Dark Knight Rises - Christopher Nolan - 2012

★★★-The Dark Knight Rises. I'm Gotham's reckoning. Here to end the borrowed time you all have been living on. Christopher Nolan directed movie from 2012. The third movie in his Dark Knight trilogy. His eighth film overall. Don’t buy the critical consensus. This is a solid flick, but not a great one. 

Gist is that Batman returns after nearly a decade after the events of the previous movie, The Dark Knight. This is after the Joker's reign made Batman a public enemy. Now, the League of Shadows has returned to create terror for the citizens of Gotham. Led by Bane, the group isolates the city from the outside world with the threat of detonating a nuclear bomb and killing 13 million people. Batman returns to save the city and take down the League for good. 

Christian Bale returns as Bruce Wayne/Batman. Also staring in the flick were Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Gordon, Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, Tom Hardy as Bane, Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate, Joseph Gordon Levitt as John Blake, and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. 

Best two scenes of the movie are the opening one with the plane crash. Followed by the football scene which is great. Weird to follow up Batman and Bane chilling and talking with pure chaos. Love how they are cut off and Bane comes out and tells them all who is white before killing Pavel, the only one who can save them. “ We give it back to you, the people.” About the time they are freeing the “oppressed,” I’d start questioning this. 

Fight scenes are bad. Obvious misses and slow haymakers that land. Nolan hasn’t made a bad movie. Momento is his best though. 

There is a little bit of nonsense. Plot holes or whatever. Batman’s vertebrae protruding for example. Falling with a rope ran your waist with a bad back isn’t a winning strategy. Some free solo shit. 

Cast is stellar. Tom Hardy, of course, is insane. But just go with it. His voice is dumb, yeah, but I still love that dude. Even when he makes a lot of old man noises whilst dying. Peak Tom Hardy. At least at his most Tom Hardy. 

How is Joseph Gordon Levitt not a star? Anne Hathaway is straight fire. She is not a fighter though. Probably my third favorite Catwoman, but out of the seven I can think of off the top of my head, they are all pretty fire. Post peak Christian Bale. He is my favorite Bruce Wayne and Batman not in costume. Keaton is my favorite Batman. But Bale is more physical. He would probably be the best but the voice is terrible. “Tell me where the trigger is then you have my permission to die.“ Boo. Lot of hubris there. General rule for Batman in this universe is just stop talking. 

Notice the pop star chick from Ted Lasso is in this. Hangs out with Catwoman mostly. 

Gets a little weak when it gets sentimental. Dig the League of Shadows, but you can’t be the Unabomber and be taken seriously. All makes for a week last 20 minutes. Then DB Sweeney shows up. Also, Matthew Modine redeems himself and then dies off-screen. Um, OK. 

I’m fine with a happy ending. I guess I think it’s just sort of whatever. Explain it all with some auto pilot stuff which is easy to mess and sort of feel sandwiched in.

Joker is the greatest movie of all time

Joker. I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realize, it's a fucking comedy. Pretty damn solid. Might even be transformative to the superhero genre like The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger's Joker performance was in 2008. However, don't see the flick as rewatchable as those Christopher Nolan Batman flix. I mean, you never really forget that you are watching a guy suffering from serious mental illness that society doesn't give a shit about. Not my idea of a movie I want to watch a whole lot. Like Taxi Driver, which everyone keeps comparing it to, in that way, but worse.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Joker gives its infamous central character a chillingly plausible origin story that serves as a brilliant showcase for its star -- and a dark evolution for comics-inspired cinema.

Gist of the movie is that Arthur Fleck, a mentally disturbed aspiring comedian, basically completely loses his shit after getting pushed to his breaking point. After getting jumped for the second time in the movie, he kills some stock brokers in self defense but guns another down as he is trying to escape. From there it is all down hill as he becomes an icon for the oppressed of Gotham City.

Stars Joaquin Phoenix as Joker (aka Arthur Fleck) and has a notable appearance from Robert De Niro as late night talk show host Murray Franklin. Something cool about having De Niro in the film is that it connects all the allusions to Taxi Driver (maybe De Niro's most memorable role) that are in the film. Both take place at the same time and Joker references this by talking about the garbage strike. This isn't laid out in Taxi Driver but it was filmed during a massive garbage strike in the mid 1970s in New York City. That is the reason the city looks like such shit in Taxi Driver and Travis has his whole fixation on washing away all the trash.

Other people you are likely to recognize are Zazie Beetz (a pretty lady who was in Deadpool 2) as Joker's love interest, Frances Conroy--whom you may remember as Ruth Fisher in Six Feet Under--plays Joker's mother (Penny Fleck), and Marc Maron whom I always assume is incredibly famous but no one seems to really know when I geek out whenever he shows up in anything (he is only the star of GLOW, Maron, and the host of WTF?, sorry he isn't Ben Shapiro or Joe Rogan or whatever). Then there are several "that guy"s like Glenn Fleshler who plays this monster clown coworker of Fleck's. This guy is brutally killed in everything I have seen him in including True Detectives (he is the serial killer in the first season) and Barry (he is the leader of the Chechens). Then the little person, an actor named Leigh Gill, was in Game of Thrones and Fantastic Beasts is somewhat recognizable but I think is mostly because he was the other little person in GoT.

