Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

All pictures courtesy of the
 Captain America: The Winter Soldier IMDb page

This isn't going to be a spoiler-free review. I'll do my best to not spoil anything huge, but there might be small ones here and there. You have been warned.  

I knew I was going to enjoy this movie, because Steve Rogers is my favorite Marvel character. I didn't know that it was going to be the best Marvel movie I've ever seen.

I don't try to over-analyze superhero movies. I expect them to be action flicks with more explosions than plot, so I'm not disappointed when they are action flicks with more explosions than plot. I also have to mention that I know next to nothing about the original comics, so this review is purely going to be evaluating the movie.

(I've heard that some of the comic-lovers think that The Winter Soldier would have been much more powerful if Steve had died, and The Winter Soldier had taken on the mantle of Captain America, like what apparently happens in the comics. I can relate to being upset about movie adaptations not following the source material, but seriously. If Steve had died, I would have walked out of the theater and never gone to see a Marvel movie ever again.)

Going back to my original statement about superhero movies, The Winter Soldier has more than enough explosions, shootouts, and dramatic chase scenes, but there's also so much more to it than that. Saving the world is almost a side issue. The movie is about its characters, and about their convictions, courage, loyalty, friendship, and self-sacrifice.

 I feel quite sorry for the other people in the theater with Katie and me, because we spent most of the movie either gasping, clapping our hands over our mouths, flailing, sobbing, or doing a combination of the above. Anyway. Moving on.   

Good Things
I expected this movie to be more of a sequel to The Avengers than to Captain America: The First Avenger, because of the seventy year time gap. They actually tied the two Captain America movies together incredibly and painfully well, especially at the climax, with Steve being too brave AGAIN.

I like to tell people that I like Steve Rogers better than Captain America. I adore the first half hour or so of Captain America: The First Avenger, before Steve goes through the experiment, and while I obviously still like him afterwards, I will always prefer pre-serum Steve. The last thing I ever expected to see in The Winter Soldier was NEW FOOTAGE with pre-serum Steve, and I was hyperventilating so hard during that one scene that I was barely paying attention to anything that was going on. All the flashbacks were so painful, but so wonderful. Argh. And then there was Steve's visit to an old friend of his, and that's when I started sobbing.

I found it very refreshing that in this movie, the antagonist actually isn't a super villain. (The Winter Soldier is not the antagonist of this movie. He's a weapon that's being used by the antagonist.) The true antagonist is one of the most powerful kinds of villains--the frighteningly normal kind. He doesn't cackle evilly over his plans of world domination; he at least seems to believe that he's fighting to make the world a better place.

Sprinkled in with all the pain in this movie is just the right amount of humor to lighten the mood without detracting from the emotional impact of the story. Natasha's attempts at matchmaking in the middle of all the chaos are probably my favorite. Speaking of which, that leads into another point. One of the things that really sets this movie apart from several of the other recent Marvel movies is that there is absolutely no forced or rushed romantic subplot purely for the sake of a romantic subplot. (I'm looking at you, Thor.) Steve isn't ready to move on while Peggy is still alive. Sadly, he doesn't tell Natasha that.

Steve and Bucky's friendship was already decently developed in The First Avenger, but they didn't leave it at that. They kept developing it in this movie, probably just for the sake of making everything more painful. "I'll be with you 'til the end of the line." Excuse me while I cry.

The Characters

Steve Rogers is still every bit the awkward, old-fashioned, gentlemanly soldier and captain in this movie. I was a bit worried about where they were going to take his character, but that didn't end up being an issue at all. If anything, I like him even more now.

I've always liked Natasha, but if anything I respect her more after this movie because of the sacrifices she was willing to make. When it comes to her action scenes, nothing in this movie even comes close to her introductory sequence in The Avengers, but it was still very fun to watch her. And her attempts at finding Steve a date added some much-needed and light-hearted fun.

Sam Wilson. Not knowing anything about the Falcon, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I ended up absolutely loving him, and the way he supported Steve right when he needed it most. "Don't look at me. I do everything he does, just slower."

The Winter Soldier had all of five lines in this movie, and as Katie pointed out, the first one was in Russian. For being the character that the movie is named after, he doesn't really start being involved until surprisingly late in the movie. But as soon as he does come into play, the emotional trauma for anyone who cared anything about Bucky's friendship with Steve in The First Avenger begins. Sebastian Stan's acting is phenomenal, because he's forced to act mostly with his eyes and body language instead of words, and if your heart doesn't go out for the Winter Soldier, then you don't have one.

