Reviews

This is the first Marvel Movie that was truly boring. Some of the Marvel movies, like Ant Man, Black Panther, and the last two Spiderman have been pretty badly written movies, but they all have a pace and great action that engages the audience. This movie, by the halfway point had a weak skirmish between over matched US Soldiers and Fish People, a weak skirmish between over matched French Soldiers and Spear People, and finally a really run of the mill by-the-numbers "We have You surrounded!" scene where three protagonists escape US Soldiers only to face the Fish People. There is one 5 out of 10 level action fight with spears that climaxes this scene. The rest of it...the car chases, the Junior Iron man suit, the drone crashing....all of this stuff was tired lame done better before action.

For 90 minutes you watch Angela Bassett overact, Julia Dreyfus badly act, Martin Freeman do nothing. Florence Kasumba does as much as she can with her one dimensional character. Letitia Wright does a pretty good job though. Dominique Thorne I can not decide...did she suck or is the character so contrived, stupid and bad that there was nothing she could do. But it is mostly hokey and horrible. Tenoch Huerta (Prince Namor), good or bad? Competent enough, but the character simply is not Sub-Mariner.

And I will say this. Michael B. Jordan's departed Kilmonger is brought back to do a scene in the movie. Watch that scene..it is an example of the worst acting I've ever seen in a movie. This guy literally read his lines about at the competence level of High School Drama production. He is stunningly horrible in this scene.

Mainly this is just boring. An extended African send off for the late Chad Boseman, whose tragic death clearly crippled the Black Panther franchise, followed by UN Wakandaphobia, and then Sub Mariner taking Surhi down to Atlantis (10 mintues of floating through underwater Disneyland to bad music)...which isn't Atlantis now because of the horrible mistake of re-imagining one of the oldest best Marvel characters to fit Ryan Cooglers vision of non-white supremacy and conceding 'Atlantis' to DC's Aquaman. A lot of pointless chatter, scenes of people preparing for watever. A bunch of people do bad African accents. None of the dialogue is important and much of it is cliches. Part of the problem is Shuri's character doesn't have another character to bounce her conflicts off of. It probalby should have been Ironheart, but it could have been Namor. It's a miss because the true story is her emergence as the Black Panther and we just watch it...we don't really empathize with her.

The second half of the movie comes down to an attempt to recreate the Avengers Age of Ultrom climax fight scene, right down to a bunch of slo-mo co-ordinated fight choreography with all the players 'working together'. I can give credit where it is due, it finally delivers the missing action that we expect from a Marvel epic. But at no point is this battle as good as the epic fights we have seen from the Wakandans in the Avenger Movies and Black Panther 1.

I also believe this movie is a bellwether. It is the first time Marvel Studios has made a mistake that Sony and Warners keep making with their Marvel and DC stories. You took one of the best Silver Age characters...Sub Mariner and you rewrote the back story to fit your director's needs. Bad Move. Namor is 'Roman' backward. He wasn't a 'meso American'. The exact thing that made Iron Man and Captain America (and teh first X-Men) work so well was the idea that all you needed to do was follow the Silver Age story. Sony wasted Dr. Doom and Silver Surfer by changing them. DC has done the same with Flash, Atom, Hawkman.

I expect this is the start of the decline of Marvel. Silver Age was 1 Million Unit / Month comic books. Those charactes are iconic. Black Panther was one of them. But when you start moving into the 1970s and post that...those comic book characters never had popularity. Nobody cares about 'The Marvels', nobody is going to run out to see Iron Heart with Dom Thorne; and Shuri as Black Panther, or Anthony Mackie as a new Captain America will not have the automatic audience that the original Silver Age characters had. And as we see more efforts by more diverse directors...we are going to get less popular characters being made into movies by people who are just doing a job...they are not particularly enamored of the Comic book genre. (To his credit, Jordan Peele turned down directing one of these movies for that reason, 'Comics are not really my thing')

This is a super slow moving movie. It is supposed to be atmospheric. The boondocks of farm town remote backward religious Ireland. People eke out a subsistence living and cling to Catholic doctrines while the underbelly of life makes it all hypocrisy. A psychologically damaged Nurse is sent from London to observe a child supposedly performing a miracle by surviving with no food, only manna from heaven. That is the whole story. You learn about the nurse, you learn about the family and its suffering and pain, you learn how this innocent girl is in the deep end of the pool and drowning while everyone watches.