Ladies!

First off, Phoenix was pretty great. Not anyone going to make a convincing argument that he didn't win the movie. It is nuts. Also, interesting stuff written for his character. One of the coolest things is the allusion to the 1928 film The Man Who Laughs which the Joker character from the 1940 Batman #1 comic was the obvious inspiration. Like the title character from that film, who looks exactly like the Joker, Fleck laughs despite the really fucked up shit that goes down around him. He has this disorder that resulted from severe childhood trauma where he would laugh uncontrollably when in extremely uncomfortable situations (which is how he ends up on Murray Franklin's show). I think I may have this for all I know made up disease, by the by (see my review for Pet Semetary, but I won't get into it here. He then can't really laugh when things are actually funny but sort of fakes it. As an aspiring comedian, we see him at a comedy club taking notes and such and faking a laugh like a second off from the audience in an obviously fake, not getting it way. I find that sort of shit extremely off putting. It is one of several ways that they show us that he is not in control. Another way comes after he starts his crime spree, killing for the first time. He is kind of freaking out but definitely sort of digging it. He goes to a filthy restroom to compose himself and does a sort of beautiful dance that is really something. Reminds me of a mime or a marionette. This stuff was really good shit.

As far as De Niro's character goes, he is a Johnny Carson type Pushing a civilian over the edge like that is pretty fucking gross. He wasn't asking to go viral. You are sort of on board with that shit, his rage. Then he shoots the guy in the face and at least I was like, "whoa buddy." Sort of like when Mike Tyson was all "I'm the best ever; there's never been anybody as ruthless" and I was all "yeah." "My style is impetuous." Yeah! "My defense is impregnable!" Yeah!!! "I'm ferocious. I want your heart." YEAH!! "I want to eat his children." Hold the fuck up, man, I'm not signing up for all this now. Same shit. Shoot a guy in the face on TV. Talk of butchering and eating a baby. Not quite at that level. Though we'll see how this Trump thing goes. Maybe in a year I will be. Anyway. Love that they do this shit. You see this in a lot Batman comics and graphic novel, Joker going on talk shows and then murdering people, and it is portrayed really ingeniously here.

Other things that are of note is what an asshole Thomas Wayne is. Dude is a one-percenter and is finally fucking portrayed like it. Fuck him. I always thought he was secretly a prick. If I have to watch him die in the same way for the 10th time on film, it better offer something. This totally does. Another thing is this twist that happens. Totally didn't see that shit coming. I think it is obvious that there would be one but this was not one I was expecting. Enough said there.

Complaint is did it need two goddamn endings? The first one was solid. The second was complete shit. Not going to give it away in detail but this is sort of a spoiler. It is like the studio and all the rich fucks that had say were like, "I'm a little uncomfortable with this ending, we have to make sure everyone knows he is in Arkham." Horseshit.

Overall, though, the film is a really fascinating study of how when pushed to the breaking point and politicians and agents of order just keep pushing, shit will go the fuck down. I would say if you ignore the second ending, it is a call to action of sorts (or maybe more of a warning). It says that we are fucking living this shit. The film doesn't fuck around with that. This may take place in the 1970s, but this Gotham is Trump's American. Burn the mother fucker down.

Deadpool 2 is the greatest movie of all time.

Oringal Deadpool was definitely my favorite super hero movie of all time. After one viewing, I like Deadpool 2 probably just as much. Just a heads up, I'm probably going to spoil the shit out of this bitch so read no further if you want to go in cold. Oh, by the by, Deadpool 2 is the greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Though it threatens to buckle under the weight of its meta gags, Deadpool 2 is a gory, gleeful lampoon of the superhero genre buoyed by Ryan Reynolds' undeniable charm.

Pros: Funny and fun. Great pacing. Casting is dope. Reynolds is the fucking man. That Zazie Beetz and Morena Baccarin are both pretty ladies. Get the best Deadpool rival/X-Men villain which I will spoil later.

Cons: The constant jokes get somewhat exhausting, I imagine it is more so on the second viewing. Deadpool is too fucking nice.

Spoilers... Deadpool 2 was fucking sick. Reynolds as Wade Wilson and his alter ego Deadpool goes berserk after his wife (Morena Baccarin) is killed, again, spoiler, eventually teams up with the X-Men... but straight up murders a guy while helping out a powerful and violent mutant child. Both Deadpool and the kid, Firefist played by Julian Dennison from Hunt for the Wilderpeople, get sent to mutant jail where time traveling mutant cyborg Cable (Josh Brolin who is also Thanos right now) comes to settle an old score... with the kid, going back in time to end him when it is easy, Terminator style. Turns out the kid grows up to be a shit. Firefist, however, turns out to be a lot harder to kill than expected and Deadpool goes from protecting him to trying to stop him, forming a team rival to X-Men, the X-Force. The 11th X-Men movie that may actually fit into that universe as we see a bunch of them behind a random door at the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. The film also stars Beetz (ger) from the show Atlanta as Domino, Brianna Hildebrand as that Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Jack Kesy whom I've never seen before as Black Tom, Shioli Kutsuna is Yukio who is the NTW's girlfriend, T. J. Miller reprises his role as Weasel, and Karan Soni is back as even more irritating Dopinder. We also get cameos from Terry Crews, Brad Pitt (who is in the movie for all of three seconds max), and Bill Skarsgård who was Pennywise in the most recent It movie.