Music
I don't usually like it when a sequel has a different composer than the first movie, but I think Henry Jackman does a good job of capturing the overall feel of the movie. I heard hints of the original Captain America theme, which made me happy, and the piano solo in "The End of the Line" is beautiful and hurts my emotions.

Rating
This is possibly the cleanest PG-13 movie I have ever seen. Swearing and profanity is at a minimum. I think the rating is purely because of the intense action, and that one scene with Bucky. And because of the emotional trauma these fictional characters will put you through. 

Bad Things
Seriously my only critique of this movie is that there's too much action. "Well, of course," you say. "It's an action flick." I know. But I watch these movies for the characters, not for the shoot-outs and intense car-chases. However, I do have to say that the action that is in the movie is very impressive, especially the hand-to-hand combat scenes.

Overall, I give this movie six out of five stars, and declare it as a must-see for anyone who's a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because it's so much more than your typical superhero action flick, and I'm pretty sure it's going to end up on my list of top favorites.

~Kellyn~

The Sherwood Ring, by Elizabeth Marie Pope

Picture from Bing Images

I hadn't even heard of this book until a friend of mine said that Arsene Lupin reminded her of a character from it. Well, that sounded promising, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. It sounded interesting, and I decided to give it a whack.

Heh.

I obviously wasn't expecting it to suck me in, make me fall in love with the characters, cause me to stay up until midnight reading it, and to leave me so satisfied at the end.

The Sherwood Ring, written in 1958 by Elizabeth Marie Pope, is about a newly-orphaned seventeen-year-old named Peggy Grahame who goes to live with her eccentric uncle at the old family estate in New York--and she quickly discovers that when her father told her that Rest-and-Be-Thankful was haunted, he meant it.

However, these ghosts aren't transparent tortured souls looking for revenge. They're Peggy's ancestors from the Revolutionary War time period, and they only want to tell Peggy a story.

A story filled with suspense, excitement, and romance, of course.

Seriously. This book basically takes everything that I love (amazing, relatable characters,
lyrical prose, and clever dialogue) and wraps it up in a package made out of one of my favorite time periods. And I think the author was an anglophile, to boot.

The characters, both in modern day (Peggy Grahame, Pat Thorne, and Peggy's uncle), and in the 1700s (Richard Grahame, Eleanor Shipley, Barbara Grahame, and Peaceable Drummond Sherwood) feel very real and relatable to me. And Peaceable Drummond Sherwood went on to earn a place on my list of favorite fictional characters, but more on that later. (Actually, that might have to be its own post. :P)

I don't often notice the prose in the books I read as much as the dialogue, but I love the prose in The Sherwood Ring. It can be slightly sarcastic (which I adore in books), and it fits both time periods very well. The pacing is also pretty much spot-on, in my opinion. There were times when I wanted a bit more detail, but there was never too much. Also, I normally don't enjoy reading books that switch perspective practically every chapter, but Pope does a masterful job of weaving the two stories and time periods together so that you're left wanting to know what's going to happen next in the past, but not annoyed to return to the present, either. In the Sherwood Ring it's also kind of fun to notice the slight narrative differences between the ghosts. And when I realized that it was Peaceable Sherwood's turn to tell his bit of the story, I might have gotten  just a little majorly excited.

The dialogue. I loved the dialogue. There are several spots where the characters start bantering with each other, and then there's the one bit that I loved just because of how strange it sounds out of context--

"You're not by any chance the fool ancestor who began the fool custom of leaving the punch bowl in this particular corner?"

"No. Only the fool ancestor who didn't get himself hanged on a fool gallows because the punch bowl happened to be in that particular corner."

 One last thing before I move on to the ending. I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't name the characters, but the romance between two of the Revolutionary War era-characters that develops during the course of the story made me ridiculously happy, because it came out of nowhere and yet made so much sense.

And then there was the ending. I haven't read a book with an ending that made me that happy in forever. Everything was wrapped up perfectly and yet still left me wanting more.


