I was really looking forward to this movie based upon the fun I had with Deadpool 1. But I was disappointed to the extent that I found myself yawning at least a couple of times and laughing very little. My negative reaction goes very much against the grain in that it got high critics’ reviews ( 84% on Rotten Tomatoes) and mosyly praise from theater goers. My review is heavily based upon a review by  Alex Doenau of Trespass Magazine which I found expressed my sentiments almost exactly and to whom I give credit.

 DEADPOOL   2.7***

       You think you’re doing something different, and you make 15 times your budget back. Success! So you bring back your star, give him a writing credit and you think you’re getting more of the same, for only a little bit more money. That’s the theory behind Deadpool 2. Little did they know that they were essentially getting another X-Men movie, but with swearing and gore.  

Immortal mutant Wade “Deadpool” Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) takes a break from killing bad guys internationally so that he can protect an angry young pyrotechnical mutant Russell  from the wrath of time-traveling assassin Cable (Josh Brolin, Avengers).

The whole thing about Deadpool is that he’s supposed to be irreverent and rude. Deadpool 2 sees him plunged into a deep depression almost from the very start, and the way the writers, including  Reynolds, have fashioned the character means that he doesn’t really have the capacity for drama. Deadpool is designed to be annoying to his enemies, but he becomes irritating to the audience as well.   Fourth wall-breaking (speaking directly to the camera/audience) for the sake of it helps no one, and it does not cloak the fact that this movie is  about helping a misfit mutant to feel like he belongs in a world that has been cruel and tortuous to him; in other words, the themes that have defined 18 years of X-Men films. 

 Deadpool 2 is strangely charmless, as if they thought they’d worked hard enough in the first, so that henceforth they only needed to be cruel, trot out some of the same jokes and struggle for relevance. While it is true there’s more than one way to be funny, Deadpool 2 is not particularly so. The worst crime, however, is the inability of Deadpool 2 to strike a tone, or balance pathos with comedy. It is a movie that cancels itself out..

    Deadpool 2 is everything that it is supposed to rail against: a generic comic book movie that is only a step above the lesser entries in the Marvel/Fox continuum. The best scenes come after many will have already left the cinema — not having been trained to stay for the credits  and these credits make you wonder why the rest of the movie wasn’t much better. Deadpool 2 is vulgar enough to entertain less-demanding audiences, but the discerning viewer knows from experience that you can incorporate these elements into an overall stronger film. Perhaps  Deadpool 2 is merely the difficult second album; but to me whatever good will Reynolds had built up in Deadpool 1 is quickly squandered here.

AVENGERS  INFINITY WAR  3.0 ***

      This year the Marvel Cinematic Universe ( MCU) turns 10 years old, and Infinity War (the 19th film in the MCU series) represents the culmination of  a carefully constructed story that started with Iron Man. With the exception of a few characters, the gang is all here (about 35), and an effort is made to give everyone a  role or at least a moment. It's not an easy task, but Infinity War (with it's 2 1/2 hour runtime) does manage its cinematic roll call reasonably well. At times the massive cast comes at a cost, as characters fall out of the story for large stretches of time, but the film itself never stops to catch its breath. 

A BIG mean, ugly purple dude named Thanos scours the universe for the precious crystals to fit into his snazzy metal gauntlet, intent on using the massive power of the stones for his own horrible scheme. If he can get all the crystals he will have the power to and will eliminate half (1/2) of the population of the Universe which he believes is the only way to save the Universe. It is up to the assembled team of brave superheroes (most all of Marvel’s Avenger characters and the Guardians of the Universe team) to try and stop him.

For the best part of two hours I was reasonably entertained by what unfolded, despite not knowing the backstory to several of the characters. The plot was pretty easy to pick up, the action scenes were visually impressive, and there was never a lull in pace. It is a “super” slick, big-budget popcorn fodder designed to appeal to the masses, but which hardly qualified as revolutionary or indeed, all that memorable. Eventually, I could feel tedium creeping in from the repetitious massive battles. And then the last act was a BIG downer…a shocker in a bad way to me.

 If the MCU movies have had a consistent criticism it’s the villains, but that's not an issue here. Thanos is not only impressively rendered physically, but he's got a depth and a mission that go beyond your standard baddie. Our heroes are the same characters we've grown to love, and it was nice to see a few of them known more for their humor get some dramatic depth.  

There's a lot to like about Infinity War, but for me the whole was less than the sum of its parts.

THE THREE FACES OF EVE  (1957)  3.5***

        For dramatic effect many Hollywood movies about mental illness  have the psychiatrist coming up with a miracle cure of the patient. In reality cure is often difficult to achieve,  but it does make for good cinema. To give credit where it is due, The Three Faces of Eve is about a real case of multiple personality disorder and the cure takes a matter of years .

In only her third feature film Joanne Woodward (virtually an unknown at the time) won Oscar’s Best Actress award for the 1957movie, ironically beating out Elizabeth Taylor who played a woman descending into madness in Raintree County instead of being cured. I read somewhere that the Southern born Ms. Woodward remarked ironically that it took years of training for her to lose her southern accent and then she had to find it all over again for her role in The Three Faces of Eve to win the Oscar. Obviously the Academy voters were quite impressed with how she was able  to so easily change into three very different characters . She's a drab boring homemaker Eve White, a sexpot who hates her husband and loves to dance at local dive bars as Eve Black, and as Jane who's a balanced level-headed woman. The question becomes which one will ultimately dominate.

As good as Woodward is ( and she’s outstanding), my favorite scene in the movie is when the psychiatrist played by Lee J. Cobb tries to explain to Woodward's working class husband about multiple personality disorder. The “he doesn’t understand a thing I’m saying”  look on Cobb's face and the blank uncomprehending expression on the husband's face say more than ten pages of dialog.  

The movie is somewhat dated but is still an excellent early docudrama about a rare form of mental illness. 

NOTE: According to information on the DVD : "When the real Eve signed the contract for the movie, the studio had her sign three separate contracts under each of her personalities, so that they would be covered from any possible legal action. In fact, when she signed the contract, they actually had her go into the personalities, and the signatures were all different on the contracts."