When I was checking the movie's IMDB page when I came across the plot summary provided by the studio that made the film, Twentieth Century Fox. It is a bit different and totally unrelated to the movie, which is fitting. It reads: "After surviving a near fatal bovine attack, a disfigured cafeteria chef (Wade Wilson) struggles to fulfill his dream of becoming Miami's hottest bartender, while also learning to cope with his lost sense of taste. Searching to regain his spice for life, as well as a flux capacitor, Wade must battle ninjas, the yakuza, and a pack of sexually aggressive canines, as he journeys around the world to discover the importance of family, friendship, and flavor - finding a new taste for adventure and earning the coveted coffee mug title of World's Best Lover."

Okay, time to talk about the Juggernaut. Wow. That is tits. Only the second time he has been in the X-Men movies. First time he was remotely done right. The first he showed up was in X-Men: The Last Stand which was more or less universally hated (I thought it was okay but was disappointed while the girl I saw it with wanted to leave the movie--my tolerance for garbage is insane though). In that version of Juggernaut Vinnie Jones was more or less a normal sized dude with slight powers (he couldn't be stopped when he got going) who was irritating AF. Around that time there was that "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch" video that came out. It was considered pretty funny, though I didn't really get it, and it became sort of sort of hilarious to scream, "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch" at inappropriate times. What was super insane about ,X-Men: The Last Stand was that Vinnie Jones's character fucking said "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" which was fucking bananas. I thought for fucking sure he was going to say it in this flick as well but it didn't happen.

Anyway, now we have the truly massive Juggernaut (my favorite scene from any of the Deadpool comics was Juggernaut this size on a commercial flight) with his super strength, regeneration, unstoppable momentum, and metal helmet that keeps Charles Xavier, his brother (in the comics as least) from fucking with his mind (Magneto style). When he first showed up in this movie it was shocking. Deadpool, like the audience, breaks the fourth-wall to show what a super he is of one of his biggest enemies. Juggernaut, for his part, rips Wade in half which leads to him walking around with little baby legs, which was genuinely hilarious. But yeah, Juggernaut showing up was the best little surprise of the movie. It was sort of disappointing when they seemingly killed him off, "you can't kill him off already!", but then at the end you seem him pulling himself out of the pool he was being electrocuted in. Need that guy for the franchise, main!

Speaking of the future of the series, it's impossible to tell where the franchise is going as the timeline is completely shot to shit during the closing credits so make sure you stay put for that. What happens is the Negasonic Teenage Warhead fucks up bad. She "fixes" Cable's time machine and just gives it over to Wade who is like "I'm gonna abuse the shit out of this!" at which point she is like, "uh, I just really fucked up." Uh, yeah, dude goes back in time and basically made the whole movie sort of unnecessary with his time travelling. Immediately he stops the big twist that happens at the beginning of the movie and sets up everything that goes down. He is shown saving Peter who's the normal dude who joined them because it sounded fun, Deadpool was all "fuck yeah!" when he wanted to join X-Force though he was obviously going to die. Also, dude gets weird with it. He kills off the Deadpool from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, for example, and in a super meta-moment he kills a Ryan Reynolds just after he's finished reading the script for Green Lantern. So yeah, dope from start to the post credits.

Deadpool is the great movie of all time

IMO this is the best Marvel movie. I've watched it five times, the most recent in prep for the sequel, and it is still dope. Here is some masturbatory preamble... I didn't get into comic books until my mid 20s. At that point it was mostly just because and my literary tastes had already been long established (self-aware meta shit was my jams). That being the case, I went into a comic book store and asked the stereotypical fat comic book dude what I should read. He gave me Planetary and Deadpool both of which I still love. For DP it was the series "The Circle Chase" which featured The Juggernaut who was mad hot at the time because of that "I"m The Juggernaut, bitch," video that my girlfriend of the time found to be the most offensive thing of all time. Shout out to Clare (she definitely had a point). Later he became my go to hero whilst playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, probably my favorite game of all time. Gotta love that regeneration and teleportation, main. This, more than anything else, got me into the character. I mention all this to let the world fucking know that I was into that shit before anybody. I'll cut you if you accuse me of jumping on that bandwagon. Cut you. Anywho, love a character who can enjoy a good chimichanga is what it comes down to. So I was stoked to see the character on screen. And the shit did not disappoint. Knocked it out of the goddamned park and Deadpool was indeed the greatest movie of all time.

Colossus. Russian. Metal. Good job.

Rotten Tomatoes Consensus: Fast, funny, and gleefully profane, the fourth-wall-busting Deadpool subverts superhero film formula with wildly entertaining -- and decidedly non-family-friendly -- results.

Pros: Solidly funny. Pokes a lot of fun at the superhero genre like Scream does with horror. Ryan Reynolds is dope. Great pacing. Gina Carano is a pretty lady. The first X-Men movie to not fuck up Colossus.

Cons: Some may call it crass and juvenile. It is but it was fun in the end.