The film uses a pointless 'this is a play about this...' which adds nothing to the story. The filmography is bleak and subdued. There are a lot of stock characters behaving in stock ways. It is a psychological drama, about a woman who needs saving by finding something to hold dear in her life, which she finds in the fate of this innocent girl. But it moves very slowly and has a contrived and fairytale like ending that brings it all down.

Florence Pugh overacts but more subtly than in some of her other roles. Kíla Lord Cassidy relies on whispering her confused, hurt, lost, despondent utterances to appear innocent and damaged, it is endearing, but there is no point where she really gets enough meat or sense dialogue to establish the performance as anything more than adequate. Nobody else is bad in their roles of nuns, doctors, inn keepers, farmers...but not much is asked from anyone.

This is less a psychological deep dive, and more a melodramatic woman's movie with a too simple happy an ending.

Let's start with this: Nicolas Cage was great in this movie. He's funny, weird, wild and seems to have said.... I know this sucks, but I'm going to go for it.

And then I thought of Christopher Lee playing Dracula in Hammer Horror movies of the early 70's who told them.... I'm stooping to doing this crap...but I'm not going to dignify it by actually speaking any lines. So Christopher Lee made a few of these movies where he is the star and he does nothing but hiss at people. I was wondering if Nick may have done the same thing?

None of the other actors comes off well though.

I would also say that this was a master class in low budget movie making. There is nothing here relative to any 21st Century movie making. No CGI. No Big Scenes. The fights are as fast and furious as they can be due to pacing, scene cutting. A few misses here and there, but for the most part they are funny and engaging. The soundtrack works. You know you are watching schlock, but its funny and works somehow.

The story is actually told by narrative. First, a young teen, Liv explains part of it. A little later the Sheriff tells her deputy the rest of the story. None of it really matters because we get it. There are evil creepy Amusement Park Animatronics. There are a surplus of young teen agers to be slaughtered. How and Why is not relevant really.

A few things were missing. Who was Nick Cage? He took everything in stride to the point that I thought his character would be explained. And why did he bring the Punch drinks and need them? And why pinball? Why didn't he talk to anyone? I was more or less left scratching my head wondering.

It is super silly. It is super dumb. Nick Cage is cooler than us. Laugh, it is Roger Corman / Ed Woods kind of fun.

The question is why? We get a few of the same badly constructed characters. The tough guy who can't control his temper and wants to boss everyone. The college student who is too young to die. The heroine and the guy that buddies up with her...and then the spare people that used to beam down with Captain Kirk and not make it home.

Exactly like the Cube: you mysteriously wake up. You want to get out. You encounter other people, deadly traps, and a seemingly hidden plot that you believe is steering you to redemption.

In this story, everyone is given a clue. There are markers that reveal a map route. The assembled bunch argue their way around while traps and death await around every corner.

The end seemed designed to rather than explain anything...leave you in cliffhanger that could become part II of the story.

LIke the cube, its not badly directed or made. The minimalist settings work better than the b-rate acting deserves. None of the actors stand out.

I didn't hate this movie, but the plot fizzled out and the characters are not compelling. I can't recommend it.

This movie is nothing that you haven't seen before. It's a story about a haunted Mansion out in the countryside. It jumps right into the plot fairly quickly. It has a lot of completely cliche horror story tropes.

The anomic teen daughter. The persevering momma bear who is determined to solve the mystery. The moron kid that keeps playing video games and is stuck standing out in the cold waiting for mom to pick him up late at school again. The useless dad that laughs at the idea the house is haunted. A trip to see the previous owner who is disturbed in a wheel-chair in a nursing home who 'she doesn't talk much' who then explains everything to mom. The expert who mom takes her tale to...who explains the back story of occult happening to her.

So, there is 100% nothing new in this story. Yet...if you like horror movies, there is nothing to complain about. All the acting is fine. The direction is pretty tight. The music is overdone and for the first 2/3rds of the movie...dramatic pulsating music is used to induce horror in you...and then nothing much happens.

But...the finish is pretty strong when it gets there. The evil is explained and mostly makes sense, and the ending is a classic horror story ending.

For the most part I enjoyed this movie. Its a comfortable solid effort that takes you back to movies you've seen before, but it still is fun to watch.

I think this is one of the worst pictures ever made about Vikings without Kirk Douglas. There is no reason to watch this movie except for the artistic Viking religious symbolic vision/dream sequences that the director uses.

