Avengers: Age of Ultron - a collection of thoughts

Bringing together a host of characters from different films, and doing it coherently, is not easy, but Joss Whedon managed it beautifully in Avengers Assemble.

Now, three years later, the director is back with Avengers: Age of Ultron, where Captain America/Steve Rogers, Iron Man/Tony Stark, Thor, Black Widow/Natasha Romanov, Hulk/Bruce Banner and Hawkeye/Clint Barton battle against Ultron, an AI - created accidentally by Tony Stark - who becomes sentient and determined to gain peace in our time, via murder. Joining the cast of characters are brother and sister Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, better known as Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, who find that life is not as black and white as they thought.

Ultron clocks in at a whopping two hours and 21 minutes, and while it's entertaining and enjoyable (it would take a lot for me to hate a Marvel film), it's also bloated, a bit of a mess, and frustrating to watch. Rather than a conventional review, here are a bunch of thoughts about what I loved and what I hated about Ultron, in no particular order. Warning, lots of spoilers ahead.

Film review: Snowpiercer, dir. by Bong Joon-Ho and starring Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton and Song Kang-Ho

Forget what you know about heroes, because Snowpiercer is going to remake your image of what a hero looks like.

It is almost 20 years after an experiment designed to stop global warming instead resulted in the earth being frozen over. Now, all survivors live on a train - Snowpiercer - which hurtles its way round the earth, between the snowdrifts. But society has not banded together to survive, instead the haves live luxury lives at the front of the train, while the have-nots live in squalor at the back of the train, surviving on a diet of brown, jelly-like bars and a taste for equality and revenge. Led by Curtis (Chris Evans) the have-nots decide to stage a coup, get to the front of the train, and destroy the class system forever.

I can't begin to tell you just how good a film Snowpiercer is, and how much it pains me that it hasn't received a cinema release in the UK. This is, undoubtedly, one of the best films released this year. Beautifully shot and directed by Bong Joon-ho, Snowpiercer is painful, violent and bleak, and brilliant with it.