The Sherwood Ring is a perfect book to curl up with on a chilly autumn afternoon and lose yourself in, and I'm sure I'll be re-reading it way too many times. I'm very thankful to the friend that introduced it to me, and I hope that this post has inspired you to go check it out as well. :)

~Kellyn~

The Code of the Woosters, by P. G. Wodehouse

Picture from Bing Images.
Extremely disturbing book cover,
fantastic book. :P

Bertie Wooster's task was simple. All he had to do was visit an antique shop in Brompton Road and convince the owner to lower the price of an eighteenth-century silver cow-creamer. But when things go wrong, and Bertie finds out that the woman he was once accidentally engaged to is threatening to cancel her wedding to one of Bertie's old friends, our hero is determined to get them back together--and, once again, the answer lies in securing the very same cow-creamer, and also in finding a little brown notebook in which the groom wrote some very unflattering things about his future father-in-law. That's my best attempt at explaining the plot. :P A much more coherent summary can be found here. But if you really want to know more about it you should go read the book. *nodnod*

I grabbed this book off the shelf when I wanted something fairly short and entertaining to read and was seriously laughing within the first few pages. P. G. Wodehouse is a good writer, and Bertie is a hilarious narrator. Combine the two, and you have a very enjoyable book.

The plot is seemingly simple, but right when you think everything has finally been fixed, Wodehouse throws in another twist that makes you laugh, shake your head (or roll your eyes), and keep on reading until the end.

I don't normally read books that are purely supposed to be funny, because a lot of times the humor is too slapstick for my taste, and the characters annoy me more than anything else. But Wodehouse is a master. None of the characters in this book are overly annoying, I actually found the book extremely entertaining, and did I mention that Bertie is hilarious and ridiculous and endearing? And Jeeves is just awesome.

Another thing that I have to mention: there was hardly any swearing or anything like that in this book at all. Wodehouse gets major bonus points for that.

Anyway, if you like humor, the first few decades of the twentieth century, and British literature, go look up P. G. Wodehouse right now. I will definitely be grabbing more of his books off the shelf in future.

~Kellyn~

P. S. I am determined to review All Creatures Great and Small...as soon as I figure out how to write the blog post on it. Inspiration has not been my friend when it comes to that post, for some reason.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

"The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!
Sunset Towers faced east and had no towers. This glittery, glassy apartment house stood alone on the Lake Michigan shore five stories high. Five empty stories high.
Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy rode around town slipping letters under the doors of the chosen tenants-to-be. The letters were signed 'Barney Northrup'
The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northrup...."


The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

The Westing Game is a favorite book of mine, if for nothing else because of the unique layout of the story and the way the plot progresses. Generally, in a mystery novel, there are a couple of main characters, a victim of some sort, and a trail of clues and plot twists that lead to the resolution of the mystery. While, of course, clues and plot twists are essential to a mystery story, in The Westing Game, there are several main characters and a rather unorthodox "victim." The main characters all have distinct personalities, and, well, perhaps the book itself can describe them better-

"Who were these people, these specially selected tenants? They were mothers and fathers and children. A dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge. And, oh yes, one was a bookie, one was a burglar, one was a bomber, and one was a mistake. Barney Northrup had rented one of the apartments to the wrong person."

While the book is a fairly easy read, the quality of the mystery is not. I, myself, have read the book three or four times. The first time I read it, I was held in suspense until the very end. The flow of the story was so beautifully complex that I was never able to guess the ending. It was immensely fun going back through the book again, looking for all the subtle hints and connecting elements. The unique layout of the story keeps you interested all the way through; it keeps the gears turning in your head as each character finds a new piece of evidence to further the "game" these tenants are in the midst of.

I quite enjoy this book, and would recommend it to anyone who wants a fun, light read and an intriguing mystery.

~Katie~

 

That Hideous Strength, by C. S. Lewis

According to C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength is a fairy tale for grownups. You have villains that are clearly villains, and heroes that are clearly heroes, and high stakes (They just have to save the world again. No biggie.), and even magic of sorts.

The main characters are Mark and Jane Studdock, a newly-wed young British couple who aren't getting along as well as they thought they would. As they grow farther apart, they find themselves on opposite sides in a battle between the blatantly evil National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments  (oh, the irony), and the small group resisting them.

The first half of the book starts out pretty slowly, and the villains are, well, bad, and not very pleasant to read about, especially if you're reading the book for the second time.  And the ending has a very different feel from the beginning, because it's much more fantasy-ish. Also, That Hideous Strength is the third book in C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, and though it technically can stand alone, the ending would be very confusing if you haven't read Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.