The Plot is older than snow. A rich young prince is a-partying with his war-worn brave powerful father, who is teaching him how to grow up to be a heroic royal personage. Suddenly...Dad gets whacked, Mom gets carried-off and our young prince escapes death and swears revenge against the regicidal maniacs who ruined the party. That's it. Been done a hundred times.

So what makes this different? Nothing. There is a lot of corny dialogue and a bunch of horrible accents. He grows up, comes back, and as an unknown unrecognized entity, makes an impression, gets a love interest. Things get amped up with the dream sequences about Odin and his Ravens, Valhalla, and a bunch of other weird Viking crap. At the end, he goes for revenge....because after all that was his fate.

The movie is well directed, there are annoying Chapters with Viking Runes that are translated for each step of the story. There is Willem Dafoe, doing crazy Viking, which isn't a big reach for him. There is the Ice Queen of Botoxia, Nicole Kidman, whose strange frozen visage and giant inflated plastic surgery lips are a visual distraction in a Viking story. Everybody else tries for a tough guy nordic act...and it was actually done better by. Travis Fimmel in the Viking TV show. Alexander Skarsgård is not a bad actor, but in this movie its jus about him being buff and pumped up. Anya Taylor-Joy is named Olga, so she goes for a bad Russian Accent instead of a Nordic one. She does a good job for the most part as the love interest.

The whole thing is just weird and mostly boring. It doesn't go anywhere. For me it dragged, was slow moving, and just seemed like something that had been done before.

I am pretty stunned that this movie is as popular as it is. It's basically a contrived gimmick to pull together the characters from past Spidey incarnations and crack a lot of jokes.

I have never been a fan of Tom Holland's take on Spiderman as a good hearted teen-ager being overly deferential to every adult he deals with. It's a one-note performance and from the start it's been contrived and unconvincing. Andrew Garfield relied on looking at the ground and foot-shuffling when he was trying to portray Spiderman. Holland just calls everyone 'Sir' all the time.

So...in a stupid corny contrived scene, Spiderman can't shut up long enough to allow Dr. Strange to cast a spell and everything is set in motion. Dimensional reality is breached and the other Spider Men from other Universes wind up in the new Spider Man's reality. So do all the old baddies from the old movies. Doc Occ/Goblin/SandMan/Electro/Lizard Man. So the three Spideys + Zendaya and her giant nose and Spider's Nerd Pal join together to correct the histories of multiple universes and they succeed but at a huge cost.

There is a ton of 'jokey' humour in this junk food burger that doesn't work. There are standard Marvel CGI effects. There are a strangely bunch of complacent half-hearted no motivation baddies.

The whole thing is horribly contrived, doesn't make sense, the characters don't act in sensible fashion, and our Hero is left with nothing but his super-hero identity....which we are left with the idea that that is all he needs because it is his destiny.

Plot wise this movie was as bad as The Eternals. It is basically a movie for kids I guess. Fundamentally it was simple, stupid, contrived. Like a Big Mac, it filled you up, left you sluggish and wishing you had eaten something of better quality.

This fails completely in every possible way.

Ethan Sharrett. Amy Lindsay acted well enough to be in a 4-5 star movie. Jeneta St. Clair is not totally horrible. Andrew Hernon and Stewart Calhoun are Acting 101 bad.

I usually try to appreciate low budget films and the constraints that that causes, but here, the crew quarters just look like a bedroom in someone's house. The CGI is a little below 1990s TV CGI...not quite as good as Startrek TNG level....but that is not that distracting. Overall they don't achieve the look and feel of a space ship. It is all too low quality and not done carefully enough. There are a number of low budget films that did more with as a little. (The Shasta Triangle, Offseason, Bloody Hell). This just seems like the director didn't care enough.

And the story? First a space ship goes to get water from Europa....ya it's a big ship but that looks like enough water to last about 2 days for any sizeable group of people. And then they come out of 'stasis' and find Earth is blown to hell and humanity is gone. So the ship designed to travel a half billion miles is now going to travel for light years to the next potentially sun that might have a planet fit for human life...and power back up with 'solar power' somehow?

And then it gets unrealistic...after that.

And after positing a sudden miracle...that occurs...sure enough the guy that believes in God is the deranged socio-path. And the 1 in 10,000 chance of finding a solar system that supports life a few million light-years away...sure we hit that jack pot.

