilt is too much for him to say his little Spider Son’s name. Oh, fuck you, Russo brothers.

And then the team being in utter shambles over losing to Thanos, all of them just barely holding it together, and then Tony just shatters. He’s home and he’s with family, but he can’t get over this kind of failure. What really tears it is him going after Steve so viciously, and it’s so complex. He’s angry at himself, and he chooses to direct that anger at Cap because we all know Tony took it as a personal loss, as all of them did, that he couldn’t stop Thanos even though he literally gave it everything. He gave every last bit, every last drop, of effort, and he couldn’t stop Thanos. It just hurts. And the resentment that was already between Cap and Tony after Civil War is still clearly there, so the entire scene is just like being dragged naked over broken glass. RDJ and Evans’ acting here is some of the best of the entire series in this scene. It sets the stage and reminds us of the stakes amazingly well.

-Tony’s post Snap life, and his interactions with his family. All of us Tony stans called it that Tony would be a phenomenal father. He’s already shown us that he can be the right amount of strict and caring, and everything with Morgan is exactly what I dreamt it would be. I could rewatch the scenes with Tony and Morgan a thousand times. People can shit on Tony all they want and I will never listen to them, because it’s so apparent how much and how deeply he cares in scenes like this. Where he confronts Pepper after he figures out the time heist equation. Years ago, Tony may have lied to her or made a decision without consulting her, but Tony has grown as a person and he approaches his wife with one of the most important things he will ever do in his life and he asks for her opinion before he does anything. It’s such a good comparison to how he used to be. Tony’s heart is so huge in this whole sequence. It’s such a good representation of his internal battle between doing what is right for everyone and doing what is right for him.

-Tony and Cap’s reconciliation. Oh, my heart. I love how Tony approaches it in such a Tony sort of way, forgiving Cap and agreeing to move past their resentment for what happened in Civil War. I like that it was done in a brisk sort of way, and that a lot of the power in the scene comes from RDJ and Evans’ facial expressions. Really, these two act off of each other so well that part of why we’re all crying so hard about this movie is the horrible knowledge that we don’t get to see them act opposite each other in this context. I pray they stay friends in real life, and I would love to see them reunited on screen someday. It’s such a great relationship and it’s at the core of why this is such a great film series.

-The New York heist. Oh God. I can’t wait for them to tell us if the comment about Cap’s ass was in the script or if it was an improvised line by RDJ or Paul Rudd. It is by far one of the funniest things ever to happen in the MCU. Dear God, I was howling. The best part is that during the premiere we were all laughing so hard that I missed Cap’s initial reply, which was, “No one’s asking you to look, Tony.” Christ, I can’t deal. I know it’s straight up Stony pandering but I don’t give a fuck, it was hilarious. And it’s a very meta joke since Chris Evans’ gorgeous, flawless body is a meme thanks to his Dorito proportions (if you haven’t seen that yet, oh god, please look it up) and the fact that he has an absolutely phenomenal ass, especially for a white guy from Boston. Anyway, Tony and Scott’s whole interaction was perfect, and I loved how the scene went and how it led into the next one.

-The army base heist. Tony running into his father was such a good twist. I absolutely did not see that coming, but it was a really welcome conversation to give Tony closure. He’s felt so guilty for how he left things with them, and it was so touching to see him get a second chance at it, even if Howard was none the wiser. I really hadn’t expected anything like that, but it worked well with Tony’s arc and I thought it was very sweet.

-Tony’s reaction to seeing his baby boy, his little Spider Son, running up to him. My God. This was everything. I am a hardcore supporter of the Iron Dad and Spider Son dynamic, and this was the reunion I so sorely needed after the sick, demented, painful scene that was the final moments in Infinity War. Like the rest of you, the level of trauma that hit me when Peter Parker died is just…hell, infinite. The pain was just infinite. I both love and hate Tom Holland and RDJ for doing that shit to us. I did not know I could cry that hard about a fictional character, but I openly wept to the point of sobbing when Peter Parker died in IW, and to see him back in this scene was so wonderful. In my second viewing, the audience actually clapped when Peter swung through the portal, and that was quite sweet for me to experience. But back to the point: once again, I have to simply compliment RDJ’s acting. This is why we love him so much. It’s not even about the big, loud moments. His acting is so precise that the flurry of emotional expressions that Tony went through when his tiny son helped him up and started excitedly babbling to him about being dead, of all things, and then Tony just doesn’t even interrupt him, he just walks forward and pulls that little boy into his arms and holds him tightly in a hug and it’s just…wow. This is some spectacular acting on both their parts, and it heals a really wounded part of my heart, even though the next scene I talk about just breaks it all over again. Plus, at the time I wrote this review, the Spider-Man: Far From Home full trailer just dropped and (SPOILER ALERT) the opening scene is Peter Parker and Happy mourning Tony and I just feel like someone hammered a stake into my chest. This scene is so fantastic. It’s just another reminder of how damn much Tony Stark cares about the people around him and that he has an actual family now, and that’s why the next scene is possibly the saddest one of all.

-Tony’s death. Like Loki’s untimely demise, I knew this was coming from years and years of being a writer. Based on the track for his character arc and because RDJ announced this is his final official performance as the character, I knew Tony was going to die. There was no way around it. His determination to save everyone and correct the wrong done to the universe by Thanos would drive him past his limits and cause him to sacrifice it all. It’s just…man. I wish it had ended differently for him. Anyone who follows me on Tumblr knows that I tag all Iron Man posts with “we stan Tony Stark in this house” and that is how I feel. While Tony is not my favorite Avenger, I will stand up for him all day, err day. Tony Stark is the epitome of the human spirit, and in a different way than Cap, if you ask me. Tony is all of the dark and seedy parts, but also the defiance and the self-deprecation and the obsession and the power of the human spirit. He has so many vices and yet so many virtues. He cares to a fault. He blames himself to a fault. He has come so far after that brutal conversation in Avengers when Cap accuses him of not being the man to lay down on the razor wire and let the other guy crawl over you. He made the ultimate sacrifice play. As much as I reject the idea, we all knew it had to be him. It had to be. Because at the end of the day, Tony’s need to make his family safe was more precious to him than his own life. He gave up a future with his loved ones to make sure Thanos could never hurt them again. And all of it was capped off with a line that will probably haunt me forever, of Pepper’s soft, forgiving goodbye, “You can rest.”

-Tony’s farewell message to his family. Want to know something crazy? I cried so hard at the premiere. So hard. I was almost dry heaving with how hard I cried at Tony’s funeral. But then I had a week of time and I saw it again this past Sunday. I was choked up during his death but I didn’t shed actual tears this time until “I love you 3000.” Somehow, it didn’t hit me until the second time how they filmed Tony’s goodbye to us. They shot it in such a way that as he leans down to turn off the recording, he’s actually looking at us. Not directly into the camera, but so close to it that it finally hit me that this was RDJ’s goodbye and thank you to the fans. It was so touching and sincere that I finally broke down and actually cried again. What truly hurts is knowing that his loved ones have to be without him, and even though his sacrifice means everything, he is going to leave behind such a void. Even with his problems and his flaws, Tony was a damn good man and he was the right choice to begin this epic series. I can’t express how much I am going to miss him and how much I am going to miss RDJ in this shared universe. He’s so charismatic and wonderful and complex. It was not only a comeback for Tony Stark, but a comeback for a very troubled man, and it’s come full circle that Tony had a loving family just as RDJ has a loving family after his checkered past. To be honest, I’m likely going to do as I did for Loki and have a cutoff point in my brain for the MCU, where I don’t accept what happened because it’s too painful. I just pretend that nothing happened after that hug with Peter Parker and they all won the day and no one died. That’s just how it’s gotta be for me to survive a post Endgame world.

Thank you, Tony. You gave everything. I love you now and always.

Thor

-Thor executing Thanos. Standing. Fucking. Ovation. Right, so, I know that Thor probably should not have outright killed Thanos before they had more information, but at the same time, there was nothing more to get out of that son of a bitch and I clapped when Thor swung Stormbreaker and lopped that mo’fo’s head clean off, and I flipped off Thanos’ corpse with both fingers. Good boy. He told you he’d kill you, and he killed you, you sorry bastard. A+++

-Thor’s depression and weight gain. Alright. *rolls up sleeves* Time to make some enemies. I think Fat!Thor is a great idea, but the execution could have been done better. I recognize writing tricks when I see them, and Fat!Thor seems to be two ideas in one, and one of them is what is bothering the semi-reasonable part of the fandom. What I’ll do is explain my take on both parts of the overall idea.

(1) Thor’s depression at his failure (at the time) to reverse the Snap and save everyone is 100% accurate, in character, and is damn good writing. Thor has never actually full-on failed at anything in his life. The closest he has come is between being cast out in the first Thor movie for being irrational and cruel, and in Ragnarok where he had to let Surtur destroy Asgard in order to save his people. Even then, Thor lost battles, not the overall war. Therefore, Thor does not understand how to process failure. Yes, he also failed to save his mother, but at the same time, it’s not a failure on this level. He lost Frigga, Loki, the Warriors Three, and Heimdall, but this was literally trillions of lives that he feels were weighed on his shoulders, and his shoulders alone, even though as Rocket pointed out, losing the war was the fault of a LOT of people, not just Thor (and not Starlord either, you bunch of whiny hypocrites in the fandom, ugh). So becoming an alcoholic and giving up on his life as a hero is definitely how Thor would handle things. Think about it. He no longer has any guidance from his family, or his best friend, since they died. All he has is his Avengers family and Valkyrie. I’m sure the Avengers tried to talk him out of it to no avail, and that’s a really sad thing to know, that they couldn’t get him out of his depression spiral, so they let him wallow in it. As for Valkyrie, she’s still just barely recovered from her own trauma, and I am sure she probably tried to snap him out of it too, but he was too stubborn to listen. What I like about this point for his character is that Thor is right—he has always been expected to be “worthy” and to be the savior. Thor is the big gun on the team alongside the Hulk. He has always been the bravest, the noblest, and the most powerful person on the team, and he is expected as a king to win the day every time. But he lost. And he can’t reconcile it since he has always triumphed in the end. So it’s very understandable for him to lose control and just want to have nothing to do with the hero business, because if you fail once, you can fail again, and he couldn’t bear the thought of failing again, not after it cost him literally everything.

