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.

Death On The Nile

 

A Gal In
Every Port

Death On The Nile
UK/USA 2022
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
20th Century Fox Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Finally catching up now to the 2022 release of Kenneth Branagh’s Death On The Nile... a loose adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel of the same name and a sequel, in this case, to the director’s Murder On The Orient Express (reveiwed here), in which he reprises the role of Christie’s famous Belgium detective Hercule Poirot.

And there’s lots of things wrong with it, it has to be said. Especially if you’re an Agatha Christie purist and treat her original works as sacred. I don’t and am somewhat fortunate, in regards to this film, that I’m not all that familiar with the story. The first and last time I had any exposure to this particular tale was in my local cinema in 1978, when I saw Peter Ustinov play Poirot in the adaptation of it from that year. It was a much publicised film and I think I found it pleasant enough (which is probably not nearly enough for a ten year old boy watching more sensationalist fair such as Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica) but I absolutely don’t remember anything of it other than Ustinov wore a white hat... I think.

So, luckily for me, I found this new version by Branagh to be utterly entertaining and well directed, with some beautiful, symmetrical cinematography and bright, almost lurid colours signalling stark contrasts in tonal palettes, to indicate key locations (and even time shifts) at various points. There are a load of problems though... so I’ll get to those first.

The character of Poirot is at least 30 years younger than in the books and here is seen, younged up and clean shaven, serving in the Belgium army during the First World War. The scenes serve as an introduction to the film and are rendered in a beautifully crisp black and white which helps serve, along with a later flashback, to give us both an origin of why Poirot grows these enormous moustaches and also helps to humanise Poirot. So I think Christie purists would have bailed by this point of the pre-credits because, yeah, all of this is just made up and not from source.

Then we have the various characters and plot mechanics themselves... many of them amalgamated or replaced to give a smaller ensemble. Perhaps a very smart movie for a film adaptation but not something fans of the novel would easily embrace, I suspect.

Now I’ve said that, though... the cast are all wonderful and there are some real star names on board the paddle steamer, which serves as the ‘murder cruise’ location for the majority of the film. Actors such as Annette Bening, Letitia Wright, Armie Harmer, Sophie Okonedo and, the film even reunites famed comedy duo French and Saunders as ageing lesbian lovers. Joining them is the absolutely brilliant Gal Gadot and, I have to say, I was impressed by her skills as an actress here. I mean, she does brilliantly as Wonder Woman but I was amazed she was able to hold her own with such acting heavyweights on board... more than hold her own actually, she pretty much outshines many of them and I was truly astonished by her presence on screen again in this one.

There were two more big downsides for me though. One is when one of the characters greets Poirot with a parody of a famous line from Casablanca, “Of all the pyramids in all the world...” etc. Alas, the main action of this film takes place in 1937... five years prior to the release of the film this character is paraphrasing. So, yeah, this was quite a glaring error.

The other big problem for me was... knowing it was a mystery. As soon as I heard one of the characters complain that some red paint was missing, I knew that a gunshot wound or some such was obviously going to be restaged to reframe the timing of a murder and I was pretty sure I knew, due to some atmospheric dance hall telegraphing near the start of the movie, exactly who the two culprits would be. Despite their pretences throughout the main body of the movie. So, alas, within the first twenty minutes of the movie, I was pretty sure I knew who would be responsible for various murders and... yes, alas... I was completely right. Always a bad thing, in my book.

However, I will say that, for all it’s many perceived flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed this production and was content to let the beautiful performances and wonderful cinematography, counter pointed by a nice score by the director’s regular collaborator, composer Patrick Doyle, wash over me and give me a nice time. I even enjoyed the romantic spark of humanity stirred up in the movie and bolstered by an epilogue which clearly spells out Poirot’s intent to one of the other characters (a scene which also features a cameo by long standing TV Poirot David Suchet, as it happens). So, yeah, if you’re a strict Agatha Christie fan then you may find this new version of Death On The Nile to be in poor taste, perhaps... but I certainly had a good time with it, despite the ease of the solution to the mystery. Glad I saw this one and I hope Branagh gives us a third sometime soon.

