What makes Deadpool a very, very special member of the Marvel Universe is that he rides that Bugs Bunny plane of existence where he has a direct, ongoing conversation with us, the audience, as he partakes in the same superhero escapades of his spandex-clad counterparts. For fans, the prospect of him hitting the big screen was an exciting one—a Deadpool movie, done well, has the potential to undress superhero movies in a spectacular, hilarious way. After years bubbling up to the surface of the cesspool of weirdo movie projects no one wants to finance, Deadpool is finally here, and it does (hooray!) walk through many of the creative doors a fourth-wall-breaking character like “The Merc With A Mouth” kicks down. What’s a disappointment is how surprisingly tame the comedy feels and how conventional the movie feels as a whole, but if it’s simple, off-the-wall entertainment you’re after, you’re going to leave the theater mighty happy.

The movie’s self-awareness is may be the biggest hook for those of us with previous knowledge of the titular character (played by a fiery Ryan Reynolds), but for mass audiences, its clear appeal is its free pass to show us hard-R, bloody, vulgar stuff you almost never see in superhero movies. Kick-Ass constitutes the “almost,” but Deadpool hits the anti-superhero-movie thing on the head much, much harder. The tone is firmly set in the funny opening credits sequence which, instead of sprawling filmmaker Tim Miller‘s name across the screen, cites the director as “Some Hack” and the writers as “The Real Heroes Here.” The jokes, which mostly take aim at studio-movie clichés, are well thought-out a lot of fun, though they never feel as smart or ahead of the fanboy curve as I’d hoped. Most of the laughs come from a place of recognition, like pointing out how shameless Marvel’s Stan Lee cameos have become or referencing the colossal blunder that was The Green Lantern (which also starred, as you probably know, Mr. Reynolds). The best gags are the ones that come out of left field, like when Deadpool slyly hints that the main reason the movie got financed was due to the support of Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman.

Reynolds (who’s been vocal about his desire to reprise the Deadpool character after the missed opportunity that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine) doesn’t shut his yap for virtually the entire movie, a difficult task for even the most seasoned onscreen comedians (Jim Carrey and the late Robin Williams took on many a gabby, cartoonish role in their respective careers, and even they had their fair share of missteps). That the Canadian heartthrob sails through the material so comfortably is super (pardon the pun) impressive, especially considering how much harder it is for uber-handsome leading men to get us to laugh at and/or with them (Cary Grant was one of the few actors who could be “the fool” and make us feel sorry for him despite his immaculately chiseled chin). Now, is Reynolds as funny and brilliant as the three legends I just name-dropped? That’s a big NO. But most actors of his generation and ilk would crash and burn in this kind of role, and he keeps his composure uncommonly well.

After the movie’s first scene, a quippy, brain-splattering freeway shootout in which Deadpool’s badassery and loudmouth personality are established, we flash back to learn about the life of Wade Wilson, a mercenary with a barkeep best friend called Weasel (T.J. Wilson) and a kindhearted, prostitute lover, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). Setting Wade on his path to becoming the one-and-only Deadpool is the news that he has late-stage, terminal cancer. When a shady figure offers him a cure in the form of experimental therapy (which, as chance would have it, affords the patient super powers), he reluctantly seizes the opportunity. Bad move; the organization administering the treatment turns out to be totally evil. Wade’s cured alright (he even acquires super-healing powers), but he’s left covered from head to toe in Freddie Kruger-esque burns. In a word (his word), he’s “un-fuckable.” The dejected Wade can’t bring himself to return to Vanessa with his disgusting-ass face, so he instead sets out on a revenge mission in search of Ajax (Ed Skrein), the mad scientist who screwed him over in the first place.

Deadpool starts in a good place but eventually starts to skip to the same beat as all the superhero movies it pokes fun at, pitting our antihero against a sadistic bad guy in a CGI-heavy final battle, the fate of his love hanging in the balance. Some mutant sidekicks join the fray in the form of the Russian, steel-bodied Colossus (Stefan Kapacic) and the explosive Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand). These two are mostly used to emphasize how much edgier Deadpool is than your everyday X-Man, though it’s pretty clear that, deep down, he sits comfortably on the good-guy side of the larger spectrum—what’s more heroic than risking life and limb for your lover? Take away his potty mouth and murdering addiction (he only kills bad guys, after all), and he’s just like the rest of Professor Xavier’s gifted students. That’s the movie’s biggest issue: bells and whistles aside, it feels like just another superhero story. The irony stings. Still, it’s entertaining throughout and the laughs are well-earned and rival those found in the excellent Guardians of the Galaxy . That’s a win deserving of a lifetime supply of yummy chimichangas.