Carano. A pretty lady

Gist of the first one is that mercenary Wade Wilson meets a chick, they get engaged, he gets cancer, undertakes experiment treatment that is basically just torture which leads to disfigurement and superpowers, becomes Deadpool, tells jokes, searches for the guy who fucked his shit up (Ajax), meets up with X-Men Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (meh), kicks ass. The movie stars Reynolds as Deadpool, Morena Baccarin (who I'm pretty sure was crazy eyes in How I Met Your Mother) as DP's love interest Vanessa, Carano who was an MMA fighter, Brianna Hildebrand as NTW, Stefan Kapičić voices Colossus, T.J. Miller who played Erlich Bachman in Silicon Valley, Ed Skrein as Ajax, Karan Soni as the annoying cab driver, and Leslie Uggams as Blind Al who I fucking swore was Nichelle Nichols (Uhura on Star Trek) but I'm an idiot apparently. It's technically the eighth X-Men movie but has to be in a different universe and is hard to tell where in the universe it fits in which it pokes fun at. It also shits on several timelines including the first movie Deadpool appears in, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Some of the best shit from the flick is the opening scene, which is one of those stopping time dealies. It is a moment in time right before a bunch of carnage in the middle of a big highway fight scene where the bad guys are getting thrown from an SUV that is flipping sideways. They lay nonsense credits over scene--stuff like staring "a hot chick," "a CGI character," "god's perfect idiot," "written by the real heroes here," and so forth--while the song Angel of the Morning by Juice Newton (it's that song that goes "Just call me angel of the morning, angel. Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby"). Once time starts moving again one guy is decapitated, one guy is thrown 30 feet into an exit overhead sign, and one is crushed under the SUV. Deadpool, in this moment, worries about if he left his oven on. In case you haven't seen it, here it is...

The post-credit scene is also a nice bit of nonsense. Deadpool, donning a bathrobe, says something to the effect of "why are you still here," Matthew Broderick from Ferris Bueller's Day Off style in a total nod to that scene. Makes sense that they would reference that movie as both are solid examples of metafiction where both characters tool on the audience for still being in the theater after the movie is technically over. Bueller is sort of Deadpool's brethren when you think about it. Snarky all nonsense characters that like to break the fourth wall. I love that shit. Deadpool also goes a little further, as Marvel movies are wont to do, when he talks about the sequel which he says will feature Cable and then goes into possible casting before finally making a few more little jokes how the Marviel Cinematic Universe teases the next flick in the series during the post-credit scene in every fucking movie. We then get the final "chika-chikaa" from the song "Oh, Yeah", by Yello, that's featured in FBDO. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure.

Anywho, the movie is basically one-liners and action. I like the one-liners more than the action which I think is sort of universal but don't know. The action is pretty cool, especially with Colossus who finally looks like the comic book character and is finally Russian for Christ's sake, but it's still watching someone else play a video game. Probably the most humorous stuff though is how he makes fun of superheros. Like how cool NTW and Ajax's names are and the super hero landing they are always doing. Shit we've all thought about and are hip to as lame devices. So yeah, a solid first feature film for the character with a bunch of ridiculous jokes, disembowelment, a raging superhero, and sympathetic alter-ego. Shit is dope.

Avengers: Infinity Wars is the greatest movie of all time

Avengers: Infinity Wars. Spoilers. Mad spoilers, bra. With a decade of Marvel Studios flicks, Marvel Cinematic Universe has all been building up to this. To give you an idea of the size, it is one of the most expensive movies ever made, Wikipedia lists the budget at $300-$400 million, it has the highest grossing weekend of all time and is already in the top 50 highest-grossing films ever. Most critics love that shit, too. All the action. All the feels. Greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Avengers: Infinity War ably juggles a dizzying array of MCU heroes in the fight against their gravest threat yet, and the result is a thrilling, emotionally resonant blockbuster that (mostly) realizes its gargantuan ambitions.

Meh

Pros: Story is fucking solid. Even though there are like 400 people in it they do a good job of getting everyone a lot of screen time and telling how everyone sort of fits in. So much star power it is insane. Some truly shocking moments that are quite emotionally affecting. Thor continues to be hilarious and awesome.

Cons: Feel sort of nitpicky listing any of these as "cons" because the movie fucking ruled. It was just with the movie being so long there were just several little things to list, some more valid than others. First, I was not emotionally ready for the ending. Plus, knowing the bare minimum about comics, the weight of that ending is undercut by the fact that no one in comics ever dies. Thanos is sort of lame. Too much of the story relies on us giving a shit about Gamora (who probably gets the most screen time) which is tough because she has basically just been the love interest up to this point. Not enough Captain America and his click.

Gist of the Infinity War is that most but not all of the Avengers (notably missing were Ant-Man and Hawkeye) and some of their super buddies (the Guardians of the Galaxy, basically, and Dr. Strange and some Black Panther) get it on with the most powerful villain in the Marvel Universe, Thanso, who is going about trying to complete his little set of Infinity Stones which he wants to use to kill half of living things in the universe because of resources. Like Killmonger in Black Panther, he's not wrong, he's just an asshole.

