The Flash (2023)

Director: Andy Muschietti

Cast: Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Ron Livingston, Michael Keaton

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: Quick question before we begin: Exactly how fast would I fave to run to be able to go back in time to 2018 and stop myself from writing a review of every movie I watch? Asking for a friend. Who is also me.

There’s so much to cover in this review, and I’m a little bit dreading getting into it. I feel like not addressing everything about the film would be worse than if I missed something with almost any other film. Both a monolith of controversy and (as I write this well into opening weekend) something that looks as if it will fail to fully capture the audience’s imagination. On a personal level it has promised both a shopping list of what I’ve wanted out of superhero films for a number of years, and been a repeated source of frustration. To put it simply, the film is slippery from this critic’s perspective.

Is Ezra Miller a serial abuser shielded by the possibly impenetrable privilege of being white and a movie star at the same time? Or do they struggle with any number of mental health problems exacerbated by sensational tabloid stories orbiting around them? Or is it both? I really don’t know. Plenty of people have refused to go see the movie as they reckon with those questions. I’m not bothered by anyone coming to that conclusion. I can only hope those people aren’t too terribly bothered that I decided to go see the movie, or that I’m going through all of these mental gymnastics to get me in the theater. But then again, I may have to accept it if they are.

This film is largely an engine of crowd-pleasing. Well, maybe not crowd pleasing, but there is quite a bit about it that seems designed to engender good will from me. It’s a time-travel comedy that owes as much to Batman (1989) as it does to Back to the Future (1985). For the few minutes in which it is a Justice League film, it’s easily DC’s breeziest, most enjoyable effort in that arena. Ben Affleck has two scenes in the film, and he makes the most out of them, even if his final scenes in the cowl are among several scenes with some rushed special effects*.

Which brings us to the Keaton of it all. On some level, I’ve wanted Michael Keaton to return to the role of Batman since I was ten. There were years where I would have said I definitely wanted it when it wasn’t even a possibility. And now, with all of the Twilight Zone-style monkey’s paw qualities of this film, I got my wish. For my money, he is really great in the film, channeling a lot of the same energy he brought to the earlier films. His Bruce Wayne spent two entire films avoiding people like the plague, so hermit-Bruce feels like a natural extension a

And then, they go ahead and kill him. Not only do they go ahead and kill him, but when Barry manages to reset the timeline one more time after accepting that he can’t save Batman (or, for that matter Kara Zor-El/Supergirl (Calle, who the film wildly underserves), the Bruce Wayne of that universe is… I can’t believe I’m typing this… played by George Clooney.

And I’m fine with it, actually. No, really. If you had pitched me in year’s past a movie where Keaton’s Batman dies and Clooney’s Batman lives, I would have not been in favor of that movie. It’s clear an alternate ending was filmed where Keaton (or a variation of him) was once again the Batman of the main DC film universe, but that would have flown against the film’s heart, even if it means that not just Batman and Supergirl, but the entirety of Earth-89 are sacrificed to General Zod (Michael Shannon, bored but I don’t blame him as the film gives him only moments from Man of Steel (2013) to replay).

Just as Barry has to let his mother and his control over the universe go, I’ve got to let my favorite Batman go. There’s probably a few things I need to let go of, but none of us need me to convert this review into an ad hoc therapy session. That’s the lesson the movie wants to give me, I think, if you look through all the (frequently cameo-filled) noise.

Oh, one more thing. If you think this is the best superhero movie of all time, I think that may mean you need to watch more movies. That’s okay. There’s plenty of time, and plenty of methods to watch them.

* Everyone is so irretrievably bothered by some of the special effects, as if Muschietti wasn’t also the guy who made <IT - Chapter Two (2019)>. Dodgy CGI is the guy’s aesthetic.

Batman: The Long Halloween (Part 1) (2021)

Director: Chris Palmer

Cast: Jensen Ackles, Josh Duhamel, Naya Rivera, Billy Burke

Have I Seen it Before: Na… It’s new. I’ve read the book probably half a dozen times over the last twenty years.

