Film Review : "Birds of Prey"

"Birds of Prey" opened and it was crickets on Facebook. There were no updates about how great it was . Just awkward silence even with the 80 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating paid for by Warner Brothers, a great many people are not surprised this movie bombed. The studios obviously not being counted among them as they think high lighting Harley in the title will help. Maybe a focus group told them this. This is a shock to Warner Bros as I am sure they thought anything connected to Bat-man is bullet proof after Joker.  When I walked out of  the theater after seeing "Suicide Squad" I remember saying "Well that was for kids who go to Hot Topic" . This movie is not that cool. This movie is for little girl's feeling edgy at Claires. My ten year old daughter will like this movie. She has been Harley for two halloween breaking the streak last year with Wednesday Addams . My daughter also watches Youtube channels of kids making slime and doing silly dares. "Birds of Prey" has about that much depth. There are no surprises, they do not even attempt any. Margot Robbie has settled into the role. Too bad it will likely be her last as I do not see them lining up a sequel in this lifetime after the bomb it dropped/

Roise Perez has aged well. Her character felt forced in the story line there was little justification for her teaming up with them.  Black Canary even more forced and Huntress was not that great either. This is not the best argument for female super heroes. Black Canary could have pushed the sex appeal more. Lets face it the way they went with the character that is really all she would have had to offer,. It feels weird not having her around Green Arrow. For the minute she was in costume it worked for me. Huntress however was horrible and too much of a tom boy. That is not how the character should roll. This is a shame as I am a fan of female super heroes,these characters have been pretty hot in the comics. Why could Huntress no be hot and tough.? Speaking of tough the fight scenes were terrible. Why must every female character do a flying head scissors . In a real fight that is the last thing they would want to attempt. , 

Mcgregor was entertaining in his role though lost more menace as the movie progress,. The end was anti climatic and all of which you could seen coming from a mile away. This would have been better if they had nto tried to sell this to kids and gone with a rate R version, but you get what you get. Unless it is hyper realistic it looks like D/C movies will continue to be duds, it held itself together better in the end than say "Shazam" and looked better than Aquaman, but those a very low bars.  It made as much as "Jonah Hex' and I would have to say I liked "Jonah Hex" er.

Film Review : "The Joker "

Lots has been said about this movie. A lot more has not been said about it. What has been said is that it is not like other super hero movies. This is true. What has been said is the acting is great. This is true. What has not been said is ...can acting alone save a movie when the writing is shit? What about if there is very little plot and a message about the 1 percent being pushed when in fact the would be hero to come is the 1 percent ? The movie is well made from a production stand point. It looks great. In my writing on music one of my common complaints about music these days is bands might sound good, meaning they have every thing dialed in to get a certain sound, but they can not write songs. This fits if you replace sound with look. This movie could have been edited down to 30 minutes because nothing happens until the last 30 mins. Oh, a sub way shooting. That could have happened during the opening credits. But it is an origin story one person  on Facebook cried when I expressed my boredom with the first half of the movie . To which so was Conan the Barbarian. In fact Conan had a much worse go of life, he not only saw his parents get killed, but he was sold into slavery and forced to push a wheel of pain for 14 years...and still he was kicking ass with in the first 20 minutes of the movie.   

The buzz this film built around it came from the scare of gun violence. Without it would it have really had much more hype than "Suicide Squad" or the "Venom" movie ? It is closer to Venom than Suicide Squad in terms of execution. Though It reminded me more of "the Brown Bunny" if it had been given a "Falling Down" twist. The comparisons to "Taxi Driver" are not unfounded but almost gives the writing too much credit. It felt like they only had a script for the last 30 minutes.  There will be some who would like to think they are thinking deeper about this movie  so lets make sure we did not miss anything. Life is hard for the Joker. He has a condition where he can not stop laughing. This is difficult. The mental health care system is rough, hey I know this one first hand , I am always saying I should become super villian. Life dealt him a bad hand. How many movies has this been the case ? Mmm "The Elephant Man", "Hunch Back of Notre Dame" , "Carrie" ...I can keep going though you can also count the other movies we have used as comparisons too. He cracks under pressure and we know where this is going so there are no real spoilers here. In other words more thoughtful than most villians get and I think he will stack up well again the Twilight Knight version of Bat-man.