It’s been three and a half weeks since 20th Century Fox revealed the Deadpool trailer at their panel at Comic-Con to roaring applause and tangible excitement. Three weeks since a puny little phone camera version was leaked on the Internet and the viral response to it showed just how much audiences have been waiting for this. First revealed in The New Mutants #98 in 1991, and first played by Ryan Reynolds in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, this wise cracking anti-hero has been aching to make it to the big screen and it’s finally here. In a world where superheroes eat daisies for breakfast and poop rainbows and polish their halos every night before bed, Deadpool promises the first of a new kind of hero. As he so aptly says in the trailer, “Daddy needs to express some rage.”

So without further ado, you’ve waited long enough. Coming out on February 12, 2016, be sure to watch the newly released trailer for Deadpool.

If only we couldn’t see every beat of Woman in Gold coming from a mile away, it might have been a fascinating tale of identity and family and the American Dream. Instead, it’s a merely adequate tale of identity and family and the American Dream. It’s a sad Hollywood tradition to take amazing, bizarre true stories, sterilize them, prune them, buff them, and smoosh them into a uniform, textureless box. Simon Curtis’ new historical drama is unfortunately just another package shipped out from the factory. There’s no risk, no flair, no imagination involved; just a series of moves and tropes we’ve seen a million times before.

The true story on which the movie is based is awe-inspiring. Helen Mirren plays Holocaust refugee Maria Altmann, who with the help of American attorney Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) attempted to recover a Gustav Klimt painting of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, which had been stolen from her family by Nazis. When Maria fled from Europe to California with her husband during the war, the painting stayed in Austria and over the years became the country’s veritable Mona Lisa. Understandably, the Austrian population was outraged at she and Randy’s threat to wrest the painting from the Belvedere Palace where it hung and fly it to America in the ’90s, despite irrefutable evidence that proved it belonged to Maria by law since the war ended.

It’s a thought-provoking dilemma of both personal and international proportions, but Curtis and screenwriter Alexi Kaye Campbell employ hackneyed storytelling tactics that get in the way and make Altmann’s improbable, once-in-a-lifetime story feel old hat. Mirren is so seasoned that she occasionally manages to give the mostly flat script a little volume and depth, triumphing in the moment, but since every obstacle and revelation she happens upon is so easily anticipated, we’re two or three steps ahead of her, a deadly situation for any actor. Still, the screen veteran is always worth watching, and her turn as a woman torn apart by the unfinished business of her forgotten past is the best thing the film has going by a landslide. As Maria she embodies dignity and an internalized hunger for justice that bubbles to the surface every now and a gain in controlled yet spontaneous-feeling bursts.

As Schoenberg Reynolds has about as much charisma as a roll of Reynolds Wrap. He’s a quiet, unremarkable young man wearing unremarkable ’90s lawyer clothes. It’s not a bad performance per sé, but Curtis makes him shed all the energy and magnetism that got him to this point in his career in the first place, turning him into a Clark Kent-like bumbling nerd. Reynolds is good enough to hang with Mirren on-screen, but without his sharpest tools, he winds up coming off as woefully dull. His character’s inner turmoil isn’t explored deeply enough, and his subplot involving supporting his wife (Katie Holmes, in a wasted role) and kid is utterly disposable. Daniel Brühl makes a decent impression as a local journalist who provides insider information to aid Maria and Randy, but like Mirren, he has lukewarm chemistry with Reynolds.

The impetus for the eventual friendship between Randy and Maria is one of parallel family history: though he was born in America, Randy’s family fled here just like Maria did. Randy’s just landed a sweet job at a big L.A. law firm, but he takes time off to help Maria recover her family painting when he discovers it’s valued at over $180 million. He insists Maria return to Austria to appear in court, but she’s rightly horrified and conflicted by the idea of returning to the place she once called home, which has long since been tarnished by memories of violence, indignation and injustice. She’s indelibly linked to Vienna, and her struggle to suppress the fact that she has no choice but to be defined by her sordid past life is the heart of the film. Her journey to self-acceptance isn’t told elegantly enough by Curtis, but a surrealistic final scene serves as a beautiful, poetic cinematic statement that says much more than the around 100 minutes that preceded it. It’s a shame the rest of the movie isn’t as refined, imaginative and piercing as the finale.

About a third of the film is made up of intermittent flashbacks to war-time when Maria was a child living in her well-heeled family’s house in Vienna that the Nazis eventually pillage. One scene sees Maria and her husband, under house arrest, elude one of their Nazi guards in a street-level foot chase. It’s one of the more engaging sequences in the film, though it feels strangely protracted and slightly out-of-place. The film may have benefitted from dedicating more of its runtime to the ravishing period flashbacks, whose set and costume design are pretty stunning. Instead, the film plays out like a store brand court drama about a true story that’s much more interesting without Curtis’ cinematic machinations.