Red Notice

Withering Heist

Red Notice
USA 2021
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
Seven Bucks Productions

Warning: A very minor pointer to a possible spoiler.

Okay, so I don’t quite know why this movie has been getting some mixed to bad reviews but, I have to admit I kinda liked it. I don’t think the three lead actors... Gal Gadot, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Ryan Reynolds had bad chemistry at all (as has been suggested) and my only real disappointment with the movie is that it telegraphs itself a little too much in terms of something which happens much later in the movie.

So the plot of Red Notice is all to do with the three famed ‘Eggs Of Cleopatra’... three bejewelled eggs crafted as gifts for Cleopatra (which are a complete fiction and conjured up entirely for this film, of course). Anyway, these fabled eggs... err... fictional fabled eggs, are wanted as a wedding gift by a rich sultan for his daughter and he has offered 300 million dollars for the person who can secure all three. Cue various international art thieves trying to steal the three from their known owners with the one twist that Nolan Booth (played by Ryan Reynolds), international art thief, is one of the few people in the world who actually knows the location of the third egg. However, an FBI agent, John Hartley (played by The Rock) and his new partner Inspector Das (played by Ritu Arya who feels like a mega-star in the making and really needs to get some higher profile roles) track him down while he’s trying to steal the first egg and capture him... but not before the international art thief known as The Bishop, played by Gal Gadot, makes off with the egg for herself.

Furthermore, she frames Hartley for the theft and he ends up in a Russian fortress style prison with Booth as his cell mate. After they escape, they go after the second egg so Booth can get his reputation back and Hartley can arrest The Bishop.... both pursued relentlessly by Inspector Das as the two become partners in crime etc. So yeah, simple plot set up and it sings along fairly nicely as an action comedy. There’s a good amount of action and the opening chase in and around a museum exhibiting the first egg is pretty great. There’s a lot of comedy (as you would expect with Ryan Reynolds involved) and fortunately Gadot and The Rock are pretty good at comedy too.

There are also some nice metatextual references throughout the film, mainly coming from Reynolds character who, I guess, we are all used to making such references from films like his turns in the Deadpool franchise. For example, he directly refers to one of the eggs as a McGuffin at one point (if you don’t know what that is then google it) and in one scene where he’s filling in The Rock (and therefore the audience) on the specifics of a plan, he refers to the bodyguards and party goers in a sequence as ‘featured extras’. Also, when he and The Rock find themselves in an underground Nazi bunker in Argentina, as well as a quick shot labelled up as the wooden crate which housed the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Reynolds has also just been whistling the Indiana Jones theme. I have to say though, in the trivia section on the IMDB, it’s noted that Steve Jablonsky’s score for this movie is very much like the Indiana Jones films and, well, I’d have to say I disagree on that count. Jablonsky really does not sound like John Williams (and vice versa for that matter so, I have to wonder who the heck is writing silly things like this on the IMDB these days).

My one disappointment stems from a ‘surprise reveal’ near the end of the picture. Spoiler... it wasn’t in any way a surprise. By the time I was half way through I’d picked up on something pretty basic about the relationship between two of the characters which was saved as some kind of plot twist for the last ten minutes or so but, honestly, this was telegraphed in the film way too much and I suspect most audiences would have seen that one coming an hour before this point in the picture. So, yeah, that did put a kind of dampener on things by the time it comes up.

That being said, though, the film is still a speedy and entertaining action comedy starring three of Hollywood’s A list actors who are all old hands at this kind of thing. So it’s still a joy to watch even if some of it is a bit obvious. At the end of the film a ‘Red Notice’, aka a high level, Interpol watch notice, is put on certain characters and everything is nicely left open for a sequel, should that be required. Well, all I can say on that one is... sure, I’d watch a sequel to this. Especially since the audience wouldn’t then have to spend the entire movie waiting for one of the characters to catch up to them in regards to the central ‘twist’. I had a good time with Red Notice and, if you like big action films peppered with a fair few one liners and a comic tone, then you shouldn’t have much of a problem with this one, I suspect.

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.

Wonder Woman 1984 (aka WW84)

 

 

Paw Deal

Wonder Woman 1984 (aka WW84)
UK/USA/Spain 2020
Directed by Patty Jenkins
Warner Brothers

Warning: Yeah, this will have loads of spoilers so,
you know, see the movie first.