What I liked the most about this movie was even in trying to be a high brow art house flick it was not overly apologetic for being a comic book movie kept things in Gotham and gave appropriate wink to the Bat Man mythos. If you were really into this character then I think you will appreciate this part. As how he stacks up against the other Joker's he is closer to Heath's which is not my favorite and I think the hype of his performance will not stand the test of time . I think the scare tactics employed for controversy might have been generated by the studio themselves. Nothing in the movie is any cause for alarm. Some one asked me if this is dark and I told them what are you comparing it to ? Other super hero movies sure. Lars Von Tier or David Lynch films ...no. Horror movies no. If there is a cheap matinee is worth that I would not pay more than six buck unless you are really bored or a mega Joker fan.

Film Review : Suicide Squad

Fandom has become like living in a dysfunctional family. In families marred by alcoholism and abuse, the rule is to keep quiet, live with the secret while putting out a united front to the rest of the world. In fandom this done out of a mutual love for comics, movies , gaming or whatever makes you feel part of a bigger trend you see at Dragon-con, Comic-con or where ever you go to cosplay. This culture has created the market for Suicide Squad. It puts people up in arms at Rotten Tomatoes, because people whose job it is to review films dared give Suicide Squad a bad review. I would like to know who you could expect these people who review movies to give a movie that all of a sudden skips the third act and turns into Ghost-Busters a good review. So Suicide Squad is going to be the elephant in the room, that everyone will want to save face and say they liked it. Perhaps they would like it if they are 15 , don't read comics and get most of their entertainment from playing video games because that is clearly the target audience. If you played Grand Theft Auto as Dead Shot and crashed it into Call of  Duty on zombie mode, you would have the plot of this movie.

My wife and I were disputing if Suicide Squad was as bad as Super-man vs Bat-man as we were leaving the theater. We agreed that what Suicide Squad had going for it was the fact that it did not take it self as seriously as Bat-Man vs Super-man. Everyone in our group of six leaving the theater seemed to be in agreement on the fact that Marvel continues to kick D/C's ass when it comes to comic book movies and this film doesn't change that fact. I expected a similar tone to that of Deadpool. I would not let my 6 year old daughter see Deadpool, but I would have no problem with her watching this movie, aside from the fact I would have to sit through it again.

So why is geek culture so afraid to call this movie out for what it is ? Harley Quinn, would be the answer you are looking for. Harley is a beloved character who is a fun loving bad girl no one wants to slut shame. So the character is up on a similar pedestal as Deadpool, who is the Marvel male version of this obnoxious outcast archetype. This is the first time we have seen Harley on the big screen. Margot Robbie's costuming for the role had girls dressing up as her portrayal of  Quinn almost a year before the film's release. In the end she injected personality in her version of Quinn, but her accent reminded me more of Fran Drescher. I could have done without half the dialogue from her. It seemed the focus was more on the swish she had in her hot pants, however this character's sex appeal worked best as a tease, because she had zero chemistry with Leto's Joker.

Leto's Joker was better than Bat-Man Versus Super-man's Lex Luthor, who ruined that movie. In fact I was find with Leto's Joker unless he was interacting with Quinn , as everything became stiff and forced when those two were on-screen aside from the montage that gave a wink to the famous Alex Ross cover. I know people were upset of the dynamics of their relationship, I am not sure how you can believe he was anything more than her pimp in this movie.

Killer Croc was the worst character of the movie and with Will Smith's Dead Shot and Captain Boomerang being the best. I was pretty indifferent to everyone else and really did not care if they lived or died. Bat-man's appearance worked best when he chased down the Joker and took out Quinn with one punch. The best part of the movie aside from some of the little intro stories than brough the characters in was the trailer for Wonder-Wo-man. Lets break the silence here, I love Dr. Strange but if that movie sucks I won't be afraid to tell you to save your money, it's ok to speak out when Hollywood does us wrong if we don't it will keep happening.

Bat-Man vs Superman

Marvel continues to kick D/C's ass when it comes to the big screen. D/C often works better on Television because on a show like Gotham or Smallville, they break things down into smaller bit sized portions to focus on the character's rather than the big picture. When the scope gets too big it's hard for the often more mythic heroes of D/C to be anything more than card board cut outs. Bat-man has worked on screen time and time again because they are able to make a emotional connection with Bruce Wayne while the alien messiah is harder to make down to earth. When this is touched upon in Batman Vs Super-man the film is working best.  So lets look at what makes the movie and then see what breaks it.

