Vanity Fair‘s just-appointed film critic is saying with a straight face that Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Captain America: the Winter Soldier (Disney. 4.4) is pleasing enough and decently assembled but should basically be viewed as a warmup to the next Avengers film. I don’t know what to say to Richard Lawson. He’s indicating he was more or less delighted with Joss Whedon‘s The Avengers, which I described 22 months ago as “basically a bludgeoning,” and that he can’t wait for Avengers: Age of Ultron (5.1.15). This is the blindness of geek aficionados (which the George Lucas-resembling Lawson apparently is to some extent). To them bigger, rompy-stompier, more avalanche-like and titanically proportioned CG action films are better than smarter, faster, restrained, character-driven, tighter and more precise ones. I didn’t hate The Avengers but it was mostly a form of punishment — “big, noisy as shit, corporate piss in a gleaming silver bucket.”

Note: I meant to say that Lawson resembles George Lucas as he looked 25 or 30 years ago.