Okay, so if you know me at all in real life you’ll know that, for me, Patty Jenkin’s 2017 movie Wonder Woman (reviewed by me here) is not only the best superhero movie ever made but also one of the greatest movies, to date, of the 21st century. There was no way in hell WW84 (aka Wonder Woman 1984, if you go by the posters as opposed to the title on the actual print of the movie) was probably going to come even close to the greatness of the first movie and, yeah, that’s probably the case here but, although it maybe has a few very slight problems, I’d have to say it wins through with what are, for me, the two most important things to get right... one is it’s vastly entertaining and two, it doesn’t let the side down when it comes down to living up to and respecting the original.

What I’m trying to say is, although it doesn’t deliver quite the same experience (I wasn’t weeping throughout the whole movie as I tend to when I re-watch the original one time and time again), it’s a pretty good movie and it certainly has a lot of spectacle to it.

As different as it is to the first film, however, it does try to match some of the elements of the first, attempting to give the fans of the first film more of what they want to see in regards to the specific ingredients which may (or, arguably, may not) have made the first film such a huge draw for the box office.

Perhaps the most blatant of these, at least visually, is a very strong opening action sequence which takes us back to the 12 year old Diana on Themyscira, taking part in a huge sporting contest reminiscent of the games the Amazons used to play on Paradise Island back in the 1940s iteration of the comics (which are, at the moment, the only ones I’ve read... well, just the first couple of year’s worth and a stretch by John Byrne a fair few decades later). This is really a spectacular sequence and Hans Zimmer’s score matches that spectacle note for note. I’ll come back to the scoring of this in a little while.

Another very blatant thing to capture the essence of what made the first film so successful is the return, in 1984, of Steve Trevor, portrayed once again by Chris Pine opposite the sensational Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. People who have seen the first movie will know that Trevor dies at the end of the first film, sacrificing himself at the end of World War I... however, the surprise return of the character fits into the ‘magical’ theme, which sees an ancient artefact of the Gods granting wishes (mostly unconsciously) and thus Diana Prince accidentally wishes Trevor back to life. As does Kristen Wiig’s character Barbara Minerva, who wishes for Wonder Woman’s powers and becomes (although not named in the movie), her alter ego of The Cheetah (or one of them... I’m only familiar with one of the earlier incarnations of Cheetah so I’ve no idea how this character lives up to the comics). So, yeah, you have all that and with it you therefore have the fish-out-of-water scenario from the first film, where Diana was trying to grapple with the world outside her invisible island, reversed here with Steve Trevor trying to catch up with a culture which has moved on almost 70 years. We also get a similar reversal of the costuming scene in the first film, with Trevor this time trying to find something to ‘blend in’ with 1984.

One other nice touch is the way photographs in Diana’s apartment show that the writers have not forgotten the power the photo from the first movie had as an emotional punch on the audience and, although 'that photograph' is not easily in evidence here, there are some moments where the poignancy and emotion of photographs are dwelt upon just a little longer than you may expect in any other film where this fetishism to the static image was not rendered so lovingly in the previous installment.

And everybody is good in this. Pine and Gadot are excellent in their roles, both retaining certain character traits to keep them credible, although I would have liked to see Diana take a punch in a thoughtful manner the way she did in both Wonder Woman and Justice League (reviewed here). Kristen Wiig is also very good in her role, although she totally goes through exactly the same kind of transformation (just a little more gradual) that Seline Kyle went through in Batman Returns (reviewed here). And when it comes to that character, this was one of my slight criticisms of the film... there needed to be a five minute follow up to explore the post-story relationship between Minerva and Prince, I felt. Unless they’re maybe saving her for a sequel.

Pedro Pascal, The Mandalorian himself, does an equally fine job as villain Maxwell Lord and I was very impressed with the arc of the character, who starts off so smarmy that you really dislike him from the get go but then (just like Wiig’s villainess), as more of his back story is revealed, you begin to feel a lot more sympathy for and I was very happy that the arc for both of these villainous characters were handled in a way which was much more appropriate to the title character’s realm and not as they might have been disposed of in other films.

