The Flash (2023)

It seemed like a bizarre twist of fate that I saw The Flash exactly ten years to the day after first seeing Man of Steel. (Save your ticket stubs, friends.) So much of The Flash revolves around a sideways retelling of the events of Man of Steel, while at the same time serving as the ostensible finale for the cinematic universe that began with Henry Cavill’s debut as Superman. For this reason – and so many more – it is a challenge to think of The Flash as its own thing, as a superhero movie unto itself. The Flash is by and large a fun time at the movies, but it is so nakedly corporate and so eager to shuffle another franchise off this cinematic coil – and consequently it is difficult for this fan in particular to celebrate and embrace it wholesale.
 
After the events of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) has unlocked the ability to travel backward in time. Hoping to exonerate his wrongfully-imprisoned father, Barry changes the past to prevent his mother’s murder – but in so doing, he creates a universe with no metahumans to stop the invasion of General Zod (Michael Shannon). With only the fiery Kara Zor-El (Sasha Calle), an aging Batman (Michael Keaton), and his own alternate universe doppelganger (Miller again), Barry must either save the present, restore the past, or lose the future.
 
At the center of whatever you make of The Flash is the cauldron of personal and legal challenges in which Ezra Miller is currently embroiled. A fine enough Flash in ZSJL – and a decent, if overly Spider-Man-esque, variation in the theatrical Justice League – Miller never presented as irreplaceable. And for Warner Bros. to pin their hopes on a film starring not one, but two Ezra Millers, while simultaneously claiming that Batgirl was unreleasable, seemed like such a curious choice. Here again, Miller is quite fun as both Barrys, giving suitably nuanced performances to differentiate the two, but it is equally hard to watch the film and not imagine a less problematic performer in the role.
 
As if to distract from the Miller of it all, the film brings in scores of old faces and a few new ones, too, and on that count I must concede it works. No matter what baggage you bring to the theater with you, there is an undeniable thrill from revisiting Stately Wayne Manor and seeing Michael Keaton fly a Batplane with Danny Elfman’s score thrumming in the background. Keaton has not lost a step as Batman, reinhabiting his idiosyncratic Bruce Wayne with ease. Meanwhile, the other returning Michael reprises his General Zod, albeit with little of the personality and narrative heft that Shannon brought to Man of Steel. It’s a treat to see his Zod again, but his performance feels a bit like someone bringing a favorite action figure out of the toybox and playing only the hits.
 
On the flip side, Sasha Calle’s Kara is scratching the surface of a very interesting take on the character, though she has far less to do than the trailers let on. Still, playing up her role as Superman’s older cousin and riffing on the Flashpoint comics, Calle makes a compelling case for being more than just one cast-off universe’s Supergirl. If the reports bear out the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow film we’ve been promised, I’d say it’s worth giving Calle a fuller shot at the role.
 
And yet, hard as I tried to watch The Flash as its own one-off film about the Scarlet Speedster, it was so very difficult not to view the film as a kind of living funeral, an elegiac wake for an aborted cinematic universe that I’m going to miss so terribly much. For all that it tries to be a celebration of the DC film universe writ large, it was impossible – at least for me – not to feel an accompanying pang of sadness. This, for example, is likely the last time we’ll see Ben Affleck as Batman, and his performance is so touching, partly because it’s an absolutely wretched way to say goodbye, even while he wrings such effective pathos from the bare minimum that the script gives him to do. Ditto Miller, whose performance is nothing overly special until the final act, which gives us a powerful emotional climax that the film scarcely deserves. If this is indeed the final run for this Barry Allen, what a waste to leave just when things were getting interesting.
 
I made the mistake of watching the Flash scenes from Zack Snyder’s Justice League the night before seeing The Flash. It was a mistake because that iteration of the character was so fun and so fresh that I couldn’t wait for more Barry Allen. Those super-speed scenes looked crisp, and I still get a little emotional at Barry’s big “Make your own future. Make your own past” moment. By comparison, The Flash is lousy with muddled CGI (which director Andy Muschietti, bafflingly, insists is deliberate) and the loud-and-clear message is instead, “Stop living your past.” It’s advice that the film might well have taken, riddled as it is with cameos, callbacks, and references – only a few of which are actually well-used and not, frankly, ghoulish. 
 
At the end of the day, though, The Flash is entertaining enough. It’s fun enough. It’s fine. It’s not good enough to merit the extensive discourse around Ezra Miller’s employability. It’s not a great sendoff for the so-called Snyderverse. It’s not an auspicious beginning for the new James Gunn universe – if indeed that’s what The Flash would ever have been. And it’s not even a loving highlight reel for DC Universes gone by, dangling most of its shiny cameos like baubles on a Christmas tree. It’s junk food, albeit junk food that happens to star some of my favorite fictional characters. But if it’s going to leave my preferred interpretations of those characters lying face-down in a puddle, turning them into punchlines instead of paragons, this might just be where I jump off the cosmic treadmill.
 

The Flash is rated PG-13 for “sequences of violence and action, some strong language, and partial nudity.” Directed by Andy Muschietti. Written by Christina Hodson, John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein, and Joby Harold. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Kiersey Clemons, and Michael Keaton.

