movie review – News on Shuffle

Superman of the People

Last weekend was opening weekend for a movie I had been anticipating for quite some time – Superman. From the day the first teaser dropped and they so expertly wove a variation on the old theme music into a series of images that told us nothing while simultaneously peaking our interest… I was pumped.

I watched this multiple times in a row and hyper analyzed every frame when it came out. The casting looked great, and they clearly wanted to appeal to old fans of the comic. There were a few full trailers that came out after this, and each one got me more excited than the last while only somewhat giving us an idea of the actual plot. They evoked the right emotions while spoiling nothing.

Fast forward to a little nonbinary nerd celebrating their day (happy belated nonbinary day everyone!) while finally getting to watch the movie they had anticipated for what seemed like ages. The reviews were all great (minus the people crying it was too woke) so I knew I was in for a treat.

Here’s where the actual spoilers for the movie come in, so pause here if you haven’t seen it yet and come back when you have.

logo for James Gunn’s Superman movie

The movie starts with the theme playing and the old Superman design appearing, which immediately got me in my feels. We then get a brief bit of text appearing on screen explaining the history we need to know about the character in this universe. I am super grateful to them for doing it this way and not making me sit through yet another origin story.

Cut to a scene we got in the teaser, of Superman having just lost a fight and having to be dragged home by bestest boy Krypto. In general the scenes from the trailer all mostly happen at the top of the movie, which I also really liked that choice.

I won’t do a play by play of the whole film, but I will dive a little bit more into what I loved and what I can see some people nitpicking over. First, the likes! I loved the casting for starters. Everyone was the perfect choice for their roles. I also love that black Perry Mason seems to just be canon now. I’ve seen it in a few iterations at this point. Personally I don’t think skin color matters for that character, as long as you nail the personality down. You don’t get a ton of Perry in this movie, but the scenes you do get really captured his spirit. I also almost said out loud “that is a perfect representation of Cat Grant” but held back since I was in public. I can’t wait to rewatch this at home and really get into it.

Next, let’s talk about it being too “woke”. There are aspects of the movie that can perfectly be layered over our current discussion about immigration right now, but does that make it “woke”? In my opinion, the folks who are complaining about this are simply realizing that they are more similar to the villains of these stories than the heroes. Comic books have always been about standing up for justice and protecting the little guy. Sorry if you’re just noticing now that you worship an actual supervillain (Elon Musk) and lost some of your humanity along the way. Superman gives a fantastic speech towards the end of the movie where he calls Lex out on what it means to be human and how he would be better off if he saw that for himself rather than being jealous of Superman. But other than that, the movie doesn’t beat you over the head with its message, and if you were uncomfortable that might be a you problem.

Now for the possible nitpicks. If you’re a comic book fan, you might notice that they change the origin of Ultraman. I personally am not bothered by this, but my knowledge of the character is also weak to be fair. The one teeny thing I could nitpick on is the appearance of Supergirl at the end of the film. My ears perked up when Superman mentions his cousin, but I don’t love making her a party girl. Again, my knowledge of the character isn’t as good as the core cast (Superman, Lois, Jimmy, and Lex) but I feel like she’s supposed to be more mature than that. Hopefully her own movie gives her more depth.

Despite the teeniest of complaints at the end, I overall thoroughly enjoyed the movie and would give it a solid 4.8 out of 5 stars. I would go see it in theaters again (which is rare for me) if it weren’t for the fact that I’m saving my money to go see Fantastic Four later this month. I highly recommend going to see Superman in theaters, and the sooner the better. It’s the little dose of goodness and hope we could use in these dark times.

Superman flying up with the words "look up" to his right

Doctor Strange: Musings of the Multiverse

This should go without saying, but this will have lots of spoilers for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. You have been warned!

