Film Review : "the Flash"

 

To credit this movie as being one of the best DC movies is not that big of a compliment, so I think I should say this is one of the best  live action comic book movies we have seen since , the last Spider-man film which is very fair as it offers the kind of fan service that No Way Home did. I have seen online a few reviews trying to say this movie is the problem with comic book movies, and those are the kind of journalists, who do not know anything about comic books to begin with. Frist off I have no horse in this race, as I am not a DC, my favorite DC character is Swamp Thing. Not sure the Flash would make my top 10 DC characters list. I do have an appreciation for his lore, and watched the CW show., which I think overall gets a better feel for the character, but this movie comes much closer than other versions of the character we have seen on the big screen . 

The film explores a wider range of the Flash's powers. Ezra Miller, the  actor who defied cancellation, plays Barry Allen with the kind of charisma that served as comic relief for Justice League. For this movie you can not really say this is their best movie that is not a Bat-man movie, as it is pretty much a Bat-Man movie, and Super-Girl had more screen time than expected. Keaton reprised his role well, and the new Super-Girl worked for me, though would it have killed them to dye her hair blond? Tonally you will see people hating on this for the same things they loved about Deadpool. It does humor much better than any other recent D/C Movie ...the Suicide Squad included. I have also heard quips about the CGI, which was way better than anything in the Black Panther movies or Wonder-Woman, but did not hear the complaints from those people in regards to those movies, so I am suspect of them, 

When compared to the popular CW take on the Flash, the bigger budget allows for a better representation of his powers and what makes the Flash tick, where the CW show is more about what makes Barry Allen tick, I think there is space for both. It seems comic book movies are leaning into Multiverses pretty heavy lately, well DC did it first as they beat Marvel to the punch before Marvel cranked up their Ultimate Universe where Miles Morales came from. The story takes from parts of popular DC sagas and blend them well and offering fan service to an extent that might go above and beyond what Marvel has done, and if the story got convoluted well DC stories have always felt like action figures were just thrown on the bed into two page fight scenes, and this movie makes more sense of it and uses a bit of restraint to tell a better DC story than we saw in Black Adam or any of the Shazam movies, this movie serves as a great bridge from the Synderverse into Gunn's vision of the future and hopefully fans will say fuck the press and give this film the shot it deserves, all this is coming from a Marvel guy with no horse in the race, but a deep appreciation for where they went here. 

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 : "Justice League"

This Review may contain Spoilers- 

The tone of "Justice League"  matched the tone of D/C's comic output, though this is also the reason that I read Marvel not D/C. That is not to say there are not many D/C characters I like...my favorites being Super-man, Aqua-man, Swamp Thing,Hawk-man and Martian Man Hunter. The problem the comic books have is there is tons of senseless fight with page after page of people piling in with nothing to connect you to the humanity of the character. This is why Bat-man tends to work best on screen as he is just a human not so godlike you can not relate. This movie was not as abysmal as I though it might be going into it, the end befell the same problem Wonder -Woman face where it devolved into a mindless splash of CGI being vomited onto the screen.

The number one problem with the movie seemed to take place in post-production as the timing was off due to terrible editing the part that should have been condensed drug on and the films coolest moments were too short live. The chemistry of the characters forming this team was lacking because the only character who felt comfortable in the role was Henry's Super-man. He has now had three films to grow into it. Hands down the movies best moment was when he kicked the shit out Wonder-woman. The fights with Steppenwolfe who was an awful choice for a villain, all felt the same. You really didn't care about the outcome, they never felt like they were in peril aside from Super-man's outburst. Cy-borg as a character was as flat as it got. The actor who might have been hindered more than helped by the excessive CGI , did very little to compensate for this. Aqua-man might have been the most disappointing, as he was like a dumb bro rather than regal. The Flash was ok but felt like he was trying to hard, with both Bat-man and Wonder-Woman's characters feeling like the took a step backwards in their development. The big crawling Bat-mobile thing had to be one of the film's worst moments.

I am unsure where they added more Wonder-woman and could not really tell where they did the re-shoots, so maybe in doing so they lost the story they were trying to tell. The film might have been better served with the impostor Super-men showing up to take the throne, like Eradicator, though they would have been even more outclassed. I did like the little glimpse of a Green Lantern at the beginning, and wondered why was he omitted. Another female on the team like Hawk-Woman might have made sense . It's not like they were trying to really develop anyone aside from the big three and solo movies from Aqua-man and Cy-borg are bound to be huge flops. Mera's three seconds on screen was cool but pointless. It's clear unless it's Bat-man, Super-man or Wonder-woman, D/C can never touch Marvel on screen. 

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.