The movie was directed by Russo bros Anthony and Joe features the ensemble cast of all the usuals. Going back over the cast, this shit is insane. Basically this is a who's who list of Hollywood talent. See it listed is pretty cray. A partial list, in alphabetical order, includes Dave Bautista as Drax, Paul Bettany as Vision, Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther, Josh Brolin as Thanso, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Bradley Cooper as Rocket Raccoon, Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange, Benicio Del Toro as The Collector, Vin Diesel as Groot, Peter Dinklage as Eitri, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Danai Gurira as Okoye, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Tom Holland as Spider Man, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Anthony Mackie as Falcon, Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Chris Pratt as Star-Lord, Mark Ruffalo as Hulk/Bruce Banner, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, and Sebastian Stan as Bucky. This only scratches the surface.

A lot of stuff I have been thinking about that I loved here. First, the film is book-ended by two scenes that were shocking as fu-uck. The one at the beginning which was just fucking nuts was when Thanos, already with the Power Stone in hand, hops on the spaceship with all the Asgardian refugees on it following the events of Thor: Ragnarok to strong arm the Space Stone in that there old Tesseract cube from the various flicks. In the process Hulk comes out of the woodwork to end this bullshit and gets beat the fuck down which was a serious WTF moment. With him out of the way, Thanos and his group of underlings called The Children of Thanos (consisting of Corvus Glaive, Ebony Maw, Proxima Midnight, and Cull Obsidian), they easily bitch Thor, kill Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston), and Heimdall (played by Idris Elba) before blowing up the ship, killing everyone but Thor (who just floats through space until the Guardians find him) and Hulk whom Heimdall beamed to Earth with the Bifrost before he met his end. Hell of a way to start things off, I'll tell you.

Then there is the ending which was a complete fucking shock. Obviously spoiling shit here so don't give me shit. At the end we have all the characters coming together in Wakanda, getting it on with Thanos, and seemingly sort of stopping him by destroying the final stone in his collection, the Mind Stone, by killing Vision. Woohoo. No. Thanos, who can bend time, space, reality, so forth, but generally chooses close quarter hand-to-hand, turns back time reassembling Vision and plucks the stone from his melon, killing him again. If you've seen Dr. Strange you should probably sort of expected this but if you are like me then you didn't think of it until it went down. It was cray AF. Thor shows up here with his newly forged hammah and smacks the shit out of Thanos who teleports the fuck out of there. Sort of think it is over or whatever but then they start disintegrating with half of them and half of all life in universe fucking dying. When Black Panther blew away it was too much, main. "No!" I yelled in my car at the drive in. We also lose all the Guardians except Rocket. Damn. But, yeah, after it's over its hard to know how to take all this death/the movie in general. Obviously all the ash characters can't stay gone. There are two more Black Panther movies coming out for Christ's sake. 

Anywho, another thing of note here was that Thanos knew Tony Stark by name, which is interesting. Tony, for his part, claims that Thanos has been "inside my head"--or something like that--for six years which was the whole shit that went down in New York in the first Avengers movie. Thanos, on the other hand, seems to only have respect for one human,Tony, whom he sees as the main Avenger aka protector of earth or whatever, I guess. Regardless, they are obviously connected and what not and I'm thinking Tony will have to sacrifice himself or some such shit since Dr. Strange gave up an Infinity Stone to save his life though he said he would not do that just a few scenes before. But after Strange had his little vision, which is the only way it played out that they defeat Thanos, so he must need to live for that shit to play out. 

Chris on Chris action

Some other shit that I'll mention was that Dinklage shows up out of nowhere. He is a fucking dwarf but is a giant dwarf. He ends up being the tallest person in the movie which is probably a fucking wet dream for dude and what not. The best shit of the movie though was the Chris Hemsworth vs Chris Pratt doofus off where they both crack wise at each other despite Thor having just lost all his people in mass genocide and Star-Lord having just caused the end of half of all life in the universe because he is an idiot.

The last thing I shall mention is that this flick has really put out some dank ass memes. Most of them revolve around Thanos either looking ridiculous or being an asshole or obsessing over his stones. I leave you with these, some of my faves, for your viewing pleasure.

Justice League is the worst film of all time

So the Justice League is bad but also is really bad. But not as bad as I was expecting. Out of the 2.75 DC Universe films I've seen, I basically couldn't finish Batman vs. Superman and haven't seen Man of Steel or Wonder Woman yet, I'd put this as the most enjoyable. Again, though, pretty bad. Justice League, in fact, was the worst film of all time. I know I just said it was better than two other movies but we are binary in this bitch.

When it comes to the comics I'm into, I much more of a DC than Marvel guy. However, with the movies, there are no DC over Marvel people, though the Christopher Nolan Batman Trilogy was god tier. Saying such a thing would give one limited credibility. Based on all the shit that DC is putting out, I'd be surprised if we get much farther in that world before it all falls apart. That said, let's get into it.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Justice League leaps over a number of DC movies, but its single bound isn't enough to shed the murky aesthetic, thin characters, and chaotic action that continue to dog the franchise.

Ger

Pros: Music--both Danny Elfman's original (which included some dope samples of previous Batman and Superman themes) and the soundtrack. That Gal Gadot is really something. That Superman guy, Henry Cavill, is pretty good too.

