The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

I confess I did not really watch the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, let alone the movie. Only with Firefly did I become a mild fan of Joss Whedon. It made sense for him to return to writing horror, with past comrade Drew Goddard, for a bit; in other genres, he loves to kill at least one of the heroes eventually.

If the title sounds awfully generic for horror, that's deliberate. It's no spoiler to say that this movie combines dozens of classics and not-so-classics of the genre...with The Truman Show. A secret, possibly government agency is basically making a scare-by-number horror flick featuring five young adults (the only actor among them you're likely to know is Chris Hemsworth), who thought it'd be fun to camp off the grid, unaware that they're being manipulated to engineer their deaths...at first. We see plenty of scenes at HQ, where the humans (among them Bradley Whitford and Sigourney Weaver) seem like ordinary people aside from their lack of sympathy for the victims. How could they do this? Well...

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Some of the biggest weaknesses from the mostly great The Avengers have been reduced this time around. For example, with more screen time, more character importance, and an actual use of his code name, Hawkeye doesn't get nearly so shafted (no pun intended). The climactic battle doesn't feel quite so lacking in practical progress, nor does victory come at so little cost to the heroes. I think there's more cause for tender emotions.

But I must stop a little short of calling the latest sequel equal, let alone better. In particular, it has issues of pacing. A good chunk is either too fast or too slow, as evidenced by my dad sighing next to me. I suspect that the DVD will be loaded with deleted scenes or at least descriptions of planned moments. I almost wish director Joss Whedon threw in as much as he'd wanted, but 2.5 hours makes for a pretty uncomfortable sitting already. And you probably will prefer to see it in a theater.