Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.
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I can't stop thinking about In Hot Pursuit (would that I could). I forgot to mention that most of the vehicles in the movie looked as if they were purchased from a demolition derby (and viewers are just supposed to ignore it, I guess). At on point, Oosh and Doosh decide to rob an armored car to pay their boss back for the vehicles and pot they lost on their last job abd decide to rob an armored car. The "armored car" is a 1950s Chevy van, painted black and white, with the words "armored car" stencilled on the side. (It's like avante garde theater.) the end credits run a slogan I have never seen before: "No stuntmen were used in the filming of this movie."
My wife and I watched The Flash, finally. My wife really liked it (and cried during Barry's unspoken goodbye to his Mom). "This movie is about death," she said, and its inevitability. "And who wouldn't want a last conversation with their Mom?" she said.
It probably helps that she thinks Ezra Miller is handsome and has only heard vaguely that they have legal problems without knowing the details. Anyway, we watched it in two sessions separated by a couple of days, and she wants to watch it again all the way through.
I'm on the fence. It was OK, but I'm not sure I could sit through it again.
For one thing, I don't think Ezra Miller is handsome. And I do know the details of his legal problems. In short: I find him icky, and he's on screen a LOT.
And some of the babies at the beginning looked like the dolls they were. Despite the huge budget, my wife commented midway through "it's too bad they had such a limited budget." (Then I told her what the budget was, to her shock.) And "dumb Barry," as we dubbed him, was pretty irritating. And the congress of worlds bit was hard for me to follow, with the Nic Cage bit too confusing for anyone who hasn't obsessively read everything about comic book movies. (I understood it instantly, but then my brain said, "Why?" not "Cool!")
But I really enjoyed the Batman bits. (Honestly, every time they used the 1989 Batman theme I got chills.) They really dropped the ball not having Keaton avaiable for the long term. In all the negative reviews, I didn't see word one about the movie's themes, which -- my wife is right -- is about the inevitability of death. Not just Nora, but Earth-Keaton. There's the "path untaken" aspect, with Barry turning into a slacker when he has a doting Mom. (Be careful what you wish for.) Heck, even co-workers Albert Desmond (future Dr. Alchemy/Mr. Element) and Nora Spivot (future girlfriend) become slackers. I loved Sasha Callie's badass Kara. (And I don't usually like variant Super-outfits, which try too hard, but I really liked this one. Simple and effective.)
While I didn't care for the Nic Cage cameo, I did like seeing George Reeves, Adam West, John Wesley Shipp and Christopher Reeve. (I always love Shipp in the Garrick uniform. He is PERFECT for that role.) But the topper was Christopher Reeve and Helen Slater in the same scene, and even interacting a bit. I don't know how they did that, but it made my brain swirl with the might-have-beens of the Reeve era. (Darn that fourth movie!)
We still don't have an explanation for Flash's cameo in Batman v Superman, where he warns Wayne that "Lois Lane is the key," but I don't care. Any effort to explain it would have dragged us back into the Snyderverse, where I never want to go again. What a miserable, hopeless, nasty place that is.
In all those Batmen, did we see Christopher Bale or Val Kilmer? They could have lifted scenes from their respective movies, but I don't remember seeing them. Or the Batmen of the serials, either. I guess you have to draw the line somewhere, or we'd start having Smallville and Gotham cameos. Which, honestly, I would have preferred over a cameo to Nic Cage's non-existent film.
The tl;dr is that I found Flash a decent movie, but I don't think I'll ever watch it again. YMMV.
ClarkKent_DC > Captain ComicsSeptember 22, 2023 at 10:25pm
I saw The Flash a while ago but hadn't put down my thoughts.Might as well do so now ...
Let me throw up a , cause I'm not going to try to avoid spilling any.
First off, this was a notorious box-office flop, said the be the biggest money-loser in the entire history of Warner Bros. Worse, it went on to be the biggest money-losing superhero movie ever. How, pray tell, do you manage THAT?
By hanging the movie on an unlikeable lead actor.
The studio poobahs were big on Ezra Miller's performance, and I can see why (more later), but the bad buzz (for months!) over Miller's off-screen lifemust have kept a lot of people away. It definitely kept my son's adorable girlfriend from seeing it.