(2) Fat!Thor was an easy source of cheap laughs to keep the mood from getting too dark considering the subject matter handled in this movie. I am of two minds about this issue. On the one hand, I can see why certain people feel that this is fat shaming. It is. But the problem stems from the fact that the fat shaming is still a large part of American culture, and people have not broken the bad habit yet, and so it gets shifted into the easy laughs category. The easy laughs are for the Average Joe viewer. It’s for people who aren’t as conscious of how it sounds to mock him for his weight gain who are just used to “ha ha, fat person jokes.” Some fans felt uncomfortable that he was the butt of a few jokes because a lot of us who suffer from depression know that this is in fact a side effect. When you’re depressed, it’s easy to stress eat and overeat, and you lean heavily towards comfort foods that cause you to gain weight, and your depression makes you tired, so you also don’t exercise and that’s how you can end up overweight. On the other hand, while I agree with these folks about not liking the fat jokes, I also think it was necessary to show a character we all admire falling into the same pitfalls that we as mere Midgardians deal with on a daily basis. I don’t like the jokes, but I do like Fat!Thor’s inclusion in this story because people need to realize what depression does to a person. It shouldn’t have been handled this way, but from a strictly observer perspective, I understand why they went for the low hanging fruit. People needed to laugh since Endgame has very, very dark elements to it. I would have preferred they approach his weight gain in a more dignified fashion, but not every part of this movie was written for me and I sadly have to accept it. That’s my feelings on it.

-Thor’s encounter with Frigga on Asgard. I. FREAKING. LOVE. THIS. I did not see it coming, and I love it with every fiber of my being. This is such a heartwarming scene. I want to rewatch it a thousand times. I love Frigga immediately knowing what’s up (she’s not stupid and of course she noticed and it’s everything to me) and I love that she can clearly see how distraught her beautiful son has become. I love Thor having a panic attack, because that’s extremely realistic after he’s gone so long not having done any hero work, per se, and having to face his previous failed relationship with Jane, and with facing the day his mother died again. It’s really compelling writing. Frigga’s gentle reassurance is exactly what he needed, and it’s exactly what we needed to see him go through. He had to let go of the expectations piled upon him and accept himself for who he is, not who he needs to be as a warrior king and an Avenger. While I do wish they had gone on to show us a little more of who he considers himself to be instead of who he is supposed to be, I am really excited to hear Chris Hemsworth is one of the Avengers who has chosen to stay past the end of Phase Three. He’s young and funny and vibrant and I think Thor is his best role of his career anyhow (no offense meant, Hems, if you ever read this, you handsome golden retriever, you). I think exploring Thor’s personal goals and future will be very interesting.

-Thor’s reaction to Natasha’s death. This is a very small moment, but I actually like it a lot. I like that Thor’s optimism here is a form of denial. I like it because there are certain Avengers who despite the 11 year saga have not interacted with each other much, and Thor and Nat are probably my leading example. When it hit him that they couldn’t use the time stone to bring her back, the loss and devastation on his face almost made up for the fact that Thor and Nat have almost no lines with each other in the film series. I like it because it hurts and because it shows that she does matter to him, even though they don’t interact. It’s a nice detail to include since I was often a little sad I never got to see these two have dialogues. I personally have even written a bit of fanfiction about what their relationship could have been like, and I think it could have been sort of brother-sisterly. It’s a shame we won’t get to see it, but I like that it is given attention here at last.

-Thor wanting to undo the Snap. Yes. This is a very good character beat for him. Again, I agree it’s annoying he ends up getting another fat joke thrown at him (nice work, Rhodey, sheesh, it’s not like the poor guy was traumatized or anything), I like that Tony talks him down. I like that Tony doesn’t think he can’t do it, he’s worried that Thor is in so much pain that he shouldn’t try to make such a rash decision that could cost him his life. Tony seemed dismissive, but I think he was trying to protect his friend more than anything else. I think Tony also knew that it would be rough if Thor either died or became permanently crippled by undoing the Snap. Being able to fight is extremely important to Thor, even with his depression, because Thor is essentially a space Viking. It shows that Tony is aware that Thor’s not just bumbling around as a chubby drunk, but he’s legitimately in pain and he needs to take things slower.

-Thor giving Valkyrie the throne. First off, I need to sling salt at the freaking part of the Thorkyrie fandom that is somehow complaining about this scene. Are you kidding me? What movie did you watch? This is the ultimate freaking Thorkyrie scene, you bunch of whiny nincompoops! Thor literally gave Valkyrie the throne because she is so smart, powerful, and kind that he trusted her to take care of the people he loves with all his heart. The amount of trust and respect that is in this scene makes me want to just squeal for hours. I can’t handle how affectionate and reverent Thor is as he gives Valkyrie the throne. I love the long gaze they share. I love the handshake. I love that Val asks when she’ll see him again. I love that Thor has faith in her and how she will lead his people. Anyone bitching that this is an anti-Thorkyrie scene did not see the same movie we did, and you can all piss off. I love this scene to my core. I love seeing Valkyrie being assured to be a relevant part of Thor’s story and that it likely means Tessa Thompson is going to join us again for either Thor 4 or Guardians of the Galaxy 3. I am a giant freaking fan of her character and I can’t scream “SIGN ME THE FUCK UP” loud enough for her to be in future films with him, and with the MCU in general. I hope she signed a three movie deal or more. That would be amazing. But anyway, my point is, this scene is fantastic and I will be rewinding it a lot when this movie gets to DVD. Nothing makes me happier than Thor shooting heart-eyes at Val, and he was shooting them so hard in this scene that he even took his sunglasses off. God bless this scene.

-Asgardians of the Galaxy. I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN WITH THIS BUT I LOVE IT WITH MY ENTIRE FUCKING SOUL YOU GUYS. Everything about Thor hanging out with the Guardians makes me so incredibly happy. I can’t wait for shenanigans. I would assume the plot of the next one is finding Gamora and bringing her home and re-teaching her about her family and falling in love with Quill again, but who knows what wackiness awaits us? I can’t deal with Thor being a little shit to Quill. I could see his Hemsworth peeking through, and I am here for it. Half the reason we all love Thor as much as we do is that Taika was one of the first people to suggest letting Hems be more like himself, and Chris Hemsworth is basically a giant, hilarious puppy, and it really made Thor more fun and likable. Don’t get me wrong—I loved my noble prince, but he was still a big golden retriever even when he was more Shakespearean and all they truly did was dial it up to be a bigger part of his personality.

Really, I like what Thor went through in Endgame and how it connects with lots of elements in previous movies. While parts could have been done better, I thought it was fantastic and it shook things up in a way that should be quite intriguing for his future appearances. Of everyone, Thor is the character I am most excited to learn about continuing to be in the MCU.

Natasha

-Natasha taking a leadership role in the Post Snap years, and her conversation with Steve. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a die-hard Captasha shipper, but more than that, I think the friendship and love (platonic or otherwise) between Nat and Steve is by far one of the best relationships in the Avengers saga. I love how it began, how it developed, and where it is when we watch this scene of them together. I love how soft and gentle Steve is with her, and yet he teases her in this subtle way that’s almost like a verbal hug. Steve is just so compassionate and conscious of her emotional needs, the same as how she has been with him. I think this is such a precious relationship and it’s vital to both of them that they have someone to confide in when times are hard. It’s possibly even more beautiful because they aren’t canonically together as a couple; they’re just two friends who have bonded and been partners ever since The Winter Soldier, and they without a doubt love each other. (Side note: and I am not alone in this because Chris Evans even ships it, and that makes me so very pleased.) I gobble up all Captasha scenes, honestly, because it’s so well written and it’s come a long way from the first time they met in Avengers. But to get a little more in depth, Nat’s brief breakdown about Clint is really something else. Seeing her struggle with the idea that the man she loves (again, platonically) has become a monster, and struggling with the idea that she should move on but she can’t because she’s lost her family, is really damn hard to watch, but it’s necessary. It’s a really good reflection of the level of loss and trauma and pain our poor Avengers have had to deal with since the Snap. It’s an excellent scene.

-Nat going after Clint to bring him home once they figure out that the time heist is at least possible. Ow. This is another scene that is a big kick in the nuts. “Don’t. Don’t give me hope.” “I’m sorry I couldn’t give it to you sooner.” Bury me, this is such a good, quiet little scene for her. I really like their friendship and their bond. When Nat mentions family in the previous scene, this is what she’s talking about, and I love how Endgame might be the first film to openly acknowledge that the Avengers are family to each other. And what I like is that this series has earned that. Nothing makes me angrier than when people drop the F-bomb where it is NOT deserved. (*side eyes Suicide Squad and Deadpool 2*) The Avengers have fought and bled for each other, have supported each other, and have loved each other through hell and back, and they ARE a family. Bringing Clint home was a big deal to her, facing her fears of what he’s become, but seeing that he is still somewhat the man she knows and loves because he does return to the fold in the end.

-Natasha’s death. Hoo boy. Okay, so like Tony and Loki, I might just stick this in my Denial category. I was hit with a huge wave of “oh no, please no” when I found out Clint and Nat would be the ones going to retrieve the Soul Stone, because of course it had to be them. However, it was thematically the right choice for it to be Clint and Nat, since I personally think the only other combination it could have been was Steve and Tony or Steve and Nat in terms of “give up that which you love” that the Red Skull illuminated is the price for the stone. I think all the team members genuinely care for each other, but if I wanted to use the word love, yes, I’d say it comes down to members of the team who truly love one another, it’s Tony and Steve, Clint and Nat, and Nat and Steve. So I am in a very weird place about Nat’s death in this movie.

First off, I love how it was handled because it couldn’t have gone any other way. Of course both of them wanted to jump on this grenade for each other. Of course they both think they are the unworthy one who should die for the other person they love. Of course they fought over it.