The movie perhaps feels a little light in action in places and another minor criticism is that it starts with a bang and maintains the rush right through to about maybe halfway through the film, with a big desert vehicle chase which, after it has finished, kind of leaves the film a little flat in some ways. I think, however, when I watch this one again, I will probably be more on board with the second half of the piece and I’m pretty sure I’ll regret writing that previous sentence before long.

Just as I regret criticising Rupert Gregson-Williams score in the first movie. By the second screening of that one, I was totally on board with his score and, frankly, tend to get more than just a little teary eyed when I have it on the headphones, walking down a street. I’ll say here that, although I love Hans Zimmer’s music as a composer for a lot of movies, I wish that Rupert Gregson-Williams had been asked to return for this one because, although Zimmer did build the basic Wonder Woman motif for Batman Versus Superman - Dawn Of Justice (reviewed by me here), I thought the stuff that Gregson-Williams brought to the table in the first one far exceeded Zimmer’s wonderful contribution. That being said, Zimmer does have vague hints of Gregson-Williams thematic material from time to time and, of course, he does retain his own Wonder Woman theme with an appropriate build up to it in this film. Other times, though, I thought the score seemed wildly inappropriate, with a comic theme which recalled, to me, his Electro theme from The Amazing Spider-Man 2... a score I was not all that fond of, to be honest. Still, there are also some wonderful pieces of music in WW84 and I certainly can’t wait until the CD arrives in the post.

The structure of the film is clever too and The Monkey’s Paw element of ‘magic’ at the heart of the story (something it comes clean about a few times in the film) extends in like spirit to a credible, if you’re on board with this central concept (I expect some people won’t be), rendition of a new twist on the old Invisible Jet that Wonder Woman used to have in the comics and TV series, imbuing it with a new accessibility which could prove interesting in the future, if the film series keeps going.  Alas, the way the story is put together also reveals the end game quite early on and the obvious ‘sacrifice’ on the table here... I mean, I knew it would have to come anyway but there’s a point in the film where audiences are going to figure out, probably before Diana does, that a certain character is going to have to disappear into the ether again for her to be powerful enough to resume her stance as a guardian of the planet. It doesn’t take the sting out of it too much but, yeah, things are pretty obviously pointing to both this and the mechanics of how the ending is going to have to work to give each of the ‘super-villains’ a way out of the mess they’ve, almost inadvertently, created. The ending is nice, though and, certainly retains both the spirit of the first film and, also, the way the character arcs would tend to go in those 1940s comics I’ve read.

And that’s about me done with Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84) other than to say, if you’re a long term fan of the character in the medium of the moving image, you’re going to want to stay around in the cinema for the mid-end credits sequence. Again, I could see the reveal there coming before it happened and, to be honest, it was done in perhaps one of the least subtle, cheesiest ways imaginable but, you know, without revealing too much, I really loved it and hope a certain character can return if there is a sequel made to this movie. Other than that, it fits in surprisingly well with the continuity of the other three DC Universe movies in which Gal Gadot has played this role and I would recommend this as a high calibre superhero movie for most people but, with the small caution that there was no way it could ever be better than the first one. Definitely worth most people’s time though. Loved it!

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.

Wonder Woman

Blood n’ Wonder

Wonder Woman
2017 USA/China/Hong Kong
Directed by Patty Jenkins  
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very slight hints at spoilers.

I was actually quite apprehensive about going to see the latest of the DC superpowers movies. Not half as much as anxious as I am about seeing what looks like quite a dreadful attempt to put the Justice League of America on screen later in the year but certainly, given the last three films by the studio... the terrible Man Of Steel (reviewed here), the not too terrible Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice (reviewed here) and the passable but superfluous Suicide Squad (reviewed here)... were all much less than great movies, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to how the studio might screw up Wonder Woman. As it turns out... I needn’t have worried. This movie is easily the best movie they’ve put out in the last five years and even towers above a fair few of the Marvel movies released during the same period.

