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: Gods of Egypt

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Gods of Egypt and all the images you see in this review are owned by Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate

Directed by Alex Proyas

No one was asking for this!  No one wanted the director of Dark City to make a Gore Verbinski style summer tent pole!  Where the hell did his even come from, other than the pits of Hell?  Brace yourselves people.  We’ve got a REALY bad one on our hands.  How bad?  Well you’re about to find out!!

The movie is primarily about the God Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who is the son of Osiris (Bryan Brown) and will be given the throne to Asgard… I mean Egypt.  Osiris’s brother Set (Gerard Butler) has other plans however and stages the worst (yet somehow most effective) coup I’ve ever seen where about five hundred soldier dudes just enters the main palace with no resistance from Egypt’s own military.  Set kills Osiris and challenges Horus to one on one combat which seems like a pretty dumb idea in hindsight considering Horus almost beats his sorry ass and only loses once Set’s soldiers get involved.  Horus’s own soldiers never show up, and the other Gods observing the ceremony don’t step in to HELP him, so Horus loses the fight and has his eyes plucked out.  Set is now the king, goes full Egyptian Nazi on their asses, and has plans to… take over the afterlife?  I don’t know exactly but whatever it is, it’s nefarious!  Who can stop Set?  Well apparently a simple thief can as Bek (Brenton Thwaltes) breaks into the pyramid where Set keeps Horus’s eye and steals it away so that he and his girlfriend Zaya (Courtney Eaton) can bring Horus back and stop Set.  Zaya gets killed in the process unfortunately which means Bek has to use the eye as leverage to get Horus to bring back his girlfriend in exchange for it.  So now that Horus is back in action (at least half way what with one eye), he needs to come up with a plan to defeat Set with the help of Bek who seems to know a couple of things about Set’s operation and his natural abilities as a thief prove to be quite useful.  Will Horus find a way to stop Set before he does something REALLY bad?  Will he get any help from the Goddess of Love Hathor (Elodie Yung), the God of Wisdom Thoth (Chadwick Boseman) or his own grandfather Ra (Geoffrey Rush) who apparently lives on the Justice League Watchtower space station?  Does… anyone really care?  Was anyone looking forward to this?

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“Ugh…  What am I even doing here?”

Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Gods of Egypt”