Doctor Strange

I will admit it, I'm a Marvel-holic. Even the weakest of the official Marvel Cinematic Universe films usually makes me at least somewhat happy. Yes, they are simplistic blockbusters with somewhat weakly defined villians and often have a tendency to end with the baddy fighting the goody somewhere fairly high up with somewhat generic fight choreography, but for all that there's a charming lack-of-pretension and an all-round sense that it's great to spend time with these characters.

"Doctor Strange" introduces a tad more visual extravagance to the Marvel formula than usual, with the hero in this case becoming a magically-endowed sorcerer producing all kinds of fantastic effects with the aid of a bit of hand waving and a mythical artefact or two. Benedict Cumberbatch manages to trudge the path from arrogant neurosurgeon to befuddled neophyte to heroic figure (though, I note, never superbly-over-confidently-powerful - wisely, the writers give him room to get better during the sequels) with aplomb. Tilda Swinton does the lions share of the training gobbledegook and makes it sound simultaneously profound and obvious rather than befuddling and ridiculous. Benedict Wong has grumpy librarian down pat, and Chewitel Ejiofor has a nice sparkle in his eye as he appropriately doubts Strange's abilities to do the impossible. Rachel McAdams has a pretty perfunctory almost-girlfriend part (she and Strange are more exes than a couple, but she does connect back to him in one mid-film sequence that gets STrange back into the regular world before shooting him off to the impossible again) and Mads Mikkelsen glowers well as a bad guy who's doing the usual stomping around for power and dominance without much of an indication of what he's planning to do with it once he gets it.

Scott Derriksen's direction combines Marvel's usual deft character work with a bit more spectacle than usual, and never lets the people get lost in the mass of action. While there is a certain amount off bitching about superhero movies out there, if all of them were this kinda fun, I'm sure there would be much less.