I’ve watched almost all the DC animated movies, they’re basically all good with solid plots. I do not understand how every superman/batman movie is significantly worse.
Lol Zach Snyder.
Agree there. The Superman/Shazam animated short was amazing. Flashpoint was LIT. Goddamn that alternate Batman where Bruce’s dad survived instead of Bruce was amazing.
From interviews with Snyder, my impression is that he has an authoritarian, brutal perception of the world and what is demanded of heroes. It’s been a part of his DCEU vision since Pa Kent told Clark to just let people die.
Compare that to the DCEU movies that have won acclaim. Wonder Woman, Shazam… Somewhat Birds of Prey. Joker, I guess, but at the end, that was as emotionally empty as Uncut Gems.
Superman is an inspiring figure. You can change a bunch of stuff to make his story yours, but a Superman that stands by and lets people die reveals the flaw in Snyder’s overall vision and what I expect from the Snyder cut. The attraction of Superman is that he cannot stop himself from being a hero. If you want to go dark, that’s easy. He has the power of a god, and yet he feels tortured that he cannot do more to help people.
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The Arrowverse crossover specials are way better than any of the Snyder movies.
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Brandon Routh donning the cape again to close out the Christopher Reeve movie arc was so good
Batman Beyond is still waiting for a live action adaptation. Keaton would be great for that.
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That would be amazing.
And now they could also use him in a live-action Kingdom Come adaptation. Pair him with Brandon Routh and it’s almost as good as if it were actually Chris Reeve vs Michael Keaton.
Why don’t they get the guy who plays The Flash in the TV shows to play The Flash in the movies? Dude is incredible in that role. I might consider watching one of these Snyder movies if they brought the CW actors on board.
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More movies.
I was confused to discover there was a 90s thriller starring both Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine that I’ve never seen, so I corrected that and put on Blood and Wine. As the opening titles rolled I saw that the biggest role actually went to Stephen Dorff, which explained things, and I have not been missing anything all these years. It was one of the innumerable 90s thrillers that seem like a Shannon Tweed cast off, and in the role she might have played was a young Jennifer Lopez. Given the cast, (Dorff aside), and that Caine especially was reliably great, it’s a wonder it was overall as boring as it was. The plot, about a stolen necklace, was convoluted but not that complicated or interesting, and it didn’t really do anything well. I’d say avoid if I thought I needed to bother.
I also had a look at Brawl in Cell Block 99, another film by the director of Dragged Across Concrete (see above) starring Vince Vaughn as a drug dealer having a tough time of it in jail. It was great, just a brutal, efficient old school exploitation movie. Vaughn was great, as was pretty much everyone in it—including Don Johnson as the evil warden—and instead of the affectation of DAC this was technique applied to exactly the right material, elevating what could easily have been humdrum or bad into one of the most enjoyable bits of B-movie nonsense I’ve seen in ages.
Finally, last night I pursued more related researches and saw Burt Lancaster in prison in Brute Force, a late 40s noir from Jules Dassin (The Naked City, Night and the City, Rififi.) It was as solid and enjoyable as that pedigree suggests, though there was an unfair problem I found it hard to get past—given the last 70 years of prisons in movies, it was hard to understand why Burt and the rest of them were so unhappy. Burt himself, burning throughout with righteous indignation at his dehumanising treatment, spent most of the film with the seeming freedom of the prison, going here and there to nail down his plan. His main co-conspirator even had the job of editing the prison newspaper, so spent his days chewing a pencil in his office as they plotted their escape. I mean, yeah, the evil head guard did manipulate Burt’s friend into suicide, and occasionally indulged in some Jack Bauer style enhanced interrogation. Also, when things all kicked off there was liberal use of machine guns aimed at crowds of rioting prisoners. But, at the end of the day, they started it all!
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LOL Stephen Dorff 
Caine is almost good enough to make a bad Jaws sequel work.
He was fantastic in The Quiet American. Whoof, a great Brendan Fraser role, too.
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I think I’ve watched more stupid movies because of Michael Caine than anyone else. He’s never not worth watching, though. If you’ve not seen it then The Hand, directed by Oliver Stone, is a must see in the stupid-Michael-Caine-movie genre. In real life he’s a bit of a prick, sadly. The Quiet American is one of those films I’m reluctant to re-watch in case it isn’t quite as great as I remember. I’m tempted again now, we’ll see.
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Just to prove what I said above about The Hand, here’s one of the only GIFs I’ve ever made.
(I’ve spoilered it for very mild and very amusing ‘gore’)
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This is nuts
Sleuth was pretty good (from memory).
I’m not familiar with it. Do I see correctly that Michael Caine starred in both the 1972 original and 2007 remake??
Yup, in different roles. The original was really good.
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I hate remakes as a rule (though there must be some exceptions - maybe Invasion Of The Body Snatchers?), so I don’t know.
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Any remakes in particular that shaped how much you dislike them? I guess I dislike them as a rule, too, but I’ve seen so many excellent remakes that I guess it’s not really a rule for me after all.
Cape Fear
Psycho
Colour Of Money
among the worst…others I can’t remember
Scorsese forgiven by dint of making commercial films to finance his own projects which obviously are mainly brilliant.
There are plenty of remakes that are good, it’s just that they are unnecessary and when we already liked the original, our opinion of the remake is already tainted.
For instance, I thought the Total Recall remake was solid, but there was just no need for it since the original was such a classic. If I had never seen the original, I’d probably like the remake better.