Cons: The CGI is shockingly bad. I fucking can't get past it. Steppenwolf, the villain, looks especially horrendous. He is also a loser. The plot is confusing and is all over the place. The Flash running looks stupid. The Flash is basically Spiderman. The jokes that they sandwiched in for the reshoots are fucking terrible and need to stop.

The basic gist here is Aquaman (Jason Momoa who was Kahl Drogo in GoT), Batman (Ben Affleck), Cyborg whom I hate (Ray Fisher who I've never seen in anything else), Flash (Ezra Miller, a Justin Long/Chris Kattan hybrid), and Wonder Woman (Gadot who is really something) come together to fight off this stupid looking CGI dude wearing a horned helmet named Steppenwolf who is all about enslaving Earth with the use of the three Mother Boxes, don't ask, and his flying, insectile goons called Parademons that feed on fear and also look stupid. All this is sort of vaguely follows Justice League #1 for the The New 52, especially when it comes to these Parademons. To defeat Steppenwolf, however, they require what-have-yous of Superman who is at present living impaired. So they must resurrect the uber man like the Christlike figure that he is to kick ass and take names. 

Steppenwolf, basking in his lameness

Things go wrong right off the... ugh... bat. The movie starts with a little phone video of Superman. Obviously one of the reshoots as his lip looks weird. Because actor Henry Cavill had in his contract for another film--Mission Impossible 6 (which I'm sure will be... great)--that he couldn't shave his stache, they had to CGI it out. This is not a good first impression. Nor does the CGI get any better as, again, Steppenwolf is just looks fucking god awful. Steppenwolf is also super fucking bland and boring. His motivation is crazy fucking vague, too.

The most cringe worthy acting comes from Fisher, Miller, and Momoa though it is hard to say if it is actually the performance or the shit they have to say. While I still can't get behind Affleck as Batman, I guess he does alright. Superman is cool and dark and has insane pecs. Gadot is an attractive lady who moves like a bad ass and is quite compelling. Jeremy Irons is okay. Everyone else is just there.

The best parts of the movie were when they wake up Superman and he loses his shit on everyone, basically any time Wonder Woman is on screen doing her thing, the scene where Aquaman (a total bro in this flick) confesses a bunch of uncomfortable stuff for a bro because he is holding Wonder Woman's lasso (which was the funniest scene in the movie), and the end, post-credit scene when Lex Luther (played by Jesse Eisenberg) meets with Deathstroke, saying that they should "form (their) own league." Best scene in the movie shouldn't be hyping another movie, obviously... but it sort of got me interested/excited about what might be on the horizon for the DC Extended Universe.

Spider-man: Homecoming is the greatest movie of all time

Out of the three Spiderman reboots I've seen in my adulthood, I'd put Spider-man: Homecoming slightly above the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire iteration. People that hate on either of those don't fucking know. What puts this one above the other two is, more than anything, its tying into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. First Spiderman movie to do that since that has been a thing, which is dope.

Having just come off his debut in the MCU in Captain America: Civil War, this film follows young Peter Parker as he adjusts to life as a superhero whilst going through normal, infuriating high school drama. After helping save the world or whatever, Parker finds life with his guardian Aunt May (the still lovely Marisa Tomei) to be pretty fucking boring. Plus he has father-figure Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Happy (Jon Favreau), Stark's bodyguard, monitoring his every move. As Parker hones his skills as a crime-fighter, the blue-collar villain Vulture (Michael Keaton) shows up to fuck shit up because reasons. It's not super clear but just roll with it. 

Noice

Pros: Fun. Funny. Solid cameos. Keaton. The beautiful Tomei. They skip the origin story. Outstanding soundtrack. Solidly grounded in the MCU. The twist at the end. Cool Stark engineered suit with the Iron Man talking computer thing.

Cons: Villain is sort of weak/small timey. A lot of the high school kids are sort of annoying. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Spider-Man: Homecoming does whatever a second reboot can, delivering a colorful, fun adventure that fits snugly in the sprawling MCU without getting bogged down in franchise-building.

Notes: The movie opens with an origin story for the bad guy rather than yet another rehashing of Peter Parker's transformation. With Spiderman we just get a little bit of a rehashing of what happened in Captain America: Civil War. I still like that they use a person that could actually pass for a high school student instead of someone in his mid to late 20s (although actor Tom Holland is in fact 21). They even portray him as sort of a screw up. Like when his buddy tells everyone at school that Parker knows Spiderman most no one believes it, especially this raging prick who is more or less Parker's bully. There is some humor that comes about as a result of this like when Spiderman pounces down on his car or something while fighting crime, smashing the car, as Spiderman swings away the dude asks him "if he knows Peter Parker." That dude is a fucking hater. Anyway, after that little recap of Civil War we jump right in. All of this is appreciated. Have a lot of time to do some character developing and what not instead of giving us a bunch of shit that everybody already knows.

