“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” was the first of the four flicks to enter theaters, and it built high expectations with a smart script, strong acting and an abundance of beautifully executed action sequences. In short, the movie is a first-tier superhero picture that improves on the franchise’s already solid debut, “Captain America: The First Avenger.”  “The Winter Soldier” is set two years after events depicted in “The Avengers,” and Captain America, a.k.a. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), is settling into life in the 21^st century. 

Whether your understanding of mental illness is limited to what you’ve seen on the silver screen, or as intimate as a firsthand struggle, the topic has occupied a continual space in our national discussion, eliciting controversy and fascination. Today, there are nearly 60 million Americans who suffer from a mental illness, and it continues to present a quality of life, household and community issue. 

While strong female protagonists have been all but invisible in conventional war genre films (Jarhead, Hurt Locker, Black Hawk Down, Restrepo), a new sub-genre has cropped up that puts women at the center of military defense politics. From Alias and Salt to Homeland and the Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty, we have witnessed the emergence of a contemporary screen obsession with watching ass-kicking female CIA agents hunting the world’s most elusive political terrorists.