Simon Curtis’ Woman in Gold chronicles the true story of Jewish refugee Maria Altmann, who decades after fleeing Austria for America took on the Austrian government to recover a painting of her aunt Adele that had been stolen by Nazis during the war. It was a hard-fought legal battle, as the painting had become the country’s veritable Mona Lisa, but with the help of American attorney Randy Schoenberg (the grandson of Jewish refugees), she ultimately found justice and inner peace, reclaiming her family’s painting and reconnecting with her past life. We spoke to Curtis while he was in San Francisco promoting the film.

Above anything the film seems to be about how Maria struggles with being tethered to her past.
She was forced to leave her home. The scene where she says goodbye to her parents is the last time they’re ever together. A bit of her is locked in that moment, and I think that’s what propels the film: at the end of her life, she’s the last one living who was part of that community.

Is that what fascinated you most about the true story?
I think it is. I love the fact that Maria’s life is a story about the twentieth century in a way. Vienna at the beginning of the century was this amazing place, a melting pot of all these great ideas. She and the painting ended up in America at the end of the century. It’s about America’s policy of immigration, too, because this refugee who lived 50-60 years in California teams up with the grandson of another refugee, and they take on this campaign.

Is one of the biggest hurdles of promoting Woman in Gold getting the idea out of people’s heads that it’s a Holocaust movie?
I’ve never worked out how many minutes we spend in the past, but most of it is in the present. That was very important. There’s a speech in the end where Randy says, “this is a moment where the past is asking something of the present.” That tussle is in this. It’s really a story about Randy and Maria in the present going on this voyage of discovery. He discovers the importance and value of his history, and she re-confronts her memories. That’s the story of the film.

You consider yourself an actor’s director. When you’re helping Ryan and Helen, are you molding their performances as a unit, or do you do it separately.
It’s both. But I was thrilled that they hadn’t even met before. They got on immediately, and there was a real spark. They offered much more humor than I was expecting. I love hearing people laugh during the film; it’s a great feeling.

Do you think actors are better at social interaction than the average person?
I don’t think there’s a rule for that. It’s certainly not true that actors always like being the life and soul of the party. There’s this thing of, “Notice me. Leave me alone. Notice me. Leave me alone.” The more I work with actors, the more I realize that every actor has a different version of how you can help them. My job is to work that out. Some actors want you to talk about everything, some want to be left alone. You have to intuit that in a sense.

Do you prefer directing for theater?
No, actually I don’t. I used to, but now I love doing a scene and then moving on. Theater is about having to recreate a scene time and time again.

In theater, performances build over time.
And they can get worse as well!

Do you feel a higher sense of urgency directing movies since you film a scene, and then it lives on forever?
There’s definitely a sense of urgency, but again, if you flip that around it becomes a part of the creative process.

The scenes set in the past look amazing.
Ross Emery is a brilliant DP. Really, there were three time periods in the film: the Adele “golden years”, the modern scenes, and the past, which was the end of an era.

It must be magical to walk through those period sets.
There’s certainly something magical about filming 1938 Vienna in Vienna. It got to us all. It was really poignant and moving. When the Nazi vehicles come in or when the Jews are painting on the wall, we were recreating actual footage and photos we found from the time.

Was the ratio of past scenes to present scenes always the same?
I don’t know. I always imagined it was about a fifth of the film in the past.

Was this your first time shooting an action sequence? It must have been fun.
Yes. Tatiana Maslany is extraordinary. She spent days running around Vienna. Days.

I think something people don’t talk about enough when it comes to actors is how they act with their bodies as opposed to just their voice or their face. I think Helen is great at that.
I agree. It’s interesting because some actors do the same thing every take, but she’s always doing something slightly different. But when you cut it together, it feels really secure. It’s a strange thing. Her instinct is fantastic, and she’s always incredibly well-prepared. I was always excited to start filming, and I always trust her instincts.

I grew up in the ’90s. I think that decade is far enough in the past now that we can sort of dress people up according to ’90s fashion, and it’s really weird.
I read somewhere that clothes in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s were all so different, but we’ve pretty much been wearing the same clothes from the ’90s onwards. “The GAP years.” So it’s sort of tricky to recreate the ’90s. The cell phone Ryan has at the beginning was a big thing in those days.

The final almost dream sequence is something else.
We wanted something up-lifting. If you’d lost family, it would be lovely to see them one more time.

The One I Love

The One I Love is a genre-bending psychological, comedic (in some parts), dramatic romance story that follows Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss), an unhappily married couple seeking new thrills through their couples therapy sessions. The story is well written and the film is excellently executed. Duplass exemplifies the emphatic character with his extremely likeable mannerisms and familiar character traits. The dramatic reflection of married life is well paced and had the audience emotionally invested as their story progressed. Using only one location, Duplass and Moss were able to express a very personal experience to the unlikely implications of a relaxing “weekend away” to rebuild their relationship. In the end, The One I Love is a surreal, surprising, and enjoyable fantasy version of marriage counseling.