Makes the Movie

Affleck is better at being Bat-man than we expected.

Breaks the movie

He is worse at being Bruce Wayne, this gives us more of an emotional connection with Super-man, who comes across as being the mis-understood under dog in all of this.

Makes the Movie

Wonder-man, despite being a little on the scrawny side compared to the iconic Linda Carter, Gadot's Woman is one of the best things this movie has going. Perhaps it's because if we don't count the Lego Movie,  we have been through six Super-Man movies, Smallville and Lois& Clark, along with seven Bat-man movies  and Gotham . So we are hungrier to see Diana on screen. Lets not get into the others as Cyborg might have gotten more screen time than Aqua-Man and the Flash got more than both. As Wonder-woman she does just as the trailer suggests, but we do get to see her bracelets and lasso in action.

Breaks the Movie

The best part was too condensed, they could have given us more and less Lois.

Makes the Movie

The action scenes with Super-man were much better than Man of Steel.  When he lets Bat-man dent his armored fist on him it was great.

Breaks the Movie

The big showdown. Super-man is not dumb. If this is his first encounter with kryptonite, then it's effect might be  a surprise, but after he see what happens when he breathes it in then would he not hold his breath when his super-hearing picks up Bat-man cocking the trigger of the gun? His reflexes make him not only faster than a speeding bullet but fast enough to have the gun up Bat-man's ass before he pulls the trigger. So that did not work for me.

Makes the movie-

I liked the messiah approach to Super-man and Lex Luthor's line about "if God is All-Powerful then he can't be all good, and if he is good than he can't be all-powerful" as well as the line where he says Clark Kent and mentions all the other names of gods .

Breaks the Movie

The worst depiction of Lex Luthor ever, he comes across more like the Joker than it seems Jared Leto's version will. Luthor is a megalomaniac not a maniac. He should come across more like Kevin Spacey's character in "House of Cards" at his most human and be more cold and calculating, but wait in this movie that would blur the lines between Luthor and Bruce Wayne.

I think I fell asleep for a couple minutes building up to the big show down but caught the rest of the movie, was a little confused why Super-man didn't use his hearing to find this mother if he didn't want to fight Bat-man. Bruce Wayne was a jerk so he did need the beating he got. Could have stood for less Bruce Wayne, the scene with Bat-man taking out the Russians was good enough for my Bat-man fix. Once the big throw down with the troll from Lord of the Rings that they decided to make Doomsday took place I thought was funny that Bat-man just got out of the way since there was little he could do. The end was no surprise because you know what is going to happen to Super-man when Doomsday shows up, you can paint him as a messiah figure with out him becoming a martyr.

I didn't like Nolan's too realistic take on the D/C Universe in the movies that followed Bat-man Begins, but this tried to hard to rub a coat of grit on everything and missed what makes the Avengers/ Marvel movies fun as it took itself too seriously. Even though Civil War and Dr. Strange are more than likely going to be the last of the great Marvel movies and bring the curve of the comic genre back down in it's wake, much like the fate of the Universal Monster trend met it's end with the Abott  and Costello films until Hammer breathed new life into the undead, D/C is pretty much still born at this point.

Movie Review: Man of Steel

If you read this blog, it is no secret that Super-man is my favorite D/C comics character,  so the anticipation and the expectations are raised pretty high, though after the Rotten Tomatoes reviews started coming in and the social media reaction was not negative but just not knowing how to take the film, I tried to lessen my expectations. Now after seeing it myself I can understand the odd reactions as it was not what people expected and I am still a little unsure how I feel about it.

It was entertaining and did not suck. Part of this was due to the fact it was incredibly well made. Some of the mega-galatic qualities made elements of the Avengers look like cheap video game cgi.  So from a production and cinematic level it was a better movie than Avengers as it had more of a Ridley Scott feel than the more comic like elements Snyder normally employs.

From the get go liberties began to be taken with the mythos. Krypton resembled something that was a cross between "City of Lost Children" and "Dune". Truth be told I am so tired of this origin story being told I guess the visual element was needed to keep from losing me. The last adventures of Jor-el, while fun to watch could have been trimmed to have put more screen time with Clark in the suit before he turned him self over to the military. Zod shows up and outs Clark via a broadcast threat, so the fact the military decided to just take Zod's word or everything seemed a little off to me.