Here's the thing, though: from a writing standpoint, it did need to be Natasha.

And before we go further, let’s address the elephant in the room fandom-wise: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, YOU MORONS, THIS IS NOT THE ‘STUFFED IN THE FRIDGE’ TROPE. God, I hate you sometimes, MCU fandom. I knew as soon as she sacrificed herself that all the fake feminists would run into the streets and climb onto their soapboxes and try to call the Fridge trope. Shut up. It’s not a Fridge.

For those not familiar with the trope, Stuffed in the Fridge is when a typically female character is unceremoniously killed off for usually one of two reasons (1) to cause a male character to angst (2) to further or advance a male agenda somehow.

Natasha’s sacrifice is neither of these things.

First off, it was her choice. Clint made it completely clear that he loves her and he did not want her to die for him. One of the primary problems with the Fridge trope is it robs the woman of her choice, and Nat is the one who decided that she would be the one to die for the Soul Stone. Calling this a Fridge is a blatant, insulting erasure of her motivation as a character.

Second off, Nat’s death is a sacrifice that wins a war. It’s not pointless, and it’s not just for angst, and it’s not just for a male character to get ahead in the story. She literally saves trillions of lives by trading her soul for the stone. Trillions. Yes, the team is devastated, but her death is not simply there to make you shed tears and nothing else. She saved them all. So don’t you dare try to pin this dumb trope on her, because it’s not accurate or correct.

Third off, this completes Natasha’s character arc. We’re introduced to the beginning of her arc in the iconic scene of The Avengers where she tricks Loki into revealing his scheme, but it turns out that while she does succeed, we find out what motivates her, and that Loki’s cruelty did affect her in the end. Clint was sent to kill her, but he shows compassion and instead recruits her. Clint gives her a second chance. And Nat, in sacrificing herself for the Soul Stone, gives Clint a second chance. It’s come full circle. One of my all-time favorite lines in this entire film series is hers, “I got red in my ledger; I’d like to wipe it out.” That. Is. A. Fucking. Great. Line. And this is the pay off and the completion of Nat’s character arc. She’s done horrible things and they have been chains on her soul and she felt that she needed to repay her debt in this way, and in a way that would save so many innocent lives. I will not have these people running around discounting that and acting like she is some victim. Natasha Romanov is not a fucking victim. Natasha Romanov died a hero. She is one of my favorite Avengers and I cried so hard at her loss, but I acknowledge that she did a brave, selfless thing for everyone she loved, and she will be remembered for that always.

Now. That being said…if you want to complain about a female character dying in a majority male story, yes, go right ahead. That is a legitimate complaint. It sucks that Nat died when most of the team is male. I will heartily concur with this criticism and offer no counterargument. It sucks. Period. I hate that she dies in the first act because I really love her fighting style and I wanted to see her kick more ass in the final battle because she’s amazing to watch. So yes, that’s a point I do take off from this movie.

In the end, I’m sort of straddling the fence for losing Nat, as I am with Tony, but I think a lot of people feel the same way. It is great writing, but the loss is so painful that I might not accept it totally.

Thank you for your bravery, Nat. Seriously, you’re one of my favorite female leads and you’ll be sorely missed. I can only hope the Black Widow movie helps me deal with the pain of losing you.

Steve

-Steve quietly taking all of Tony’s trauma-fueled ranting. This is so important. Chris Evans is so fantastic at acting in general, but all of his expressions as Tony lays into him are so underrated, man. He knows that Tony has reached a breaking point, and so he offers no vitriol in return. It’s a huge contrast to the scene in Civil War where the two of them argue. Steve is by no means a timid man. He recognizes that Tony is in such pain, as are all of them, and he just takes that rage because he knows it’s just how Tony chose to process everything because he can’t come to terms with it. We know he blames himself for being unable to stop Thanos, same as all of them do, and it’s such a testament to what a good man Steve is that he doesn’t fire back at Tony, and he is deeply concerned for him instead. Especially when Tony throws it back in his face that they’d lose together, and that’s what hurts the most during this scene. Tony was alone when he lost. Nebula was the only survivor, and she was a complete stranger to him until they repaired the Milano and tried to get back to civilization. I think Tony would still be angry and traumatized, but he’s always been able to look to his team members for ideas or comfort or just companionship in hard times. He nearly died, and that left a mark on him that ran so deep he just couldn’t stop spitting vitriol at possibly one of his closest friends, and it’s also important that they hadn’t spoken since the end of Civil War, so all of that anger and resentment is also tangled up inside them both. What a scene, man. What a scene.

-Steve mentoring people in the Post Snap years. This has a couple of really great things as a scene, honestly. First off, I love that even with Steve being heartbroken and refusing to move on, he still knows it is important to help others. Second off, I love that it’s almost implied that this is in honor of Sam Wilson, who did the same thing for soldiers who returned home from war struggling with PTSD. I really, really love Steve Rogers with all my heart for this scene. Even though he’s broken down and just as devastated as everyone else, he is still out there trying to help others. That is who he is at his core. Steve is the man who cannot stand by and let other people suffer. He won’t do it. It doesn’t matter what it costs him. He will defend and protect and nurture, always. By God, I love that about him.

-Steve’s quiet reconciliation with Tony. We discussed this above, but I love that Steve says so few words here and lets Tony do all the talking. There’s an almost silent “I’m sorry and I love you and I want you to be happy” in this scene together. Tony bringing back the shield just…my feelings…oh God, my feelings.

-Steve’s miniature speech before they head into the Quantum Realm. I love that even Rocket is impressed.

-Steve’s reaction to Nat’s death. Fuck. Me. Up. This hurt so badly. I can’t. I can’t with how Steve looks at Clint and Clint just looks back at him, and you can almost hear him telepathically saying, “Steve, we lost her.” Like I said before, Steve and Clint without a doubt love Natasha. Yes, Bruce does to some degree, but it’s not the same (sorry, y’all, I think BruceNat was trash and I will never accept it because it was forced and awkward and made no sense to me) as the deep vein of friendship and love she had with both men. It killed me when they were out on the dock and Steve was openly crying for her. We saw Steve crying in the trailer but we didn’t know this was the context. Oh, this hurts me. Steve loved her with all his heart. She was his best friend, same as Sam and Bucky were, and to lose her with no chance of ever getting her back is a terrible, terrible loss. Boy, this scene was rough to endure. I can only imagine how he must have felt having to let her go after he’s lost so many people he loved. Poor Steve.

-The entire New York heist. Oh God. I’m just in heaven over how Steve handled things, everything from the intentional recreation of the iconic elevator scene in The Winter Soldier to the insidious “Hail Hydra” (*makes strangulation hands in the direction of the Russo brothers because they KNOW most of the fandom hates Hydra Cap from the comics and so of course they put that in there just to screw with us*) to the smug smirk on Cap’s face as he walked away with scepter to Cap laying the beatdown on himself to Cap acknowledging his sweet, sweet, round, perfectly firm ass. (Seriously, Chris Evans, if you ever read this, marry me, we already met and hugged each other, we could make this work.) Yes. Special props to Cap vs. Cap’s interactions. It was just…everything.

-Steve wielding Mjolnir. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. So everyone’s already raved about this scene, but I don’t care, I have to rave about it too. Good gravy. Good God. This scene is everything. Honestly, it is easily one of the greatest things ever conceived not only by the MCU, but in action movies period. This can stand toe to toe with some of the best beatdowns in all of cinema. It’s just…where do you even start with how good this fucking scene is?! I mean, every second of it is just glorious. Whether it was the Russos or Evans or the script writers, whoever I need to thank, THANK YOU. Thank you for gift wrapping this total surprise. Every one of us was wounded that Cap didn’t easily lift Mjolnir in Age of Ultron, but at the same time, I loved the humor of that scene when Mjolnir did actually start to move and Thor totally panicked for a second. It was funny as hell. But for the Russos to fulfill our fantasy in a way that was not only a surprise, but just an absolute joy to watch, I can’t even express my fangirl tears. This scene is better than sex and chocolate and cocaine. It’s flawless. Everything about it is flawless, from Steve summoning the goddamn lightning to Thor’s gleeful “I KNEW IT!” I wish I could frame this scene on my wall in .gif form, and I apologize in advance to all my Tumblr followers, because the second this scene is giffed after the DVD release, I am going to reblog it three billion times. I will never stop reblogging it. This is the height of MCU perfection and it deserves to be known as such.

-Steve facing off with Thanos in his last stand, and actually holding his own. Dude. Steve Rogers is a human man, and he withstood Thanos. I just…I can’t with how awesome it is. He lost in the end, but he beat the shit out of Thanos for a good bit and I just have to give him all the props for that. He did the impossible and survived him. That’s amazing.

-Steve strapping on his broken shield and staring down Thanos and his army. This is peak Steve Rogers right here. “Yeah, you have thousands of soldiers. Yeah, you sheared my shield in half. Yeah, you beat me and my comrades. And I don’t give a single solitary fuck.” This is also an amazing echo to the moment in Infinity War where poor Wanda had to kill Vision, and Cap stood up to Thanos with his goddamn bare hands. Steve standing up after getting the shit kicked out of him is what he is all about. He doesn’t care that he is outnumbered. He doesn’t care that he is outgunned. He is Steve motherfucking Rogers and he is going to stand against evil period. This is top tier stuff, man.

-“Avengers Assemble.” Like everyone else, I jizzed in my pants. Full on. We all had a hunch that they would save it until the final Avengers film with the final appearances of the original team, and it was everything we dreamt it would be.

-Steve catching Stormbreaker as well and then trading it with Thor mid-battle. A tiny but hilariously awesome scene. I’m so glad they included it, and it was another little nod to Steve and Thor always having a small adorable friendship moment in each Avengers movie. Thanks for that, truly.

