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The summer movie season — which The Tribune previews here — begins with a big bang, courtesy of Earth's mightiest heroes.
"Avengers: Age of Ultron" is a big, overstuffed action blockbuster of the first order, a worthy continuation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's epic saga. Our heroes begin by taking out a Hydra lab, where Iron Man Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) uncovers an artificial intelligence that he thinks can be plugged into his plan to create a planet-wide security system. Stark's hubris bites him back when the A.I. becomes the evil Ultron (voiced by Downey's former "Less Than Zero" co-star James Spader), a robot who decides the way to bring peace to the planet is to eliminate those pesky humans. What follows is a darker, more complex story that delves into the back stories of Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and adds revelations about Bruce Banner, a k a Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth). That's a lot for a movie that's also supposed to be a popcorn movie, but director-writer Joss Whedon makes it work.
The rest of Hollywood is steering clear of "Avengers," which could make $200 million at the domestic box office this weekend. But there are a couple art-house offerings worth seeing.
"Clouds of Sils Maria" is a thought-provoking English-language drama from French writer-director Olivier Assayas. It stars Juliette Binoche as a famous actress who is offered a chance to perform in a revival of the play that made her a star at 18 — but this time playing the older woman instead of the ingenue, who would be played by a tabloid-trainwreck starlet (Chloë Grace Moretz). The actress runs through her lines with her multitasking assistant (Kristen Stewart), and the line between the actress and her assistant and the play's characters start to get blurry. The drama opens up plenty of material about women's identity and the complications of midlife, and boasts powerhouse performances by Binoche, Moretz and especially Stewart.
"Merchants of Doubt" is a bracing documentary that examines how corporate interests can cloud major policy issues to protect their profit margins. Director Robert Kenner ("Food Inc.") looks back to the tobacco industry, which wrote the playbook on how to delay regulation of their deadly product, and how other industries — namely Big Oil — now pulls the same tricks to prevent action on global climate change. The information is compelling, though it's hard to avoid the feeling that Kenner is preaching to the choir.