The Flash

 

Allen, No Alyn

The Flash
Directed by Andy Muschietti
USA/Canada/Australia/New Zealand  
2023 Warner Brothers/DC
UK cinema release print

Warning: This one will have all the spoilers. Seriously don’t read if you don’t want to know.

The Flash is the long delayed DCU (DC Universe) movie which is being touted as a soft reboot of the franchise, so DC can mothball the old one and reboot the characters in a new series of movies. Which, frankly, is a bad idea, especially since one of the casualties of this bizarrely terrible decision was the cancellation of a third stand alone Wonder Woman movie, from what I can make out. Well, at least I got to see Gal Gadot reprise her role in at least two DC movies this year (so far... I’m hoping she’ll turn up in Aquaman but, you know, suspect she won’t).

The film has been long delayed, as far as I can tell, due to a combination of the Covid pandemic coupled with the somewhat psychotic, ‘how is this guy not in jail?’ behaviour of Ezra Miller. Miller reprises his role as Barry Allen (aka The Flash), a kind of heavily dumbed down and reinvented version of him than in the original comics, who first appeared in a cameo moment in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice (if memory serves, reviewed here) before being introduced properly in the movie Justice League (um... both of them... reviewed here and here).

And basically, this is DCs big multiverse movie, following in the cinematic footsteps of Marvel’s Spiderman: Into The Spider-Verse (reviewed here), Spider-Man: No Way Home (reviewed here) and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (reviewed here). Back in the 1970s or 80s, both DC and Marvel Comics had big event mini-series such as Crisis On Infinite Earths or Secret Wars to try and clean their huge and unwieldy universes of continuity errors and, honestly, it wasn’t the last time they had to do this. Now both companies seem to be taking a similar approach to clean house cinematically with their big screen counterparts but, honestly, I’ve no idea how the next two DC movies this year featuring Blue Beetle and Aquaman, destined to be the last DCU movies, will manage to fit in with this one. This one is very loosely based on the Flashpoint storyline.

As a movie itself... well a few people seem to hate The Flash and many are saying it’s the best thing DC have done in a while. My take is, it’s neither of those things. It’s action packed and has a lot of good comedy moments with a lot of spectacle and, in some ways, a morality lesson although, honestly, the endgame of the movie leaves a lot to be desired in terms of just where we are with the version of reality the first Ezra Miller Flash has landed in. Yeah, that’s right, there are two identical looking Barry Allens in this movie (plus one not so identical looking version) but, even so, it didn’t need to get confusing... except where it leaves things in both the pre-end credits scene and the post credits scene is... somehow not going to connect up with the next two films, I suspect.

Okay, so it’s got action, it’s got comedy and... it’s got a fair few actors from DC’s past crammed into it in much the same way as Marvel started using previous franchise iterations as manifestations of the multiverse. Primarily we have Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman (even though Ben Affleck starts off as Batman in this movie) and, I suspect he’s probably the main reason people are flocking to this film. He may be 72 years old now but his participation in this movie as a major character demonstrates just why he owns the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne. And once the ‘old man raggedy beard and long hair’ is gone... he doesn’t look that different to when he played the role twice in the 1980s, it has to be said.

Also, we have a new superhero in this film’s version of Supergirl, played with a lot of good screen presence by Sasha Calle... who ends up helping the two Barry Allens and Batman take on General Zod in his attempt to destroy the Earth (with Michael Shannon once again reprising the role of Zod, from his appearance in Man Of Steel, reviewed here). In addition we have, as I said, a lot of actors from DC’s past... both in the form of proper cameos and also CGI integrated moments. Most of these are uncredited too, on the final cast list and, I wish Warner Brother had put their names up there. And we really do get into spoiler warning territory here so, yeah, you were warned...

So, in terms of proper cameos with real actors doing new things, we have Gal Gadot back as Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ben Affleck as a version of Batman, Jeremy Irons as Alfred and George Clooney as another version of Batman (or more strictly, just Bruce Wayne).

And then there are the computer integrated cameos. So we have a welcome return to George Reeves as Superman, Christopher Reeve as Superman, Adam West as Batman, Helen Slater as Supergirl, a version of the original Jay Garrick Golden Age Flash played by Teddy Sears and, yeah, even a terrible looking CGI version of Nicolas Cage turning up as the Superman he almost made with Tim Burton (although wearing the more traditional Superman suit, rather than the black version designed for him for Superman Lives). What I got annoyed about though, is the actors that don’t make it into the movie. How can you have George Reeves in this, who was the second screen incarnation of the last son of Krypton... and not have the original actor, Kirk Alyn, put in a cameo appearance? That’s crazy.

Yes, the film is piled high with cameos and, of course, multiverse jokes (Eric Stoltz didn’t get fired from Back To The Future in the version of the universe in which Barry Allen version one ends up, for instance). And it’s... relatively entertaining. It’s not the greatest thing ever but it’s not too terrible either and it’s great seeing Michael Keaton’s Batman trying to pull electricity into his Batcave in exactly the same way Dr. Frankenstein did in the 1931 Frankenstein movie (reviewed here). Yeah, this almost goes the full Strickfadden in regards to that... I suspect that’s the way Tim Burton might have gone with it if he was directing this thing. All held together by a quite good score from Benjamin Wallfisch (who also incorporates Danny Elfman’s Batman theme into the mix), which I really hope will get a proper CD release at some point soon and not just wallow in a useless digital version.

And that’s it apart from one more slight criticism concerning Ezra Miller... or more accurately, Ezra Miller’s character. I’m not going to pass any judgement on what he’s allegedly done in real life but he seems like a good actor to me. However... and this may be the reason why I found this movie to be only quite good as opposed to great... his character, specifically the alternate universe version of Barry Allen, is extremely grating and unlikeable. I mean, I get it. He’s supposed to be irritating but... guess what writers? Bullseye. Why did you think I wanted to be that irritated by this annoying character throughout? I was just hoping he’d get killed at some point because he’s so unlikeable. Oh... and for the record... I don’t believe The Flash has super-healing powers, right? If you get shot in the knee and are acting like you’re in agony and can’t walk properly for a while... it doesn’t kind of fix itself so you can carry on being a superhero after a few hours. A little verisimilitude wouldn’t have hurt here or... you know... have it so he doesn’t get shot in the knee in the first place, if he has to carry on doing all the superhero stuff.

