Captain America: Civil War (2016, Anthony & Joe Russo) (Patreon)

Mike Catches Up With All The MCU Movies He Skipped: An Odyssey Undertaken Solely For The Purpose Of Watching Black Panther Without Having Some Weird Anal-Retentive Breakdown (Please Do Not Waste Your Valuable Time Arguing With Mike In The Comments About How Dumb This Is, Just Accept His Sickness), Part 6 of 10. Ideally, both this movie and the MCU as a whole would have wrapped up on the Leipzig/Halle tarmac—no chance any future entry's gonna top that sequence for giddy clobberin'-time thrills. (Yes, nerds, I know The Thing wasn't there.) Wouldn't go so far as to claim it justifies all the ho-hum assemblage required to get there, but at least one of these knock-down drag-outs finally delivered, making expert use of the heroes' diverse powers while keeping multiple planes of the skirmish visually coherent. Good job, Russos. Alas, there's still half a movie (and then a billion more movies) to go when the dust settles. Opposing positions on oversight did briefly capture my interest, if only because I'd have expected Stark, not Rogers, to bridle at the thought; might even have been effective were Downey's range wide enough to make me feel the weight of Tony's guilt re: collateral damage. (He just intermittently turns off the snark, which isn't enough.) But there's so much Bucky in these movies, and I have never cared a whit about Bucky. Not sure if that's because Stan has never done much more than glower in the role or because Manchurian Buddy just doesn't work very well as a conceit, but I can almost feel my attention leaking out of my eye sockets every time he shows up. Here's hoping he remains cryogenically frozen longer than Philip J. Fry.