I know a lot of people who have some opinions about the new Doctor Strange movie, but I am here to tell you I loved it. At first I was concerned about how short the runtime was, but they managed to pack a lot into those two hours. I think my only complaint is you kinda get thrown right into things, but it’s a very minor complaint that I’m not all that mad about. Otherwise it was a great story with a rollercoaster of emotions. I wish Wanda/Scarlet Witch wasn’t the main antagonist and/or that her story didn’t end the way it did, but we’ll get there.

Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff in Marvel Studios’ DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

First of all, with how quickly and often Dr Strange was asked “are you happy?” I knew that was going to come into play at some point in the movie. For a second when he and the Christine from the other universe (sorry I cannot remember numbers other than we are confirmed 616) were talking about “I wish you could see where I’m from, it’s beautiful” that one of them would be going with the other, but Strange knows he has more work to do, and I think he’s become content with that by the end of the movie.

Now about that other universe Christine was from – I (and a good portion of the theater) cheered seeing the Illuminati slowly introduce themselves. In a few short moments we got to see Black Bolt, Captain Marvel, Captain Carter, Reed Richards, and Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Professor Charles Xavier with the classic 90s X-Men theme playing during his entrance. My nerd heart sings!

If that weren’t good enough, we also got to see Clea make an appearance during the after credits scene, teasing a visit to the Dark Dimension? I’m really looking forward to seeing where the universe takes Strange, especially if it lets him move on from Christine and we see him and Clea more.

Now let’s talk about Sam Raimi. He’s one of my favorite directors of all time. If you never saw Evil Dead, do yourself a favor and fix that right now.

Go on. I’ll wait.

Seriously though, there were quite a few moments where Raimi’s signature really shined through. The best examples are the cameos – Bruce Campbell as Pizza Poppa and The Classic (the Oldsmobile Delta that is in almost every movie of his). It’s become a game with me to spot the car as an easter egg. And of course it’s fun seeing Bruce Campbell pop up in random small roles. Almost like back in the old Marvels days where we’d wait to see where Stan Lee would appear.

Finally, let’s talk about the actual story. We got a look at how Wanda is coping after the events of WandaVision. (Spoiler: she’s doing poorly). I’m happy she’s got a moment of clarity and redemption, but I have mixed feelings about her final moments in the movie. It’s poetic to see the space we mistook for a tomb become her actual tomb, but I also would rather see her get to move on and be happy rather than sacrifice herself to protect the world from her potential for chaos and catastrophe. And yes, people have pointed out to me that we never saw a body so she might not be dead, but it felt like her story was concluding there.

Overall I continue to be excited about what the MCU potentially has coming up. My big question after the movie ended was the potential for a Young Avengers in our future. I originally figured Wanda’s kids would be involved. True, the multiverse versions of them exist, but how much are they going to be featured versus our universe? I guess that’s something else I’m curious about is how much we’ll be visiting other universes now that we confirmed their existence. That is one way we might see Wanda again. I think we’re definitely going to see more of America Chavez, and her power is teleporting amongst the universes. Whatever happens, I’m excited for the MCU to get weird and make some bold choices in the future.

What about you? What are you most excited about? Is it the Fantastic Four becoming part of our universe finally? Or maybe getting to finally add some mutants to the mix? Let me know in the comments below.

Missing Movie Theaters

Back when Wonder Woman 84 was streaming on HBO Max, I managed to catch it the day before it was to be taken down. I hastily wrote down some thoughts late that night, and swore I would review them and post in the morning. A lot has happened since then. I’m sorry this is not being shared in a more timely manner, but I think it’s still important. It turned into less of a review of the movie and more a critique on the “new normal” of releasing movies direct to streaming for a limited time. I like HBO’s formula of having it be included in the subscription better than Disney’s having to pay a $30 fee on top of your normal sub, but I will always prefer movie theaters. More on that later. For now, let’s focus on WW84 and what I loved and didn’t about it.