You just ask yourself, why did the director think this story was worth filming? A team of 5th graders could have spit-balled a better idea in an afternoon of chugging root beer.

This is the wrong rabbit-hole to go down. It probably could be on a list of the worst Sci-fi movies ever made.

I like Sci-fi and Horror genres, so I like to see what lower budget productions do to get by their limitations. I think here director Barry Levy does nothing to discredit himself. He gets a good feel of basic dread and horror from sound and some grey woods. The special effects are limited, but mostly they effectively convey what is needed .

There are a lot of scenes that fade to black, and a lot establishing shots of snails and spiders. That works against him. I wish he had been more creative with those.

The concept of the story is pretty strong. A young woman who's father disappeared while conducting a science experiment in the woods of her home town, returns years later armed with his notes, hoping to recreate the scenario that made him disappear. That's pretty classic Sci-Fi right there, and the explanations work, seem Sci-Fi reasonable enough and the idea supports a movie.

The shorter run time helps in that the story stays relatively focused and it doesn't take any off-ramps or distractions, so I stayed engaged enough. But what hurt was too little story time in clarifying the motives and story behind what ultimately turns out to be the bad-guys. They could have been super-cool, but instead we are left more with a WTF type of feeling.

I'm not sure that I would blame any of the actresses for what doesn't work in this movie. Overall, the problems seem more with the specific dialogue and the lack of depth and personality of the characters.

At the start of the movie we get a somewhat drawn out explanation of each character as they arrive at the entrance to the woods. They all know each other from having grown up in the town of Shasta. One is disliked, one is a little off, one is just there, and then there is the heroine and her police-lady buddy. I think the script failed to give each character enough weight to allow us to classify them in standard movie horror tropes.

Ayanna Berkshire stand out as the Police. She is armed, she has her wits about her, and she has the role of the faithful sidekick. We know who her character is supposed to be and it works. Dani Lennon, Madeline Merritt. Deborah Lee Smith do less well because the characters they play are either not well-defined as a trope, or just not given enough to clue us in. Is Lennon a brave and determined girl seeking answers, or just a confused twit? I couldn't tell. Madeline Merritt acts fine, but isn't given much to say or do. Smith, seemed to be the extra guy beamed down with Spock and Kirk to get killed off. She plays a nerdy neurotic and is meant to be a little annoying. I wish any of them had some better moments to show us what they could do. Helenna Santos plays the Mean Girl who we are meant to hate, but she is also smart. She gives a decent performance, but she should have been a villain, and ultimately her role is written too vaguely for it to fit our expectations. If each character had a more defined purpose and personality it probably would have worked better. Instead everyone except Berkshire just come off as a little insipid.

The story ends with a good twist regarding our heroine, but again a little more time spend in that dimension solidifying at least whether her Father was a Good guy or some kind of Bad guy, or what? We are kind of left in the WTF was that state again.

And then at the end, we get one last curve ball thrown at us, which is classic Sci-fi and it worked.

This is not a great movie, it is a low budget horror movie. In terms of that, there are some good parts here, overall tone and concept are good. A few more scenes and more adherence to character development in standard sci-fi tropes would have helped it.

There are a lot familiar wise guy faces in this movie. That is the one redeeming thing about this film. Jimmy Caan, Frank Vincent, Vincent Pastore, Pat Cooper, Vincent Vella. You certainly can't blame the mediocrity on these guys. They are capable of giving you high level gangster.

To me, the single biggest mistake is that Director Provenzano, decided to take the lead role. This movie would have gained at least a single star average rating if Christian Maelen had played the lead rather than the buddy. He seemed smoother, more 'mob' like, was better looking, and he acted at least decently. (Although all the young gang were doing the Soprano Jersey Wise Guy Act a little to obviously).

Provenzano needed to put more time into the script writing and directing. First, they way overdid the Goodfella's wise guys telling stories schtick too much. It came across as unoriginal and forced.

Although somewhat low budget, the issue was the really basic framing of scenes, and lack of thought or style put into them.

The story itself needed work. "How much are we going to make?" "oh...1 Billion, maybe 2 Billion, maybe more. We want 400 million, you can have the rest". I mean...this sounds like a meeting between Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer...not real gangsters....oh wait...nvm.