The Dark Knight Rises

You can make a comic book come to life on the screen and even take a few commercial liberties with it and have a movie like the Avengers or you can use the brand of a well known comic icon as a vehicle to use as your Trojan horse so make a gangster movie drenched in social commentary. Chris Nolan is not in the 99% no matter the moral of this story. Bat-man on your poster sells tickets you don't even have to have him in the bulk of your film. 1 minute of Bat-man on a cycle in the car garage. Roughly 3 more mins of quick cuts of him on his bike in a chase scene. 3 more minutes cavorting with Cat-woman. So if you are keeping score at home that's only 7 minutes of onscreen Bat-Man in the first hour. Then we get almost 7 minutes of the bat as well as the first awkward Bane vs Bat-man fight which i have seen plenty of pro wrestling better choreographed. The design of the Bat-man suit lends it's self to very restrained and stiff movements...now you see why they wear spandex. I get why Bane is the villain. Nolan wanted a physical threat. Given the insulated nature of his Gotham, Clay Face, Man-Bat or Killer Croc could not fit the no powers rule. Tom Hardy's Bane, grandstands in an annoying Dracula like accent through more of the film than Bale is in the suit. His dialogue is more tell less show, and breaks a few writing rules and not in a creative manner. Anne Hathaway's "Cat-burglar " is more appealing than most characters i n this film and not just because of her costume, in fact she lacks the sexuality that even Halle Barrie's version had. Then a thirty mind lag until Bat-man appears again, subtract about 15 minutes of now Bat-man , and you still have under an hour of Bat-man in the entire two and a half hour movie. Some of the Bat-man scenes in the last hour are just flashes of him piloting the Bat-wing. The bat-wing's chasing Talia Al-Ghul in the climatic build or what should have been a climatic build would have been more exciting if it had played off more genre cliques , it was flat enough as it was and seemed very uninspired. Already speculation around Christopher Nolan's next project might be already swirls the inner webs and I am concerned about his involvement with Man of Steel at this point, as I would not want it to resemble any of his previous project which devolve into over blown bores.Fandom has rallied around Nolan as they try to convince themselves the few creative scraps he casts off are more worthy than taking the time to seek out quality entertainment beyond the multiplex parking lot. While this movie was not as bad as I had fear, I still offended by it's lack of Wayne in costume and the apologetic manner Nolan continued to handle the source material.I am glad his hands are off of this franchise and hope after Man of Steel , his involvement in the super hero genre is non-existent, the way he handles spandexed heroes like a fat girl he doesn't want to be seen talking in public with give me some hope.

DC for May 16th's Releases

With Pirate Bay down it took me a minute to get these so while I'm waiting on Marvel lets do this. CatWoman #9-This continues to be one of the best out of the new 52, great art and while I don't like her sparky new sidekick, the balance of action and story is perfect, the Owl arc in this makes sense as a cross over from the Bat books, this book only fuels the disappointment of how coll Cat Woman could be on the big screen in what I have been predicting to big the big movie flop of the summer. Green Lantern Corps # 9- The art is appreciated, though in some panels less inspired than others, here the murk of space opera begins to catch up with the book, but the Star Trek spin off shows bored me, so I might not be the target audience this writer is going for now. JLA # 9- This book has taken the right turn was a little apprehensive about this villains journey arc but it's off to a good start, the art is consistently great and I love that Bruce Wayne texts Clark Kent. Legion of Super Heroes- #9- I really like the art for this book, as it's suited for the tone of the book, it would also work for the X-men but not the Avengers, this book is much less of a cluster fuck than it use to be pre-52. Nightwing #9- This book took a turn for the epic big thanks in part to the one page action shots, the art was fantastic, though the cross over was not as fluid as the cat-woman was it was a good book nonetheless. Red Hood & friends #9- Nightwing was better, this books has stayed the course , the Bat-girl appearance as ell as freeze made it all feel like Gotham. Supergirl- the weakest issue yet, but it was bound to rise and fall, the art's alright i suppose the story, meh..not impressed typical dc murky mess. Wonder-woman #9- the story isn't half bad , even with zero action, the art just doesn't work for the book too Hell-boy