The Fortress of Solitude being a space ship instead of an ice castle , made sense i selling it with as much realism they attempted with this and I think overall the film succeeded in what it intended to do in making Super-man more feasible to modern audiences when he was so grounded in World War 2 values. The Smallville elements were handled better than previous films , I feel even more than the Donner films. Reeves had more charisma on screen and made you feel like Super-man was your friend, this movie he was much more clearly alien and there was an sense of isolation and being on the outside looking in that almost took from the Bill Bixby Hulk television show.

As with Smallville or any of the movies there is this sense of joy that wells up inside of me when ever I see him first appear in the suit. Its such an iconic image that somehow manages to almost hold more weight for me than when I see Banner transform on screen. I think this is because the Hulk is more about release where Super-man is the actualization of our higher selves. It was in these moments the movie excelled, but when it threw a lot of hard sci-fi at you in the big battle scene in the movies second half that it lost something for me.

After Clark saves Lois when she is crashing to Earth and becomes embroiled in stopping all these various terra forming plots and devices Zod has set in place it gets scattered and then turns into a disaster film combined with the third  Matrix film. Snyder dialed back his trademark slow-mo fight scenes but went just as over  the top but in a much more Micheal Bay manner and lost me because then I couldn't see the character. The character came back in the final fight scene with Zod. I find it hard to believe Super-man would have allowed for that much destruction of Metropolis to take place, but this is a different Super-man who will kill, when he has to.

Overall I will have to see the middle section again to make a final judgement, it quality film making but feels weird seeing this as the portrayal of his world be it on Earth or on Krypton, it was gritty and often serious , though I don't think that was necessarily problematic, it was an intangible element in the tone, but maybe I just need to see it again to get use to the stylistic difference. It was one of the more well made Super-hero films to date and raises the bar on Marvel when they think about the quality in which they wish to bring the cosmic elements to life.    

the Arrow

There are complaints, but why start by looking this gift horse in the mouth, first off I have no emotional investment in Green Arrow aside from stints in JLA and Smallville. He is not handled all to differently than his Smallville incarnation which had already been road tested for the Cw ,so they took it and made it a tad bit more edgey in his approach to being a vigilante.

Oliver Queen is a typical Cw demographic bad boy, a Showtime version of the Punisher would be a better one but hey Dexter is close enough. The show is shot as slickly as anything else on the network , though I would say the hot chick factor is diminished when compared to Supernatural or Vampire Diaries. So maybe this is all about getting the gay demographic on board which Hollywood and the comic book companies are convinced is a substantial margin despite the fact I have seen very little actually proof of that outside the occasional queen wearing a retro Aquaman shirt they got at target, no one has been flaming up the aises in the comic book store aside from Johnny Strom.

The first four episodes of the Arrow , have had china white and dead shot , with the royal flush gang already shot for this, now bring in Solomon Grundy and I would be impressed though I don't see that happening,I'm not familiar enough with his solo mythos to know who else should be showing up aside from the Black Canary the ground work is already laid for.

Hollywood could learn from this series in how to handle origins in smalls doese via flash backs , so far I thinks it's well done though so piece meal if over done it could become tiresome why not let some of it be in secret , I think that's one of the most alluring parts of any superhero to distance themselves from the rest of the world is the secrets which prompt their adaptation to having an another identity.it looks like in next weeks episode this is going to be handled n a somewhat different manner with...spoilers....Queens arrest.

With a street level character of this ilk I was concerned it was going to be handled like the Cape show, but it was a graceful transition, not wasting too much time to get to costumed heroics, something the dark night rises could have taken notes on. The new actor works as well as Justin Hartley and while I am skeptical as to how apologetic they will become at being connected to the xc universe and being a comic book show remains to be seen.i know they are distancing the,selves from supernatural elements but how would a Booster Gold fit ? Hawk an might be too much as he has become that way in the unreadable travesty of a comic book, but there is a wealth of characters to be explored will be a regular viewer of the show if nothing else to cast my vote and get marvel off there ass to bring it to live action television , even if I am leery of another live action Hulk show and would like to see Cloak and Dagger or Dr Strange on tv first.