Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

Doctor Strange

Fuck Chicago!  Fuck it right in its deep dish, Al Capone, Blues Brothers, Boss Tweed, Michigan Avenue, white socks!

Except for The Tossers.  Those Irish rockers are the bee's tits.

I'm guessing Body Bags "R" Us is having a banner week in the (cough) Jewel of the Midwest.  Beyond the standard slew of murders and Vienna sausage-related coronaries, some Darwin Awards runners-up must have taken concrete swan dives from street lights, overpasses and balconies celebrating the Cubs' win.  Plus, there had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of poor bastards clinging to life to see the 108-year World Series drought end, and I guaranfuckingtee that every one of them gave up the ghost before the first bottle of locker room champagne popped.

Which, in a way, makes the Cubbies mass murderers.  Which, in another way, is not unlike how Doctor Strange is going to murder the box office despite being nothing more than a distant echo of every other Marvel movie from the past eight years.  Call it Iron Magician. 

Fanboys will go because they're fanboys.  And because their moms will buy their tickets to get them out of the house for a few hours so they can Febreze the basement and get in a quick hump with the Maytag Man.

Teens and 20-somethings will go because, "Oooh, shiny!"

30- and 40-somethings will go because there's fuck all else to see in theaters right now.

Stoners and acid heads will go because with its Inception meets Woodstock visuals Doctor Strange is the drug scene's new fav flick.

Filmed in glorious Collide-O-Scope and featuring Black Light Poster Galaxy!

Why all the psychedelia?  Well, Doctor Strange is a child of the 60s having made his first comic book appearance in 1963.  He's an egotistical genius with a goatee, and he's sarcastic as fuck.  Remind you of any other masters of the Marvel universe?

After a more-ironic-than-Paula-Deen-being-crushed-by-a-giant-lawn-jockey car crash destroys the world famous surgeon's hands, Doctor Strange (Benedict "Bandersnatch" Cumberbatch) turns to Eastern (formerly known as "Oriental") spiritualism to heal himself.

The Ancient One, a wizened, old, Asian man (played by the young, White, British "Waltzing My" Tilda Swinton) teaches Strange to be a great sorcerer.  Which, it turns out, is a good thing seeing as how Strange is apparently the only one who can stop smokey-eyed bad guy Kaecilius (Mads "Mads, Mads, Mads World" Mikkelsen) from . . . all together now . . . destroying the Earth.

Other than the new Marvel opening - which features movie clips instead of comic book page flips - and an early reference to Chuck Mangione - because you can't get more topical than Chuck Mangione, whose 45s and cassettes are flying off the shelves what with kids these days being so cuckoo for flugelhorn - Doctor Strange is basically the most expensive anti-texting-and-driving PSA ever.  And the least effective given that the crash victim ends up with super powers.

Talk about the Ass-tral plane.

November 5, 2016