The Flash (2023) - Movie Review

Even with how much I go to bat for the superhero genre around here, I was… kind of dreading going to see this one?

Part of that is because of Ezra Miller and what can loosely be described as their touring psycho circus over the past year and a bit (it’s been going on for much longer, but I mean in terms of mainstream coverage of it), of which I will not be getting into as it could take up this entire post all on its own… and quite frankly, I don’t feel all that comfortable commenting on it at length to begin with.

Part of it is because the entire conversation concerning the DCEU, the beginnings of its transition into the James Gunn-led DC Studios, and people still clamouring for Snyder to come back, has grown extremely tiresome, with this film being the cornerstone for that major transition.

And part of it is because I didn’t exercise due caution when it comes to new blockbusters and wound up having quite a bit of the film spoiled for me beforehand (specifically the… let’s call them ‘necromantic cameos’), and what I saw didn’t exactly raise hopes of this working out in the midst of everything else.

As I’ve gotten into in past reviews, the main reason why I do these reviews in the first place is because… well, I have fun doing this. It isn’t to present myself as some high arbiter of taste or to get involved in fandom politics; I enjoy watching and writing about films. Simple as. And watching films with this much baggage behind them, both as art and as studio product, tends to kill the mood for me. But at the very least, having now watched the film in question, I can say that I had more fun with the film than I was expecting.

Antebellum (2020) - Movie Review

Bear with me on this one, because I’m feeling a bit apprehensive about writing a review for this particular movie. As I have been making a regular habit of mentioning around here, I am a suburban white dude from Sydney, Australia, and while I don’t shy away from discussing rather grisly topics over the course of these reviews… gotta admit, being able to do justice to the American original sin that is slavery has always felt like one of my blind spots. I mean, I’m as far away from knowing the first-hand black experience as it’s possible to get, and I have certain fears that my takes about a given film to do with the topic might end up trivialising this aspect of that experience. And that's something I really want to be careful about when discussing Antebellum, which mishandles the topic worse than any other film I've covered on here.

Sweetheart (2020) - Movie Review

Female-led survival horror flicks have been steadily making the rounds over the last handful of years. The Shallows, Crawl, both entries in the Metres Down series; I guess the recent resurgence in ‘prestige’ horror cinema combined with the attempts to bring more female lead characters to the screen have resulted in this intersection. But up until this point, these films have thrived (or floundered) based on being short but sweet genre exercises, not rising too far above the benchmark for man vs. nature yarns. And then this film came along, yet another from the industrious (industrial?) Blumhouse production line, which… basically recontextualises this entire trend.

Flatliners (2017) - Movie Review

Even though history doesn’t exactly carry that much regard for filmmaker Joel Schumacher, I can’t help but think that his legacy has been unfairly discarded. Most remember him for the legendary failure that is Batman & Robin, and it’s honestly the kind of film designed to destroy careers in the first place, but the guy’s body of work stretches far beyond that. Me personally, while his more silly tendencies do factor into a lot of the guy’s films, when he indulges in his darker sensibilities, he is un-goddamn-touchable. From the look into self-induced paranoia of The Number 23 to his examination of the sex industry and the darkness within with 8MM, right down to Falling Down, a film I genuinely think changed my larger worldview for the better after first watching it. Basically, the guy either makes really good dark cinema or really cheesy cinema; he’s far better at the former than the latter.

 

One such example of this is the original Flatliners, a film that, once it found a consistent tone, made for good psycho-thrills; you can probably guess already what draws me to this guy’s filmography. Of course, knowing the track record for sequels-masquerading-as-remakes, learning about today’s film made my heart sink a little bit. But hey, maybe there’s another surprise in store for us; after all I’ve covered this year, I wouldn’t put it past anyone to succeed against the odds. Take a deep breath, like it could be your last, and let’s get started.