He'll always be Troy to me

This is the funniest/most fun of all the movies in the MCU. We get humor almost right off the bat with Tony Stark (Robert Downy Jr.), whom is a father figure as both a business man and as a superhero in his alter ego Iron Man, ending a conversation with Parker in a limo by reaching over him to open the door. Parker thinks he was coming in for a hug. Stark goes out of his way to explain that was not in fact a hug and that he just wanted him out of his car. Lot of the other humor somewhat relies on the cameos and your having to know who several B-listers are and their appearance is amusing. One is Hannibal Buress, Peter Parker's gym teacher, who is in no way athletic and might genuinely be insane. His role as a teacher and coach is absurd in that he has obviously not one for physical fitness and is more one for getting stoned and eating garbage. He is also into showing his students videos of Captain America, as any true gym teacher would be. The other stellar cameo is that of Donald Glover who is Troy on Community, the main dude on Atlanta, and soon to be Lando Calrissian in the Hans Solo Star Wars prequel. He plays some sort of stoner drug dealer dude who is not phased by anything and super unimpressed with Spiderman. Also of note are small roles by Kenneth Choi (Lewis from Last Man on Earth, Judge Ito in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story), Martin Starr (whom you may recall from Party Down and Freaks and Geeks), and the Tom Hardy doppelganger from Prometheus (Logan Marshall-Green). Also get a glimpse of a picture of Kafka, one of my heroes and why I'm a vegetarian, who wrote the story "The Metamorphosis" about a dude who turns into a bug. It's god tier.

Way to crush those dreams, yo!

Another solid little thing I appreciated was that there were no Maguire spidey lips. When Parker scales the Washington Monument when his academic decathlon team travelled to DC and saves them from falling down an elevator shaft, his love interest, who has a thing for Spidey, stands near the elevator with Spiderman dangling upside down. She sort of starts to go in for the kiss but his web busts. No stupid kiss. Yay!

Anywho, I'm not going to spoil the twist at the end other than to say that there is one and woah ho ho. Also, the outro credits are really cool to watch while you wait for the standard post credit scene at the end of every MCU movie. This one was dope. The best, I say. 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is the greatest movie of all time

Saw Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 in the 3D which I'd recommend as it looks pretty good. Movie is solid. Lot to like here... buuuuuuut there are some things.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2's action-packed plot, dazzling visuals, and irreverent humor add up to a sequel that's almost as fun -- if not quite as thrillingly fresh -- as its predecessor.

Russell mansplaining about what being a god is all about

Pros: Beautifully done with great visual effects. On point cast as the previous one with a few really solid cameos. The Watchers show up for the first time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, at least that I recall. Very funny.

Cons: Tries a little too hard, maybe. Sort of like a more eh version of the original.

Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain some spoilers but I rarely give away the ending.

Little guy

Start with the stuff I really liked. Going in, I was concerned about the baby Groot. Watching previews and for around the first quarter of the movie, I was like, “eh, little guy.” But by the end, I was all, “aw, little guy.” He's so dumb and helpless. He also does just enough where he isn't annoying, for the most part. Really start to like him when the Ravagers shit all over him (metaphorically) and when he is put in charge of helping out his mates, he generally fails spectacularly.

Basically, if you were into the characters in the first one, empathized with them and what not, then you'll get lots of that. Pratt is cool. His relationship with Kurt Russell's character, Russell fucking rocked by the way, involves lots of blue lightning, be warned. The big dude is funny as hell. The green chick gets lots of screen time to deal with her shit. Same with Daryl's brother from The Walking Dead. He is sort of the one you really feel for in this one. We also get a glimpse of what it would be like for an everyman type of guy to have godlike powers, which is cool. 

The last thing worth mentioning, which I will try not to give too much away on here, is Stan Lee's cameo adds credence to a theory that has been posed about his role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe/Marvel movies in general. Overall, the movie is funny as hell and lots of fun.

Now the other stuff. It doesn't really seem like the series is really going anywhere except for maybe exploring Quill's (Pratt) origin story. I know how this fits into the MCU but it feels totally isolated from all that shit. Also, the fight scenes are sometimes just way too long. Often get the feeling in films like this that I watching someone else play a video game.

A gold chick looking fucking cool

It's obviously not a serious movie. Lots of jokes and gags and lots of over the top action. But it's like they are seriously trying to funny which works but sometimes sort of doesn't. An example of this is with this character that chooses to call himself Taserface. He basically goes into this long monologue where he is telling the former leader of his Ravager Clan, Yondu, whom he is just successfully mutinied against, that he is weak and stupid and taking them down the wrong path and that it is time for their clan to rise to glory under the leadership of a new captain: Taserface! Rocket the Raccoon then just rips on him for the next five minutes of the movie. None of it is really funny. Then when he gets his comeuppance, all fucked up, barely alive from various injuries, he crawls over to a monitor to summon the Sovereign, one of the several groups the Guardians have beef with here that are solid gold and look fucking cool and fight using these sweet drones that they control from video game console type things, and tells them the group's coordinates so that they can come and kill them and in his mind avenge his death. He just wants them to tell the Guardians that it was he, Taserface, that did them in. The chick he talks to, however, just laughs at his name as he explodes and dies. Weak. There is some other stuff like this that is like, “whatever.”

Looking at some reviews, which I usually don't do, to find ways others explained it, I came across this in the Times, “The difference (between the original and sequel) is that while the first 'Guardians' earned that love as if by accident, this one begs for it,” which is spot on. Other than some of that stuff though it is fucking great and is totally solid by anyone's standards. I'm sure it's gonna be huge. 