So none of that seemed very well considered or developed. But that lack of realism would not have mattered as much, the banal hit scenes wouldn't have mattered as much, if we related more to the young gang. Instead, we just see some stiff standard wise guy scenes were guys get whacked and people talk Soprano talk. We don't really get to know their personal lives, their girl friends...why the hitman who appears to be a 'made guy' is Irish. There is a trip to Florida where one guy goes on a boat and talks to some Cuban mobsters...but that seems completely pointless to the story. There is a murder in a restaurant that makes little sense. The back-stabbing mobsters do obviously dumb things for no real sensible reason, except as the excuse needed to get rubbed-out for the story's sake.

And the black guy who played the FBI Agent in charge of hunting the Gang seemed liked a random guy they brought in off the street. The entire FBI contingent of the story was horribly done.

It's too bad. Jimmy Caan and Frank Vincent deserved better.

Premise is a standard horror trope. Someone called back to a remote town or village by what seems to be circumstance, but ultimately is a plot by a mysterious evil peril. And in this case, we seem to be borrowing the milieu from Lovecraft.

This film is anchored by a protagonist who has to carry the entire enterprise on her shoulders. Jocelin Donahue pulls it off. She is lovely, tired, scared, confused and is a solid actress that makes it work. No other character has that much screen time or relevance, but nobody really does a bad job. Melora Walters is solid in her role as Marie's mom.

The little town filled with weird people who don't ever answer questions when you ask. The plot device of a townie who pulls you aside to let you know something isn't right and they will help. There is nothing new here. And we have a low budget, and no grand affects. So we need pacing, music, flashbacks, quick cuts to keep us engaged and for the most part the director, Mickey Keating does a good job.

The story is about impending inevitable doom. So this is just a ride watching Donahue's Marie character react as she is led further and further into the trap being set by evil.

We start, carry on, and end in fairly standard horror movie fashion. There is nothing new or wild here. But overall, it is engaging and fairly well-done. This type of horror maybe lacks the cheap scares that certain movie-goers require, but as a fan of horror, I can appreciate it for what it is. A well executed small budget horror movie.

This movie starts with a very cliched set of events. The troubled country bumpkin warned by her homey loving Granny about the evils of the big city. The fish out of water not cutting it with the Mean Girls. As soon as the guy offers to help her on the step...I thought...OK...he is the love interest. She overhears them catting about her in the bathroom. This just seemed like a bad teen movie.

Then it seems to be turning into some kind of off-beat musical where she begins to dream herself into 60's Soho and sees (or inhabits) an Austin Powers sixty party girl trying to make it. Only this isn't a rocker flower-power Rolling Stones London, it is more like a remnant of the fifties and old school suit and tie club scene...only the young girls are rocking the minis and the boots.

So...our hero is inspired in fashion design by her dreams, but then everything takes a dark turn.

And we are in some kind of murder mystery movie. She is through her dreams, some kind of clairvoyant getting vibes of a long ago case. Only then it turns into a horror movie...and the final events play out in the present day..

Thomasin McKenzie seems like she is doing what the director wants...play the simpleton bumpkin. She is at first mousy, then pretty with big-eyed innocence. She is so innocent that her casual interracial relationship based on little chemistry or emotional investment doesn't really work. I was rooting for her, but the juxtapositions of her character and the possibility that she could be crazy just make the role kind of weird.

Anna Taylor Joy does the Hippy Shake and rocks the look, but playing the apparition of a lost age...she really doesn't have to do much.

Diana Riggs is gem. Terrance Stamp is not really developed, which makes sense in the trajectory of the plot, since we aren't supposed to root for him, and he does menacing so well that I wish his part had been bigger. Michael Ajao also need a larger roll. Basically he is a complete stranger who keeps saying 'you can talk to me' for some reason to a weird crazy chick. You don't really care about him, his relationship with her doesn't really click given her character, and the film just didn't put him in the plot enough for us to accept him or care about him.

I think this would have worked better without the Mean Girls, and without the horror. You could have had a pretty tense psychological thriller about a prescient clairvoyant uncovering a sordid sixties murder story. Instead we got weighed down into too many half thought out ideas and directions.

Begin with an elite all-girls academy. There is a clique of cool girls. There is a bee-ach ring leader, a nerd or two, a token black chick. A token Asian chick. Seance...call forth something evil. Pretty young girls die taking showers and walking home down darkened paths one by one. OK. That sounds familiar.

First girl that dies is suddenly replaced by an outsider....who of course is there for a purpose. OK. That sounds familiar.

