He's a friend from work.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Chosen by me because I like to go to the cinema a lot 

and hey, it's a marvel movie they pretty much float my boat.

This has the kind of imagery that Zach Snyder wants to be pulling off. A sort of freeze frame prog rock album cover or half recalled Lord of the Rings poster from a long ago childhood memory. But this film knows not to bury that under endless slow motion or the colour brown. It takes it's cue from the wacky science fiction stylings of Guardians of the Galaxy but feeds it through a vibrant 1980s filter (it gets easier with each passing year to forget the awfulness of much of that decade and embrace a retro chic devoid of Thatcher or bad suits) and that sense of fun fuels much of the joy in the film. 

The nostalgia (hugely reinforced by a wonderful Mark Mothersbaugh score which includes a Devo reject tune in the splendid Grandmaster Jam Session) doesnt quite hit an emotional core like the first Guardians, or say something like Lego, did but you're having too much of a blast to care.

Likewise it doesnt really solve Marvel Studios problem of having great actors in the antagonist role and not especially giving them anything to do. Though thankfully Cate Blanchett looks like she is having much more fun than Lee Pace or Christopher Ecclestone ever did. Her Hela gets to preen and crack wise and is a ball but her character never quite gels, the jealousy element a knock-off Loki, her anger never really having direction.

Much of the Sakarr sequence (a major chunk of the movie) is strangely weightless in it's stakes but only after you've finished enjoying it so much does the emptiness register. Gags fly thick and fast, the cast is great, Jeff Golblum is his Jeff Goldblumingest, the action is decent and Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie damn near walks off with the whole movie.

Unfortunately all this new jazz comes at a cost. And the generally pleasant Thor supporting cast from the previous two movies is sidelined, The Warriors Three dispatched too casually to register as an issue and the only sign of Sif is a double in a funny play performed by some noteworthy faces (I'd like to think Loki got the actual actors from Earth and it's just a kind of corporate gig for them).

And honestly Thompson makes up for any loss. A supremely confidant, cool performance she commands the screen every second she is on it, and is just super funny.

Can we have a Valkyrie movie?

Taika Waititi may be a cynical choice by Disney to hire someone cheap that they feel they can control, but it still comes from a place of choosing interesting directors, letting them imprint their personality onto a project seems to work a blinder, even working within the usual MCU framework (which this very much does despite feeling quite different to most of them).

Delightful.