Thunderbolts*

Essential, and it is the best film of Phase Five after Guardians Vol. 3. It gathers up characters left over from six earlier productions, most of them from Black Widow, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Ant-Man, and a viewer will follow it with only Black Widow behind them.

The surprise is that it is a film about depression, and not metaphorically. Yelena opens it describing an emptiness she cannot name, in voice-over, over footage of her doing her job competently and feeling nothing, and the antagonist's power is to trap people inside the worst thing they have ever done. The climax is not a fight: it is several people walking into a darkness to find somebody and simply standing with him.

That is a genuinely unusual thing for a studio to make at this budget, and it works because the ensemble is well chosen. Florence Pugh carries it, David Harbour provides the comedy without undercutting the register, and Lewis Pullman's Bob is the most sympathetic character the franchise has introduced in years.

The action is modest by Marvel standards and better for it. Julia Louis-Dreyfus finally gets a film's worth of material. The asterisk in the title is explained in the last scene and the film has been quietly reorienting the whole saga's furniture.