Of course, bad buzz and poor box office says nothing about whether any given movie is entertaining in its own right. And I actually found The Flash ... more entertaining than I expected. Granted, my expectations were low, because I have never, not even once, believed that Miller was playing Barry Allen, in this movie or any other movie -- at least, not the Barry Allen I grew up with since Showcase #4. The movie version of "Barry Allen" was an blend of Impuse and Peter Parker, with odd nervous tics and snappy, unfunny quips that were totally off-putting.
Worse, The New 52 version of "Barry Allen" in the comics has been saddled with a tragic backstory of a murdered parent, just like Batman, and the movie has followed suit So, again, we must lament that what works for Batman doesn't necessarily apply to everyone else!
But here we are.
So ... we get "Barry Allen" struggling to clear his father, wrongfully arrested and convicted for the murder of his mother. He attempts to do so through time travel (I've already forgotten how) which results in him being shunted to an alternate universe where the murder hasn't happened: Mom is alive, Dad is still at home ... and so is this realm's "Barry Allen," who is one of my least-favorite character types, a whiny, useless slacker. "Barry" and "Alt-Barry" team up for the rest of the story because, somehow, "Barry's" time travel screwed up the moment when General Zod attacked the Earth in Man of Steel (I forget how), and they have to set things right, so they need help. Help they get from, of all people, Michael Keaton's Batman, and this alternate universe's Supergirl.
Miller plays both versions of "Barry Allen" and does a good job with it; original "Barry" gets more serious as the stakes escalate and slacker "Alt-Barry" grows up a lot, too.
I was cool with the special effects, mostly, although that set-piece at the beginning with the babies verged on Tex Avery-type silliness. The fanboy in me loved the fanservice cameos of DC movie heroes from other films. (I am firmly of the belief that it is not possible to have too much fanservice.) And I got a thrill out of the surprise cameo at the end.
By the way, I ran across an article that posited The Flash and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have basically the same plot: Young hero knows parent is fated to die, moves Heaven and Earth to prevent it, and mightily screws up the timeline. This writer, however, posited that Across the Spider-Verse was the better movie because "Barry Allen" failed in his mission -- he couldn't prevent Mom's fate -- but there was still room for Miles Morales to find a way to save his father. Easy for him to say; Across the Spider-Verse didn't finish the story!)
Like Cap, I don't ever expect to watch The Flash again, mostly because I find Ezra Miller too off-putting. And I wonder about the judgment of the Warner Bros. poobahs who thought this movie could succeed in spite of that. It's not like Ezra Miller has the kind of public goodwill that someone like Tom Hanks or Denzel Washington has.
I watched Flash recently as well. I don't have a lot to add to what Cap and Clark said, but I had heard a lot of negative stuff about it, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It felt like they were trying to turn the movie version of the character into Spider-Man: lots of social awkwardness and angst (not to mention the multiverse aspect that has dominated the latest movies). The TV version is more like the character I remember. But it was a lot of fun, and I liked the way Batman and Supergirl worked into the story.
OFFICE SPACE (1999): We took a night off from the drive-in to watch something different (Tracy's choice). We had seen it before, but I think I blocked most of it when I worked in that office. Now that I am no longer so close to it, I can appreciate it more.
Somehow I never saw this movie. It's on Tubi, but only for a few more days. Shelley Winters had a long career, starting out as a young love interest, transitioning to more complicated characters. She always gave the best performance the role allowed.
IMDB Storyline:
"A retelling of the old tale of Hansel and Gretel, but set in 1920's England. To the children and staff at the orphanage, Auntie Roo is a kindly American widow who gives them a lavish Christmas party each year in her mansion, Forrest Grange. In reality, she's a severely disturbed woman, who keeps the mummified remains of her little daughter in a nursery in the attic. One Christmas, her eye falls upon a little girl who reminds her of her daughter and she imprisons her in her attic. Nobody believes her brother, Christopher, when he tells them what's happened, so he goes to rescue her.—Mark"
Apparently this sub-genre is called "psycho biddy." It's enjoyable and tougue in cheek.
Also on Tubi and also only there for a few more days. A co-production of American International and Hammer, with Peter Cushing and Ingrid Pitt.