To give you an idea how good a movie WW was, I loved it even though I had an awful experience. HBO Max (or at least the xbox app) is awful. Usually things will freeze once or twice and not completely ruin my experience…. So of course while trying to preserve the movie theater feel as much as possible, it froze more times than I could count, crashed entirely once, and once blew out the sound on my xbox and I had to restart the whole system. I was so grumpy that by the time the big fight happens between Diana and Cheeta I barely was able to enjoy it (literally said “this fight is gonna be great” seconds before the app crashed).

If HBO is going to release the next year’s worth of movies On Demand, they need to make an app that works better. Having said that, there were plenty of things to love about the film itself. Even though the fight scenes would have been better on a big screen, they still were enjoyable with what I had to work with. My favorite part, however, was when Diana is talking at the end about Truth and making everyone remember how things used to be. I realized when this movie was supposed to come out and how powerful it would have been having Wonder Woman talk to us about truth in the face of a fraud who wanted to amass power. There’s a lot about my experience I will never be able to get, and that saddens me. But overall it was a great sequel that I can’t wait to buy so I can watch it on a physical disc that (hopefully) won’t freeze a million times.

The Interview: A review and commentary on digital media

I’m sure we all remember the big news surrounding “The Interview” and how it got pulled from theaters because of a terrorist threat. The movie was eventually given a digital release and is now currently available on Netflix Instant. I originally had no desire to see the movie. I was mildly curious but didn’t care enough to go to the theater or rent the DVD when it came out. Having instant access to it, however, I decided to give it a try. Worse case scenario the movie sucks and I turn it off if I get bored.

To say my expectations were low would be an understatement. True, Seth Rogen is funny enough, but the premise of the movie seemed so incredibly stupid I didn’t want to waste my time with it. I mean, I like movies that are stupid in a funny way, but that is not how the trailers presented this one to me. Boy was I surprised…

“The Interview” turned out to be a surprisingly funny and thoroughly enjoyable comedy experience. Yeah it’s about two guys trying to kill the North Korean leader, but there’s so much more to it than that. The character development was stronger than I would’ve imagined, and the actual jokes were honest to god funny.

I laughed.

A lot.

At this stupid movie that I had very low hopes of grabbing my attention or amusing me. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe sometimes you need to let go of expectations and see what happens.

Now, if “The Interview” had been given a more traditional release it might have done okay in theaters, but I doubt it would’ve done great. Plaster it all over the Internet though, and now you have something. I know the terrorist threats attached to it definitely gave them some buzz, and there are even some who believe this was all planned for just such a purpose. Regardless of what you believe, I think movies like this in general would do better if they skipped the theater and just got released online. With how expensive movies have gotten, it’s no surprise that people have started saving the trip to the theater for the big blockbusters. I know the last time I went was probably the last Thor movie to come out, and I don’t remember the last time I went for anything other than an action movie. It’s not that i don’t like comedies. I just usually save them for home viewing. Maybe I’m in the minority on this one but I definitely enjoyed being able to watch “The Interview” while it was still relevant and not two years later when it finally made it to the top of my Netflix queue. If more movies did it like this then I would be one happy movie consumer. I might not want to pay $15 to see a movie in theaters, but I’ll pay half that to watch it instantly at home. The experience of theater-going has changed. Why not change with it?

Sherlock Holmes is Elementary Entertaining

“Magically good”

That is what I would call the Sherlock Holmes film that has just been delivered to the big screen this Christmas. The story is full of the twists and turns you would expect from a Holmes mystery, but it never leaves the viewer feeling lost. It was intriguing watching Holmes and Watson work their magic. It was equally amusing getting to see the characters I had known for some time already, come to life in a whole new way. Growing up with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in my living room, there was always a certain picture that came to mind when I thought of these characters. I knew this movie would be different, but it was done in a way that gave the characters a new charge of energy without overdoing it. Overall I was impressed with the finished product and left the theater quite pleased with the whole experience. (Then again, I knew going in that it would be good). When asked how I deduced this, our blogger simply answered, “Why, elementary my dear Watson. Did you see the trailer?”