Zack Snyder's Justice League - Movie Review

Starring Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Henry Cavill, Jason Momoa, Amy Adams, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Connie Nielsen, Jeremy Irons, Willem Dafoe, JK Simmons, Diane Lane, Joe Morton, Ciaran Hinds, Kiersey Clemons, Ryan Zheng, Amber Heard, Jesse Eisenberg, Jared Leto, and Billy Crudup.

Written by Chris Terrio.

Directed by Zack Snyder.

★★★

If it helps, don't think of it as a 4-hour movie. Think of it as a 4-episode limited series.

I thought Man of Steel was a thumbs-sideways and that Batman v. Superman was a let-down, though they both had their qualities. Justice League was a mess and about on par with BvS for me. I thought at the time that Joss Whedon did what he could with the troubled production, but stories have spread since what Whedon's really like to work with, and I felt bad about the personal family tragedy that led Snyder to walk away.

Now he's been granted the ability to tell the story the way he wanted to. Rather than making Justice League I & II, we get a full 4-hour experience. It's not perfect and it still pales in comparison to a similarly-plotted Avengers Infinity War & Endgame, but it's a vast improvement, and I really liked how the movie was able to take its time with these characters. I'd also be curious to go back and watch the 2017 movie again to see how different it was.

Ben Affleck is great as Bruce Wayne, and I was grateful to watch him stretch his legs in the role one last time. He's picking up the pieces after the death of Superman, and he knows he needs more people with special abilities to unite in order to fight what's coming. He has Wonder Woman on his side but he needs more. He tries to recruit Aquaman, Cyborg, Flash, some more successfully than others.

Of all the characters, it's clearest Whedon gave Cyborg the shortest end of the stick. We get full backstory here and a better idea of who the character is, what he can do, etc. Steppenwolf is also a more fully-realized villain here. His design's more impressive, his fighting ability makes more sense, and he has motive beyond Shiny Alien Wants to Conquer Earth. He has wronged his master Darkseid in the past and figures he can get back in his good graces by enslaving Earth for him. We only caught a glimpse of Darkseid in the original but he sure shows up here.

Other actors like Willem Dafoe and Kiersey Clemons, who'd been cut from the original, are able to deliver and expand their parts here, and even ones who weren't in it (like Jared Leto's Joker) pop by.

There are still some Snyderisms I'm not keen on. The sky is always this burnt sienna sheen from the sun in a perpetual state of setting behind some clouds. The slo-mo speed-up slo-mo approach to action scenes can make them seem repetitive. But I for one am happy that after everything he and his family's been through, Zack Snyder was able to return to his baby and fulfill his vision.

Justice League - Movie Review

Starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, JK Simmons, Ciaran Hinds, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, Joe Morton, Billy Crudup and Amber Heard.
Written by Chris Tessio & Joss Whedon.
Directed by Zack Snyder.

★★

Justice League was deep into pre-production when Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice opened. Zack Snyder had Dawn of Justice, Justice League, and Justice League 2 mapped out when he dove in. Darkseid was going to be DC's Thanos, the superpowerful villain who takes a few movies before he steps forward as the main villain. After the reviews of BvJ came out, Justice League plowed ahead as planned. After a personal tragedy, Zack Snyder had to bow out in the final weeks of shooting, leading to Joss Whedon stepping in and finishing the job, doing extensive rewrites and reshoots to try to save it. It shows.

The Frankenstein's monster of a movie that emerges is ultimately better than BvJ or Suicide Squad, but not by much. It's weaker than Man of Steel, and seeing Gal Gadot try to make this work after the far superior Wonder Woman dominated the summer is a little embarrassing.