IMDB Storyline:
"The Countess is called away to tend a sick friend and imposes on the General to accept her daughter Marcilla as a houseguest. Some of the villagers begin dying, however, and the General's daughter Laura soon gets weak and pale, but Marcilla is there to comfort her. The villagers begin whispering about vampires as Marcilla finds another family on which to impose herself. The pattern repeats as Emma gets ill, but the General cannot rest, and seeks the advice of Baron Hartog, who once dealt a decisive blow against a family of vampires. Well, almost.—Ed Sutton"
A pretty good vampire movie with no shortage of gorgeous women, both vampires and non-vampires. Loud screaming and boobs. Since this is a 1970 movie they include girl-on-girl kissing and implied lesbian sex off screen. They were trying to push the envelope.
THUNDERBALL (1965): Yesterday I finished reading the comic strip adaptations of what I like to think of "The Blofeld Trilogy" (Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice). Because the Thunderball adaptation was truncated (for reasons we need not go into here but see "The James Bond Comic Strips" discussion for details), I decided to watch the movie version last night. It wasn't exactly as I remembered it, or rather it wasn't exactly the way I remembered the book. The book introduces SPECTRE and Blofeld, and went to great detail about the organization and the man. But SPECTRE had been lingering in the background since Dr. No (the movie), and Thunderball was just an extention of that. Earlier this year I watched the first three Connery Bonds, and now I am in the mood to continue (with You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever) tonight and tomorrow.
YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967): The only thing this movie has in common with the book is the setting (Japan) and some of the characters. Blofeld (played by Donal Pleasance this time) isn't really in much of the movie this time, either, but at least we get to see his (disfigured) face for the first time. YOLT was the conlusion of the Blofeld/SPECTRE trilogy in the books, but it's only a middle chapter in the films. I'm not going to go into too much detail here in deference to Cap who will be covering this movie in much greater depth later in his series of James Bond book/movie discussions.
Replies
I can't stop thinking about In Hot Pursuit (would that I could). I forgot to mention that most of the vehicles in the movie looked as if they were purchased from a demolition derby (and viewers are just supposed to ignore it, I guess). At on point, Oosh and Doosh decide to rob an armored car to pay their boss back for the vehicles and pot they lost on their last job abd decide to rob an armored car. The "armored car" is a 1950s Chevy van, painted black and white, with the words "armored car" stencilled on the side. (It's like avante garde theater.) the end credits run a slogan I have never seen before: "No stuntmen were used in the filming of this movie."
My wife and I watched The Flash, finally. My wife really liked it (and cried during Barry's unspoken goodbye to his Mom). "This movie is about death," she said, and its inevitability. "And who wouldn't want a last conversation with their Mom?" she said.
It probably helps that she thinks Ezra Miller is handsome and has only heard vaguely that they have legal problems without knowing the details. Anyway, we watched it in two sessions separated by a couple of days, and she wants to watch it again all the way through.
I'm on the fence. It was OK, but I'm not sure I could sit through it again.
For one thing, I don't think Ezra Miller is handsome. And I do know the details of his legal problems. In short: I find him icky, and he's on screen a LOT.
And some of the babies at the beginning looked like the dolls they were. Despite the huge budget, my wife commented midway through "it's too bad they had such a limited budget." (Then I told her what the budget was, to her shock.) And "dumb Barry," as we dubbed him, was pretty irritating. And the congress of worlds bit was hard for me to follow, with the Nic Cage bit too confusing for anyone who hasn't obsessively read everything about comic book movies. (I understood it instantly, but then my brain said, "Why?" not "Cool!")
But I really enjoyed the Batman bits. (Honestly, every time they used the 1989 Batman theme I got chills.) They really dropped the ball not having Keaton avaiable for the long term. In all the negative reviews, I didn't see word one about the movie's themes, which -- my wife is right -- is about the inevitability of death. Not just Nora, but Earth-Keaton. There's the "path untaken" aspect, with Barry turning into a slacker when he has a doting Mom. (Be careful what you wish for.) Heck, even co-workers Albert Desmond (future Dr. Alchemy/Mr. Element) and Nora Spivot (future girlfriend) become slackers. I loved Sasha Callie's badass Kara. (And I don't usually like variant Super-outfits, which try too hard, but I really liked this one. Simple and effective.)
