At the movies: Captain America.

At last, America has its own Starship Troopers.

Now, don't misunderstand, I know that Starship Troopers is an American film, but it is a pure distillation of Paul Verhoeven's global genius. Captain America is just as multileveled and intriguing, but it comes from a very distinct domestic sensibility and as such has a different objective.

Verhoeven's film was about a fascist society and was made as an entertainment that such a fascist society would respond to, so we're not just watching the film, but we're asking ourselves what this film says about who it was made for. Now with Captain America, we've got a film that not only feels like a 40s' film made with contemporary technology, but one that says oodles about the America we wish we were.

My one serious complaint is that they made Chris Evans shave his chest. Other than that, it's a bonkers journey into superheroism that made me giddily happy.

At the movies: Valkyrie.

Based on the real-life story of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise), a ranking German Army official who led a secret group (including Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Izzard, and Terrence Stamp) to plot the assassination of Hitler, Valkyrie is a World War II film quite unlike anything that has come before it.

Trash was being talked about this film before it had even begun production, with the "Tom Cruise Nazi" movie becoming something of a punchline. But then people actually started seeing the film, and tunes started changing. Director Bryan Singer knows how to construct a good visual story, and we get a reunion of Carice van Houten and Halina Reijn from Black Book as well.

The big problem with this film is a historical one. We know that Stauffenberg and his collaboratiors sadly did not succeed in assassinating Adolf Hitler, so that messes with any heroic rush or adventurous moments that we're given by this film. That said, Bryan Singer follows up the exceptional Superman Returns with an engrossing thriller that gets at some provocative issues while providing an abundance of good performances.