Oh... and alright... maybe one more criticism, now I think of it. In an alternate version of Earth where Kal El never made it there, how the hell did anyone manage to capture his cousin and keep her trapped away from the sun for so many years? Surely you would have to have had some Kryptonite to do that (and recognise what that is) and, yeah, she’s obviously been in a Russian jail for many years before Zod arrives so, hmm... that’s a puzzler (or just bad writing) for sure.

Anyway... The Flash is a nice enough movie, not a disaster but certainly also not one of the best of the DC universe films, for sure. You might want to give it a go because, heck, it’s nice to be able to see George Reeves, however fleetingly, at a cinema again.

Justice League (The Snyder Cut)

Just Ace League

Justice League (The Snyder Cut)
aka Zack Snyder’s Justice League
USA 2021 Directed by Zack Snyder
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilers here.

I’ve already reviewed Justice League once,  back in 2017 when the theatrical cut, which was mostly reshot and retooled by Joss Whedon after Zack Snyder had to drop out for tragic reasons, was released. However, this new version released, due to fan pressure and with a lot of money spent on it, allowing Snyder to reintroduce something approximating his original cut, runs over four hours long and, although the reshoots weren’t extensive, Whedon cut out and reshot so much footage for his ‘rescue version’ (which I reviewed here and didn’t like all that much... it was okay), that there was a lot of original material both left out or existing in alternate forms and that’s why the film deserves both another look and a new, if shorter, review.

So what have we got here? Visually the film looks very different. For starters it’s in a 4:3 classic, old school movie and TV ratio which, frankly, didn’t take long for me to get used to. I suspect the film may even have been shot in this ratio for reducing optically for an original widescreen release as opposed to cropping the footage down here. It looks pretty good, in fact. I don’t know why the director has done this though. I mean, I guess I can see a point for it if he wants to say he was approximating Golden Age comic book panels but, if that was the case, why weren’t his previous two DC Universe films... Man Of Steel (reviewed here)  and Batman VS Superman: Dawn Of Justice (reviewed here) also in that aspect ratio?

Secondly, the colours in this version are quite dark and muted. Not as muted and dark as they possibly are in Snyder’s alternative black and white version of this movie (which I think is only available on the UHD release) but still pretty near to as greyscale as you can get it and still have colour in it for many of the scenes.

There are pluses and minuses here too. Because of Whedon scenes which have been excised, there’s much more continuity with the previous and following films in the DC Universe. Granted, some of my favourite dialogue exchanges and action moments are gone completely but there’s a much more organic feel to the final product and its connective tissue with the other movies. That being said, a lot of the scenes which have changed are put into a completely different order. Early scenes from the first version might turn up three quarters of the way through the film and vice versa. There’s also a really problematic continuity error in this too which I can only suspect comes from the way the story now plays out. It comes when, near the final set piece of the movie, Alfred The Butler (played once again by Jeremy Irons) is introduced by Ben Affleck’s Batman to Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa)... regardless of the fact that, in the way the film plays out here, he has already met at least two of the team by this point. It felt like a bit of a jarring mis-step, to be honest. When he meets Henry Cavill as Superman, it plays out far more naturally.

The story has been enhanced by not only featuring Steppenwolf but also Darkseid in the film as ‘the big bad super villain’ behind the scenes (much like Thanos was to Phases One and Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe). This all works really well though and, for the most part, the whole storyline involving all the previously unseen elements and the new, enhanced CGI on pretty much everything, is actually a heck of a lot better than the studio cut, I have to say. This version makes a lot more sense and is much more attention grabbing, I thought.

Other things of note are as follows...

Well, it was nice to see more action from one of the Green Lantern Corps but I think the first appearance here of J’onn J’onzz aka Martian Manhunter was problematic at best. Why in heck would he be checking out Lois Lane? His appearance at the end of the film is not something which solves this conundrum either and I think his first transformation to show he was posing as Martha Kent really undermined the scene where Martha and Lois Lane are bonding in grief over Superman’s death.

The scene where the newly formed Justice League bring Superman back from the dead is by an entirely different method and makes much more sense, integrated into the Motherbox plot line in a much more believable way... although it has pretty much the same outcome as it did in the theatrical cut, it has to be said.

The replacement music by Junkie XL is interesting. The director jettison’s Danny Elfman’s original score which had recycled John William’s Superman The Movie theme and Elfman’s  own Batman theme from the Tim Burton films and uses the established leitmotif of the current DC Universe, like Zimmer’s Man Of Steel and Wonder Woman themes, in a much more appropriate manner. Again, the music seems more integrated into the DCU movies as a whole. Alas, it’s only been released as a compromised, electronic download rather than as a proper CD so, I guess I won’t get to hear it as a stand alone listen anytime soon. Which is a shame.

All this adds up to a much more dynamic and satisfying version of Justice League, I have to admit... which was a little surprising. Also, although some of my favourite Wonder Woman/Diana Prince scenes have been excised, there are other scenes with her in and even the ones which did make their way into the theatrical cut, such as her rescue of the school kids in the Old Bailey in London, are much more interestingly handled here and seem like light years away from the Whedon cut. And Snyder even manages to restore the London skyline to something more resembling the real London, in that shot where Gal Gadot is standing by the Scales of Justice, as opposed to the more pastiched caricature of a US guess at the London skyline from the theatrical release... which is kind of nice, actually.

The last ten minutes or so are Snyder laying down the threads for what would come in what was to be his proposed continuation of the series. It’s got a lot of stuff going on and seems pretty bleak, it has to be said. It’s also there, I’m sure, just to get the fans ramped up again so he can get to make the next one but, well, it remains to be seen, I think, whether the suits at Warner Brothers are ready to indulge him or not. As it is though, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a much better movie than its predecessor and I certainly found it entertaining. It’s certainly nowhere near the best of the DC superhero movies by a long chalk but it’s pretty good and worth catching up with if superhero movies are your thing. Definitely worth another, augmented glance, for sure.

Jay And Silent Bob Reboot

Snoogans Bluff

Jay And Silent Bob Reboot
USA 2019 Written & Directed by Kevin Smith
View Askew HMV Exclusive Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Very mild spoilers.

I’ve been a big admirer of Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob movies for quite some time now (although apparently not as big an admirer that I only now find out there was a cartoon Jay And Silent Bob movie directed by somebody else about seven years ago). I tried to see this latest movie last year at the cinema in one of its very rare UK screenings in London. Heck, I even had my ticket booked but a real life situation arose so that I wasn’t able to get to the cinema and see it, sadly. So I’m really pleased that HMV have brought out a Blu Ray version of it this year, that’s for sure. I think this is now the third one, including the first two, that I didn’t get to see at the cinema.