Wonder Woman made her first appearance in comics in 1941, which is a time period a bit further in the future to the setting of the majority of this movie. For some reason the writers here decided to take her out of her original World War Two setting and instead go back to the First World War. I’m not complaining though... it works really well for the movie. She was created by psychologist William Moulton Marston, who invented one of the key components in what is commonly known as the ‘lie detector’. He also tended to inject the stories with a lot of oblique references to what we know these days as BDSM (which may mean he was a lifestyle practitioner himself... I don’t know) and so if you ever wondered where he got the idea that Wonder Woman would utilise a magic golden ‘rope of truth’ with which she could tie up unsuspecting captives and compel them not to lie... well there you go.

This film is pretty much pitch perfect and the director, Patty Jenkins, does an absolutely astonishing job here. Bookended by a scene set bang up to date with the recent DC movies, we first see Diana Prince (aka Wonder Woman aka Princess Diana of Themyscira) as she receives a gift from Bruce Wayne (although Ben Affleck is not present in the flesh in this movie). The gift is an old watch and the photograph of Wonder Woman standing with her allies in World War One which we first caught a glimpse of in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice. I was pretty sure that photo would be making an appearance and its used here as the element which allows us into the movie length flashback of Diana’s exploits during World War One.

The film actually keeps the same kind of tone, visually, as the Batman Vs Superman movie (with lots of bleak colour palette) but this serves to highlight the times when stronger colours are suddenly used to good effect and it’s also very well used, as it was in that previous movie, in contrast to Wonder Woman’s magic lasso... the colours absolutely pop whenever it’s used in action.

Despite some reviews I heard where the pacing was criticised, I found the speediness of this movie to be pretty good and evenly paced throughout.

After the opening bookend we start with Diana as a child on her invisible island of Themyscira (or Paradise Island as it used to be known before a well known writer was let loose on one of the many revamps of the character some decades ago) and watch her grow up as an Amazon in training... preparing for the day the God of War will return to destroy humanity. We are presented with the... I’m sorry but this was such an obvious reveal from the start... so called ‘mystery’ of the ‘God killer’ and this is used later for pretty much the only moment in this wonderful film you might see coming. Soon the actresses playing the younger versions of the title character mature into lead actress Gal Gadot and she rescues the main male protagonist, Steve Trevor (played by Chris Pine), when he accidentally pierces the veil which hides Themyscira from the outside world and also accidentally brings an army of death dealing German troops, hot on his tail, who kill many amazons before they are slaughtered themselves.

When Diana learns of the ‘war to end all wars’, as it was known before we stupidly had a second one to warrant the first with a numeric designation, she shuns the wishes of her mother and accompanies Steve to the outside world to see and destroy Ares, the God of War.

That’s the basic set up but let me say that, apart from the really obvious reveal of the ‘God killer’ towards the end of the movie, the film is so less formulaic than you would reasonably expect it to be and it also plays on the innate sexism of its audience - male and female alike - in one sequence by refusing to conform to having a certain fight scene between two characters when you are probably thinking, all the way through the movie due to the expectations of how these things are usually written, that it’s a pretty inevitable scene. Instead, the film actually managed to surprise me in regards to a reveal towards the end of the villain of the piece and, if you read my reviews regularly then you’ll already know that there’s nothing I like better in cinema than if it can actually catch me off guard and surprise me.

And it all looks so brilliant and, yep, the cast are fantastic, too.

Gal Gadot, as she did in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice, absolutely nails Diana as a title hero you can believe in. Demonstrating a strength of character and also a sense of vulnerability and mental progression which matches the writing and rewards the viewer with a pitch perfect performance. She really is a great Wonder Woman and a worthy successor to Linda Carter in the good old 1970s TV show of the same name. I was really in awe of this performance and thought she brings a carefree but responsible attitude to the character. And luckily for DC, the supporting cast are also all great. Chris Pine probably puts in the best performance I’ve seen him do here. Lucy Davis as Etta is perhaps a little underused but shines whenever she is on screen. Elena Anaya, who was so good in Room In Rome (reviewed here) makes for a menacing presence as a German villainess, as does the always remarkable Danny Huston, playing her boss. It’s also good to see the Scottish well represented by the likes of Ewen Bremner and James Cosmo and especially great to see one of my all time favourite actors, the amazing David Thewlis, here too.

