'Avengers': Multiple Marvels, Diminished Fun

What if Marvel gave a party and everybody came? That's the organizing principle of "The Avengers," the much-anticipated, hugely hyped, immensely expensive and fitfully enjoyable (with an asterisk) convocation of comic book superheroes in which Iron Man, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye team up to save the world. I'll explain the asterisk later. First let me note the magnitude of the event for the movie's fan base versus the oddity of the mash-up—a slow start, a single star performance surrounded by indifferent acting and an onslaught of computer effects that range from seen-it-all-in-"Transformers" to a whole sky full of spectacular stuff in the midtown Manhattan climax. (Joss Whedon directed from a script he wrote with Zak Penn.)

The star is Robert Downey Jr. His Iron Man is certainly a team player, but Mr. Downey comes to the party with two insuperable superpowers: a character of established sophistication—the industrialist/inventor Tony Stark, a sharp-tongued man of the world—and his own quicksilver presence that finds its finest expression in self-irony. (He was much better in the first "Iron Man," but he's quite good here.) "The Avengers," which takes place in murky darkness for the first half-hour or so, begins to lighten up figuratively, if not literally, only when Iron Man appears and we see, on the lips of the man inside the red robotic rig, a faint smile that says "this is going to be fun." The fun in seeing his teammates lies mostly in watching them in action, although they quarrel comically among themselves at the outset like superdivas: "We're not a team," Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner says, "we're a time bomb."

Mr. Ruffalo, as the anger-plagued scientist previously played by Edward Norton, makes a point of keeping Banner's emotions at a simmer, lest Banner turn into the raging Hulk, but the point is overdone in the name of underdoing and the result is blandness. It's easy to like Chris Evans as Captain America; likability is the retro-hero's shield against contempo-hip. Chris Hemsworth's Thor is more than likable; the demigod is touching in his attachment to his trusty hammer. Jeremy Renner, as Hawkeye, and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, fill out the sextet without adding much pizazz; Black Widow spends lots of time looking puzzled or confused. Tom Hiddleston is the villainous Loki, determined to steal a potential source of unlimited energy. The cast includes Samuel L. Jackson (in lower-energy mode) as Nick Fury, Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson and Gwyneth Paltrow, whose Pepper Potts makes a brief appearance, and then, toward the end, an even briefer reappearance that plays like an afterthought.

What passes for a plot is simple enough, even if frequent references to the characters' back stories may leave you feeling that you missed a prescreening plot briefing. At first the Avengers are hard put to avenge anything because they're outnumbered and outgunned by Loki's extraterrestrial army. "Stark, we need a plan," Captain America says. "I have a plan," Stark replies brightly. "Attack." Attack they do, energetically and episodically, in their individual styles. Still, it says something about the action—and the nature of action movies—that the wittiest moment comes when Stark says "Hulk, smash!" and the greatest satisfaction involves watching the green guy smash everything in sight, as well as fling Loki around like a limp rag doll.

Now, about that asterisk. I saw "The Avengers" in 3-D at a screening in Hollywood at the ArcLight, a multiplex known for excellent projection. As soon as the opening credits hit the screen it was obvious that something was wrong; the images were dim and badly out of register. I should have known that the problem was a dead battery in my glasses, since the same thing had happened—in a different theater—during last year's disastrous screening of "Clash of the Titans." Instead, I sat there stewing with frustration, and assuming the projection was to blame, since a couple of friends who'd come with me were having the same problem. One of them went out to complain, but nothing happened. A few minutes later he went out again and returned with replacement glasses for himself, his wife and me. Someone had told him the glasses were the culprit, but those batteries were dead too.

The third try did the trick; he passed out three pairs of glasses that worked. By then, though, I'd been distracted for most of the first act, and felt more empathy than I would have preferred for Bruce Banner's problems with anger management. That's the main reason I'm recounting this here. The technical screw-up was so upsetting that it may have skewed my judgment about the movie as a whole. I think I settled down, but I can't be sure, and I can't omit mention of the problem from my review.

The other reason has to do with the status of theatrical exhibitors as the weakest link in the 3-D process. (Some theaters have already been caught reducing light levels on the screen to extend the life of expensive projector lamps.) What happened to me and others at the ArcLight the other night was the height of absurdity. Here we were watching a production that cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter-billion dollars. Yet our enjoyment was compromised by button batteries that can't cost more than a buck a pop. And we were an invited audience, privileged to see an advance screening, not moviegoers paying hefty premiums for their 3-D experience. I shudder to think what they see.