Jay And Silent Bob Reboot is the seventh in the series of live action Jay & Bob movies, following on as a direct sequel to... let’s run the list in order... Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy (my favourite), Dogma, Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back and Clerks 2.

This one is also a kind of reboot in a way because, even before the various characters in the movie have discussed how Hollywood reboots are just old movies where they take the good stuff and change it just enough to make a load more money off the reputation of the old ones (I think I got that right... it gets complicated but, as is Smith’s way, rings completely true), you will probably realise already that this is almost the exact same story as the fifth in the series, Jay And Silent Bob Strikes Back. In that film you had Jay and Bob going to try and stop the production of a Bluntman And Chronic Movie, based on the fictional comic strip that Holden McNeil (played by Ben Affleck who played the character in Chasing Amy, Jay And Silent Bob Strikes Back and this one) based on Jay and Silent Bob. They even beat up Harvey Weinstein at the end... that'll date it.

So, once again we have Kevin Smith reprising his role as Silent Bob, along with Jason Mewes as Jay. It’s really great seeing these two back as the titular characters again and lovers of the View Askewniverse will surely be delighted with this new movie. Now, for me, Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back was always the weakest link in the series of films but, honestly, Smith is a great writer/director and so even the weakest in the series was better than most comedy movies of the last 20 or so years.

Jay And Silent Bob Reboot is... well it’s kinda tying at the moment in my brain as least greatest of the films but... oh yeah... you can bet I got a lot out of it too and, since there’s so much going on in this one, I’m sure that once my head begins to unravel this properly, I’m going to love it even more the second time around.

Okay, so the film starts strong and reveals the exact same plot as the fifth in an unusual way. And I really don’t want to give away too many spoilers... at least not those unrevealed in the trailer but I will give you the heads up that, once again, Kevin Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn Smith, is in this movie playing the daughter of Jay, who he didn’t know he had. There are also, as to be expected, a heck of a lot of cameos for both actors and characters from the previous six films, including Smith’s wife Jennifer Schwalbach (as the manager of the branch of Mooby’s in this movie). Fans of the series will love seeing people like Affleck, Matt Damon, Jason Lee, Joey Lauren Adams and Shannon Elizabeth reprising some key roles. Although, bizarrely, none of them are playing dual roles here... they are all limited to only one character call back each. It’s also great to see Chris Hemsworth playing himself here and getting in on the “f*ck me ‘til I’m Thor” jokes. There’s also one very special ‘’pre-cameo’ during the many scenes shown during the end credits and I don’t want to ruin it for people but, this guy’s last ‘real’ cameo was in Jason Mewes directorial debut Madness In The Method (reviewed here) and Marvel fans might take note.

Like all the Jay & Bob movies, the film is absolutely crammed full of jokes and references to other films, including many of Smith’s own and yes, you will hear a lot of familiar lines from the series turning up when you see this. As with any film which shoehorns so much in, some jokes will hit right with you and some won’t... this is not my favourite of the series by a long shot but there’s enough in here that it hit the right spots for me and there are even some quite touching moments in the ongoing character arc between Jay and his daughter Milly, short for her full name Millennium Falcon. Yeah, you get the usual Smith Star Wars references in this too... that stuff never gets old. Silent Bob also has a ‘37’ football shirt on at one point so, yeah, you all know what that means, right (if not, watch Clerks immediately, you’re missing out)?

Actually, Smith originally had a full role written for Stan Lee, who would have been a big presence in the third act but who died before filming. Lee famously played himself in Mallrats, of course, and his cameo in Captain Marvel (reviewed here) last year was of him learning his Mallrats lines on the way to the set. However, after Stan ‘The Man’ Lee’s death, Smith wrote himself into the movie again, playing himself directing the new Bluntman And Chronic Reboot movie... so Smith has a dual role in this film and it actually works out quite well.

And yes, if all this sounds a bit too metatextual then you’d be right. Like the fifth movie, this thing goes so far beyond metatextual that it goes right back around to textual again. In addition to the Smith family roles mentioned earlier, you also have Jason Mewe’s infant daughter turning up as Holden McNeil’s daughter... but that’s okay because Kevin Smith plays Kevin Smith here, telling his audience that he hates nepotism so... again, it works out okay in the end. In fact, he’s as ready to send himself up as anyone else so you gotta love the writing on this. For instance, there’s a scene where Smith’s real life daughter playing Jay’s daughter says she hates Kevin Smith for always forcing his daughter to be in his movies. There are very few writer directors who would be in a position where they could get into that level of irony, I suspect so, yeah, good stuff. There’s even a great running gag where Jay tells people that God looks just like Alanis Morrisette (who, of course, played God in two of these films).

Additional references to Smith’s heart attack a couple of years ago materialise as an explanation for both him and his fictional alter ego, Silent Bob, having lost so much weight. Mallrats fans may particularly like the “Fly, Low Fat Ass, Fly” line here.

And that’s me done with the Jay And Silent Bob Reboot one I think... it’s a shame they couldn’t get Mark Hamill back as Cock Knocker but there is a Cock Knocker Army here and also a villain which, yes, did actually take me by surprise. So there’s that. All in all, Jay And Silent Bob Reboot is not the best of the Jay & Bob movies but that really doesn’t matter... it’s still pretty good and should certainly keep the fans happy. And, heck, yes I want Smith to keep knocking these movies out (I say that being one of the few people on the planet who actually liked Jersey Girl so, you know, judge me by that). If you’re not a follower of the Jay and Silent Bob movies or just plain haven’t seen them then, sure, you’re not going to get many of the jokes here so go see the others first. If however, you love these movies as much as me and are interested in seeing just what Holden McNeil and  Alyssa Jones have been up to... and just what the heck did happen to Bartleby and Loki after the events of Dogma, then you’ve come to the right place. Incidentally, for my money, Matt Damon gets the best punchline in the whole movie in his cameo scene so... it was worth me getting this just for that. Not the greatest of Smith’s oeuvre, for sure, but still an absolute hoot. Also, definitely check out Mewe’s movie Method In The Madness if you’re a fan of the Jay & Silent Bob films.

Justice League

Beleaguered Leaguers

Justice League
2017 USA Directed by Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Yeah, there will be some spoilers in this one, I think.

Okay, so let me just say up front that Justice League is not a terrible movie by any stretch of the imagination... it’s just not a very good one either. It has its great little moments and a whole bunch of problems but, out of the five films to date making up the story arc of this particular set of interlocking DC superhero movies, this is about halfway up the list in terms of being an effective and entertaining movie.

