If you have ever read a Silver Age Jack Kirby Marvel comic, you will know that Johnny Storm and Steve Rogers have identical faces. Fifty years later, the guy who recently played Johnny Storm also plays Steve Rogers in the new Marvel movies. In the modern world, this qualifies as homage. As does Avengers Assemble, which demonstrates that brands created to hermetic perfection at their genesis should never be messed around with.
Doc of the week Last Call at the Oasis is the backstory to Quantum of Solace and any number of sci-fi flicks over the coming decade: There isn't enough water to serve the needs of civilization. Yet another reminder not to breed.
Speaking of which, Miley Cyrus gets a vehicle perfectly tailored to the audience that is growing up with her. LOL, a remake of director Lisa Azuelos's own French flick, appears to be some sort of saga about the trauma of being popular and attractive at high school. Demi Moore, Thomas Jane and Gina Gershon show how tough it is to be gorgeous as adults, too.
In A Little Bit of Heaven, Kate Hudson is an ad exec struck down with movie cancer. Her doctor turns out to be Gael García Bernal, and before you know it they're having sex. She cracks jokes with Peter Dinklage from Game of Thrones, and her vegetarian mother Kathy Bates cooks her a massive steak. Plus, it's always sunny and everyone smiles all the time. Who doesn't want movie cancer?
What do you do with the elder cast of Harry Potter movies when there is no more Harry Potter? Put them out to grass, perhaps in a series of ensemble movies. First up, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. That lovely young man Dev Patel has the dream of creating a perfect retirement home in Jaipur. Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith et al are among the elderly Brits who find the reality and the fantasy don't quite mesh. Everyone you know over the age of 65 will love this almost as much as they loved The King's Speech.
The Perfect Family has a perfect line delivered perfectly by Kathleen Turner as she confronts her lesbian daughter about her upcoming nuptials: "I don't have to think. I'm a Catholic." Turner, some years on from Body Heat, is finally at the age where retirement to the Best Exotic is not out of the question, but instead she appears to have just rebooted her career, at least according to this trailer.