While I didn't care for the Nic Cage cameo, I did like seeing George Reeves, Adam West, John Wesley Shipp and Christopher Reeve. (I always love Shipp in the Garrick uniform. He is PERFECT for that role.) But the topper was Christopher Reeve and Helen Slater in the same scene, and even interacting a bit. I don't know how they did that, but it made my brain swirl with the might-have-beens of the Reeve era. (Darn that fourth movie!)
We still don't have an explanation for Flash's cameo in Batman v Superman, where he warns Wayne that "Lois Lane is the key," but I don't care. Any effort to explain it would have dragged us back into the Snyderverse, where I never want to go again. What a miserable, hopeless, nasty place that is.
In all those Batmen, did we see Christopher Bale or Val Kilmer? They could have lifted scenes from their respective movies, but I don't remember seeing them. Or the Batmen of the serials, either. I guess you have to draw the line somewhere, or we'd start having Smallville and Gotham cameos. Which, honestly, I would have preferred over a cameo to Nic Cage's non-existent film.
The tl;dr is that I found Flash a decent movie, but I don't think I'll ever watch it again. YMMV.
I saw The Flash a while ago but hadn't put down my thoughts. Might as well do so now ...
, cause I'm not going to try to avoid spilling any.
Let me throw up a
First off, this was a notorious box-office flop, said the be the biggest money-loser in the entire history of Warner Bros. Worse, it went on to be the biggest money-losing superhero movie ever. How, pray tell, do you manage THAT?
By hanging the movie on an unlikeable lead actor.
The studio poobahs were big on Ezra Miller's performance, and I can see why (more later), but the bad buzz (for months!) over Miller's off-screen life must have kept a lot of people away. It definitely kept my son's adorable girlfriend from seeing it.
Of course, bad buzz and poor box office says nothing about whether any given movie is entertaining in its own right. And I actually found The Flash ... more entertaining than I expected. Granted, my expectations were low, because I have never, not even once, believed that Miller was playing Barry Allen, in this movie or any other movie -- at least, not the Barry Allen I grew up with since Showcase #4. The movie version of "Barry Allen" was an blend of Impuse and Peter Parker, with odd nervous tics and snappy, unfunny quips that were totally off-putting.
Worse, The New 52 version of "Barry Allen" in the comics has been saddled with a tragic backstory of a murdered parent, just like Batman, and the movie has followed suit So, again, we must lament that what works for Batman doesn't necessarily apply to everyone else!
But here we are.
So ... we get "Barry Allen" struggling to clear his father, wrongfully arrested and convicted for the murder of his mother. He attempts to do so through time travel (I've already forgotten how) which results in him being shunted to an alternate universe where the murder hasn't happened: Mom is alive, Dad is still at home ... and so is this realm's "Barry Allen," who is one of my least-favorite character types, a whiny, useless slacker. "Barry" and "Alt-Barry" team up for the rest of the story because, somehow, "Barry's" time travel screwed up the moment when General Zod attacked the Earth in Man of Steel (I forget how), and they have to set things right, so they need help. Help they get from, of all people, Michael Keaton's Batman, and this alternate universe's Supergirl.
Miller plays both versions of "Barry Allen" and does a good job with it; original "Barry" gets more serious as the stakes escalate and slacker "Alt-Barry" grows up a lot, too.
I was cool with the special effects, mostly, although that set-piece at the beginning with the babies verged on Tex Avery-type silliness. The fanboy in me loved the fanservice cameos of DC movie heroes from other films. (I am firmly of the belief that it is not possible to have too much fanservice.) And I got a thrill out of the surprise cameo at the end.
By the way, I ran across an article that posited The Flash and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have basically the same plot: Young hero knows parent is fated to die, moves Heaven and Earth to prevent it, and mightily screws up the timeline. This writer, however, posited that Across the Spider-Verse was the better movie because "Barry Allen" failed in his mission -- he couldn't prevent Mom's fate -- but there was still room for Miles Morales to find a way to save his father. Easy for him to say; Across the Spider-Verse didn't finish the story!)