Did I Like It: I’ve always been a little down on the DC animated movies. Their attempts to condense the great comic arcs into a movie less than an hour and a half always left me just wanting to read the books themselves. The Dark Knight Returns Part One and Two (2012, 2013) had something to it, Hush (2019) underwhelmed, and Death in the Family (2020) struck me as quite possibly the most frustrating bat-film ever produced.

So where does this one land in that spectrum? Somewhere in the middle. Giving the story two parts lets it breath a bit, especially when the source material is a limited run, and not a year-long (or multi-year) storyline. I have some vague ambition to track down part two now, so my interest in the adaptation hasn’t abated from my morbid curiosity about this first installment. The performances are on average, pretty average. Anyone other than Kevin Conroy playing Batman/Bruce Wayne in an animated production always feels like a misstep, and Ackles does the thankless job of not drawing attention to himself. Troy Baker, on the other hand, so desperately apes the timbre, cadence, and cackle of Mark Hamill that the homage only made me long for the original more. Jack Quaid brings all of his squirrely energy to Alberto Falcone. You may think mentioning a side character isn’t worth the word count in this review, but… Well, you just need to take in the story for yourself.

Just how you might end up taking in that story brings me to the big point.I still end up falling just shy of a complete recommendation of the film. When I first read the graphic novel all those years ago, I made the remark that it would make a great Batman movie. And it did. With some shift in focus, it was called The Dark Knight (2008). Go watch that movie, or go read the graphic novel. They’re far more worthy of your time.

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. The drips and drabs of COVID-era new movies keeps coming. Didn’t make it out into the theater for this one. Don’t know when I’ll make it out to the theater for a new movie again the rate things are going. Oddly enough, the last new movie I caught at the theater was likely Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020).

Did I Like It: About a day after screening the film, I was struck by the perfect encapsulation of my positive feelings for the film:

I enjoyed it so much, and wanted the good feelings to continue, that I was halfway tempted to watch the original Suicide Squad (2016). 

And I never thought it would even kind of occur to me that I might want to watch that movie again. But this one moves at such a lean and economical pace—despite its army of charaters all begging for a moment in the sun—that everything Jared Leto-related is forgiven.

Seriously, if you had told me as I was walking out of that movie that Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Quinn will be the most consistently enjoyable part of DC’s attempts to make a connected cinematic universe, I would have told you you were crazy.

Bringing all of the sensibilities from his work on Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and its sequel, along with its sequel, but also blending in the raucous influences of his work with Troma impresario Lloyd Kaufman, this film cuts to the quick and never quite lets the viewer get comfortable, much to this particular viewer’s delight. I laughed throughout, and yet, somehow the film isn’t a spoof of the genre. There’s a fine line between taking potshots at a genre and engaging it both fully and irreverently, and I can’t immediately think of a filmmaker working in blockbuster entertainments who is straddling that line better than Gunn.

It’s not just the best DC movie in recent memory; it is the most purely enjoyable superhero movie since Thor: Ragnarok (2017), easily the most relentlessly fun DC film ever made (and I am far from someone who is down on the DC films as a whole), and easily in the upper echelons of the superhero genre.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Director: Patty Jenkins

Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal

Have I Seen it Before: How would one?

Did I Like It: No review of the film would be complete without spending a moment on its distribution. For a major release, the idea of going simultaneously on streaming and in theaters is certainly unusual. The reasons are well-founded, as are the objections of the movie theater industry.

That all being said, it’s a different animal to watch a movie like this from the couch. In a theater, all that exists is you and the movie, and maybe some popcorn*. You don’t even talk to the people you came with, unless you’re some kind of sociopath. At home, I’m tempted to work on some writing, or thumb through a book or play a game of chess on the phone. At one point I grabbed an orange, peeled it, and then spent several minutes of the runtime debating whether I should get up to throw away the peel.

