The Dictator

                                    My Rating: 2/4

                  Sacha Baron Cohen has been one of the central (and controversial) comedic figures in the entertainment industry since the 2006 release of his film "Borat". The movie was a huge success, and the funniest movie I have ever seen. Three years later, in 2009, Cohen released his next film "Bruno", which was not received as well, but was still an intelligent comedy. Both of these films were shot as mockumentaries, as well as his television show "Da Ali G Show". Now, three years after the release of "Bruno", comes "The Dictator". This film is Sasha Baron Cohen's first time co-writing and starring in something that is not a mockumentary.  "The Dictator" is a fresh new type of story for Cohen to tell, and fortunately, it retains the same controversial ethnic humor and razor-sharp political satire. The latter is definitely the movie's strongest asset.
                  The story centers around Cohen's fourth character, General Aladeen, who is the dictator of a fictional North-African nation of Wadiya. He is the epitome of the oppressive, cruel, violent, insensitive tyrant that we all imagine when we hear the word "dictator". However, Aladeen is also a very lonely and clueless soul who is thrown into a situation of betrayal in New York City that forces him to go on a personal quest to discover the world outside of his own country that has been completely shut off from the rest of the world, and is on the verge of destruction.
                There is good material here, but I would have to say this is one of the few times Cohen has not delivered things very well. The whole point (or seemingly the whole point) of each of his movies is to bring forth some revelation about the United States. Borat showed us that America harbors a lot of stupid people, Bruno showed us that America harbors a lot of hateful people, and the Dictator shows us the America harbors many elements of a dictatorship. The revelation here is not the problem, it is the build up.
                 "The Dictator" is full of many weak spots the ultimately bring it down. There is obviously a lot of ethnic humor in this film, and I don't care about racial comments in movies as long as they are funny, and Cohen has a history of doing a good job with that sort of thing. However, this movie contains many jokes that simply exist. They are not there to move the story forward nor are the even really that funny. It seems like they are there simply to serve the purpose of being vulgar.
                  There are also a lot of celebrities in the movie, and like many other things in the movie, most of them don't need to be there. John C. Reilly is in the movie for about ten minutes, Megan Fox is in it for about five minutes, SNL's Nasim Pedrad is in it for about two minutes, and Edward Norton is in the movie for about twenty seconds. The only big actors other than Cohen that have necessary roles are Ben Kingsley and Anna Faris, and even their characters were not interesting in the slightest sense.
                  In the end, "The Dictator" fails. It fails to be funny, or at least it failed to be funny to me. I only laughed one or two times, but to see the big picture as funny would probably require a complete suspension of one's maturity. Also, in some ways, the movie fails to be intelligent. The jokes are tasteless and unimpressive, and won't reach a wide range of audiences. I appreciate Cohen's humor, and I'm glad he took the opportunity to venture out of his comfort zone and into a different type of movie. However, with this three-year pattern of his big releases, I hope that in 2015 he goes back to his roots and releases another mockumentary. This round was certainly a disappointment for me, because it was a film I desperately wanted to like and didn't.

The Avengers

                                      My Rating: 3.5/4

      With "The Avengers", Joss Whedon has brought a well-told, witty, and visually stunning story to the big screen. With a lot to dig out of Marvel's comic book lore, the story is put together in a way that will satisfy the members of the audience, regardless of their reasons for attending a screening. When I was at the theater to see this, there was a sea of both people who seemed to know everything about Marvel and people who seemed to know very little about Marvel, and one thing the movie really has going for it is that you don't have to be either to enjoy it.
       The "Avengers" are a group of superheroes from the marvel universe who work together against whatever threat is greatest. Originally, the Avengers had more members and there were constant changes in the roster, however, Marvel luckily decided to stick to its main icons for the sake of the film. The team in the movie consists mainly of Iron Man(Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America(Chris Evans), Hulk(Mark Ruffalo), and Thor(Chris Hemsworth), with its "lesser" members being Hawkeye(Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow(Scarlett Johansson). The Story picks up after the events left off by the respective movies of the four main Avengers. Thor's evil brother, Loki(Tom Hiddleston), has joined with a mysterious race of aliens, robots, or whatever you'd like to call them. It's not really explained what they are, it is only mentioned that they are from another dimension and they are called the "Chitauri". Loki is leading his army of Chitauri to Earth to retrieve powerful cube-shaped object called the Tesseract, which also made an appearance in "The First Avenger: Captain America". In order to defend the Earth from Loki's invasion, Nick Fury(Samuel L. Jackson) and the secret government organization "S.H.I.E.L.D." begin a recruitment effort to bring together a team that can save the planet.
        Now one key concern I, as well as many other people, had about the film was that the screenplay would not give each Avenger the spotlight, and that some may seem less important than the others. In writing the script, I am sure that that was one of Whedon's main challenges. However, somehow each Avenger is given their own time to shine, and none of the Avengers seem to be more important than the others. This achievement ends up being more important than it seems, because with a balance between the characters, it adds another element to the storytelling where each character's own individual story is made known, while at the same time it shows how those stories converge into this story.
       With all of these great heroes, such a story requires a good villain. Tom Hiddleston's performance as Loki has been very underrated since the film's release. His portrayal of Loki really gives you a sense that his character is vengeful, violent, powerful, greedy, and a worthy opponent to the Avengers. The witty combination of argument and banter between the characters is very amusing, with the best being between Loki and the other characters.
        Although the film brings all of these amazing elements together, my favorite thing about "The Avengers" is that it is an engaging story the entire way through. The dialogue always furthers the story, the dynamic between the characters never ceases to flip and twist in ways you would not have suspected, and surprisingly, the movie is very funny. I have been to comedies at the theater where people did not laugh as hard as they did at this movie. I was laughing too, because somehow the film seems to have outdone many comedies. The reaction of the audience did not lie, people were cheering, applauding, laughing, and really enjoying themselves. "The Avengers" reminded me why we go to movies in the first place.