Doctor Strange - Movie Review

'Doctor Strange', Marvel's first foray into exploring multiple dimensions, is as bizarre as one might expect because of its comic book source.

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Stephen Strange, a neurosurgeon who seeks professional medical help after his hands was destroyed because of a car accident. Desperate for immediate recovery, he meets The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), who will show him things he might not be prepared for.

I think the biggest praise 'Doctor Strange' will get from everyone is on how it looks. The film took a risk in opting for its weird and very uneasy visuals that gets too become dizzy to watch at times, but its sense of peculiarity can never overshadow of how too familiar the story chose to drive onto.

As an origin story, 'Doctor Strange' settles on a very safe approach. Clearly, there's tons of ways to introduce the character of Doctor Strange and the nature of his sorcery, but the film only gets to tackle only bits of it, which is very disappointing considering director Scott Derrickson seems like a great choice to explore it because of his horror background.

The performances were undoubtedly great. Benedict Cumberbatch felt like he was having the time of his life as Strange. Albeit whitewashing controversy, Tilda Swinton proved wrongly of critics over her portrayal as the Ancient One, while Chiwetel Ejior and Mads Mikkelsen delivered their parts pretty well.

There were a lot of moments in 'Doctor Strange' that felt like the visual effects team are on a euphoric state while designing its undescribably weird action sequences. One can spot how some of it strangely (pun intended) resembles the space bending sequence from 'Inception', but on a whole new scale.

'Doctor Strange' is ridiculously fun in its peculiarity, but it feels off-ly familiar and too safe in its narrative choices. There's something fascinating to explore here, we just never got to see it entirely.

The geek rates it 7/10!

'Doctor Strange' is now showing in cinemas nationwide from Walt Disney Pictures Philippines! Rated PG by the MTRCB.