Somebody at Marvel must have sold their soul to the devil.

That’s the only way I can explain how a movie like Captain America: Civil War, which juggles enough characters to make Batman v Superman and the previous Avengers movies look quaint, works so beautifully. Civil War isn’t just good, it’s the best team-up movie Marvel has produced to date, and possibly the studio’s best film yet. Despite running for two hours and twenty-six minutes (just slightly longer than the Avengers movies), Civil War never ceases to be entertaining. Just about every scene is enjoyable in its own right.

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If American Ultra is a failure, then at least it’s a noble one. The film, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, is about a West Virginia stoner who finds himself the target of a CIA hit operation, suddenly able to fight and shoot guns and basically behave like an action-movie hero. Most notably, though, it is NOT a comedy. The storytelling is completely straight-faced, there’s great care put into the action sequences, it can be mercilessly violent at times, and the screenplay is genuinely interested in making us care about Mike (Eisenberg) and his girlfriend Phoebe’s (Stewart) relationship.

The approach to take such a ridiculous concept and weigh it down with the central character’s fear, confusion, and relationship worries is certainly attention-grabbing, at least for a while. Eisenberg and Stewart are both great in their roles, sharing a strange chemistry that worked for them in Adventureland and continues to work here. Their performances and the movie’s undeniably-strong style make for a pretty engrossing first act, as we wonder what exactly the film intends on being.

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