Movie reviews

When you start arguing with yourself as to whether the Incredible Hulk’s motivations are entirely in character, it’s all over: the Dark Side has won.

The Dark Side, of course, being those shadowy Hollywood moguls who care not a whit for film as an art form, and think that making a movie like Avengers Assemble (12A) constitutes a worthy and honourable endeavour for adult human beings. Essentially, a number of comic-book superheroes — Iron Man (Robert Downey Jnr), Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson), Captain America (Chris Evans), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) — come together in order to fight the dastardly Loki (Tom Hiddleston), a Norse god who has arrived on Earth from Asgard via a space-time portal. He’s determined to rule over the planet or wipe it out entirely, one consequence being about as meaningful and/or pointless as the other given that we all know it ain’t gonna happen. The result is a long but vivid series of smash-bang-wallop visual pyrotechnics, although writer-director Joss Whedon has a little subversive fun during the middle stretch, as he pits the vast egos of the superheroes against one another like so many tectonic plates, and asks why superheroes should be allowed to ply their ‘trade’ without regulation, even if they do generally indulge in grotesque violence only for the sake of the greater good. Are the superheroes assembled here metaphors for nuclear weapons? Is there something dark and achingly profound lurking beneath the bright’n’shiny surface, much in the way the complex Tony Stark, say, skulks behind his impenetrable suit of hi-tech armour? But when you make a movie in which the character of the Incredible Hulk provides virtually all of the humour and humanity it’s worth wondering if you have, in the rush to flesh out your 2-D comic-book characters, overlooked what makes your audience tick.

Another character who plies his trade from behind a disguise is the eponymous hero of Albert Nobbs (15A) — or should that be heroine? Glenn Close received an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of the cross-dressing Albert, who dresses as a man in order to live and work as a man, Victorian Ireland being a cruel place to young women abandoned by fate or circumstance. Albert’s ruse is uncovered by a house painter, Mr Page (Janet McTeer), largely because ‘Mr Page’ is in fact Ms Page, a woman who is not only playing the same game as Albert, but is happily married and fully independent. Is it too much to hope that Albert might find such happiness with scullery maid Helen (Mia Wasikowska)? Some of the supporting performances lack any kind of finesse — Pauline Collins is woeful as Albert’s employer, for example — but the central performances are entirely plausible and compelling in their socio-cultural gender realpolitik. It’s not a film without flaws, but it is a poignant story that will resonate with anyone who has ever found it necessary to disguise the truth of who they really are.