Cinema Dispatch: The Flash

The Flash and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros. Pictures

Directed by Andy Muschietti

The Flash has been in development since at least Suicide Squad and its journey to the big screen has been fraught, to say the least. Controversy with its main star, the shifting sands of the DCEU project as a whole, Warner Bros getting sold to Discovery, and let’s not forget the Global Pandemic that threw everything into chaos and continue to affect us to this day. On top of all of that, in case there wasn’t enough going against this, it was a movie that frankly few people seemed to ask for as it was borne of the earliest version of the DCEU that people have roundly rejected and that even Warner Bros has started to correct course on. The DCEU may yet have a happy ending now that we’re finally starting over with a new creative vision under James Gunn, but is this last hurrah a bittersweet epithet to everything that it had previously stood for or is it the nail in the coffin that will finally put it all to rest? Let’s find out!!

It’s not easy being a superhero as I’m sure most of them will gladly tell you, but for Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) it comes with an extra dose of sadness as they are the perpetual New Guy of the Justice League. Unlike their teammates who are either God-like figures or super rich, they’re just a person trying to live their life and deal with their tragic backstory which involves their mother being murdered and their dad taking the blame for it. With their father’s last appeal coming fast, Barry is overcome with grief and finds out, much like Superman back in 1978, that angry running is the secret to time travel; giving him a chance to fix what went wrong all those years ago. Sadly for them, however, we’re following Butterfly Effect rules and every change makes things much worse which cascades into more and more problems that he is tasked with fixing which includes a much goofier Barry Allen who needs to learn to take care of himself and an older Batman (Michael Keaton) who gave up the cowl long ago. Oh, and General Zod (Michael Shannon) is about to take over the world since there’s seemingly no Superman in this timeline, and there are very few outcomes I can think of that are worse than having to live through Man of Steel again. Can Barry fix the timeline and perhaps leave the world in a better place than where it was when they started this adventure? Can Barry be a proper mentor to younger Barry and set them on the right course, or will this interference in the timeline create unforeseen ripples for them as well? Is there any way I can go back in time myself and have Warner Bros cancel this instead of the Batgirl movie?

“What’s up? I’m the new Supergirl and I’m gonna get a movie soon.”     “Yeah, just like how I’m alternate Barry, and I’ll be getting a spin-off!”     “Whoa, whoa, whoa! None of that’s gonna happen until I get my sequel first, right?”
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Cinema Dispatch: Criminal

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Criminal and all the images you see in this review are owned by Summit Entertainment

Directed by Ariel Vromen

While Michael Keaton is out there making his comeback off of Birdman and Spotlight, one of his leading man contemporaries of the nineties, Kevin Costner, is trying to rebuild Is career off of Superman cameos and sports movies.  Sure, Michael Keaton was in the Need for Speed movie and the Robocop remake, but at least he’s spending his time in between cash-in movies doing Oscar caliber work to keep himself respected in the industry and not just relevant at the moment.  Still, Costner has some serious talent and seems to be working towards artistic relevancy even if it hasn’t panned out so far so there’s hope yet that he can get back to or even surpass his peak relevance when Dances with Wolves was tearing up the Oscars.  Will Criminal be the movie to bring Costner back to leading man status, or will this be yet another mistake to knock him down a peg toward total irrelevance?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins with good ol’ Ryan Reynolds as a secret agent (again) who’s doing all sorts of spy things without any real context for the audience.  He’s carrying around a bag of money with a passport inside, so clearly this is some sort of rainy day fund for either himself or for someone else.  It’s clear that that rainy day has come however as he’s being tailed by a red headed bad guy (Antje Traue) who’s working for the main bad guy Xavier Heimdahl (Jordi Mollà) and they’re trying to stop Ryan Reynolds  from… doing whatever it is he’s doing.  He does the best he can but I’m guessing the guy was shooting during his lunch breaks from Deadpool, so he gets caught and murdered by the bad guys within fifteen minutes of the film, though apparently without giving them the information they needed.  The CIA, whom Ryan Reynolds was working for, is uber-pissed about all this and the head of this branch (Quaker Wells played by Gary Oldman) which for some reason is based out of the UK (okay…) needs whatever information Ryan Reynolds was hiding from the baddies.  So what’s the BRILLIANT idea that he comes up with?  Well… Get a world renown doctor in the field of memories (Dr. Franks played by Tommy Lee Jones) to do a SUPER SCIENCE EXPERIMENT where he essentially transfers the memories into another person.  Who’s the vessel for these new memories though?  Well for reasons (sciency reasons I’m sure), they need someone who’s frontal lobe isn’t working properly and the only person they could find is a psychotic and ultra-dangerous criminal by the name of Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner) to play along with their Frankenstein plan and not try to escape at the earliest opportunity.  Oh wait.  After the surgery he does just that.  Whoopsie daisy.  So now we got a career criminal with CIA memories, a bad guy looking to take over the world, and I think the Russians are in the mix as well; all of whom are gonna give the CIA and Gary Oldman a brain aneurysm before this day is over.  Will the lost memories of Ryan Reynolds be enough to save the world from Xavier Heimdahl?  Will Jericho get over his angst and brooding long enough to not let the world be destroyed?  Who thought this was going to work?  Like… at all?

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“Why am I here?  God damn it, is Iñárritu doing another Birdman movie?  We could call it Waterman!  That’ll work… right?”

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