It’s a different thing. I sure would like it if people got serious about the everything of the current era and the vaccines keep (or truly start) a comin’ so that I might sit in a movie theater once again before I die.

It seems like a lot of my review descend into a similar rant these days. Anyway.

I came to the film a full week after its premiere, and had to work extra hard to not let the somewhat negative word-of-mouth clutter or prejudice my thoughts.

And I think I mostly succeeded.

I hesitate to make some kind of prediction with my first review of 2021, but I think that despite the grumbling, this one will age better than the average superhero film. 

Yes, it doesn’t really feel like a superhero film for much of its runtime. If you cut out all of the scenes were Diana (Gadot) is in full Wonder Woman regalia doing Wonder Woman things, you’d still have a movie that feels about twenty minutes too long. I can see where people feel like they might have been sold a false bill of goods, especially in a year when the last new superhero film we had was Birds of Prey (2020) back in February.

Other parts of it feel like a less-frantic remix of some of the same themes examined in Batman Returns (1992), which would automatically elevate the film’s standing in my view. 

And where that previous film was a fun-house mirror reflection of that earlier film, this film is so quintessentially of its time that it will be hard to completely dismiss in the years to come. The promises of shallow wish-fulfillment by Maxwell Lord (Pascal) will immediately sound familiar, and after all of the time we’ve had, the way Diana unravels those plans feel more satisfying than they have any right to. In a few years, the film may feel quaint, but I’m really looking forward to that. 

* Please, don’t at me with Raisinets. I’m aware of them, and they are not a proper movie snack. I will not be taking questions at this time.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)*

Director: Cathy Yan

Cast: Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: Suicide Squad (2016) was a muddled mess of editing and miscasting. The fact that Margot Robbie’s performance as Harley Quinn was able to be a bright point in one of the more boring wide-release films in recent years definitely warrants her welcome return under different creative stewardship.

And the film is terrific. It brings the sensibilities of someone like Shane Black into the DC Universe. It’s a film that’s funny, the characters are likable (even when they are gleefully being unlikable), and there isn’t one point in the writing where I wonder how this thing got out of the studio. This would automatically put it above most DC films released in the last ten years.

Like Wonder Woman (2017) before it, Birds of Prey manages to bring a DC character to life without making large swaths of the audience alternately bored and uncomfortable. Now, granted, there are choices in this movie that will piss off the contingent of movie internet who have spent the last several weeks telling anyone who would listen that Parasite (2019) stole something very precious from <Joker (2019)>, but those types of people have enough to occupy their time so their tired complaints about the film aren’t worth acknowledging, to say nothing of dwelling upon.

It also may be the most sensuous breakfast porn I’ve ever seen. Seriously, I’m less than an hour past my screening of the film and I’ve wanted nothing but an egg sandwich ever since.

I do have two thoughts that I implore you, dear reader, to not take as complaints, but more as missed opportunities to my particular taste. There is a prolonged action sequence in the impound locker of Gotham City Police Department precinct, and it looks like any other impound lockup from any other cop movie you’ve ever seen. The film could have had a menagerie of thing taken from many of the Rogue’s Gallery. Harley could try to fell the mercenaries with an umbrella gun, and—in keeping with the themes of the film—find it utterly lacking in destructive power. A similar moment could be played out with a hand-grenade made out of a set of chattering teeth. There are other suggestions I have, but I won’t trouble you with them now. The film’s title has already received a revision since its opening, we don’t want this to be a Cats (2019) situation. In the interest of full disclosure, my wife strenuously disagrees with this though. It’s not an objective note about the film.

The other qualm I have with the film? No Barbara Gordon! How can you have a Birds of Prey film without including Barbara Gordon? Now, I understand DC may be angling for her own film sooner rather than later, but the question remains. For that matter, how has no live-action DC film even attempted to bring the once and future Batgirl to the screen? It boggles the mind.

*I set a minimum word-count for these reviews, and awkwardly long titles like this certainly help matters.