Next Step...is there a Ghost, or is this a deranged serial killer slashing hot young school girls?

Throw in the brooding young hot guy caretaker who befriends the girl, and an tough as nails old School Principal to keep everyone in line, as she tries to protect her Academy from the scandal of each seemingly disconnected accidental death.

You as a horror viewer should be pretty comfortable with all this. What goes wrong?

Really dumb arbitrary things. Immediately at the point where the diminishing cadre of young murder victims decides together that yes...indeed...there is actually a ghost doing this, the ring-leaders buddy says..."No you guys all go on, I'm going to the empty dance room to practice dancing alone in the dark for a while". I mean...seriously?

And ultimately that is what happens to this story. The School Principal just disappears and has nothing to do with anything at the end. The explanation for the killings just seems contrived and somewhat random. Oh...that's why. For unexplained reasons the main character seems to be armed and trained...except she keeps getting her butt kicked. Then...ya...she was 'a close friend' of the dead girl growing up...so that is how she stole an identity that gained her entrance to an exclusive school that somehow was magically financed because she was some kind of butt-kicking person for some reason. And....well...there was a ghost...I guess it was the ghost of her friend...not the first ghost after all.... and then she turns out to be gay and lets her newest friend know that she will come back to her, so the best concept of the movie, two superhot model looking chicks being gay with each other never happens....which shows us a bigger problem, the point of a teenage girls getting slashed movie is to titillate us with sexual innuendo that is juxtaposed as the killer's motivation for revenging all that hormonal sin of these young girls.

I can't argue with the idea that the cast is all a little too adult for their roles, but that didn't bother me as much as the two good guys....are played by two girls that are bean-pole models. They can't act and they seem like bored 30 year-olds hoping to break into movies.

Confused story, weak acting and cast, direction fine. At the lower end of this genre.

I'm not obsessed with comic book movies, but I grew up reading comic books. So, I truly enjoyed Iron Man, Captain America and the other Marvel Characters being brought to life so well with amazing special effects that truly brought Marvel to life.

But I never got that thrill from DC comics (which I read as much as Marvel as a kid). There is an inherent problem with Superman, which is the basis of Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen. An immortal all powerful being would have a universe to play in...would Earth and it's petty humanity really be worth his time in the long run? And when you put that character into the hands of people who don't understand the comic world, but are just movie makers doing it for a buck... you get Superman's creation story and Lex Luthor over and over. You get the Joker and the Penguin over and over. There is no vision and no love for the characters, they simply pick the surface. This is what makes Man of Steel standout...a spin...He is an alien trying to fit in unnoticed. Snyder got the character. In the same way, Nolan went to Ra's al Ghul and Bane....realizing that following up the Joker with the Riddler and Penguin was just treading in shallow water.

All of which brings me to 2016's Suicide Squad. Let's get Margot Robbie (the Hollywood It girl of that moment) and pair her with (everyone likes) Will Smith. But then...they made a movie with a story, graphics and monsters that seemed to come from Resident Evil. The entire effort seemed to be made by people who just didn't care. Marvel got GOTG to fly...time for us to go a little weird. But when Suicide Squad walked down a set street and shot up the goo-monsters I thought I was watching a movie made in 1985.

Seeing they plucked Gunn to do a mulligan and that shanked tee shot...I was hesitant. Suicide Squad has a problem. The audience doesn't know or care about who these people(?) are. The concept is the Dirty Dozen. You're rotten bastards and we will give you a chance at redemption, only we are really sending you to die. Ha Ha.

In GOTG, Gunn's first movie overcomes that problem...he introduces us to the characters and the entire purpose of the movie is to show us the shared events that turned them from strangers into a family that we rooted for. That remains the biggest flaw of this new movie. Although we've seen an origin story of Harley Quinn in previous DC movies, that can't be said about everyone else. It is somewhat compounded by the film's beginning misdirect...which assumes it is funny or clever to whack a load of crazed Squaders that we don't care about before revealing the true story line. It eats some time, has a few chuckles, but ultimately it has nothing to do with what is going on.

So now, I'm finally with Dead Shot and a couple of others that I don't care about. The biggest drag down now becomes John Cena, who simply can not act. It is not easy to make one consider how well Dwayne Johnson and Dave Bautista actually deliver their lines, but Cena does it.