Let me go into what I liked. I thought Flash (Ezra Miller) was hilarious. He was my favorite character, and he should get his own movie. Henry Cavill, who is billed second so you know Superman won't stay dead, has the best scene in the movie during those first few minutes after he's been resurrected. When he shows up, I thought to myself, "Yeah, Superman's been missed." I kinda liked Jason Momoa's Aquaman. The tiny tiny amount of work Jeremy Irons and JK Simmons were given as Alfred and Gordon respectively made me hope Matt Reeves keeps them when he makes his own Batman movie.

Now for what I didn't like. And this will take longer.

1. Steppenwolf. He is the main villain. He's a lesser DC entity, and as soon as he showed up, I was disappointed. You've got the great Ciaran Hinds playing him; why not use more than his voice? Steppenwolf had this generic CGI monster face complete with a double axehead for a helmet. Why not put Hinds in makeup? Or at least try to look like him a little? Plus he has those dragonfly zombie monsters from the dumb dream sequence in Batman v. Superman as his minions. As his CGI creatures that are easily killed by the dozens. Flying orcs, they.

2. The plot. Steppenwolf has three magic boxes, called mother boxes, that he must unite and it'll give him ultimate power. Feels like the same thing in Marvel with Thanos collecting infinity stones, right? Wonder Woman gives this expositional monologue about this space battle that brought Steppenwolf to power, and I remember thinking, "Did the women from Wonder Woman know all about space battles before this movie? Sure, they're goddesses, but they marveled at a WWI plane." They must have, because apparently they've been guarding one of the three mother boxes for thousands of years. Yeah yeah.

3. Cyborg. I don't know if he's the most poorly written character, or if Ray Fisher is just boring playing him. Probably a bit of both. He's definitely the Hawkeye of this bunch, where there's no desire to see him get his own stand-alone movie.

4. The direction. Snyder loves to do the slo-mo freeze frame speed-it-up-again shots in action sequences, and there are a lot of them. Plus once again, most of this movie takes place at night. Or in darkness, or shadow. Or maybe most days are cloudy.  Brighten this world up already. I love Batman in darkness, but Superman? Wonder Woman? Flash? These are DAY characters!

The post-credits teaser is kinda cool, but I just hope the fruits of that teaser are allowed to breathe a little, grow more organically.

As a kid I always thought DC had overall cooler heroes and villains than Marvel. Marvel movies have blown DC out of the water lately, and I'd like DC to get back on track. Wonder Woman showed they can be just as good, now for the people in charge of the other characters to catch up and elevate their games.

Wonder Woman - Movie Review

Starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, David Thewlis, Danny Huston, Elena Anaya, Ewen Bremner, Said Taghmaoui, Eugene Brave Rock and Lucy Davis.
Written by Allan Heinberg, Zack Snyder & Jason Fuchs.
Directed by Patty Jenkins.

★★★½

After she stole the show in Batman v. Superman, I'm not surprised Wonder Woman is still winning in her own movie. The real surprise is that DC has delivered its first really good movie since The Dark Knight.

We met Diana (Gal Gadot) in modern times, but this is her origin story. Diana is being raised to be the next queen of the Amazons, but when WWI pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crashes on to their beach, these women need to confront the outside world they've been able to ignore for millenia.

Patty Jenkins (Monster) does a good job balancing action and humor. Act I has the beach fight; terrific. Act II has No Man's Land; excellent. Act III has the big-explosions showdown with the main villain. Honestly that might be the movie's weak link, in that all of these movies tend to end with big-explosions showdowns.

Gadot captures the combination of fierceness and naivete of Wonder Woman. She has the physiciality down, but she's quite charming in her fish-out-of-water scenes where this Amazon, who's never met a man before, must now fit in 1917 England. The chemistry between Gadot and Pine is solid. Like Christopher Reeve/Margot Kidder solid.

Really enjoyed it. It's in my top five for 2017 so far.

Criminal - DVD Review

Starring Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds, Alice Eve, Michael Pitt, Jordi Molla, Scott Adkins and Amaury Nolasco.
Written by Douglas Cook & David Weisberg.
Directed by Ariel Vromen.