Like Cap, I don't ever expect to watch The Flash again, mostly because I find Ezra Miller too off-putting. And I wonder about the judgment of the Warner Bros. poobahs who thought this movie could succeed in spite of that. It's not like Ezra Miller has the kind of public goodwill that someone like Tom Hanks or Denzel Washington has.
I watched Flash recently as well. I don't have a lot to add to what Cap and Clark said, but I had heard a lot of negative stuff about it, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It felt like they were trying to turn the movie version of the character into Spider-Man: lots of social awkwardness and angst (not to mention the multiverse aspect that has dominated the latest movies). The TV version is more like the character I remember. But it was a lot of fun, and I liked the way Batman and Supergirl worked into the story.
I've been putting off watching the Flash on streaming. From Cap's review, it sounds like I won't hate it when I get around to it.
OFFICE SPACE (1999): We took a night off from the drive-in to watch something different (Tracy's choice). We had seen it before, but I think I blocked most of it when I worked in that office. Now that I am no longer so close to it, I can appreciate it more.
TRAILER.
Whoever (or Who) Slew Auntie Roo? (1972)
Somehow I never saw this movie. It's on Tubi, but only for a few more days. Shelley Winters had a long career, starting out as a young love interest, transitioning to more complicated characters. She always gave the best performance the role allowed.
IMDB Storyline:
"A retelling of the old tale of Hansel and Gretel, but set in 1920's England. To the children and staff at the orphanage, Auntie Roo is a kindly American widow who gives them a lavish Christmas party each year in her mansion, Forrest Grange. In reality, she's a severely disturbed woman, who keeps the mummified remains of her little daughter in a nursery in the attic. One Christmas, her eye falls upon a little girl who reminds her of her daughter and she imprisons her in her attic. Nobody believes her brother, Christopher, when he tells them what's happened, so he goes to rescue her.—Mark"
Apparently this sub-genre is called "psycho biddy." It's enjoyable and tougue in cheek.
TRAILER
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I also watched The Vampire Lovers (1970)
Also on Tubi and also only there for a few more days. A co-production of American International and Hammer, with Peter Cushing and Ingrid Pitt.
IMDB Storyline:
"The Countess is called away to tend a sick friend and imposes on the General to accept her daughter Marcilla as a houseguest. Some of the villagers begin dying, however, and the General's daughter Laura soon gets weak and pale, but Marcilla is there to comfort her. The villagers begin whispering about vampires as Marcilla finds another family on which to impose herself. The pattern repeats as Emma gets ill, but the General cannot rest, and seeks the advice of Baron Hartog, who once dealt a decisive blow against a family of vampires. Well, almost.—Ed Sutton"
A pretty good vampire movie with no shortage of gorgeous women, both vampires and non-vampires. Loud screaming and boobs. Since this is a 1970 movie they include girl-on-girl kissing and implied lesbian sex off screen. They were trying to push the envelope.
TRAILER
Two that I've seen before. I even wrote an overview of Psycho-Biddy some years ago.
THUNDERBALL (1965): Yesterday I finished reading the comic strip adaptations of what I like to think of "The Blofeld Trilogy" (Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice). Because the Thunderball adaptation was truncated (for reasons we need not go into here but see "The James Bond Comic Strips" discussion for details), I decided to watch the movie version last night. It wasn't exactly as I remembered it, or rather it wasn't exactly the way I remembered the book. The book introduces SPECTRE and Blofeld, and went to great detail about the organization and the man. But SPECTRE had been lingering in the background since Dr. No (the movie), and Thunderball was just an extention of that. Earlier this year I watched the first three Connery Bonds, and now I am in the mood to continue (with You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever) tonight and tomorrow.
YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967): The only thing this movie has in common with the book is the setting (Japan) and some of the characters. Blofeld (played by Donal Pleasance this time) isn't really in much of the movie this time, either, but at least we get to see his (disfigured) face for the first time. YOLT was the conlusion of the Blofeld/SPECTRE trilogy in the books, but it's only a middle chapter in the films. I'm not going to go into too much detail here in deference to Cap who will be covering this movie in much greater depth later in his series of James Bond book/movie discussions.
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