Meme-Free Zone

Someone really ought to write this... The Winter Soldier was the "one-armed man" who killed Richard Kimble's wife. No idea why, maybe she was a KGB defector or something - in which case he let Kimble live so that the "one armed man" description would circulate in the intelligence community and they would know that defectors were not safe in the USA.

One of the nice things about retirement is being able to catch early shows at the cinema with no kids (and in this case virtually no audience, I think three in the whole cinema). The Winter Soldier was today's movie, and turned out to be pretty good - I won't say perfect, but there was a lot less to complain about than I expected.

Before I get to spoilers, I can say that we see much more of Black Widow than I expected - I thought it would be a token appearance to keep the fans happy, but she's in a majority of scenes and pivotal to the plot. We also find out what happened to Peggy, see the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian (which does have some swastikas on view in historical film etc., something we didn't see in Captain America), where Cap is recognised by a kid who sees through his impenetrable disguise of a baseball cap. We also get glimpses of his apartment and his shopping list of things he needs to learn more about in the 21st century, and learn more about SHIELD - a lot more.

Then there's the actual plot - ( SPOILERS!!!!! )

All in, it's a fun romp which has thoroughly Jossed pretty much all fanfic involving SHIELD in the Marvel cinematic universe, and is hopefully going to be important in future films with this setting. I recommend it.

There was also a trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy, which looks to be pretty good, and Amazing Spider Man 2 which... doesn't. We shall see.