Paul Greenwood's movie reviews

Director: Joss Whedon

4 stars

All caught up with the Marvel movie universe so far? You'll kind of need to be to get the most from this superhero sequel that's in danger of bursting at the seams with returning characters while also trying to find room for several new ones.

The first film to feature the Avengers arrived to a rapturous reception three years ago and soared its way to a spot as the third biggest box office hit of all time. We've had further appearances from main players Thor, Iron Man and Captain America since, with last year's Guardians of the Galaxy taking the big picture into space.

With no need for introductions or get togethers here, the first five minutes plays like the climax of most other action movies, as the full Avengers team (which also includes Black Widow, Hawkeye and everyone's favourite, the Hulk) gets in amongst a bunch of baddies defending a stronghold.

It's a glorious sequence, as the six of them barrel through the enemy like they're bowling pins on their way to finding the sceptre belonging to Loki (see the first film). New questions are raised here too, as they encounter mutant twins Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who is able to get inside their heads and conjure dark thoughts and visions, a plot point which is never really explored in any meaningful way.

The main thrust though is that Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has a plan to create a robotic peacekeeping force, something he's keeping from the rest of the team. It involves that current cinematic bugaboo of choice, artificial intelligence, leading to the inadvertent creation of Ultron, a powerful entity who can inhabit any metallic body, and who decides he fancies destroying the planet.

There's a real effort to make the film about the characters, which is great, and to have their in-fighting as the source of the discord and mistrust that will tear them apart. It's just a little too easy though, like they're falling out because the plot demands it, rather than it feeling natural and organic. But it also allows us to dig deeper into the people under the suits, with Scarlett Johansson and Mark Ruffalo in particular given time to explore the effects their lifestyle has on them.

Once the speedbumps have been overcome, these are genuine heroes doing properly heroic things, and that's the movie's real triumph. Although the element of surprise has gone a little (we kind of know what they're all going to do, especially Hulk), there are some nice developments. And the rich vein of humour that writer and director Joss Whedon is so good at incorporating is present and correct. Yet the laughs quota is down on the first film and once in a while there's a feeling Whedon is trying too hard; he doesn't need to make everyone a joker, so when Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye tries it, we don't really buy it.

The big treat though is how funny Ultron is. As voiced by James Spader, he's imbued with the same sort of glib impatience as Stark, and his often exasperated exclamations are a welcome change of pace from typical supervillain fare.

The action scenes come at a furious rate, and while one or two might be filler (Iron Man vs Hulk?), there are several moments when you simply have to sit back and gawp in wonder at what's happening on the screen in front of you. As befitting a film with a budget pushing $300m, the scale of the spectacle is breathtaking, and the CGI used to create impossible things borders on photo-real.

Occasionally Age of Ultron can feel a little chaotic and occasionally it's completely baffling, but go with it and stick with, because there's plenty more to come from Marvel and these guys know what they're doing.

Stonehearst Asylum (15, 110 mins)

Director: Brad Anderson

1 star

Rarely can such a collection of talent have come together for such a misbegotten venture as this idiotic gothic thriller. It was known before a title change as Eliza Graves, the main character played by Kate Beckinsale who is sent to the titular asylum at the end of the 19th century suffering from hysteria. There a young doctor (Jim Sturgess) tries to help her for absolutely no reason other than he takes a shine to her, with far murkier goings on to be uncovered over the course of a ridiculously protracted running time. Plot-wise it's as though the key ideas were dreamt up by a 10 year old, and it's so honkingly predictable in its twists that jaws will drop, while it moves forward with all the pace and purpose of an actual hospital building. Poor Edgar Allen Poe on whose story it's based must be spinning in his walled-up tomb as Ben Kingsley, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson and Michael Caine line up to see who can make the biggest fools of themselves with increasingly hysterical and cheesy turns, yet bizarrely it's not remotely trashy enough to be in any way entertaining.

The Falling (15, 100 mins)

Director: Carol Morley

3 stars

At an all-girls school in the 1960s Lydia is just one of a number of girls afflicted by mysterious bouts of fainting and illness, with Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones proving her worth in the lead with a mature and confident performance. Woozy and dreamlike, The Falling takes its cue from something like Picnic at Hanging Rock, but the problem is it tends to depend a little too much on its mood and less so on its characters. So don't go looking for explanations, and if we see one young girl fainting, we see a hundred, with the effect starting to wear thin after a while. But it's a visual feast that's never dull, and its impact may have been improved further still if it had ended just a few seconds before it does.

The Good Lie (12A, 110 mins)

Director: Philippe Falardeau

3 stars

Based on true events and the stories of the Lost Boys of Sudan, this solid if unexceptional drama depicts the many hardships encountered by the people of the civil war-torn country in the 1980s. A group of orphaned youngsters are forced to flee their village, and the first stretch of the film is a harrowing account of their attempts to walk the hundreds of miles to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Years later, some make it to the States thanks to a pre-9/11 government programme, where Reese Witherspoon is the case worker assigned to help them find work, and the film changes tack here to show in illuminating detail how they deal with their new lives and all the things that are alien to them. It's convincingly acted by all concerned, very well intentioned and occasionally rather moving, and if the actual storytelling is a little pedestrian, that's not too much of a problem.