-Steve passing the mantle over to Sam Wilson. Holy shit. So a lot of us were relatively sure with Chris Evans confirming this as his last full appearance as Captain America that the mantle would go to either Bucky or Sam. My money was on Sam, simply for him still being new blood having entered at Phase 2 in the MCU, and because Sam is a lot more of a dynamic main lead that I think the MCU needs in the role. Anthony Mackie, as any hardcore MCU fans know, is a bundle of fun behind the scenes. He’s really hilarious and charismatic, and I think he’ll bring a lot to the role of the new Captain America. It’s such a touching scene as Steve hands him the shield. I really, really get choked up about how it was handled with such respect and trust and honest to God friendship. “How does it feel?” “Like it’s someone else’s.” “It isn’t.” Wow. What a beautiful scene. I’m a little misty as I type it out. And I do like that there was just this little nod from Bucky, who has been antagonistic to him pretty much all the time but here, he shows his support and it’s kind of just known that he will back Sam up no matter what. I cannot express how much I love this idea and its execution. It was perfect. (By the way, please look up the way Anthony Mackie found out about this before filming. It’s too cute.)

-Steve’s ending. Oh my God. Of possibly everyone on the team who I wanted to have a happy ending, I wanted Steve’s the hardest, even though I love Tony to death and beyond. Thank you, Russo brothers. Thank you for letting this man have his second chance at a life, and that he got to spend it with Peggy. I was already crying from the funeral, but the fact that they decided to end the saga with possibly the sweetest imagery in the MCU is just overwhelming. I loved their little slow dance. I love the tears of joy on Peggy’s cheeks. I love the softness in Steve’s expression as he dances with his lady love. I love the song choice. I love how he just looks down at her and she looks up at him and they kiss to close everything out and say goodbye to us all. What a scene. What an ending. I love it more than anything.

Thank you, Steve. Thank you for being our ray of light and sunshine and guidance all these years.

Nebula

I really did not expect to see an arc for Nebula, but I am delighted that we got it. This was very, very interesting considering what a sadistic murderess Nebula was in the previous films, so fueled by rage, and yet here we see that she is still powerful and effective and yet vulnerable. I enjoyed seeing her growth and getting some amount of closure with Thanos’ demise and saving Gamora as well as the rest of the universe.

Bruce

So here’s the thing: Bruce is probably my least favorite Avenger, next to Clint, but that’s not because anything is wrong with either character—I just find their personalities and abilities the least interesting. Therefore, I’ve heard complaints about Hulk not kicking ass in Infinity War and Endgame, and while they are valid points…I don’t care. I guess the thing is that Hulk has kicked ass in all his previous appearances, and I think it was nice of them to get back to the fact that Bruce is indeed a scientist and there is more to him than just crushing things. He is a very conscience driven character, and I was totally fine with him as a supporting member of the team, and of his brave decision to Un-Snap everyone back to life. I especially liked his sympathetic approach to bring Thor back home. “You helped me.” I fully admit that made my lip quiver, honestly, since Thor was obviously so traumatized and was in a lot of pain, and Bruce was gentle with him. That, to me, is just as important as all the bashing he could have done. Same with his impassioned plea with the Ancient One. Sorry that he didn’t kick ass in these last two movies, but honestly, I felt things were balanced and that it’s important to show he is more than the Hulk.

Clint

As mentioned above, Clint is my least favorite Avenger, but again, not because there is anything wrong with him or that he is written poorly—the others just outweigh him in what I like about them. I have to say opening the film with Clint losing his entire family with no knowledge of what was going on was almost as gut-stabbing as how Infinity War began and ended. It was somehow even more cruel since Clint would not have known what was going on until he called the Avengers. And yes, someone’s pointed out to me that it’s crazy he didn’t know about the war, but I have a headcanon that he just cut everyone off once he decided to retire, and he wouldn’t answer when they called so he wouldn’t be dragged into more shenanigans. I highly doubt the whole team just flat-out didn’t tell him what was going on. There’s a good chance Clint decided not to hear from the team again after Cap busted them out since he risked everything and almost got jailed for life after his decision.

All that being said, I did feel Clint’s loss very hard after Nat sacrificed herself. It was extremely well done on Jeremy Renner’s part and there was never a doubt that he loved her. Their bond has always been very cute and I never shipped them, so I wasn’t disappointed by the reveal of his secret family. I thought it was a nice touch and a surprising turn in the story. I’m glad he got to go home to his family in the end, and I especially liked the touching moment he shared with Wanda after Tony’s funeral.

Loki

Holy shit, y’all.

I did not expect this, and I love it more than anything in the world.

Right, so, I am sadly a fan of Loki’s ever since The Dark World, but at the very least, I am not a rabid fan of the character. He is an absolute fucking trashlord and I acknowledge it while still loving him anyway. I was positively giddy that they invited Tom Hiddleston back to shoot new scenes of Loki rather than simply using the old Avengers footage. And I definitely didn’t expect Tony, Cap, and Scott to screw up and Loki gets the Tesseract and vanishes. This is amazing. I can’t wait for the Loki mini-series on Disney Plus, and I assume this is what it’s going to be about. I’m really excited to see what kind of shit he gets himself into, and I loved the little bits we got of him mocking Cap even though they all just kicked his ass, and I loved him rolling his eyes in the background during the heist, and being the only one who knew something fishy was going on. Love, love, love it to pieces. Thank you for giving me more of my stupid trashlord, Endgame. You rock.

Scott

Oh, poor, poor Scott. Not only did he awaken to find his new family gone, but he lost five years of time with his daughter. Ouch. I really have to commend Paul Rudd for the reunion scene with his daughter. The shock and pain mixed in with the gratitude that she survived the Snap was so palpable. I’ve never really considered him much more than an easy going comedic actor, but he did a great job here. Kudos.

Gamora

I am really, really deeply hurt that this means our Gamora, the one we came to know and grow with, is truly gone. Like many fans, I had hoped she was somehow inside the Soul Stone and they could bust her out, but like Nat, it appears that we did truly lose her. I’m not okay. I feel so bad for Quill, who wooed her with so many great moments, and now he’s lost her again. He’ll have to try to make her fall in love with him again, and it hurts me because the sequence of events from the first two Guardians movies are how they fell in love, and it’ll be so much harder to make her understand what they meant to each other and what they had with one another as well as their little stitched together family. Damn it all. This might be one of the biggest underrated losses of all for me. Gamora is my favorite Guardian, period. I adore her, so I am both anticipating and dreading the third Guardians movie as a result.

Carol

Alright, I do have to admit one of my letdowns, even though it’s a total nitpick, is that the trailer gave us Thor and Carol, but the actual movie did not. Oh, why did you lift my hopes up this way?! I really wanted Thor and Carol to bond and have hilarious pissing contests about who is the strongest Avenger, and become battle buddies! However, this might be possible later since we know Hemsworth has agreed to at least one more film, if not more, so fingers crossed he and Carol share screentime. I adored that “I like this one” scene and Thor would play very well off of Carol if you ask me.

That being said, when Carol came back for the final fight…yassss bitch yassss fuck it up! When she came after Thanos, he was fuckin’ shook and I am here for it. I loved that failed headbutt. I want to frame that on a wall. Carol Danvers is not having any of your shit today, you purple Grape Ape punk ass bitch. She laid down the law, and it was glorious. 11/10 good shit of Carol whupping his ass and he had to suckerpunch her just to try to win.

And kudos for the utterly adorable interaction she had with my Spider Son, “H-Hi, I’m Peter Parker.” “Hey, Peter Parker. Got something for me?” *kisses fingertips* This could not have been cuter. Thank you so much, Carol.

Oh, and extra kudos for the Ladies of the MCU smackdown moment. My God. I loved every second of that assault. Please make that into a whole separate team someday and make a movie about it.

Wanda

Standing ovation for Wanda in every respect: her entrance, her powerful line (“I don’t even know who you are.” “You will.”), and the fact that she flat-out almost killed Thanos by her damn self. Wow, wow, wow, my girl. You brought the pain. I miss Vision too, honey, and I’m so sorry we can’t have him back. It’s so unfair that she’s lost her brother and her love within this story, but she still manages to keep going. Wanda is a testament to just how strong women truly are in spite of adversity.

Plot/Story

I know some fans didn’t want it to be as straight-forward as it appeared to be with them going back in time to grab the Stones and undo the Snap, but I was honestly fine with it. The story still managed to genuinely surprise me, especially with the development that the two Nebulas are what caused Thanos to find out what was going on. Holy shit, that was very creative and a great way to let her be a central character considering the trauma she has been through and overcome. I thought the pacing was excellent, and I will have to sit down and think it through but I don’t feel as if we had unnecessary scenes aside from the diner scene being a little longer than it needed to be. (You could have cut the photo op bit out and no one would miss it, for instance.) Like Infinity War, I felt that all the scenes had a use and showed us something, and the action was magnificent and creative. The Avengers pulling the entirety of the MCU together in the third act is some seriously iconic stuff that I really hope people will take into consideration as a legendary thing no one has ever really done before.

A friend of mine mentioned that you can neatly divide Endgame into three sections of story: build up, heist, and pay off. One of the best things about Endgame, to me, is the pay off. I love how many continuity nods we had and how many threads were tied off in a satisfying manner, from deeply emotional relationships to just sublime action sequences. We have so many films in this series that it’s hard to rank them, but I have to say I really would put Endgame in the top 10 for my preferences. It was a worthy ending to such an amazing set of films, and while I will miss the actors who won’t continue past Phase 3, I am incredibly grateful for their time and talents spent on this franchise. It is in its own category, honestly, with consistent quality in nearly every aspect it attempts. I think it was the perfect mix of solemn but affectionate goodbyes and bright, hopeful new beginnings. I am excited to see what is in store and what new ground we’re gonna break with the future stories.

So thanks for everything, Endgame. I’m glad to have had this era come to such a satisfying close.

See you in the funny papers.

Kyoko

[bloggerblagger]

87) Blank space. (And the profound questions deriving therefrom.)

                                                              I was there.                            ______________________________________________________________________

I am looking for a film.

I have hunted high and low and I can’t find it.