DC’s track record hasn’t been all that great since the fantastic last part of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Night trilogy, it has to be said. Man Of Steel (reviewed here) was just dreadful. Batman Vs Superman - Dawn of Justice (reviewed here) was a fair bit better but ultimately not very well received by critics and audiences alike, it seemed to me. Suicide Squad (reviewed here) was... okayish but really wasn’t making people that happy either. But then we had ‘the movie’. Wonder Woman (reviewed here) isn’t just the greatest superhero movie of all time (and, yeah, I know that’s a brave and bold claim to make but I promise this is not a knee jerk reaction to it)... it’s also one of the best movies in the past few years, period. It’s also flattened all the competition at the box office for the forseeable future (or just maybe until the new Star Wars movie premieres next month) and it more than deserves its success.

The thing is, though, everyone was kinda hoping that Justice League would somehow live up to the almost impossible standard that Patty Jenkins set with Wonder Woman and, frankly, that would be hard to top even by her, when she comes to work on the sequel. So I guess it’s no surprise that this movie comes nowhere near as close to the dizzying heights that Professor William Moulton Marston’s amazonian princess scaled to in her own solo movie adaptation. A shame, though, that Justice League doesn’t come close to the Batman VS Superman movie either.

Now I’m not going to go into the production problems this film had, what with Zack Snyder leaving for very understandable reasons and Joss Whedon reshooting the thing in places... firstly because I would be no good at figuring out which bits were directed by whom and, secondly, because it’s the film we’ve ended up with, for better or worse. Given Snyder’s reasons for leaving, there’s absolutely no point in having an autopsy on why this theatrically released cut doesn't really cut it.

Okay... so lets look at the good stuff first and get that out of the way...

Well, some of the action was okay, especially the Amazon’s fighting the villain of the piece, Steppenwolf, near the start... and also in the bank scene where Gal Gadot’s Diana saves a bunch of people by doing some cool action stuff. That being said, I did miss the sudden glow of orange as the metal on her wrist bands cool down after a bullet hit, which was a nice detail in Patty Jenkins movie during the alley scene in London... itself an homage, presumably, to the alley scene in Superman The Movie. Gadot is just wonderful again here, as she was in her previous two movies with this character because a) she looks just like she could do all this stuff in real life and b) because she performed it in such a way that she doesn’t betray the character as set up in the previous two films.

Similarly, say what you will about Ben Affleck but I think he makes a brilliant Bruce Wayne/Batman and I really hope he doesn’t leave the role after this. I think he could really do well in a solo Batman movie and I would really like to see it.

Henry Cavill... well I hated Superman in Man Of Steel but that’s more because of the script than Cavill’s performance and I certainly warmed to him more in Batman Vs Superman - Dawn Of Justice. He’s great here too and you really believe in his character, who he portrays with the same kind of honourable presence as some of the great actors who have played the part before him... and I’m specifically thinking of Kirk Alyn and Christopher Reeve here. Now if they’d only bring back the ‘S’ kiss curl and the red trunks then the illusion would be complete.

Jeremy Irons as Alfred has about as much screen time as he did in the previous movie but I think his character makes a bigger impact here, with various ironic comments thrown at Bruce Wayne which I found fairly entertaining.

 It was also great seeing a Green Lantern in the sequence flashing back to a battle on Earth which took places many hundreds of years ago, too. It’s been suggested that the cloak on him was a reference to the original Golden Age iteration of the character in comics but, the people saying that might do well to remember that the original Green Lantern’s costume was red (yeah, I know that’s ridiculous but don’t blame me... I didn’t write those things).

And that’s mostly the good stuff.

Now we also have three new members on the team...

Ezra Miller does okay as a really bizarre and teenage angsty version of the silver age version of The Flash (aka Barry Allen) and he was getting a good reaction from the audience at my screening. Personally I didn’t find him all that easy to identify with and I could take him or leave him, to be fair. Then we have Cyborg, who was a member of the Teen Titans the last time I read of him (sometime in the early 1980s) so goodness knows what he’s doing in the Justice League of America (as the supergroup was always known in the comics... until maybe recently). He’s played here by a guy called Ray Fisher and, although he turns in a solid performance, I couldn’t help but think that the script wasn’t doing him any favours. He just comes across as a bit dull, to be honest.

Jason Momoa’s version of Aquaman is a more fun character but, honestly, is nothing like the Aquaman I used to enjoy reading about when I was a kid (I even had a little action figure). The clean shaven, blonde version of Superman with the blue eyes, orange suit and green legs and gauntlets has morphed into what is presumably a more contemporary comic book version of the character (well... at least he still has both of his arms here). Again... he was okay but I really would have preferred the version of the character I grew up with here.

Okay... let’s get to the really bad then...

So much of the dialogue between Batman and Diana feels forced and, bearing in mind the amount of times that Steve Trevor’s name is bandied about, it somehow seems disrespectful of the truly marvellous solo Wonder Woman movie what came out earlier in the year.

Another thing which felt out of place was that the background story about the ‘mother boxes’ seemed like it came completely out of the blue and Diana never once goes to Thermyscira to consult with the Amazons. Indeed, she even goes so far as to say that they cannot leave their island... which is a completely redundant and contradictory idea in terms of their purpose on Earth, to be honest. This film so badly needed a scene between Diana and her mother and it similarly needed ‘the amazon horde’ to come galloping in for the somewhat bland (as it is here) action finale too. Especially since their own battle with Steppenwolf near the beginning of the movie was a heck of a lot better.

The way Superman is brought back to life is really stupid Doctor Frankenstein stuff and I couldn’t help but think it all seemed just a little too optimistic and contrived. “Gee whiz... wouldn’t it be great if we could use this mother box technology to bring Superman back to life with?”... well, okay, it wasn’t quite like that but it was pretty close. It felt like the whole thing was written by a small child at this point. What was worse than that though was... Superman and Batman were allies by the end of Batman Vs Superman. In fact, Batman saved Superman’s mother’s life. So why the heck would the newly woken Superman be so aggressively hostile to Batman and the others and try to kill them all? It made no sense. It was like watching that truly dumb scene in Superman III where he splits into two and the evil and good halves fight. It just made no sense.

And then they trot out Amy Adam’s Lois Lane to calm him down? Honestly, it felt like her role was really pushed to the back in this and the scene where she and Diane Lane as Martha Kent were talking in the newspaper offices felt like it was shot quickly in the director’s favourite room in his house one afternoon. The set dressing and feel of the scene seemed to be completely unconvincing.