Logan is the greatest movie of all time

So this is it. Jackman’s last go as the X-Men’s most iconic character. Grizzled as fuck, the film is dark, violent, and is sort of a bummer of a movie. Maybe a little violent for my tastes but all in all solid. The movie is also a meditation on death which even superheroes are not immune. This one takes a lot out of you.

Pros: The feels. Performances of Jackman/Stewart/Keen (the feral little girl). Storyline.

Cons: The brutality. Too long.

Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain some spoilers but I rarely give away the ending.

Notes: Professor X is extremely old and demented, this aspect is very interesting and totally heartbreaking, and time is finally catching up with Logan as well. Their relationship is one of a man in need of physical care and the reluctant caregiver. Also, one in need of emotional care and a not quite able caregiver. A lot of tear-jerking scenes there especially with this being the last X-Men movie, for Jackman at least. It’s hard to see the treasure that is Patrick Stewart like this.

Enter adorable half-Mexican, half-Wolverine child. She’s a badass with little kid front and back claws with the power of regeneration. Some dark, governmental, paramilitary outfit has suppressed the mutant gene in the public but is using the DNA to create future super soldiers. Only thing is, these kids are living things with feelings and desires and such. Now that they have found a way to breed that out and create a fully grown, ready to rock mutant, they are just going to slaughter the kids. Cull the herd. It’s fucked up. Knowing this, the nurses, at least one of them, help the little mutant kids escape whereupon they will meet up in South Dakota and cross into mutant friendly Canada, eh.

There are several twists throughout, one that was fucking shocking, which I shant give away. One thing I shall mention, however, is Eriq La Salle, Darryl Jenks (the antagonist) from Coming to America and Dr. Benton from ER, shows up. So does Stephen Merchant from The Ricky Gervais Show.

Batman: The Complete Outdated History

Batman is ridiculously old. Created in 1938 by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, he is almost as old as comic books themselves—what we think of as a serialized comic book today began sometime around 1935 and Detective Comics (DC) #1 was published March 1937—but he is still just as popular as he’s ever been. In his comprehensively researched book, Batman: The Complete History, Les Daniels details every aspect of the most ambivalently sinister superhero to wear his underpants outside his trousers while delving into the question of what accounts for this character’s multigenerational appeal.

While this sophisticated book does cover pretty much the entire history of the publication, the text doesn’t offer much insight or go into very much detail in its reporting more or less the bare facts so as to keep the book at a reasonable length. It begins with a time decades before Batman was ever found on the printed page, going through Kane’s various influences (and possible influence)—Zorro, The Phantom, Sherlock Holmes, Doc Savage—and the lesser-known Finger used to create the Caped Crusader.

We are then taken from the hero’s early all-or-nothing days where he was a grim figure willing to shoot down and kill his enemies, to the diluted 1940-50s version of wholesome family type pulp fiction that literally featured a “Bat-Family”, to the pop-art influenced campy Adam West as Batman television show version, to the Neal Adams years of slick realism where he was a grim detective who relentlessly stalked those who preyed on the innocent that has been widely influential since the early 1970s, and ends with the even more expanded visions of Frank Miller, Denny O’Neil, Alan Moore, as well as Tim Burton’s 1989 film and in 1992 Batman: The Animated Series. Be warned, published in 1999, the Christopher Nolan films are not discussed, though the book is so well done you which it would have been written later.

The most frustrating thing about the book is that it is in no way critical of the film franchise even though things really went to hell with it there in the late 1990s. From this DC copyrighted book (who own the entire franchise, duh) you would think Joel Schumacher was a freaking genius for what he did with Batman and Robin. In other ways too Daniels proves annoyingly uncritical, as Claude Lalumière’s review “A Loving Bat-Tribute” sums up: “[it] flirts (but only flirts) with some controversial issues, such as the attribution of proper credit for the creation of Batman’s classic rogues' gallery and the highly questionable 1988 event ‘A Death in the Family,’ where readers were asked to call a 900 number to cast a vote of life or death for the second Robin, Jason Todd.” But I guess its never rise to bite the hand that feeds you as they say.

Some of the best sections are the ones that detail the effects of the Comic Code that regulated the industry making sure everything was PG-ish and wussified which was put into place following the 1954 publication of Seduction of the Innocent by psychologist Fredric Wertham that claimed “the Batman type of story may stimulate children to homosexual fantasies” after seeing things like the panel at right. This sparked a one-sided debate regarding the morality of comic books and since Batman had such a pivotal role in Wertham’s reasoning, much of the campy ridiculous crap came in an attempt to deflect criticism of angry parents and what have you.

This is all sort of like how people have been all up in arms over violent video games like Grand Theft Auto and such, saying they make kids violent and anti-social which is just insane. Here Daniels does a pretty good job of illustrating how the mindset that brought about the Comic Code was equally as ridiculous and stupid.

Also of note are the three reprinted Batman comics from the various time periods that show the comic’s progression. The stories work very well in context and are all excellent tales.

Perhaps the best thing about the book is its wonderful, aesthetically pleasing design engineered by Chip Kidd. Kidd’s work alone is worth the price of the book. Flipping through the book’s pages reveals its beauty with eye-popping art from cover to cover—its pretty much eye candy.