I don’t mean a roll of film - who has those these days? Unless you’re living in the dark ages. Or in Hackney or Stokie or Lewisham and have a beard, tatts, nose ring, possibly a lip disc - and that’s just the girls, tee hee. (Sorry, I meant cis gender women.) (And trans women too of course.) (Maybe I shouldn’t have started this.)

Anyway, no, I do not mean that kind of film, I mean a film as in a movie, a flick, a picture, a cinematic experience. I have lost one - no. 45 to be precise - and being a bit anal about these things, I am quite disturbed.

To explain: a few weeks ago we had the London Film Festival. As a one time titan of the airwaves, and now the the author of this estimable blog, I am, in exchange for an ever increasing fee - forty five quid  this year - able to blag a press pass.

And very grateful I am. What better way to fill a retiree’s days as the autumn chill begins to bite.

The trouble with joy

Ah! If only simple pleasure were enough for me. I am, as Woody Allenonce described himself, ‘anhedonic’. As I understand it, that means incapable of having a good time for the sake of it.

Something - somewhere inside my amygdala or frontal lobe or wherever such impulses lurk - insists that I must have an aim, a goal of some kind. It’s as though standing before the Eiger, it would not be enough for me to admire its magisterial beauty. I would feel an  irresistible compulsion  to grab some crampons and leg it  up the North face. (Okay, possibly a slight overclaim there but you get the idea.)

And thus it is that, each year, my principal purpose at the festival really has nothing to do with appreciating  the glories of world cinema. As with the mountain that must be climbed because it is there, I hear  an irresistible call to a completely pointless course of action.

My personal Eiger (it really should be Everest but I’m stuck with the Eiger now) is to pay an average price of less than £1 per screening that I enter.

Rules of the game

And lest you think that’s dead easy - and that all I have to do is walk in, get the person with the BFI badge and the little hand held   recording doobery to record my press pass number, and  then walk straight out again - you are most seriously mistaken.

Rule 27 subsection b, clearly states that I have to see enough to be able to write some kind of review for each and every film.(See below.) (And further below.) (And much further below.) Furthermore, although I am  permitted to walk out if I think the film is really shite, I have to stay for at least half an hour.

It is a feat  that I have, for one reason and another - typically, violent vomiting brought about by a surfeit of Gallic pretentiousness or a crippling attack of wobblycamitis -  never previously managed to accomplish. And inflation makes it an ever more daunting prospect. It’s like the Eiger growing another couple of thousand feet every year. At the 2018 price, it would mean I had to see at least forty six films.

Reaching for the stars

The one thing that gave me a tiny shred of hope was that this year I would be in London with a more or less empty diary for the entire period of press previews, beginning Sept 24th, and for the actual festival, which ended October 21st. Forty six films in twenty nine days. Obviously tough, but at one and three fifths  a day, it did seem just about doable.

In fact, a bit  like Mo Farah, who is happy to ease himself into the race and hang about at the back of the field for the first lap, I saw only one film a day for the first week and gradually stepped it up so that by the beginning of the final week I still had twenty three films to see. Yes, as  the bell sounded for the last lap, I still had an immense amount of ground to make up.

But I was honed, oiled (a steady diet of oatmilk lattés) and up for the challenge. Saw four films a day Mon to Fri, except Wed when I saw five - my first ever 5 a day! Saw two on the Sat - but, as much as it stuck in my craw, paid - PAID! - for a ticket for one of them (will explain later) so  only one counted. And  then three more on the final Sunday. Meaning I had seen forty eight films overall  with forty seven eligible  - forty seven for the price of my forty five pounds press pass. Average cost: 95.744 pence.

NINETY FIVE POINT SEVEN FOUR FOUR PENCE!!!! Cue tumultuous applause, wild cheering, caps being hurled into the air, my modest, slightly sheepish acceptance of bouquets thrown at my feet, headlines in the dailies, in depth analyses in the Sundays,  a billion tweets, Facebook breaking down through worldwide overload,  invitations to appear on Breakfast TV, The  One Show - rejected - Graham Norton - maybe - James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke - okay -  and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon - accepted if whole show is devoted to me.

Let the naysayers nay

Of course, I knew there would be doubters. Small minded types consumed with envy - very possibly like yourself - and  conspiracy theorists  who would insist that, like the landing on the moon, seeing forty eight films (forty seven eligible) in twenty nine days was simply beyond the reach of humankind and that the whole enterprise was some kind of epic confidence trick.

So I knew I would need proof. And so I kept notes. Contemporaneously. Each film I saw, I noted down on the yellow notebook thingy on my i-phone. From one to forty eight (forty seven eligible) they went in and were consecutively numbered. And then, at the end, it was my intention to review them. (Too busy resting in my  bivouac - aka the cafe in the PIcturehouse Central - to write them as I saw them.)

That was the plan and the plan was put into effect. All went swimmingly, if several tads slowly - at the time of bloglication it’s already the thick end  of a month since the Festival finished - until I reached no 45.

And then - disaster.

YIkes!

44 was clear enough: ‘Ollie and Stan.’ And 46 was there: ‘Girl’’. But beside the number 45, there was nothing. Just blank space. (And though Blank Space could easily have been a film, perhaps based on the song Blank Space by Taylor Swift - ‘I’ve got a blank space baby, And I’ll write your name’ - and there was actually a film called Blank Spaces made in 2010, the blank space in question was just in fact, no more than that, a blank space.)

The reader - if there still is one - will be easily able to imagine how distraught I was. I was - and I remain - convinced that I had seen forty eight movies (forty seven eligible) but I could only identify forty seven ( and therefore only forty six eligible.)

How could this have happened, I wept and beseeched the God in whom I do not believe? As expected, no answer, but retracing my fingers I concluded that in writing the reviews beside the numbers, I had unwittingly deleted the name of the film that had been beside the number 45.

An absence of proof

I grabbed my dog-eared copy of the Festival Programme and cross-checked all the gazillions of  titles with those on my list, to see if there was one that I recognised that might have been no.45. But when you are as anal/OCD/idiotic as I am, you have to be punctiliously - obsessively - honest and I have to confess that I couldn’t find anything. I delved into the settings of  my i-phone’s yellow notepad thingy several times to see, if I had by any chance, inadvertently made a copy of the original entries before I began the review, but nada.

Eventually I had to accept that,  like Shergar, the name of the film that should have been beside no.45, would never be found. My only consolation was that this fascinating tale would be the basis for a fantastic movie, which I shall, one day, star in, write, direct, and produce: ‘And the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor/Writer/Director/Motion Picture goes to: Richard Phillips, Richard Phillips, Richard Phillips, Blank Space!’)

Other than that, I am left with nothing but a terrible quandary. Do I insist, despite the missing movie,  that I saw forty eight films (forty seven eligible) and that  the price of 95.744 per film stands? Or do I say, since I cannot name film no.45, that, for the official record, I shall accept, albeit grudgingly and bitterly, that only forty seven films (forty six films eligible) can be counted, which increases the average price to 97.827pence per film. Yes, still inside £1 but unarguably by a substantially narrower squeak.

But  that is not proof of absence.

As you will imagine, I have, before sending this blog post off into the e-ther, fought an epic battle with my conscience. I have tossed and turned in the night, spent days in a monastic retreat - well, sitting on the loo, as good as - before deciding that, one missing title notwithstanding, I did indeed see forty eight films (forty seven eligible) and will claim, until the moment I have taken my last breath that the average price per film was 95.744p.  Indeed, given the importance this  has assumed in my life, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that these will be  my actual last words -  though hopefully not right now.

However, my rigid insistence on  complete honesty  demands that I confess that there is another reason for choosing the 95.744 option.

It is this: There  is another rule - 39, clause iv - that has to be obeyed. And to explain that properly, I need to go out of order and begin my reviews with no.22

Ignorance is not always bliss.

Rule 39, clause iv, states that I must see every film ‘completely cold’ - by which I mean, knowing as little as conceivably possible about what I am about to see. I make a point/fetish of never reading the Festival programme blurb before I go in. When going to the cinema in the ordinary way, that is to say paying a proper price, I do everything I can to avoid seeing a trailer, usually by timing my entrance so I miss them, but if not, I  cover my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears, and I would go ‘la la la la la’ except I would be bombarded by popcorn and soggy nachos.

And I never, ever so much as glance at a review until after I've seen the film, and not just because I think all reviewers - except me - are tossers. I want to make a judgement of my own, uninfluenced by the half baked opinions of others. I want to witness  the story unfold exactly as the director intended that it should. Of course my determination to be so pure has its drawbacks occasionally, and never more so than  in this case.

Thus:

22 Little  Drummer Girl

I went in with high hopes as the director Park Chan Wook, who made the astonishing Korean and Korean-ised version of Sarah Waters’ fantastic (I thought) novel Fingersmith. (His film was called The Handmaiden, not to be confused with The Handmaid's Tale.)

TLDG started intriguingly and then, after about  an hour, the end credits rolled, seemingly  half way through the film. I sat there thinking, ‘how very odd’,  but, given my admiration for this director’s previous film, I decided this must be some uber cool directorial device and carried on watching regardless. Then an hour later the same credits rolled again, this time, as it turned out, at the conclusion of the performance. Even odder, for there seemed to have been no clue - at least none that I’d picked up -  as to why the credits had  been run the first time.

So whatever uber cool trick the director was trying to bring off, it was clearly way too cool for me. Moreover the story was left completely unresolved. It seemed as though there was a lot more  to be said  and  the audience had been left high and dry. The whole thing was completely baffling. Until, that is, I finally referred  to  the programme blurb and discovered this wasn’t a film at all but the first two episodes of a new BBC series. (Now showing.)

Why should this be shown at a Film Festival, especially when the TV series is to be broadcast only two weeks later? Answers on a postcard please.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.0* (Not a film.)

So, you can see the problem. This wasn’t strictly a film - as in a movie that you might see in a regular cinema - at all. So should it count?  If the Rules Committee (me, myself and I) took a really strict view, they might not allow The Little Drummer Girl through even though I had  thought it would be a proper film  when I went in.