RATING: 8.7

Little Accidents

Pinpointing the exact reason why this film is worthy of this rating is difficult, there are so many. Little Accidents is not only a beautifully shot film, but it also had the collectively incredible cast whom were unwavering in their individual performances to portray isolation, betrayal, heartache, and the wonder of the human spirit in the face of sorrow. Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook and Jacob Lofland are the films driving force and carry the weight of their character profiles extremely well. Little Accidents is a heartbreaking story of loss and the pressure of a society that has conformed to a poverty stricken way of life. The towns inhabitants work their fingers to the bone and some are at risk of life threatening conditions all to put food on their tables and a shirt on their back.

Little Accidents was shot entirely on location in West Virginia and has a very convincing authenticity about it. The grey, misty atmosphere, the natural forest backdrops and rundown neighborhoods are all suggestive that what you’re seeing is real. It’s easy that this traumatic event had a lasting effect on the town.

RATING: 8.8

The Voices

The town of Milton is home to pink overalls, pink trucks, pink forklifts, and a population of 4,000 including one disturbed young man named Jerry (Ryan Reynolds). This endearing, yet mentally unstable, factory worker initially tries his very best to blend in to society–volunteering to help organize the office party, doing his best to always wear a smile. However, as unfortunate events occur, Jerry loses his ability to lead a normal life and becomes increasingly more involved and allied to his psychosis and is unable to identify what is reality.

The Voices aims to bend the rules of the psychological comedy genre by featuring a unique storyline. Reynolds plays a fantastic l”oveable” psycho serial killer and the comedic values he brings to this film are brilliant and welcomed. The film is a tremendous accomplishment. I’m sincerely optimistic for it to have a universally enjoyed worldwide release.

RATING: 8.9

Buried is a claustrophobic thriller that will leave you gasping for air and remains suspenseful enough that even Hitchcock would have been proud. You can guess what the film is about from it’s title, still Rodrigo Cortes keep us engaged as Ryan Reynolds stars in his best role yet and does not fail to outperform his past roles.

Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is an American truck driver working as a contractor in Iraq who awakes in pitch darkness for nearly a minute before finding a lighter and realizes that he is buried inside a wooden coffin. As he slowly regains his consciousness, he vaguely remembers being attacked by a group of Iraqis. Searching around the coffin with his lighter in hand, he discovers something very important, a cell phone.

The cell phone discovery is crucial as it allows him to get in contact with the outside world. Like anyone would instinctively do, the first thing Paul does is try calling 911 for help. He becomes even more frantic when he gets the run-around and put on hold over and over, something we have all experienced. The signal strength is not great and frequently disconnects.

Suddenly, the phone rings and he hears the voice of his captors on the other end. They demand a $5 million dollar ransom from Paul and give him only a couple hours to do so. He begins to think who he can call to help rescue him by paying the ransom only to realistically decide that getting that ransom money is highly unlikely.

Not only is getting the money a big concern for Paul but also is the lack of oxygen. Between both him and the lighter using oxygen, it is only a matter of time before it runs out. Still, he knows time is of the essence so he uses the phone to call his wife, his employer, the FBI. Luckily, the captors left a pen with him as well, so when he calls 411 for information, he is able to write numbers down.

The most ingenious attribute of Buried is the entire film takes place in the coffin. Not a single shot from the outside, whether it be loved ones, 911 operators or captors on the other end of the phone call, are ever shown. We see nothing from flashbacks of how he got in the coffin. Nor do we see cutaways of what his captors are up to, aside from a video text he receives from them. I say ingenious because the fact that we see nothing from the outside means that we are also trapped inside the coffin.

Making a 95 minute film that takes place solely in one very small space interesting and engaging is a challenge. Buried accomplished this by providing enough action and suspense to keep you entertained throughout its entirety. The camera work in such a restrictive space and limited lighting would be challenge for any great filmmaker.

It is hard not to compare Buried to the film 127 Hours as they came out around the same time (Buried first) and share a lot of the same characteristics. In both films, you have a main character that is alone nearly the whole time in a confined area seeking to survive and get escape. Both even feature the main character forced to cut off a part of their body.

Shot in just 17 days with a relatively low-budget of 3 million dollars, Buried accomplished a lot. Considering the lack of space, lack of cast and lack of special effects it sure is loaded with suspense, thrills and solid film making. If you were unsure if Ryan Reynolds could be taken seriously as an actor, after watching this film will likely answer that question for you. Buried may not have a lot of rewatchability but the first time will leave you exhausted from the tension and suspense it creates. Look past a few minor flaws (cell phone battery life, or lack thereof) and embrace the film few could do right.