So, I'm now 45 minutes into this movie, and the enemy is a bunch of stereotyped 3rd world Hispanic Oppressors guarding a Tower that is the target, and Harley Quinn is their prisoner. I'm sitting here not impressed, and not all that engaged. Gunn is obviously a step-up in special effects and cinematography but I don't know who this girl with the rats is, or care about the polka dot guy. Everything seems jokey and overly attempting to be clever. Idris Alba does the best he can, but I don't see anything special.

But...then the 3rd act begins. Harley Quinn escapes captivity in a bloody, stylish choreographed escape that seems to be out of a page of Gunn's GOTG. And, from that point on, every thing I was waiting for happens. This movie morphs into one stunning visionary visual experience after another. The comedy starts landing, the characters become compelling, the action builds and builds, and the whole thing becomes a crazy beautiful explosion of colorful movie magic.

When it was all over I shook my head and said...'That was awesome'. I enjoyed it, it delivered. I hope Gunn comes back to this one and makes a sequel.

There are two metrics relevant to ZSJL. First is the JWJL of 2017, the other is, of course, The Avengers Saga.

The JWJL Movie attempted to use the Flash's Nebbish Neurosis and Aguaman's slacker angst as comic relief. Whedon obviously used these two devices to try to match the light-hearted humor that is seamlessly integrated throughout the Marvel Universe. In terms of box office, you can assume that Studio Bigwigs wanted to see this kind of movie...laden with flashy action sequences and one liners by stars. But the problem is that the Avengers was a stew of many parts slowly developed over a series of movies. You knew who Thor was. You knew Ironman was a quipster. You knew the GOTG was based upon sly puns and buddy humor. Those jokes came naturally. But...when the Flash is doing a George Costanza routine...it was a little off putting.

And then there is the multiple movie Universe Spanning arc of the Avengers. Little did we know that the Red Skull in Captain America had an Infinity Stone, or that Loki did. This decade long series of hints and easter eggs slowly developed into the Galactic Space Opera Infinity Wars/End Game. We were ready for it. In Whedon's movie, Steppinwolf and the unity of the boxes, just did not have the Gravitas needed to compel us.

Snyder's four hour multi-chapter movie tries to correct some of these mistakes.

The Aquaman Movie took care of that character. The Flash movie is coming, so they didn't do much to explain him, they simply toned down the Woodie Allen act and played him a little straighter. Cyborg, for me, is maybe one of the best comic characters. There is a poignant tragedy behind the character, and Ray Fisher is way underrated in how well he brings pathos to that character. I personally would have loved to have seen a separate origin film for Cyborg. I personally like Affleck as Batman in the sense he looks like Batman. But the personal dynamics of Dawn of Justice viciousness between two supposedly intelligent good guys never really worked, and neither does their new found alliance. At their core...they both seem like dicks. Gal Godot brings an exotic aspect to Wonder Woman that works in all the movies so far.

So what do we wind up with. Certainly a better told, slower paced, slow brew story that sheds humor and becomes completely earnest and somewhat dark. We get some strange out of left field components that are related to the expansion of the DC Cinematic Universe, the Multiverse scenario that both Marvel and DC are moving towards, and a possible extension of some future story involving these Justice League Characters, Jared Leto's Batman, The Martian Manhunter and a run amok Superman.

Maybe this take goes too far in shedding the light-hearted humor of a Summer Action movie. Maybe the big fight climax is not that much different or better than the first version. It still falls short of the Marvel plot and pace. It still would have been improved if origin movies of the other characters had been done first. Batman and Superman still come across as stiffs. All in all, we are not humming as smoothly as Marvel has done.

This movie decides to be stylish. Comical quick-cuts and back tracks, a main character who carries on a conversation with himself for no real reason, and unexplained horror are lumped together to give Ben O'Toole a reel he can use to try to land the next Ironman incarnation.

We get O'Toole doing his best Robert Downey Jr. comic toss-offs in the middle of action sequences. Other than that, there is nothing going on here.

He is some guy....somewhere and then something happens and he deals with it and it makes no sense that it ruins his life. So he tries to escape his past and something happens and he deals with it....because despite his hallucinating projection of his ego .... he is just a super cool dude at his core.

The monster makes no sense. The people around him make no sense. But he is so busy talking to himself, and doing RD jr. wise-cracks, it doesn't matter.

Everything starts trivially, proceeds trivially and comes to a trivial conclusion. You'll chuckle a few times and see a few weird things, and then think....why did I watch this?