You can see where I am going with this. If I had not refused to back down on the missing no.45, I could have been in serious trouble. Because If I hadn’t and the Committee  put their black caps on in regard to no.22, I would be down to forty six films viewed and only forty five eligible, meaning the average price of entry would be £1 exactly.

Still a formidable achievement but, whichever way you look at it, £1 cannot be simultaneously less than £1. I would my miss target for yet another year.

Agonisingly close but no cigar. And you can’t really plant the flag unless you’ve reached the summit.

Let the record show

As I have said, I am not a believer but sometimes one simply has to invoke the name of the  so-called creator because it is the only word that will do. So thank God that after long, and sometimes hotly contested deliberations, the committee voted by a majority of two to one (myself and I for  the motion, me dissenting)  to take a lenient view and admit no 22. What’s more they didn’t even raise the subject of  the missing no.45.

So, all’s well that ends well. Will 95.744p ever beaten? One never knows, but my guess this is a Bob Beamon Plus Plus Plus sort of record.

One final note before I get to the other forty six reviews. I am the reviewer who is absolutely, positively guaranteed never to give the game away. No plot spoilers, no tedious Kermodian descriptions of every tiny thing. In fact, sod all apart from the odd detail such as the title, occasionally who might be in it, its country of origin and the briefest reference to  the skeleton of the story.

Reading one of my reviews you will never learn who dunnit. You won’t even know  wot they dun.  

The rest of the reviews:

1 Asako 1&2 (numbers are part of the title) 

Japanese romance with a clever plot twist.  Inoffensive, watchable - a slightly different slant (shamefully politically incorrect pun but impossible to resist) on familiar themes. 3*

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

2 Petra 

An incoherent Spanish film about a young woman and a small daughter in search of something or other. Complex plot which asked too much of this audience. (By which I mean me.) Tiresome.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1.5*

3 The Guilty 

Highly unusual and thought provoking thriller of sorts. Although nothing remotely like it, except in its ‘message’,  it reminded me of the celebrated Guardian commercial - celebrated if you lived  in the advertising bubble, that is  - which showed one scene from different points of view, each one altering your assumptions about what was going on.

A lot of concentration required for ‘The Guilty’  - slightly more than I had. A few irritating plot flaws but worth your time.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

4 Wildlife

Thanks to British Rail’s time honoured uselessness,  I was 10 minutes late but I don’t think I missed anything crucial.  This was the very first film I saw but I can still just about remember it which says quite a lot for it I suppose. Carey Mulligan who I usually don’t like is very good in this 50s Americanadrama. Ed Oxenbould as the teenage son in the midst of a family crisis is impressive.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

5 Crystal Swan

The lesson to be learned here is that  under no circumstances choose Belorussia  for your next holiday unless unremitting bleakness turns you on. But the story of a rebellious young woman desperate to get  a visa to America is intriguing and persuasive.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

6 Shadow

Another of those Chinese warrior films which involves all sorts of leaping about and balletic sword twirling. Not my cup of Lapsang Souchong  but if it’s yours, go for it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

7. Arctic.

Icelandic. Very snowy. A man lost and hungry and  not a happy bunny (not that any bunny would be)  in the eponymous frozen somewhere. In short, All Is Lost on Ice. (A brilliant line if I say so myself. If you haven’t seen All Is Lost, you should because it’s better and also because you will then appreciate the brilliance of the line which will otherwise be wasted on you )

On the other hand if you don’t see it, Arctic will probably seem more original and interesting than it did to me.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

8 Jinn

Awful, unlikely story about a black Californian teenager who wants to shake her booty  and her controlling TV weatherwoman mother who discovers Islam. 

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

9 Manto

Worthy but tedious biopic about a famous writer caught up in the cross border chaos of Indian/Pakistani independence. I lasted for about 3/4 of it, then decided to get a sandwich instead.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

10 After the Screaming Stops

Where else but at a press screening at the London film Festival would you find yourself watching a documentary about a Bros reunion? Interesting  in that it showed what an incredible jerk Matt Goss is. And sometimes funny in the laughing-at as opposed to laughing-with sense.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

11 May  the Devil Take You

Walked out. Hated  it. Apart from that I can’t remember anything.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.0.5*

12 Mandy

Never got all this cult film bollocks.  Never liked Russ Meyer or  got George Romero or John Waters  and this film which appears to be in this ‘cult’ category was , as far,  as  I was concerned,  simply unbearable. Left after an hour.  Yes, I know it’s had fantastic reviews from all and sundry but then remember, fengshui proves that a billion Chinese can be wrong.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating. - (minus) 200*

13 Ash Is Purest White

A Chinese melodrama about low level gangster life centred on the life of the moll. (I mean morr- ha ha ha.) (Is it racist to make pathetically obvious jokes, if you can call them that, about Chinese/ Japanese pronunciation issues? Probably yes, so why do I keep doing it? Discuss.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2.5*

14.Widows

The gushing reviews it seems to have received (judging by the number of stars on the posters on the underground)  baffle me. It was nothing more than a highly polished turd. The original television serious was completely implausible and this film is no improvement. In the trailer  that I advertently failed to miss, ‘12 Years a Slave’ director and, in another life, Turner prize winner, Steve McQueen - the new one not the dead one - appears himself  to  claim this is the film he always wanted to make. 

Personally  I think it might have been about the money.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2*

15 Thunder Road

A curious piece, written and directed and starring  the same person, all about the  disintegrating life of an American policeman. Tonally it was partly black comedy and partly unalloyed tragedy. A tour de force of sorts creatively,  but not quite sure what to make of it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

16 Border

A love story with knobs on - but not necessarily in the usual places - this is a quite brilliant piece of filmmaking which questions the very nature of attraction.  ‘Border’ has a very contemporary story but one which is drawn,  apparently,  from Nordic mythology. One of the two or three best films I saw in the festival.  Highly recommended.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

17 Colette

I started by being irritated by Collette. Keira Knightley has had a bit too much onscreen rumps pumpy to be a convincing teenager in plaits skipping through the grass. And there was early dialogue referencing toothpaste and the top line on an optician’s charts. In 1892? Did they have those in 1892? (The answer it turns out is yes - toothpaste invented in the 1850s, Colgate producing it in jars in 1873 and in tubes in the 1890s, and opticians have been around since earlier than that - so one in the eye for me. And one  in the mouth.)

But all this became quickly irrelevant anyway. Because I stopped being picky and submitted to the  charm of this film, seduced by the bravura performance of Dominic West - who seemed  made for his twinkly eyed, moustache twirling part  and by the surprisingly nuanced Keira Knightley - never been a fan but I am now. As it turned out, after that first slightly jarring note, she was perfectly cast as the country school girl who goes on to be a revolutionary in the fin de siecle culture war in Paris.. But above all it was the astonishing, and very well told, story of Collette - nothing of which I knew - which fascinated. In short, a  damn good night at the cinema.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

18 Beautiful Boy

Film about parental angst over teenage son’s descent into drugs hell. I found it interesting, if for no other reason than it made me realise the blindingly obvious fact that each viewer sees  a film through the prism of their own life experience and that must affect their appreciation of it. In  this case, as a father I couldn’t help but see  things  from the father’s point of view but if you you were in the first flush of youth you would, I think see it from the son’s. 

The  casting of Timothy Hutton  as the expert to whom we see Steve Carell talking caught my eye because he was, about 40 years ago,  the Timothy Chalomet  of his day - remember ‘Ordinary People’?- and then looked a little like him.

And here’s another curious little factoid about Timothy Hutton - perhaps something to thrill the table with if Christmas lunch is flagging. He also appeared in a 1996 film called Beautiful Girls.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

19 Sometimes. Always.Never

Light, low budget British comedy with Bill Nighy; painstakingly made and clearly a labour of love. A little twee at times but very well played and with something semi-profound to say - though at a distance of a few days, having seen so many films since, I can’t remember exactly what it was.  

It had a particular appeal for me because the hero had  spent a life in the menswear business, as my father did, and  the title refers to how one should button a three button jacket, from top button downwards - something I learned at an early age and have never forgotten.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

20. Roma

I would say that Roma was a faultless recreation of 1970s Mexico City except that I wasn’t in Mexico City in the 1970s so how could I know?  It did however ring completely true to me - apart from a shower head which looked suspiciously modern - pedantic? moi? - and demonstrated  the astonishing versatility of the director, Adolpho Cuaron, who  also made ‘Y Mama Tu Tambien’ 'Children of God' and ‘Gravity’ - that’s some CV -  films which could not be more different to this. ‘Roma’ is a sort of upstairs downstairs story and has wonderful performances from all the actors but most particularly from the main character, the young servant girl. 

If I have one caveat it is that it didn’t quite ‘speak to me’, apart from making me queasily guilty that I have a cleaning lady.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

21 Non Fiction

One of those literary French films purporting  to be profoundly intellectual (even if, in this case, also supposed to be ironically amusing.) All about writers and publishers and their existential angst in the digital world.  But then  aren’t all French films like this about existential angst - whatever it means? This is the sort of thing I viscerally loathe  and after about half an hour, je sort, and  gave ‘Non Fiction’, the General de Gaulle - ‘Non! Non! Non!’

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

23 Life  Itself

Not everybody loves this film; in fact, the reviews have generally had the whiff of a  blocked drain,  but I claim my right to vigorously demur - up to a point. Directed and written by Dan Fogelman (the guy who does ‘This Is Us’ on Netflix or somewhere) it begins with a story about familiar  Noo Yorker angst but approaches it from a surprising angle - at least to me. ‘Life Itself’, comes in four labelled acts, something I don’t like in movies usually but the first three  worked for me. The  last seemed like a rather - make that very - tired cliché. 

My main issue with the film was that, whereas with Roma I couldn’t quite understand what it was trying to say, here the message was triple underlined in upper case bold. Not yet quite at the stage of jibbering senescence where I need to be spoon-fed.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

24 Wild Rose

Have to declare an interest here. The film’s star, Jessie Buckley,  is someone I know a little, and whose  career I have watched with interest since she was about 18 when she appeared on a TV talent show and after which  I interviewed her. I am a massive fan. She is an astonishingly gifted singer and a damn good actor. (Brilliant in her earlier non-singing role in last year’s ‘Beast’, which I thought was an exceptional movie, better than this to be honest, and which may yet prove to be a bit of a sleeper.)