There’s a certain stylistic dynamism to a lot of the scenes and, although there were a lot of slow motion scenes which were a little distracting, I can see why director Patty Jenkins chose to use these and, overall, I think she’s done a fantastic job here, giving the modern DC cinematic universe their most credible and polished film to date. There was one shot which did puzzle me but I think I’ve maybe worked out why she did it now. I’ve seen other directors do similar things but she only does this once in the movie and so it kind of stuck out a little. There’s a scene where Steve Trevor suggests to Diana that she “follow the smoke” while he looks around to find a motorbike and then we follow her progress as she gallops off into action on a horse. For some reason, the shot is turned on its side and it looks really alien to what you would expect to see. The shot then cuts to a similar shot the right way up. It looks pretty odd and I don’t know whether the shot was actually shot at this angle or whether it was actually turned on its side during the edit. Looking at the overall effect, though, I’m guessing that the camera movements in the shots proceeding, coupled with the direction in which the bike which Trevor finds is pointing, meant that the director decided she wanted the next shot to follow through on the ‘right to left’ forward motion of the preceding shots and so used that version of the shot in the final movie to keep momentum going. Maybe it looked even more jarring if she cut a ‘right way up’ version directly in? Who knows? That’s my best guess on that one though.

As per usual, I have a couple of slight criticisms of the movie but they are very minor things, to be honest.

The first is that I thought that the film could have maybe had just a few more humorous one-liners in it. Sure, there’s humour in here but I just felt it could have been a little less poe faced on occasion. Although, of course, we are dealing with The Great War which is not something to be humorous about and, also, it feels like the current crop of DC movies almost have 'a lack of humour' written into their brand guidelines... so I’m not too fussed about and it works so well with less of that comic element in it anyway that I’m certainly not complaining.

The other thing, though, is the lack of blood. It’s the First World War. People are getting blown up in this movie, mutilated, dying in various horrible ways and even getting run through with a sword. And it’s all quite bloodless. I don’t blame the director for this. She probably well knows that she might have been fired if she didn’t deliver a film suitable for young children so the studio can get a bigger profit (and you just need to look at the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies to see how far this ridiculous predilection for grim violence with no blood to appease the censors can be taken) but I do feel that the gravitas of the war and the message that violence is a bad thing would have been better served by showing, just a little more, the direct consequences of that violence. The director does her bit by showing the mutilated bodies of the survivors to strike home the horror of war and Diana’s awakening to that horror but... it just felt unnecessarily bloodless is all. Like I said, though, we are unfortunately living in a social climate which makes those kinds of censorious decisions a necessary choice in an art form which can only thrive when commercial considerations are accommodated so... yeah, I guess the director does pretty well getting in what she is able to in this one.

Rupert Gregson-Williams score to the movie is serviceable but feels a little bland and unnoticeable in a lot of the movie... like it could have done with more textural contrast to make some of the cues stand out. However, at a couple of key points he, or whoever made the decision, does the right thing and brings in musical continuity by referencing Hans Zimmer’s Wonder Woman theme from Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice. The theme was already prominent in the various trailers for this movie and I’m glad the powers that be saw sense and used it here... he also goes with a full on rendition of this theme at the start of the end credit music so, you know, special shout out to DC for considering the musical continuity, finally. And at least this one has got a proper, physical CD release so there’s at least that. Having now listened to that CD release, I can  confirm that, as a stand alone listen away from the images, it’s really powerful and was maybe suffering a little in the movie from being slightly buried in the final sound mix in some points. There are some nicely subtle textural contrasts here... they just can't necessarily be heard amongst all the blood n' thunder of the final cut.

If you are a fan of superhero movies then Wonder Woman is absolutely unmissable. It feels like a completely epic cinematic spectacle and, well... that’s because it is. If you are not all that familiar with superhero movies, however... go see this one anyway. It doesn’t matter because it’s a pretty fine example of the current trends in cinematic art done almost perfectly and should be supported by all enthusiastic cinema goers. An all round positive recommendation from me for this one to pretty much everyone I know. Both Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot deserve some serious recognition for this. Can’t wait to see what direction the sequel takes us. I’d personally like to see Wonder Woman in both the Second World War and the Vietnam War in future movies, maybe?