Monday at the Movies - May 2, 2016

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.”

Elvis & Nixon (2016) – Here’s a film that can best be described as rivetingly peculiar, as if the Coen Brothers turned their eyes on the most esoteric corners of American history to say, “Gee, wasn’t that strange?” It’s director Liza Johnson, though, who helms this look at the famous photograph of Elvis Presley (Michael Shannon) and Richard Nixon (Kevin Spacey), and how it came to pass that these two met to discuss drugs, popular culture, and the fate of the nation. Elvis & Nixon takes the strangeness of that sentence and runs with it from the word “go,” with even the supporting cast musing how curious all of this is and doubting its veracity. Whether the film is accurate – based on a conversation with my resident Elvis expert, it’s pretty close – isn’t of chief concern, so much as the film wants to give Shannon and Spacey a chance to revel in the weirdness of their roles. Spacey’s is something of an exaggerated caricature, maybe not the best Nixon impression we’ve seen, but he performs exasperated better than most. It’s Shannon, though, who steals the film with a bizarre portrayal of Elvis by way of Michael Jackson, surreal in his aloofness and his disconnect from the way the world works outside of Graceland. The film seems told through the eyes of his friend Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer), who lets us see Elvis from outside the head of the King, but even scenes without Schilling allow Shannon to bring Elvis to life with all his quirks, eccentricities, and sequined outfits fully intact. Elvis & Nixon might be Amazon Studios’ second film, but it’s star power like Shannon that will make the studio a successful one.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

BUT – face front, True Believers – we’ll continue to Make Yours Marvel this Wednesday with the final installment in “The Grand Marvel Rewatch,” so check back then for a look at all five Marvel One-Shots. Or subscribe above, and receive those missives right in your inbox. Nuff said!

Monday at the Movies - September 15, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Continuing our string of bizarre coincidences, tomorrow is screenwriter Justin Haythe’s birthday, he of the largely ill-conceived Lone Ranger reboot.

Revolutionary Road (2008) – If you want to remember the postwar era fondly, the door to Turner Classic Movies is that way.  Director Sam Mendes helms this adaptation of the eponymous novel by Richard Yates, and you’ll find it astounding to believe this is the same director behind both Skyfall and American Beauty.  Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet play Frank and April Wheeler, a couple for whom the sheen of marital bliss is quickly cracking; the two deliver reliably solid work, and the tension between the two is divinely palpable.  As unfaltering as these two performances are, they’re also relentlessly depressing.  They’re fantastic performers, and we enjoy them on-screen for it, but good Lord – it’s very trying to watch two of your most beloved thespians berate each other for two hours in a self-destructive, mutually abusive marriage.  The goal here is a warts-and-all exposé on the darker side of the late-40s American optimism, with a heavy dose of Peyton Place thrown in for those who still held the suburbs as idyllic.  On that count, Revolutionary Road is a bleak success, but feel good it ain’t.  To lighten the mood, though, Michael Shannon wanders into the frame every so often, and – as is usually the case with him – it’s as though he’s in an entirely different movie, one I can’t say I wouldn’t rather have watched.  His supporting role as the son of the Wheelers’ realtor neighbor (Kathy Bates) comes with equal parts mental derangement and frightening outburst, a fine and effective complement to the repressed Frank and April.  The real treat is in watching him act, with an occasional tic or bizarre vocal inflection making his the only real fun performance to be had in a film that is creatively successful but otherwise oppressing to watch.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - September 2, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies” – this week, we review two films that are really quite draining in an entirely delectable sense.

Drive (2011) – Here’s a movie that’s way more intense than I was expecting.  In Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, Ryan Gosling plays a stunt driver, moonlighting as a getaway driver, who becomes embroiled in the underworld after falling in love with his neighbor (Carey Mulligan).  I don’t really know what I thought I was getting into; I’d only heard rave reviews, and I’ve never seen a Gosling performance I didn’t like.  But Drive is such an oddball captivating flick, its glacial pace tempered by Refn’s keen cinematographic eye – the result is something closer to There Will Be Blood than 2001: A Space Odyssey.  All this is not to say that the film is boring; rather, Refn directs the daylights out of some car chases without resorting to shaky cameras or even quick cuts, relying on the natural tension of the narrative and a well-placed close-up on Gosling’s steely stare.  Drive is undeniably Gosling’s show (Refn’s direction, though, giving a run for his proverbial money), but an astounding array of supporters – Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, and Albert Brooks as a spooky mobster sans eyebrows – fill out the film with that who’s-who delight enjoyed by moviegoers such as myself.  But boy, is this a violent flick, with some of the most jarring violence I’ve seen in movies recently – and, remember, I loved Django Unchained.  But Refn’s use of violence is sparse, used to jar and interrupt and not to delight; essentially, it does what violence actually does in real life, which makes it all the more effective and/or disturbing.  Drive, then, comes highly recommended.

