Film history is a long and strange one. They trace their origins to the late 1800s, much like USC does. Most films were almost immeasurably short during that time period. Any random YouTube video you pull up now would, at the very least, rival one in length. Sound in film didn’t catch on until the late 1920s. Fast forward to 2015 and $200+ million budget films with explosions and ear-rupturing sound aren’t even uncommon. All kinds of new technology like IMAX, 3D (which sucks, by the way), and 4DX are shoved down our throats. We live in a great time to be movie-watchers.

The sheer volume of movies means we also get a metric ton of crap. You know it’s serious when an American switches to the metric system (Just FYI, we DON’T use imperial. We’re more pretentious than that. It’s called “US Customary Units”). To help you sift through the garbage (and maybe collect some cans to recycle), I will release periodic movie reviews. What trip through Los Angeles is complete without a stop in touristy Hollywood? The idea is straightforward: I’ll keep it short, simple, and as spoiler free as possible—it might even be shorter than the early films.

With that being said, the first movie review to grace this blog will be:

Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Runtime: 2 hours, 21 minutes
Budget: Estimated to be $250-280 million

The bottom line: you get what you pay for. As usual, Joss Whedon gives you a bunch of snarky one-liners and banter. Marvel keeps finding new ways to keep the action different and exciting. They also continue to elegantly weave scattered pieces of Marvel comics together even while taking liberties. The characters being more genre-saavy also adds an interesting flavor. It is a fairly straightfoward and enjoyable movie.

CommBro BREAKER

A City of Angles post would not be complete without another angle! I mean come on, the blog’s tagline was a quote in Captain America: The First Avenger with a few changed words. I have to apply some more angles to this review.

First off, I felt like the movie lacked a clear climax like Transformers 3 (which was kinda bad). Some parts also dragged a bit.

And before you try to pat them on the back for all the action scenes, consider this: whether intentional or not, some fight scenes in indoor areas were hard to follow because the shots were too tight. You could say…the ANGLES WERE BAD.

P.S. Why do so many movie critics rely on puns to make it interesting?