 ‘Wild Rose’ is about a single mother from the badlands of a Scottish estate who has a yen to be a Nashville diva. (A bit like  Lady Gaga in ‘A Star is Born’. C&W seems all the  rage at the mo.) ‘Wild Rose’ has a few credulity stretching moments but the  feel good peaks make you want to ignore  those. It will make the Saturday night popcorn go down with a tear and a cheer. And it is a wonderful showcase for Jesse, who, If there is any justice, is destined for Hollywood mega stardom.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

25 Sunset

Lazló Némes, who made last year’s wincingly convincing Auschwitz film ‘Son of Saul’, now comes up with a wobbly cam evocation of verge-of-World War One Budapest called ‘Sunset’. By a complete but happy coincidence the person sitting next to me turned out to be an old  pal, Saul Metzstein, who is a movie director himself. 

I was gratified to learn that he was as mystified by this film as I was. No idea what the point of it was - went straight over my head. (Which,  admittedly does not require much intellectual elevation.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2*

26 Dogman

Loved this. One of my Festival top three or four and likely, I read,  to be a runner in the Oscar Foreign Film race. It’s a modern tale of the  little man in a hostile world and takes place in one of those seedy parts  of Italy that you find everywhere if you stray very far from the tourist trail. It is already on release - in fact, by the time I get around to posting this blog, it may already be finished, but try to catch it if you can. (Beware of violence though, if that bothers you.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

27 The Kindergarten Teacher

Never been much of a Maggie Gyllenhaal fan - always seems a bit cold and distant to me - but she is exceptional in this unusual contemporary New York drama about a thoroughly decent middle aged woman who,  for reasons which may or may not be valid,  finds herself out of step with those about her. Intriguing and thought provoking and better the more I think about it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

28 They Shall Not Grow Old

Everyone is raving about Peter Jackson’s  colour and  3-D reincarnation of genuine old World War One footage but it left me pretty cold.

It may be - no doubt is - an astonishing technical feat but after so many books and plays and films and so much TV and radio devoted to the subject I am afraid to say that I have a touch  of World War One fatigue and this didn’t relieve my symptoms.

Last year’s  wonderful remake of RC Sherriff’s ‘Journey’s End’ packed far more emotional punch, for me at least. Yes, the colour pictures of corpses and lice and rats and trenchfoot were ghastly but I wasn’t shocked and I wasn’t surprised. Who doesn’t know that World War I was unspeakably awful? Or rather, who amongst those who might go to see a film like this, doesn’t know? (‘Venom’ fans, I would have thought,   are unlikely customers.)  

My biggest complaint, though,  is about the soundtrack: I found the unrelenting stream of voices irritating and soon switched off and stopped listening to what they had to say. Easily the most powerful piece of sound in the film was, I thought,  the accompaniment to  the end title, the marching troops singing ‘Mademoiselle from Armentiers’. (Sung  of course, as Ah-men-tears’.) Nothing seemed to me to sum up the pathos and suicidal naivety  of the cannon fodder as much as this.

Perhaps more music of the same intensity and fewer quotes might have made them more memorable.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2.5*

29 Rosie

An Irish version of a Ken Loachy sort  of film about decent people caught in the poverty trap. Persuasive and faultlessly done. But I am not sure what it told me that I would prefer not to know but unfortunately do.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

30 El Angel

A highly original and sometimes very funny,  blood soaked,  true story  about a teenage boy with decent, law abiding parents and   a head  of blonde curls  which is  set   in  Argentina (where, typically, people  are swarthy with black hair) in the 70s, and   who determinedly but very merrily sets about pursuing his ambition to become a ruthless murdering gangster. If there seem to be a few contradictions there, that is the joy of this film. 

Remember to search  for it on Amazon or Netflix in a few months  if it doesn’t get a release.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

31 Florianopolis Dream 

Was really   struggling to remember anything at all about this film  and,  until I checked, I thought it was more of the seedy  Italian  seaside and the story of two women battling it out to claim maternal rights over a small child. But now I realise that was another film entirely, which was....

32, Daughter of Mine.

Okay but in the unlikely event of  it ever getting a release, I wouldn’t worry about FOMO if you can’t manage to see it. 

And, now that I  do remember it, likewise  Florianopolis Dream, a Brazilian effort about a family’s seaside holiday in a place where it seemed to be perpetually cloudy. (Just to be clear, the  cloudiness was nothing to do with the plot, which was largely non-existent, but the obviously very low budget. I am sure the director would have preferred the sun but couldn’t afford to wait.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.

Florianopolis Dream 1.5*,

Daughter of Mine 2.5*

33 Capharnaum

A close second, that well  might have been first had I not seen the winner afterwards in the race to be my top pick of the festival. Timing is everything.. This is the heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting story of a boy of about twelve brought up in abject poverty in the slums of what I presume was Beirut. 

The performance of the boy is magical and though a two hour journey through the world of the  Lebanese dispossessed (or rather,  the  would’ve been dispossessed if they had ever possessed anything in the first place) may not sound like a fun Saturday night at the pictures, do not be put off. Whilst not so much pricking your conscience as repeatedly firing a  Kalashnikov at it, it somehow manages to be a feel-good movie at the same time.  

My only quibble was that the editing around the clever device upon which the plot is built,  slightly confused me at the end. Oh, and also, what’s with the title? Could they have found anything more obscure? Or maybe there was a clue in the film but, if so, I didn’t pick it up.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4.5*

34 Birds of Passage

Think of this as a pre-prequel to Narcos. Drugs and grisly murders mixed in with a bit of ancient dream interpretation  in Colombia in the sixties, when it was the  Native Americans (or one of the 87 tribes of Pueblos  lndigenas  as they call  them in Colombia - isn’t Google marvellous?) and not the Sicarios who were cashing in on the medical benefits of the local cash crop. 

Judging by the gore in ‘Birds of Passage’,  they  could have taught  Pablo Escobar a thing or two about effective persuasion -  blowpipes were out and sub machine guns deffo in. Clear and solid storyline, good pace, convincing acting, and lots of ketchup  - what’s not to like? Another probable Oscar Foreign Film contender.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

35 Carmen and Lola

Good late Sunday night on BBC4  type film in which two young gypsy women in modern day Spain confront the fixed ideas of their incurably misogynistic families. One fascinating side effect of seeing this film  was noticing in the sub-titles that the Roma  in Spain (who are not shown as travellers but living in permanent homes) refer to the wider Spanish community as white  people.  

To me,  the man and woman in the Spanish Street  and the Roma  all looked pretty much the same - dark haired and sallow skinned,  and hard to differentiate from each other. I mentioned this in the Q&A afterwards and Spanish members of the audience - and remember, film festival goers are usually predictably right-on - seemed a bit put out. Perhaps I was being tactless and/or naive. Prejudice runs deeper than you might think.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

36 The Quake

I correctly interpreted the title as heralding  a thriller about an earthquake and looked forward to some  light relief from the intense social commentaries that are the bread and butter of the festival. I have rarely seen a bad Norwegian film but I did this time. Ludicrous  plot,  wildly overdone CGI including a slowly toppling, and clearly named  Radisson hotel - very  odd  product placement. Avoid.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 1*

37 Girls of The Sun

A no punches pulled war film from a French woman director about Yazidi girls fighting in the Kurdish army in Iraq. Couldn’t help but be struck by the casting of far and away the prettiest girl as the group leader and main character. A curious - commercial? -  decision in such a feminist piece. 

A decent enough effort otherwise  but I feel that Henry Naylor’s plays which have done so well at Edinburgh and in New York in recent years (Borders, Angel etc, a couple of which are on at the Arcola, Dec 4-22)  and which deal with similar themes  do so much more effectively. A rare case - for me- of the cinema being inferior  to the theatre.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3*

38 The White Crow

Quite nteresting without being competely fascinating, watchable without being riveting, this is a tale of the early days of Nureyev directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also appears,   thankfully not as Rudy, but as his teacher, giving a performance which I found somewhat  distracting as he strongly reminded me of Paul Whitehouse. Nureyev Is portrayed as an unsympathetic character, driven and selfish, which could well have been true, so ‘The White Crow’ ticked the ‘seems authentic’ box, although his chilliness  doesn’t help you love the film.

 I would semi-enthusiastically recommend it, but I doubt it will be shown very widely since I can’t see it  doing brilliantly at the box office - not sure that the world of ballet is a place the Saturday night  popcorn crowd want to visit.  And who under 50  will know much - or indeed anything - about  Rudolph Nureyev and his place in the sixties zeitgeist?  But then who cares? It wasn’t my money.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

39 Burning

There seemed to to be a bit of a buzz about this film amongst the so called press (aka the vast number of liggers who, like me, and with no less right, had managed to blag a press pass) but I have no idea why. It’s a strange story about the homecoming of a rather disorientated young Japanese chap with a father in gaol and another contrastingly self assured young fellow  who is doing jolly nicely thankyou. Plus, for some reason, there are burning glasshouses. Utterly mystifying - to me at least - and so slow it made the average glacier seem like Usain Bolt.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2*

40 Yommedine

A road movie about an Egyptian  leper and a runaway orphan. (One of the many surprisingly good things about this film is that there it unlikely to be a Hollywood remake.) 

An astonishing achievement to have made such a simultaneously upbeat  and yet deeply moving  film about people one would normally think of as being at the very bottom of the heap if, that is, one gave  them any thought to them at all. Brilliant performances that take us beneath the skin that so many are terrified  to touch.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

41.Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Stands a pretty good chance of coming to a cinema near you and I don’t you think will begrudge the price of a ticket. Melissa McCarthy gives a masterful - if that’s the right word to use - performance in the true story of surly, lonely, habitually rude 51-year-old biographer and lesbian Lee Israel  and her extraordinary and ingenious attempts to make money in 90s New York.