'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'

Let's stipulate that older moviegoers are underserved to the point of starvation by a youth-obsessed entertainment industry. Yet they're ill-served by this story of British retirees traveling to India to spend their sunset years in a retirement hotel that's supposedly as beautiful as it is inexpensive. The hotel turns out to be a ramshackle disappointment where almost nothing works as advertised. The same goes for the movie, even though the cast includes some of the best English actors of our time—Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Maggie Smith.

They're stuck with a script, by Ol Parker, that's stuffed with contrivance and cliché, and doggedly repetitive as it tracks its characters' efforts to find new love and adapt to new surroundings. When a genuinely dramatic encounter takes place—it involves Graham Dashwood, a retired judge played by Mr. Wilkinson, and it's the movie's only moment of genuine drama—the camera perversely pulls back to a respectful distance. We see next to nothing of the encounter and hear nothing at all until later, when Graham tells someone else about it.

Let's also stipulate that Mr. Nighy is one of the great comic actors of any time. Here, however, he's a glum presence in a role of bleak passivity. Ms. Smith spends most of her screen time in a wheelchair, complaining nastily about everything under the Jaipur sun. Dev Patel has been encouraged, or allowed, by the director, John Madden, to overact wildly and wave his arms grotesquely as the hotel's desperate young proprietor. Only Ms. Dench gets to play a scene worthy of her gifts. Her character, Evelyn Greenslade, has gone out and hustled herself a job at an Indian call center; suddenly she's plunged into the witty give and take of teaching a young Indian woman how to keep a client on the line. The scene is about listening well, thinking quickly and responding creatively. Unlike the rest of this inert film, it's alive.

'First Position'

Bess Kargman's debut documentary is a marvelous way to spend 94 minutes, provided you're willing to spend them with your heart in your mouth.

The subject is young dancers seeking awards, validation and elite contracts in a ballet competition called the Youth America Grand Prix, which holds its final round in Manhattan. In structure the film is a real-life "Billy Elliot," but the familiar formula doesn't exclude breathtaking surprises. Beneath the jetés and bleeding feet, "First Position" is about toughness of mind as much as visions of beauty. In one case it's about a transformation so profound as to be unfathomable.

That distinction belongs to Michaela DePrince. A black war orphan from Sierra Leone, she was adopted at the age of four and brought into a very large, very white New Jersey family. When she recalls the horrors of her first four years she does so matter-of-factly: "Everywhere you looked you saw someone die...one time I tried to save my teacher, but they just came and cut her arms and legs off." Michaela's arms and legs are strong; so is her compact body. What she wants might seem out of reach for a young woman of her specific physique—"to be a delicate black dancer who does ballet." Yet delicacy is in the mind and muscles of the dancer, and Michaela has already proved that nothing is beyond her reach.

Ms. Kargman's strategy is straightforward—follow six contestants as they make their way through the semifinals and the finals, where everything they've learned, everything they've worked for and everything they can do must be distilled into a few fleeting moments on stage. There are crushing failures, of course, but also thrilling successes. In one of those success stories, the camera follows a contestant to London, where a scholarship awaits at the Royal Ballet, and where, it is noted in passing, two of the ballet company's adjacent buildings are connected by an aerial passageway called the Bridge of Aspiration. Everyone in the film has come to such a bridge, and everyone has crossed it.

'Here'

You must be willing to give yourself to Braden King's debut feature, a slow, meandering and sumptuously photographed road trip combined with an intimate love story. I gave, and I got. A lot.

The setting is Armenia, where Will, an American mapmaker played by Ben Foster, meets Gadarine, an expatriate photographer. She's played by Lubna Azabal, the actress who gave a glorious, grand-operatic performance in "Incendies." Ms. Azabal is much more restrained in "Here," but extraordinary all the same. And Mr. Foster is fine in an inward way that defines his character. Will works for a satellite-mapping company. Solitary in nature and obsessed by precision, he connects satellite images to the right places on the ground. Gadarine makes images too, but they're filled with faces and life, and they tell human stories.

In other words, two people who are polar opposites when it comes to mapping their worlds. Inevitably, and poetically, one approach gives way to the other. I won't say which trumps which, but I can tell you that Gadarine doesn't end up working for Google Earth, and that the filmmaker, Mr. King, has a gift for telling a story through meditative images. (Lol Crawley did the cinematography.) "Here" is intentionally underdramatized, and occasionally sententious, but intensely felt. Whenever Will and Gadarene touch, they are truly touched.