The music is perplexing too. Danny Elfman has been tapped for this one but I felt like either Hans Zimmer or, especially, Rupert Gregson-Williams (who had provided real emotional depth to the Wonder Woman movie) should have got the gig here. Instead, Elfman uses various themes from films gone by to weave a new musical direction for the franchise and... it just felt wrong. Okay, so he uses Zimmer’s Superman theme from Man Of Steel at one point and he similarly uses Zimmer’s “Is She With You?” theme for Wonder Woman in a less striking arrangement (but without using Gregson-Williams gorgeous thematic material). However, he also uses John WIlliams' Superman music at one point too plus... he even uses his own 1980s Batman theme for some of Ben Affleck’s Batcentric shenanigans. None of that really made sense... what’s he trying to evoke here. It’s a nice enough score, when you can hear it over the noisy sound effects but... it doesn’t knock it out of the park like some of the films in this series do.

Okay, last thing I’ll highlight here is the running time. This is the shortest of the recent DC movies, clocking in at one minute shy of two hours. But you are dealing with six superhero characters, not to mention the big bad guy and the introduction of the mother box on the narrative. How do you cram all that into two hours without losing sight of something? Short answer... you don’t. This film feels like it should be a lot longer and, I dunno, less flippant and somewhat darker in tone considering the events that have birthed it in the previous films. Things felt somewhat rushed... especially when it hurtles to a climax that is less than interesting.

Also... you have continuity errors like the mother box being used to bring Cyborg to life being in the previous film, which makes no sense. Or the fact that the third mother box was found during World War I when, if you check out the epilogue scene included on the home video version of Wonder Woman, you’ll know that Etta Candy and the others were tasked with the mission to find it after the end of the war depicted in that film. Thins like this just seemed a bit like sloppy writing to me, it has to be said.

So, yeah, that’s my review of Justice League. All in all I’m glad I went to see it... if for nothing more than to see Gal Gadot totally slaying it as Wonder Woman. However, the film didn’t blow me away, for sure and it certainly felt a little more anti-climactic than I was expecting. All in all, if you loved Wonder Woman then you’ll probably want to see this one anyway. I can’t really recommend it to anyone on any other basis though so... make of that what you will. Old school DC comics fans, though, would do well to look out for the first of the two post-credits scenes if they want to see a familiar homage and... don’t miss the end if you want to see what happened to another character from a previous movie in the series.

Suicide Squad

Deuce Ex Position

Suicide Squad
2016 USA Directed by David Ayer
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Yeah, there’ll be some minor, suicidal spoilers in this one. Read at your own peril.

Okay, so this film is getting a lot of hype right now and, in terms of box office success, it’s making a big killing. I have to say that, while I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing this movie, I didn’t have a bad time with it. It’s not a terrible movie but it is a movie which does have a lot of problems. I can totally understand the critical dubbing it’s getting but that doesn’t mean to say you’re not going to like it. Let me explain what I’m talking about here but first, a little background as to where this review is coming from.

This is not the version of DC’s Suicide Squad which started appearing in 1959, in issues of The Brave And The Bold and Action Comics, although some of the members were in place even back then. This version, adapted for the movie, seems to be based on the fifth incarnation of the comic book which started maybe five years ago (which I think may be when Harley Quinn was first in it... I think). Now I don’t know much about any of the characters in this movie, apart from The Joker, it has to be said. Some of them I know purely from playing the Batman Lego games on my old Playstation 2 and iPhone. The others I know nothing about and certainly Harley Quinn was a character invented much later than the comics I was reading, for the Batman animated adventures... so I’m not even sure if she’s properly become canon in the non-kiddie versions of the comic books or not. I’m guessing she must have transitioned into the more adult DC titles after a while or we wouldn’t be seeing her here. So, yeah, the only character I know something about, in terms of the protagonist/antagonist supervillain elements of this piece, at any rate, is The Joker so... that’s my only credentials for the credibility, or not, of this review. Sorry about that. But I can still review it in terms of being a movie... I just can’t comment too much on the adaptation elements. So, yeah, take it or leave it, I guess.

Suicide Squad is definitely a movie which can’t help but show you its very obvious influences. Now, I’ve never even got around to seeing The Dirty Dozen but I know for sure that what we have here is a DC version of that movie but, that’s okay because I believe one of the incarnations of the comic book was too, so... yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem. Its other main influence seems to be John Carpenter’s classic Escape From New York in terms of the way the action is contained within a few, abandoned city blocks with various antagonist forces trying to stop Suicide Squad from reaching their destination. Now this really is quite blatant and its interesting that the writers have chosen to push the analogy further by actually using Carpenter’s carrot/stick approach to getting an anti-hero to do your dirty work. That is to say that each member of the Squad who starts the film off in captivity is injected with an exploding neck bomb which can be triggered to take their head off at the whim of their boss. I’m surprised the writers went this far, to be honest, and I can only hope it was done in the spirit of homage, rather than anything else.

Okay, so positive points about the movie are that it looks quite good, in the odd moments the camerawork settles down and you can gather your eyes together for longer than a second. It’s also got a terrific cast including the main lead, as far as I’m concerned in terms of amount of screen time and presence, Will Smith as Deadshot. The lead female is definitely Harley Quinn, portrayed really interestingly by Margot Robbie. And we have Jai Courtney, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Cara Delevingne, Joel Kinnaman, Jay Hernandez and Karen Fukuhara. And they’re all pretty  good. Fukuhara plays a character called Katana and she has an groovy sword which is like a distant cousin to the sword Michael Moorcock created for his Elric Of Melnibone character, which was called Stormbringer. Stormbringer was made out of black, other-worldy material and had runic symbols carved into it, if memory serves. It often had a mind of its own and when it bit into its enemies, sometimes without the intention of the person wielding it, it sucked the living soul from its victim and the albino Elric was fed the energy from that soul through the hilt of the weapon, allowing him to stay strong when his normally pallid state would not allow him to conquer his enemies so easily. Katana’s sword also steals the souls of her victims but then it traps them within the weapon itself... which allows her to talk to her dead husband whose life was taken with her sword. So there’s some interesting stuff going on in the background of this movie. 

There’s also a fair bit of action throughout the film and, for the most part, it doesn’t really drag too much and it at least keeps moving forward to a specific goal. There’s not much plot but that’s okay too... not all movies need that much of one to do what they do. This is sadly deficient compared to, say, any of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe movies at the moment but... yeah, that’s okay too. Not every movie has to have the kind of gravitas and interesting plot twists of that kind of writing and, while this certainly doesn’t, it doesn’t really harm the movie, I think.

