Doctor Strange (2016)

  I gave up a night of sleep to go see this on Thursday.  I'd like to say I was totally in love with it but that would be lying.  Overall, it's a good movie.  It just didn't have the pizzazz I was hoping to see.

Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a world-renowned neurosurgeon.  He's also a complete asshole. When his hands are crushed after a car accident, he spends every dime he has searching for a miracle cure, while belittling everyone he comes into contact with.  A physical therapist tells Strange of a patient named Pangborn (Benjamin Bratt) who completely recovered from near total paralysis.  Strange seeks out Pangborn and learns the man went to Nepal to seek enlightenment and found Kamar-Taj, the home of a group of mystic warriors who protect the Earth from multi-dimensional creatures.  Strange goes immediately to learn from the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) but is drawn in to an ideological battle.  One of the Ancient One's pupils, Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), has stolen pages from a dangerous book detailing how to free a creature that exists outside of time, Dormammu, in order to kill what he perceives to be the greatest threat to life:  time itself.  Strange must master these new lessons and make decisions that will impact all of the multiverse.

Ok, here's the thing:  I don't really like Benedict Cumberbatch.

I don't know why.  I am just so turned off by everything he does.  I have finally (after three seasons) become okay with him in Sherlock and I don't mind him as Smaug.  I enjoyed The Imitation Game but that was in spite of him, not because of him.  And here he has an American accent that just sounds super weird to me.  I am just totally biased against Benedict Cumberbatch and I have no idea why.  I'm working through it.  It's like immersion therapy.  I'll get to the point where I can see his face and not think "ugh, why?"

The best part of this movie is the Cloak of Levitation.  That is the greatest inanimate sidekick since the carpet from Aladdin.  I can't say a lot about it because it is all spoilers but that alone is enough for you to go see this film.  The other reason is the mid-credits sequence with Thor to set up Ragnarok.  I am so excited for that, I can hardly stand it.

On the scale of Marvel movies so far, this is trending down towards the bottom of the heap but it is necessary and important to have because it sets up so much stuff for the future.  It's good but not amazing.