I started reading the Space Trilogy because I grew up reading The Chronicles of Narnia and wanted to check out some of C. S. Lewis' other fiction work. I enjoyed the trilogy, but I probably won't be re-reading the first two books very often. I liked That Hideous Strength much more because it's set on earth and starts out fairly normally, allowing the reader to adjust before the really strange things start happening.

Things I liked about the book:

I love the way that Lewis takes a neutral couple not directly involved with either side and uses them to illustrate the differences between the N.I.C.E. and the group of people who stand against it. I also like Mark and Jane, although when I re-read it I really just wanted to slap some sense into them and tell them to stop trying to be too modern and politically correct and start behaving like decent people. :P Really, though, it's amazing to watch Mark's change of heart (it happens to Jane, too, but it's not quite as marked.), and to mentally yell at him when he's being an idiot and to cheer for him when he finally sees the light.

And Mr. Bultitude. Mr. Bultitude really made the book for me. Even though he's only in a small part of the book, he provides a wonderful bit of comic relief when things really begin to get disturbing.  C. S. Lewis's way of describing animals and giving them personalities is just amazing. I found trying to picture a bear "meditatively boxing a punch-ball" quite entertaining. XD

Things I didn't like about the book:

The villains are bad. Like, send-shivers-down-your-spine-how-could-they-possibly-be-so-convoluted bad. I know that those are the best kinds of villains, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy reading about them.

The book does get kind of strange in the middle/end. Once Merlin is introduced (Yes, that Merlin) the whole feel of the book switches completely and leaves you thinking "Okay, what just happened?" If I remember correctly, this is also when the villains start to get really bizarre.

There's some swearing. And it isn't just the obviously bad characters who do it. After a while I just wanted everybody to shut up.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, and I would recommend it to teenagers who like science fiction and C. S. Lewis and want to be challenged by a book that makes you think a little.

~Kellyn~

I'm Not Dead...

...I'm just having problems actually finishing blog posts. And it's also really hard for me to not majorly overthink things when I'm trying to review books. I keep thinking that my reviews have to be all professional and intellectual, and that's not the point. :P

So. List of  reviews that I've started working on:

-Three Men in a Boat
-That Hideous Strength
-All Creatures Great and Small
-North & South (The BBC miniseries)

I promise that I will have at least one of these finished and posted by the end of the week, and yes, you can hold me to that. I think I need accountability.

~Kellyn~

Gaudy Night

This is pretty much a blogging fail of epic proportions. We went to see this play on October 19th of last year, and I've been working on this post ever since then. I am determined to get it posted though, even if it is old news by now, because this play did so much for my literary tastes that I've just got to give credit to it. I'm still including most of the original post that was written within a few days of seeing the play, but I've added comments looking back on it in parenthesis. So...

I walked into the small theatre and settled myself in my seat in almost the exact middle of the second row and only feet from the small stage.  As I gazed at the table set for dinner with a card announcing that it was reserved for a Lord Peter Wimsey, I couldn't help but wonder if Gaudy Night would be worth my getting so excited about it.

Within minutes of Lord Peter and Harriet settling themselves down at the table and beginning to talk, all my concerns were forgotten. Taproot Theatre, I am so sorry that I ever doubted you. This was the first play that I'd been to in years, and it was splendidly well-done. Harriet was lovely, Lord Peter was wonderful, their relationship is beautiful, and I'm now obsessed with the 1930s. (Is that when it started? I'd almost forgotten. Now I'm kind of obsessed with the whole first half of the 20th century. Do you see the effect this play had on me? It's shocking.)


(And here comes a not-very-concise and rambly summary.)

Gaudy Night is set in England in 1935. The main character (unlike all the other Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries)  is Harriet Vane, a mystery writer, who is invited to attend what is basically a ten-year reunion for the graduates of Shrewsbury, the very first women's college at Oxford. When she arrives for the gaudy, she learns that someone is leaving people obscene notes and vandalizing college property. The dean asks if Harriet would be willing to look into the matter, since calling in the police would ruin the reputation of the college. But, just because Harriet writes mysteries doesn't mean that she's an expert in solving them. However, Harriet accepts the case, and also receives help from Lord Peter Wimsey, an aristocratic amateur detective who saved her life five years earlier and has been proposing marriage to her at regulated intervals ever since. (His first proposal? "What I mean to say is, when all this is over, I want to marry you, if you can put up with me, and all that.") 
Harriet, who thinks that Lord Peter is just a rich idiot and desperately wishes that she didn't owe him for saving her life, has refused him every time...but also hasn't sent him away.