Take Shelter (2011) – Is there any working actor more intense than Michael Shannon?  He’s always wound tighter than Taft’s bathtub, but when that simmer boils over it’s explosively good fun to watch.  Take Shelter might have been a dull picture with any other front man, but Shannon does fantastic work in an Oscar-snubbed lead performance as Curtis, a family man haunted by nightmares of an impending apocalypse.  As his behavior becomes increasingly obsessive and erratic, Curtis risks alienating his wife (Jessica Chastain), who’s especially worried about the fate of their deaf daughter and what will happen to the family if Curtis’s burgeoning psychosis threatens his own employment as a construction worker.  This is not a movie where much happens; instead, the film relies on the capable performances of Shannon and Chastain, who are more than believable as beleaguered Midwestern spouses.  The film is undeniably Shannon’s, his clairvoyance/psychosis (depending on how you read the film) taking a clear toll on his wellbeing as he grimaces and twitches in quiet moments before squinting into the horizon or, in one of the film’s strongest moments, unleashing his manic frustrations on his friends.  While she stands in a long shadow, Chastain is the emotional anchor of the film, the audience’s point of interaction as voice to a thousand doubts and frustrations; I don’t know where she came from all of a sudden, but her work in the past few years (particularly Zero Dark Thirty) demonstrates that Hollywood needs more of her kind of actress.  More indie than blockbuster, Take Shelter flew low enough under the radar that more people ought to see it – especially those of us needing a little more intensity from General Zod.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!  And don’t forget that this Saturday is the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month...

Man of Steel (2013)

Tall order, Zack Snyder:  direct the heck out of a Superman movie so we can move toward a Justice League franchise while we forget entirely about Superman Returns.

Mission accomplished.

After a dynamite Krypton scene introducing the coolest Jor-El (Russell Crowe) this side of Brando, we catch up with Kal-El (Henry Cavill) on a journey of self-discovery – until star reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) finds him first.  But before the man who will become Superman can reveal himself to the world, the mad General Zod (Michael Shannon) arrives and demands to reclaim Kal-El and the Kryptonian race.

I always feel a bit starstruck writing these reviews for movies I went into expecting to like.  It’s a Superman movie godfathered by Christopher Nolan:  I’m admittedly biased here.  So if you like, take a grain of salt to go with this review.  But while I’m less agog than I was at The Dark Knight or its Rises successor, I’m prepared to say I liked Man of Steel better than Batman Begins, a “first film” with which it shares many similarities.

The first of these is the film’s smart emphasis on the man before the Superman.  As with Bruce Wayne in Begins, we care about Kal-El as a character caught between two worlds without feeling at home in either.  And it’s on Cavill’s able shoulders that the film rests; tasked with playing Kal-El (not heroic Superman, not geeky performance Clark Kent), Cavill gives us a compelling and engaging protagonist who we actually appreciate for his complexity.  Watch the moment when Kal confronts a belligerent trucker; the simmer is there, and the punchline reaction is pitch perfect.

The rest of the cast is stellar, too – no complaints about Adams or Shannon, who both turn in reliably solid work; Adams is spunky and darling as Lois Lane, and no one does crazy-angry like Michael Shannon, whose Zod is a megalomaniacal ball of fury who never descends into caricature.  The real surprises, though, are the gripping performances of Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner as Kal’s two fathers; Crowe makes Jor-El interesting beyond Brando’s stuffed shirt (seriously, can we get a Jor-El prequel?), and Costner is moving to the point of misty eyes as the weathered all-American Pa Kent.  Better still, we can see how these two parents informed the man Kal becomes, partly through the flashback structure of the film (again, Batman Begins) and also through Cavill’s interactions with them.  (As Ma Kent, Diane Lane gets just enough screentime, though one suspects she’ll have a larger role in the sequel.)

Finally, major major kudos go to Hans Zimmer, the stalwart composer of some of the best blockbusters of the past decade.  Zimmer manages to sidestep the issue of the iconic John Williams score by giving us a rousing and optimistic theme that soars with the protagonist, booms with Zod’s invasion, and actually – unlike his early Batman stuff – gets stuck in your head.  Equal parts Batman, Pirates, and Inception, Zimmer’s Man of Steel score sets the stage for what ought to be a stellar Justice League jam.

And yes, the build-up toward Justice League is acutely felt, even though the stage is entirely Superman’s (eyes open for nods to Wayne Enterprises and Lexcorp).  What we’ve got in the meantime is a thoroughly engaging cross between the fanboy fidelity of Zack Snyder (see Watchmen, slavishly so) and the relentless realism of Christopher Nolan.  The film does, as Eddie Izzard would say, do a bit of “pissing about with the myth” (too many people might know Superman’s secret identity, and Superman makes a controversial climactic decision which I suspect sets up a sequel), but this original take on the classic character ought to leave plenty of fans satisfied.  And from the box office receipts, mainstream moviegoers are pretty pleased, too.

Heck, Man of Steel doesn’t say it in the title, but it’s super.

Man of Steel is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence, action and destruction, and for some language.”  Some of the action/fight scenes are relentless, lasting dozens of minutes at a time.  They’re almost entirely bloodless (Kryptonians apparently don’t bleed), though some have been distressed by the apparent 9/11 allegory at work.  Lois Lane has a few mildly salty lines, but they’re more endearing than offensive.