Comics of the week

ok lets do this ... with some quick hits X-Factor 233...it didn't really stick to me , Longshot was underused, the art was decent but luke warm overall...Avengers/X-Sanction 4- liked the art overall it was a fight book with alot of cheap shots and no defined winner , hopefully this isn't a sign of whats to come with avengers vs x-men,...Generation Hope 17... much like the character Hope tis book has not caught on for me , even the art work which is above average can't redeem the convoluted writing Amazing spider-man 682 - this begins the ends of the earth, not a fan of the new suit it looks like an excuse for an action figure ...New Mutants 39- meh, the writing was decent in the sense there was a sense of threat and urgency underlying everything but just didn't feel the characters. Invincible Iron -man 514- pretty solid book in every area like the re-vamped villains and the fact as far as tone it feels like the movies but not compromising canon. Wolverine 303.., not a bad book for Wolverine fans ..everything you would want from his mythos , ninjas, Sabertooth, Mystique and Sliver Samurai, lots of action decent art.
Ok DC Justice League 7 - vs a weird monster thing the art work has taken a sharp dive and now looks like a Creepy magazine from the 70's , this is issue was what it was hopefully this isn't the direction the books continues in. Wonder Woman- 7 ..felt weird like I was reading an issue of Hell-boy instead. the story and art both reflected this not the best Wonder-woman story I 've read for sure . CatWoman 7- the art continues to excel, the story drags a little here, i think she would have been a better choice than Green Arrow for a tv show . Batman 7- starts this arch of the owl cult , they die it into dick grayson's past, the art worked enjoyable read even with not actual action.
Yet to get to Uncanny x-men this week so it looks like Iron-man might take it as the book of the week

The Week in Comics

the Incredible Hulk 5 , SPOILERS AHEAD-The reveal of Dr Doom,as the Hulk's scientific benefactor was let out early on, though after the whole World War Hulk's thing on Pak's run, Doom working with the Hulk didn't make alot of sense ...But I'll see how it plays out the fact this story arch has been drawn out over 5 issues into a 6th , is moving a little slow as we tango with the Gamma Zoo Island, but lots of smashing so it's a minor gripe, the whole this story has a major impact on the rest of the marvel universe thing they are always pitching is now getting to be very Chicken Little

Venom- 13. whatever- It reminds me of the replacement Fantastic Four issues where, Spider man, Ghost Rider, Hulk and Wolverine teamed up, the use of Venom, Ghost Rider, X-2e and the Red Hulk isn't even trying to hide this fact, entertaining no new ground broken here, not sold on a female Ghost Rider, and Venom/Flash Thompson...is proving to be a weak character doesn't even feel like Thompson's voice ,

Secret Avengers 22- the art work is the horrid penciling fro the Hulk book, we've got magic super adaptoids, o.k got send Capt Britain back to X-calibur , and I might by the line-up, I think this books should just get turned into west coast avengers

Black Panther-mmm the art is a little suspect as Luke Cage and Kingpin are both drawn a little puny, the title character has never grabbed just thought this Kingpin fight would be interesting but it didn't go any different than say a dare devil fight , leaving me to wonder is this just a "TOKEN" title, if so make it more Shaft

Bat-man & Robin- I have never seen the need for Robin, I do like Damian Wayne , perhaps more as a Teen Titans and less as a pea in the pod to Bat-man, the father son thing makes sense and Robin is now synonymous with the character and there is no avoiding that, the art work is still good but i think the writing could lend it self to playing up to the epic potential , this whole spy vs spy thing ... leaves much to be desired when i first gave this one a shot i like the writing but it's becoming too drawn out and bogged down with forced back story

mean while

Last night i had the chance to read new avengers annual and detective comics number one, my first read of the new dc 52 , though i have action comics and swamp thing waiting for me in my hold box .
New Avengers annual, the title will always be approached with prejudice as it's an avengers team where the only real avenger is ms marvel, i might be able to handle one non-avenger if you wanna go for the novelty, maybe jessica jones , i think her being on the team and her husband not would be interesting you could get some luke cage in the periphery, but they need to go over to heroes for hire though i will accept him as a defender. this story is about wonder- man ..simon williams revenger team, so lets get this straight during drak reign williams cracked up and left his hollywood lifestyle to become the one man ethics committee for the avenger a man who got his start in the masters of evil? doesn't add up for me but a team of misguided super villains attacking head quarters ... the masters of evil have been there and done that , two giants on the team is uh... well the tromp the new avengers , some ben grimm a guy who holds his own with the hulk for longer than he did these b-listers phuuuuulease, if the avngers proper don't wipe the floor with these guys then we have problem in the bull pin.
Dectective comics feels like i expect the tone of the next nolan movie, with the cops at odds with the bat and gordon having to run interference . this joker is little darker especially crazed when you see what him and doll man come up with at the end , won't bomb you with spoiler's like i did with avengers up there , but the plot was the crux of the problem , ths relaunch didn't feel drastic no origin story the bat-man is who he is, little more of a vigilante feel which i think is an improvement, the art was spot on so a good first impression for my first read of the 52 , now lets see how swamp thing and super-man hold up.