Review: Captain America 2 - The Winter Soldier

Seeing as he gets a name check in the title, you'd expect the Winter Soldier to have a bigger part in the second Captain America film - but in fact he ends someone playing second fiddle to the main villain and looks like he's spent too long listening to 30 Seconds To Mars and My Chemical Romance to be any real threat.

That's not the only problem with this sequel either, with the biggest problem facing this this film (and the Marvel Universe as a whole) is that since Agent Coulson's reappearance in Agents of Shield, it's tough to believe for a second that anyone is in any real danger at any point in the plot. That said the Marvel films have their formula down to a tee, with impressive action sequences interspersed with snappy one-liners to lighten the mood, meaning the Captain America 2 is always entertaining, but future films need to up their game to hit the heights of previous successes.

Review: Marvel Avengers Assemble

Avengers Assemble is the film Michael Bay thinks Transformers is - where in Bay's head he's made a film that features a team of superheroes coming together to save the world, that is full of action, laughs and a little something for the ladies - The Avengers actually manages to deliver on all these promises in spades.

That's not to say its perfect - the final battle feels like it goes on forever, mainly to make sure all six superheroes get the chance to shine in the fight to save the Earth from the scene-stealing Loki and his anonymous army of CGI monsters. But up until that point Joss Whedon deserves a great deal of credit for splitting scree-time between all six Avengers whilst keeping the plot moving on with pace and verve.

The script is the usual Marvel mix, with the amount of one-liners almost matching the number of punches thrown, but this manages to become funniest of the films so far by using the superheroes' powers to bring some great physical comedy to the table, with bodies flying all over the place like crash test dummies bringing some of the biggest laughs.

2012 looks set to be a bumper year for superhero movies with The Dark Knight Rises and the new Spider-Man film still to come, what Avengers Assemble has done is ensure the standard has been set pretty high already.