Quite Possibly The Most Authentically Psychedelic Movie You'll Ever See

Rating: 8/10 (25 October 2016)

Early on, during one of the first of many mind - and reality - bending moments in this film, it hit me that the 'Marvel Cinematic Universe' movies made the past 10 years are going to be seen in a half-century's time as just as classic and golden an age of film making as Disney's heyday in the 1940s, or at the very least, Pixar's rule of animation from the 90s on.
Yes, some are weaker than others - the second Thor film and the third Iron Man, for starters - but at their best they are very close to perfect, and so clearly what all those woefully misguided blockbuster abominations like The Force Awakens and Batman Vs Superman want to be. The elusive Marvel formula has been a fantastic balance of action, humour and heart, and this has all of those in spades - although if I have to pick any fault with it, it might be that the emotional charge is not as high as one might hope, and that's pretty much the only reason I took a star away. It was also apparent some PC coercion had influenced the casting and depictions of characters (white characters made black, male characters made female, and the only 'bad' or flawed characters in it being white males), but this was relatively restrained and unobtrusive and it would be churlish to kick up too much of a fuss over.
The most obvious comparison to the visual effects on display would be Inception, but I was struck while watching it, with my mouth open and a permanent smile of wonderment on my face, how this film technically surpasses everything in that film (and every other film I've seen too), but also how far more FUN it is than Inception.
So there we go, Dr Strange is a splendid, exciting, marvellously fun concoction that future generations are going to adore just as much as we do today. That's a rarity, and worth noticing while it happens.