Doctor Strange

★★★★☆

The surrealism is the best part of Doctor Strange. Creative use of Escher gravity, portals, astral projection, and time manipulation. Incredibly detailed alterations to reality - buildings don’t just stretch and fold, they add and remove bricks, windows, etc. as needed. Fights where some people are moving forward in time and others backward, or between astral forms while things are still going on with their physical bodies. And the effects make all of that look incredible.

As for the story itself: it’s fun, but it’s also very familiar. They try to patch up or subvert old tropes, some more successfully than others. But overall it follows the same beats as the first Iron Man and Thor movies: Arrogant but extremely capable man finds himself out of his depth and unable to do what he’s accustomed to, and turns things around once he starts to see the big picture and the impact his actions have on others. And of course since this is a few years into the Infinity War saga, the stakes are higher, with the world itself in danger. (It’s still better than Thor, though.)