 Richard E. Grant plays her camp hoppo with all the Richard E. Grantness that you’d expect and Dolly Wells does a nice little turn as a guileless bookshop owner. (To be frank I might not have mentioned her, but coincidentally her mother was my Airbnb guest on the day I went to see this film, so I thought it was only fair to give her a shout out, and I did think she was pretty good.) Amusing, touching and very watchable.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

42 The Hate U Give

Based  on a ‘young adult novel, this is the story of a young black girl living  in a rundown,  violent, gang ridden   district because her father, whilst allowing her to be sent to a private white school doesn’t want to make the move into a middle-class world. (Sounds fairly unlikely but on this occasion, I wasn’t in one of my usual hole picking moods so I went with it.) 

A series of regrettable incidents  force her to come to terms with the conflicting  aspects of her identity. Not quite sure if this film was actually intended  for my demographic group, but, despite it’s improbable  plot turns, I thought it had something useful to say. And hear.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

42 The Sisters Brothers

Saw this on the day that I actually managed to attend five screenings. A notable achievement but knackering and while I was supposed to be watching  this - I think it was my fourth of the day  - I have to admit I nodded off more than once.  I have a strong feeling it was probably rather good - featured Joaquin Pheonix, Jake Gylenhal, John C.Reilly, so a promising cast -  but I’m not really sure. Anyway, it’s cowboy film with a slightly Coen Brothers tone of voice, but isn’t one of theirs.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

43 A Private War

Like Maggie Gyllenhaal - see The Kindergarten Teacher, above -  Rosamond Pike has never been  a favourite of mine. and for similar reasons. I’ve always found her ice queen manner slightly off putting. Here she is playing legendary war journalist Marie Colvin but I never believed her. Lots of actoring with cigarettes and an eyepatch and her unruly wig flapping about  but it just seemed like dressing up to me. I kept wanting to scream at the screen, ‘Put a bloody helmet on!’.

 For all that, I can’t deny that ‘A Private War’ held my attention and had the odd moment.The sort of thing that might not  seem a complete waste of time when it makes its inevitable appearance on    BBC2 late on some future Sunday night. Otherwise not really recommended.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

44  Stan and Ollie

As a child in the er ah ahem um er nineteen whatevers I use to love Laurel and Hardy and here John C. Reilly and the make up artists do a great job of recreating  Oliver Hardy on screen and Steve Coogan is more than passable  if less impressive as Stan laurel. 

A fascinating story of their later years but for me, let down by the stagey, artificial representation of fifties England. Also very odd casting and playing of legendary impresario Bernard Delfont. Was Lew Grade’s brother really like that? No idea but not how I imagined the man who brought us Sunday Night At the London Palladium. Still, all in all, a pretty decent night out at the flicks.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

45. (As previously discussed.)

46 GIRL

 On the final Saturday I went with some friends to see the announcement of the result and the screening of the film which had won the best first feature award and I had to pay so I could sit with my pals. A little bit of a gamble as there was a chance I had  already seen the winning movie,.  

The winner  turned out to be Girl,  a story about a Belgian boy of 15 who wanted to be a ballerina. (Note:  Not another Billy Elliott -  he wanted to be a real ballerina.) When the announcement of the award was made, the  good news was that it was a film I hadn’t  already  seen but the bad, I glumly thought, was that I had consciously decided not to see it earlier in the week because, to be honest,  I have grown a little weary  of the entire LGBTQ I XYZ trans-gender, cis gender, gender  fluidity,  gender whatever, what? WTF!, what-do-THEY-do? thing. 

Only it didn’t turn out to be bad news at all. Girl is an absolutely extraordinary film, deeply touching with an astonishing performance by the young boy playing the young boy who wanted to be a girl. Not only was it riveting viewing but it made me completely rethink my attitude to the whole transgender thing.  Whereas  previously my attitude might have been summed up as ‘all these boys wanting to be boys and girls wanting to be boys - perlease!’ I felt afterwards that I had at least a small but sympathetic understanding of the predicament that Victor/Lara and his family faced. And by extension, others like them. A really good film can do that - open your eyes and mind to a different world. 

So, from being  a movie that I hadn’t wanted to  to see, Girl became my personal pick of the festival and recipient of the Palme d’bloggerblagger

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 5*

46 Blaze

Went to see this because I noticed that Ethan Hawke was the director and I am a bit of a fan of his work both as an actor and as a writer - he once wrote a very good novel, the name of which now escapes me. Unfortunately this film, a story, supposedly true, of a  singer and songwriter in the sixties - I think - failed to stop me from making short but frequent visits to the land of nod.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

47 The Fight

The very last film I saw, A low budget British film about a fortyish woman in a racially mixed marriage with a bullied  child and  a dark secret and a bad relationship with her own mother and who, for some reason that I never quite got to grips with,  takes up boxing.  I might have appreciated this film more  had my hearing been better. I discovered in post movie conversation (with one of the other members of the  press/ liggers ) that I had mistaken the spoken number 30 for 13 and that had a significant bearing on my misunderstanding of  the story, and consequent confusion and mild dissatisfaction.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

PS Anyone with so much time on their hands that they have waded through this nonsense until the end will have noticed, as I have only just done, that there were, in fact, two no 42s. Which I take to mean that, joy of joys,  we have found the missing no 45. (Something obviously went awry with the numbering system in my i-phone’s yellow notebook thingie. Or possibly, though obviously improbably,  it was my fault.)

Delighted to have been vindicated in my claim that I did indeed see 48 films (47 eligible.) Or, if there were an appeal against the present ‘Little Drummer Girl’ decision (unlikely but you never know) and it were to be upheld by the Rules Committee (even unlikelier) I would have seen 47 films (46 eligible.) And in even that remote eventuality I would still have officially reached the summit of my personal Eiger (Everest).

But it also means   80% of the first 1500 words of this post are completely redundant.

I could start again, I suppose. And I probably should. And yet….really?

[junker-town]

We shared our roller coaster stories because some other people got stuck upside down for 2 hours

Roller coasters are scary fun. Also scary scary.

How would you feel to be trapped upside down on a roller coaster, 100 feet above the ground? This nightmare was a reality for riders of “The Flying Dinosaur” at Universal Studios Japan on Wednesday, who were trapped for up for two hours before rescue crews were able to safely disembark every passenger.

大阪にある #USJ で走行中のジェットコースターが急停止し、一時客が取り残されました。 現場の様子を写真特集で→https://t.co/FFEMMJ58TM pic.twitter.com/O0l2VJmyD6

— 毎日新聞写真部 (@mainichiphoto) May 1, 2018

Everyone was able to leave the ride safely, and there have been no reported injuries as a result of the ride malfunction. It resumed operation following a safety check, but still — trapped upside down for two hours?

The story got the SB Nation crew talking about our own theme park related misfortunes, and we quickly learned that our ratio of employees to accidents was abnormally high. Some stories were too horrifying to be included here, but these are the experiences of our staff that didn’t involve someone’s death.

The Zipper, by Nate Scott

Growing up there was a traveling little amusement park called, I shit you not, Clown Town, that would come to my small town in New England every year. This little park would bring its rickety rides via trailer to our town square, set up, and we’d have our own little amusement park each year. Most of the rides were small time, teacup-spinning type stuff. But there was one called The Zipper.

The Zipper was an elongated spinning contraption with cars that fanned out from a central rotating structure, but the cars, which were caged in, would spin on their own axes. So riders, trapped in these cages, would be flipping about violently as the thing would move in a big circle up in the air. It was horrifying, and despite many years attending Clown Town, I never once set foot on the thing.

Anyway, one year someone got on The Zipper who should not have been on The Zipper. Someone with a weak stomach. I didn’t see this happen in real time, but heard the screams in the distance, and sprinted over with my middle school friends, and saw the aftermath.

It was like a scene out of a war film when we arrived. There was screaming above and below. Screaming everywhere. People on the ground were crawling around on hands and knees. Children wept. This is probably my memory playing tricks on me, but I swear at one point I heard someone bellow out: “THE HORROR!”

Someone had vomited on the The Zipper, at the top of the ride, up above everything else at Clown Town. Which is sad for that person, yes, no one likes getting sick.

It was worse for the people in the cages directly underneath, as well as some people on the ground who were waiting to ride The Zipper. For them, it was carnage. I have never seen so much vomit spread so far in one place. (Afterward, during a too lengthy discussion over an ice cream I struggled to enjoy at our town Friendly’s, my friend posited that it must have been a chain reaction of puking, vomit begetting vomit, as there was no way one person could have caused the scene we encountered.) The screams I heard that day ... they stay with me. And I will never forget them.

The Georgia Scorcher, by Harry Lyles Jr.

I have only gone on a rollercoaster once, because I don’t like them and I am a big baby. I went on the Georgia Scorcher, and said “shit” the entire ride. Yup!

The Great Bear, by Seth Rosenthal

In eleventh grade, we went on a “physics field trip” to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, which was basically just a day spent riding rides with like one math problem to solve at the end. On a roller coaster called The Great Bear, my friend Dave was sitting one car ahead of me and performed an incredible feat: Right as his car crested a hill, at the moment of weightlessness, he spit straight up in the air such that my trailing car passed through the falling saliva and I got a splash of spit straight to the fucking face.

The Gemini, by Jeanna Thomas

I was actually going to write about the time I got stuck on the Small World ride at Disney for over an hour at the end of the night with a bunch of tired, cranky, loud children, two of whom were mine, with that song playing over and over again. It’s not a roller coaster, but it is an amusement park ride, and it was a special kind of hell. However, Seth reminded me that when I was in high school my friend Jennifer and I were on the Gemini at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, and the girl in front of me spit toward the end of the ride and it landed on my arm. That’s objectively better than getting hit with some stranger’s spit in the face, but it was traumatic and I had successfully blocked it from my memory until right now. Please don’t spit while riding roller coasters. It’s disgusting and so very unnecessary.

Any ride at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, by Caroline Darney

I don’t have any complaints because Busch Gardens Williamsburg is the best amusement park in the world and has awesome roller coasters. Highly recommend. Go on the Griffon. It’s tops.