Office Space (1999)

Director: Mike Judge

Cast: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Stephen Root, Gary Cole

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. We all had a good laugh when I started the day job that still drags on 40 hours per week and every cubicle had a brand new red Swingline stapler.

I’m not sure if everyone got the joke at hand…

Did I Like It: As with any cult comedy—and Mike Judge is certainly hit the target twice on that with this and Idiocracy (2006)—it’s the lines people tend to remember. You took my stapler. O face. That’d be great. TPS reports. Even silent moments live in the collective consciousness, like the scene where our heroes exact their righteous vengeance on the fax machine* that had so thoroughly stymied their days.

What we don’t really talk about is how insanely relatable not only the drudgeries of life at Initech are—regardless of whatever field you may have conned into pretending to give you a living wage. Whatever problems I—and, from what I understand, Judge himself—has with the too-tidy ending, there is something profound in the film’s meditation on how not only most people don’t like their jobs, but a job is fundamentally unreliable as a source of any kind of real happiness.

I kind of wish I had internalized that lesson before the proverbial they handed me my own red stapler way back when. Might have made the last fifteen or so years a little easier to swallow. At least I think I’ve worked out what does work about life for what may end up being the next fifteen.

*Because killing Lumbergh (Cole) would have been a lot harder to slink out of in the third act with only a positive attitude and a deus ex machina to guide them.

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.