There are, however, a few things that do harm the movie, or at least give it some problems to try and overcome or, in this case, run through while the writers think nobody is looking,

Okay, so we have Jared Leto as The Joker, Now I don’t know anything about this guy except that he was exceptional in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem For A Dream. Here he’s dong his own thing with The Joker, just as he should do and, though it’s fine that he’s doing it his own way here... I just didn’t warm to this interpretation as I did to the great performance turned in by Heath Ledger in the role or, even, the pretty good versions portrayed by Jack Nicholson and Cesar Romero. This version seems to have less weight about him but, I don’t know, maybe that’s the point. I can’t fault him for his performance on any level and, if reports from the set are to be believed, he certainly gave it his all. I just didn’t like it too much although, saying that, I think the character as performed by Leto could have some potential if the writing was a little warmer and he was given a little more three dimensionality. I don’t think his performance particularly hurts the movie though. Especially since he’s hardly in it. Just a few short scenes scattered throughout the picture where he never really interacts with any of the main protagonists, except for Harley Quinn, at all... other than to shoot at them form afar in one scene.

What does hurt the movie is the amount of exposition needed to flesh out each and every character in the story. It’s surely pretty obvious to most people that DC are trying to cash in on the box office success of multiple hero fests that Marvel have so well established over the last decade in films like Avengers - Age of Ultron (reviewed here) and Captain America - Civil War (reviewed here). The problem is that Marvel took a long time to establish those characters in their own films first, for the most part, and it was a well thought through concept. In ‘DCland’ it’s a ‘quick, cut to the chase’ approach and it really shows. It was quite evident in their previous movie, Batman Vs Superman - Dawn Of Justice (reviewed here), with its bizarre ‘meta-humans on a computer screen’ sequence and it’s even more of a disaster here where, because they have a whole bunch of new characters put together, there’s probably more exposition and back story in the movie than actual plot and, although they’ve tried hard to shoe horn in the vast amount of explanations they need to get through here, it’s a bit of a mess of ‘flashback hell’ to be honest.

Another thing is that there’s a very strong, almost surrealistic, supernatural element to the whole antagonist angle in this film and... I’m just not so sure it sat well with the majority of the other elements here. When Marvel adapted Thor and his world of Gods as characters, they were careful to present it as an ‘alternative science’ approach to make it fit in better with the rest of the dramatis personae and they’ve taken this long to go ‘full supernatural’ with the introduction of a Doctor Strange movie later this year. Here it’s all very much something that all the other characters take in their stride and... I guess you have to ask yourself why? Sure, they’ve all seen Superman in action and this film is very much a third part of the Man Of Steel series, linking into the ending of the last movie in particular... but it’s still very much a stretch to credibility when you see some of the things happening here.

About that... this film also features cameos by two of the super heroes seen in Batman Vs Superman. I won’t spoil one cameo because it takes you completely by surprise, comes fairly early and it’s over almost before it’s started... but anybody who’s seen the trailers for this film will also know that Ben Affleck reprises his Batman/Bruce Wayne role from the last movie (forewarned is forearmed though... there’s a lot of material in the trailers which didn’t make it into the final cut of the cinema release). He does this four times, in fact... three times in his Batman costume, scattered through the movie, and a fourth as... well, just make sure you stay around for the mid end-credits sequence to see another reference to the forthcoming Justice League movie.

Another big problem is the use of music in some scenes. Steven Price’s score is not at fault. It’s a good selection of appropriate music which serves to boost the tone of the movie... although he does use a melody very reminiscent of something John Barry used in scenes of the Bond movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here) quite often and it kept popping me out of the movie with visions of the Swiss Alps, to be honest. However, its the song placement which becomes a problem in this one. It starts off pretty well with some well mixed in tracks that serve as a kind of audio shorthand for some of those horrendously prolific exposition scenes I was talking about. I was kinda applauding the choices and the way they were being used until... at one point during the briefing scene, it’s mixed in way too loud over important dialogue and you can barely hear what the actors are saying to each other. This is pretty terrible and I had to rely on my knowledge of the trailer, where the same dialogue is unencumbered by too prominently mixed music, to remember just what was being said in this scene. So... yeah, that’s just awful and unforgivable. Maybe they can remix it for the home video version. The song placement just doesn't work from this point on and, when even more songs come in later, you just know this was a movie that was all about the ‘songtrack’ deal at the cost of serving the art effectively. So really not very happy about that.

Also, the writing is very sloppy. At one point the Squad’s incentive for doing what they are doing is destroyed, a dramatic moment so obviously played as a card in the hand of their employers and, furthermore, Harley Quinn’s own neck device is also disarmed by The Joker. What then would propel them, her especially, to return to prison at the end because a duplicate controller is pulled from a convenient pocket. Did everybody just forget what’s happened? This is just plain crazy.

The films biggest sin, though, is the entire predictability of everything you are about to see. The destruction of the neck bomb controller, characters X and Y not being dead after all, character Z having no back story so you know he’s gong to die real quick as an example to the Suicide Squad of what will happen if they disobey orders etc. It’s all written extremely badly and you will always see it coming. There are absolutely no surprises in this movie at all, except... the brief appearance by one of the superhero characters I mentioned earlier. So that’s a real problem.

You know what though? For all its challenges, Suicide Squad is quite a fun film. I’m almost regretting seeing it on a big screen because, for me, it felt like one of those early to mid 1980s straight to VHS releases which you would hire from the local ‘off licence’ and watch with your mates. It works in its own way and maybe doesn’t feel like its something they could have got away with as a cinema release but certainly could glean a small following of people who could watch it in the same way they might enjoy a Chuck Norris movie or a Cannon Films production. Not the best movie in existence but something which might appeal to an element of your own personality and fit right into your way of seeing the world. It’s not something I would go out of my way to recommend, for sure, but it’s certainly not something I would tell people to avoid, either. It’s probably good for a Saturday night out... or in... and if you go in not expecting too much, as I did, then you shouldn’t be too disappointed with it.  After all... why be so serious?

Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice

Diana’ther Day

Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice
(aka Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice)
2016 USA
Directed by Zack Snyder
UK cinema release print.