★★

A centrally interesting idea is at the center of this otherwise dumb movie.

Ryan Reynolds plays Bill Pope, a CIA agent who gets killed in the line of duty. He has vital information so his boss (Gary Oldman) orders a doctor who's been experimenting on memory transfers in mice brains, to do his first human test. They need someone with poor frontal lobe development, so their subject is Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner), a sociopath doing a life sentence.

The memory transfer works, but Jericho escapes from CIA custody before divulging the memories that they want.

Costner's performance is really good. It's not quite the character we've seen from him before. He's a man who's never felt remorse or felt a sense of right and wrong, but a side effect of getting Bill's memories is getting his emotions. But Oldman's CIA director is so moronic through this whole movie that it felt like artificial antagonism. There's a gritty messiness to it I kinda enjoyed, but I can't really say it was good. More of a painless time-killer.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice - Movie Review

Starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Gal Gadot, Harry Lennix and Scoot McNairy.
Written by Chris Terrio & David S. Goyer.
Directed by Zack Snyder.

★★

How to explain the most controversial movie of the year? It's not that bad, but it's not that good either.

For my money, the best Zack Snyder movie is Watchmen. Watchmen was a dense graphic novel, and Snyder was as faithful to it as about anyone possibly could be. I liked his artistry with that, and the darkness of the characters lent itself to Snyder's style. I also liked Dawn of the Dead. I also liked 300. I thought his Owls of Ga'Hoole movie was challenging.

But when he had his chance to make something wholly original, he came up with Sucker Punch, which exposed every flaw that better material had managed to hide.

Now I thought Man of Steel was okay the first time I saw it. The second time around, I hated it. The moroseness, the resurrection of Zod rather than going somewhere new, the destructo-porn finale.

Snyder, in ways, is trying to make up for the sins of Man of Steel, but it's as though he learned the wrong lessons. He's trying to bend the beginning of the Justice League into another Watchmen.

BvS has a lot in common with Amazing Spider-Man 2, a movie stuffed with characters and dense with Easter eggs alluding to futher movies, but by being so stuffed with franchise fillers, it forgets to be its own movie.

The movie picks up 18 months after the climactic events of Man of Steel, when thousands of people were killed in the final battle in Metropolis. Bruce Wayne blames Superman for what happened, as one of his buildings was destroyed in that battle, killing some of his employees. From afar, he's trying to find a way to defeat Superman and any other Kryptonians that will inevitably show up.

Superman (Henry Cavill) meanwhile, is trying to remain a good guy while his actions keep resulting in unintended consequences.

Throw into this mix Alexander "Lex" Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), a chirpy Millennial tech genius who's moving some chess pieces to keep Bats and Supes at odds without their noticing.

Eisenberg's Luthor is a quirky, twitchy guy. It's a different take on the character, and his first scene is one where you have to decide if you're going to go with it or not. My expectations were low coming into this movie, and I chose to go with it. I knew what I was getting into. I actually liked his Luthor.

In fact, most of the cast is pretty good with what they're given. I liked Affleck's Wayne. I continue to be okay with Cavill's Superman. I thought Amy Adams was better this time around as Lois Lane. The jury's still out on Gal Gadot as Diana Prince (I had a hard time understanding some of her dialogue with whatever accent that was), but her arrival as Wonder Woman is the highlight of the movie. Jeremy Irons doesn't get to do anything as Alfred.

The movie feels like it has too boxes to check. The action grinds to a halt so one character can spend two minutes watching security footage of Aquaman, the Flash, and Cyborg. Sure, those characters look like they'll be interesting in future movies, but there's no justification for the scene other than to advertise future movies. Can we focus on the one we're watching now?

It may be too late to pull Snyder from the director's chair of Justice League Part 1, but I would think the reviews will underline to Warner Bros. that they're going in the wrong direction and they should get different eyes on JL2. They already have a great director in the cast in Ben Affleck. I would love him to be able to take over.