For much of Gaudy Night, Lord Peter is away on the continent, working for the Foreign Office. (You see, Harriet? Maybe he's good for something after all.) And, as Harriet is at Oxford trying to work on the case, she finds that she can't get him out of her head. (She even dreams about him, much to her annoyance.) What's worse, she literally runs into his nephew, the Viscount St. George, a silly but decently well-meaning young man who, after he finds out that she's the person he's heard lots about from his uncle, immediately starts calling her Aunt Harriet.

The part of the play that I think probably sealed my like for these characters (and the play on the whole) was when Lord Peter comes back to Oxford for a few days, and he and Harriet go window shopping in the town. One of the stores they stop at has a set of ivory chessmen in the window, and, and they catch Harriet's attention. Lord Peter, like the gentleman that he is, offers to buy them for her.

Now, Harriet didn't ask for a well-off, quirky aristocrat to fall in love with her, save her life, hang around, and fly to her rescue at a moment's notice without her even asking for it (Have His Carcase), and she's certainly never been interested in his money or anything like that. If she wanted something she'd get it with her own money, thank you very much.

But , as things have been changing lately, and Harriet has learned things about Lord Peter she never knew, in a burst of charity, she allows him to buy her the ivory chessman. I can't remember all the details, but she either has the package sent to her room or drops it off, and she and Lord Peter go off again and do something else.

When they return to her room, she finds that all of the ivory chessmen except one have been removed from the box and smashed on the floor.

And the strong-willed, independent Harriet Vane starts crying. I wish I could quote the conversation right (because it was amazing), but as she's crying Harriet says something like, "I loved them, and..you gave them to me," and this upsets Lord Peter, who says something to the effect of "If you'd said 'You gave them to me and I loved them', that would have been all right, but you had to say 'I loved them, and you gave them to me.'" My reaction to this? I was crying, as well. Because the ivory chessman that marked such an important development in Lord Peter and Harriet's relationship had been ruthlessly smashed before they could even use them.

The other part that I just have to mention is that at one point towards the end, the Poison Pen starts targeting Harriet directly, and Lord Peter worries for her safety in case things get any uglier than they already are. So he buys her a dog collar for her to wear around her neck so that it'll be harder for her to be strangled. (There are reasons why I like this character so much. XD) Harriet promises to wear it, and it ends up probably saving her life when she's attacked, just like Lord Peter feared.

Some time after this, Lord Peter has to leave again, and things begin to come to a head at the college. And, at the very moment when Harriet at last realizes just how much she needs Peter, he isn't there. She calls embassy after embassy, and he's always just left.

But it's because he's already on his way back to the college. He's solved the mystery, as he always does, and upon his arrival he identifies the "Poison Pen". Everything is cleared up, and everyone can go on with their lives.

But, before they leave Oxford, Lord Peter has one last thing to do. He proposes to Harriet one last time--and in Latin, no less. And, after five long years of Lord Peter respecting Harriet's feelings, keeping his distance, and graciously accepting each of her refusals...Harriet accepts him.

Now for the play itself.

The acting was very impressive. In two hours and twenty-something minutes the only real mistake was when Harriet starting saying "unbeastly and generous" instead of "beastly and ungenerous". And it was all so believable, and really swept me up into the story. And the thing that's wonderful about this theatre in particular is that it's tiny, and the actors often come up and down the aisles and even stand in them sometimes, and it all almost feels like you're participating in the story along with the characters, which is something you miss when you're watching a movie. It's true that in plays the amount of special effects is greatly limited, but on the flip side it's amazing how much they can do without them. And it's just so much fun watching actors live.

Overall, Gaudy Night was just...so amazing. The acting, the set, the costumes, the props, the story-- everything was a much higher quality than I was expecting (shame on me). In short...

I don't normally use GIFs, but this was
 just too perfect to pass up...

I couldn't stop talking about it practically all the way back home in the car. And of course as soon as I got home I dug the Dorothy L. Sayers miniseries out of the DVD cupboard, and the rest is history.

~Kellyn~