I had it all worked out that I’d deliver a scathing critical blow by calling this review The Brave And The Dulled when I came to write up this movie. However, after having seen said movie, I realised that was impossible because, contrary to both my own expectations based on the awful previous movie, Man Of Steel (reviewed here), and the negative reactions by the press... not to mention terrible word of mouth online... it turns out that Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice is actually a pretty good little movie. It has a few problems, for sure, and you can bet I’ll be pointing them out in a minute, but...  ultimately, it’s both a vast improvement over director Snyder’s former Superman movie and it delivers a nice spin, although not an original one, on some of DCs flagship characters. I’ll fess up and say I’ve seen almost all of the director’s previous movies and Man Of Steel is the only one I didn’t like... so I’m happy that this movie sees a certain ‘return to form’ for the director. At least as far as I’m concerned.

So the good stuff here is that the film doesn’t change or in any way pervert the characters like the previous film did... and fans of Batman who are saying it does, really need to look back to both the character’s origins and, also, the history of comic books, for a little enlightenment there. I count myself as an ardent admirer of the character over the years and this certainly does him justice. Also, the problems in the last film of Superman making the decision to kill General Zod and also not being able to stop gazillions of innocent people being killed are used as a motivator on the plot point on this movie’s ‘bout of the century’ and the weight it’s given in the script does make amends, somewhat, for Snyder’s choices on Man Of Steel. Although Superman still doesn’t wear his underpants on the outside here and that’s a detail that definitely needs some correcting.

Okay, so I can guess that some non-comic book fans or, more, people who don’t know the rich legacy of multi-character cross-overs, don’t understand the politics of character ‘team ups’ and I can imagine a lot of the movie going feeling short changed on this movie over what is, frankly, a little punch up towards the end of the story between the two title characters. But it is a greatly misleading title and one which, I’m sure, a lot of comic book fans discounted as being in any way truthful very early on in the marketing of this movie... especially when the subtitle Dawn Of Justice was added. Now, personally, I think they should have stuck to the legacy of the two characters crossing over because, after the first few times they did it in one or other of their comics, back in the 1940s I seem to remember, they were doing it a lot under the title World's Finest... and that was a comic that ran for many decades, if memory serves me correctly. I wish the studio had been more honest and less ‘marketing monded’ with the general public and called it that. Perhaps, then, there’d be a few less disappointed audiences out there on this one.

Either way, this is how a comic book cross-over works in both the DC and Marvel Universes... and you already saw a little bit about how this plays on film in Marvel’s The Avengers (reviewed here). So the characters would meet and they’d basically start fighting each other over a disagreement or because they’ve been duped by one or more villains. This is even how it happened in the famous, first 'cross-company' oversized comic book in the 1970s... Spider-Man Vs Spiderman. The heroes will fight for a short while and then find the error of their ways and spend the rest of the time teamed up against their common villain/s. And that’s pretty much the way this movie works too... except the prelude to the fight takes most of the movie and leads up to a kind of prelude to the final act. But getting their is entertaining enough, even if the showdown is a bit of a damp squib of a battle.

Okay, so no surprises in this film and lots of nicely shot, nicely edited and well acted drama. It’s a cool piece of work with Henry Cavill still being a good fit for Superman... and with a script that helps him do that, this time around. Ben Affleck was always going to be a perfect fit for Bruce Wayne and he decides to play him very cynically here but it still works pretty well. Jeremy Iron’s Alfred is pretty cool too, and I prefer him to Michael Caine’s recent take on the character in some ways... although neither of these versions are in any way faithful to the original Alfred Pennyworth in the comics, it seems to me. Gal Godot as Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman is pretty great in this movie and... yeah, she kind of steals it by the final act, that’s for sure. Looking forward to seeing her in action in cinemas next year which presumably tells the story of her exploits in World War One, referenced in a photograph in this movie. Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor is a little off with his ‘madness’ it seems to me.... although he does have an interesting quirk where he invades the space of other characters regularly by touching them, which was interesting. Amy Adams is pretty cool and Holly Hunter is wasted but certainly knocks her role out of the park. All pretty good.

Okay... there are a couple of problems.

Right from the start the writers wisely gets through the whole Batman origin story by cross-cutting the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne with the discovery of the bat-cave, during the credits. Good. This saves time in the rest of the film and the director can hit the ground running. However, there’s a point in that opening which had me growling my head off until I realised that it had been mixed into a dream sequence (for the record, Batman can’t levitate) and this sets up the fact that Bruce Wayne has a lot of ‘dream state’ visions in this movie and it’s a way over-relied on ploy by the film-makers to access some beautiful scenes (at least one of which owes a very strong debt to Frank Miller’s classic Batman tale, The Dark Knight Returns) but it really is a ‘have your cake and eat it’ kind of scenario and the problem is that you can never tell if you’ve suddenly gone into a ‘dream moment’ or not. Which means a scene which seems like a foreshadowing of disaster, and may or may not return in a future movie, is not to be trusted and seems like a nonsense at the moment. So that’s a bit of a shame.

Another problem is the physics of this universe, which seem to have changed since the last movie. In that movie Superman warned Lois to move further back and then further still so he wouldn’t hurt her with the aftermath of him taking off to flight from standing still. Fair enough but in this movie, he can do it standing right next to her on a balcony with no warning and no consequences... doesn’t make sense, does it?

Okay, now four other members of the Justic League of America make appearances in this film, three of them small, and a larger role for Wonder Woman. The problem is that the sequence where the other three are shown means that in a scene set in water, later on in the film, you assume a certain other character will make a return appearance and, when he doesn’t, it leaves you a bit disappointed. Secondly, if the whole thing seems shoehorned in to give the DC cinematic universe something to quickly combat the slowly earned and built up Marvel Avengers movies to rake in the cash... well, yeah, it does seem like it and it does kinda hurt the film, to be honest. The exception being Wonder Woman who is carefully worked into the story right from the start and who appears naturally in a scene which shouldn’t have been used in the trailers because it’s such a great entrance.

Another problem is that there’s another very famous character, and I’m not talking about Wonder Woman, featured in the last trailer for the movie and as soon as comic book fans see that character, they’ll have another pretty good idea of just where the producers are going with this movie. Yes, they do make it a partial adaptation of a very famous Superman comic and yes, we are left with an ending to the film that none of us really believe, and with good reason. There’s no post credits scene in this movie but viewers would be advised not to blink as they get to the end of the very obvious final shot of the film.

Okay, what else? Well, for a two and a half hour movie, the action is flat and minimal. Personally I don’t mind that but I think some audiences are going to be disappointed with that. It’s not great fun, nor probable when you think of the way Batman’s ‘gun’ works, that Superman can be taken down so easily in certain scenes. The physics seems slightly ‘off’ but it’s okay, I guess... just not very interesting. A bit dull. But it serves the story so, what the heck.

Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL’s score (plus a load of others if you read the fine print at the end of the movie credits) is not terrible in that it at least builds upon the leitmotif that Zimmer used in the previous film and their are definitely some thematic elements for the other characters. Wonder Woman’s one is kinda interesting. I haven’t listened to it as a stand alone score as yet but am hoping to give the CD a spin once I’m done writing this. I need to revisit the original score again too, after it started growing on me when I rewatched Man Of Steel last week in preparation for this movie. It doesn’t hurt the film and seems appropriate, pretty much. So that’s all cool. I’m seeing Zimmer in concert next month so it’ll be interesting to see if he does any of this score then.

Okay, that’s about it. There are some nice references for comic book fans such as the nod to The Mark Of Zorro (augmented here with Excalibur) as the film playing before Bruce Wayne loses his parents and a nice dig to audience members such as myself who prefer the Superman character rooted in the values of his origins in 1938. This kind of thing is always good and doesn’t hurt the film either. Other than that... not much else to say. Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice is a far better movie than I was expecting and certainly helps fill in the crater left by Man Of Steel. There’s a scene where a character from the first film returns which might annoy some people but I’m trying hard not to put spoilers in here so won't address that now. All in all, though, I think some people will like this a lot more than most of the critics and I reckon its something you just need to take a chance on, truth be told. I’m glad I didn’t get putt off seeing it... although I really wasn’t looking forward to it. Pleasantly surprised, though, so that’s good.

Argo

Cogito Argo Sum

Argo
2012 USA
Directed by Ben Affleck
Redemption BluRay Region B

“Argo f*** yourself.”

A phrase which takes on a little (just a little) extra resonance during the course of this movie, which I finally caught up with on Blu Ray... although I really had wanted to go see it at the cinema and found myself thwarted by a “too full up” life at the time. That I wanted to go see a movie involving some politics, a subject I know little about nor have any interest in, may have surprised a good deal of my friends but I’ve always been a bit of a Ben Affleck fan after his sterling work in his films with Kevin Smith, particularly the third and fourth of the Jay And Silent Bob movies, Chasing Amy and Dogma.

I also wanted to see the old Saul Bass Warner’s logo, which this movie opens with, on a big screen again... another thing in which I was stymied but that’s okay. People will keep coming back to that logo in homage for many years to come, I reckon. It also signals the kind of film Ben Affleck is trying to make... that is to say... something mired in the style of seventies Hollywood filmmaking and which stands up against such political thrillers as The Parallax View and All The President’s Men. Indeed, I’d heard that the style of the filmmaking was very close to those kinds of movies but I think that might a bit of wishful “interpretation” in this case.

Certainly, the film does more than hold up against the two films I just mentioned and many more of their ilk... Argo is a great movie and a great achievement and, perhaps, even deserved its Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards this year, in as much as any of them deserve it (which is pretty much never, in my book, but that’s another story). But, though it does eschew a few obvious modern film making techniques, and while Ben Affleck has certainly gone to some lengths to keep the film very close in style to a seventies movie (copying sequence structures and blowing up film so the grain is more prominent), I think the film still has quite a strong feel of the contemporary about it and I think there’s more than a little of nostalgia, as it relates to post-modernism, in the make-up of this movie than was perhaps required.

And that’s not a dig at Ben Affleck (nor the movie) as I don’t think that “looking back” symptom of nostalgic reverence is something that can easily be escaped or ignored and, I think, it’s probably a mistake to think you can do that... and possibly box office suicide too if you were 100% successful.

Having said that, the film does have long sequences where it does feel very “1970s” like and hats off to Mr. Affleck for making this all work so well. There’s an unwillingness to use hand held camera for most (if not all?) of the film but that doesn’t stop there being a lot of motion in the camera and the long smooth tracking shots which twist and turn and then are cut against other similar kinds of shots and then broken up completely by little short shots is something which works really effectively as a modus operandi here and, dare I say it, kinda brings a modern sensibility and thrill to a movie by subverting the very techniques it is intending to imitate.

What this leaves us with is a brilliantly shot (actually) motion picture which, even at it’s most Hollywood near the end when a series of freak coincidences, which I in no way believe happened that tightly in real life, are drawn out to make the suspense almost unbearable... is a very satisfying film to experience. I now look forward to seeing the extended cut of the film which is also, apparently, on the Blu Ray disc... as well as some of the fascinating documentaries included with the two versions of the movie.

Also, as would be expected for an enthusiastic individual like Affleck, he’s got some of the best actors giving amazing performances in this film, with no one really being narrowed down as actually owning the film (although Alan Arkin comes close) and with Affleck giving a very downbeat and reflective performance which allows the people around him to also come to the fore - Affleck is wise in that he really doesn’t let loose with anything showy in this one, performance wise, because I’m not sure this kind of delicately toned drama could have held itself together if he, or any of the others for that matter, had gone the more “theatrical” route (after seeing his performance as Bartleby in Dogma, I’m pretty sure this guy could have just dominated the movie if he wanted to... but he cleverly reigned it all in and showed a certain amount of taste unexpected from someone entrenched in the Hollywood community).

The film is a powerful masterwork because it takes a very real, intense situation and manages to keep the tension on it when the way it would have been filmed by many other people would have lessened and devalued what is at stake. It is, after all, a very simple story about a very simple incident. However, because of the way Affleck approaches the material, that is to say, as a true artist (or as much as one can be a true artist in the crazy and collaborative world of movie making), it means the audience never once loses sight of just what is at risk (seven lives) and is kept at the edge of their collective seat because of this approach.

The great Alexandre Desplat’s score is something I wasn’t really picking up on in the context of the movie and is something I need to hear again, but it certainly doesn’t sound out of place in this and the choice of someone who can be as subtle as Desplat is another brownie point for the production team. A very well put together package.

My only regret on my first watch is that I didn’t know the guy playing the storyboard artist for the fake film within a film was actually playing real life comic book icon, Jack Kirby... so I’ll have to look out for him again when I watch the other cut. Amongst other things.

Argo, then, is a great and powerfully entertaining movie and one of the best American films made in the last few years (although I still would have given Moonrise Kingdom - reviewed here - the Oscar for best picture last year) and certainly something any serious lover of cinema is going to want to add to their “watched” pile, if only to have some kind of opinion, good or bad, on it.

And to anybody who says anything any different, well there’s a phrase in the movie which would best sum up my response to that. I’m sure you can remember what it is.