Mikeylito

I've had a change of heart. If the creative minds at Warner Brothers will be making the decisions about future DC projects without the creative direction of Zack Snyder, I'd rather they didn't make Man of Steel 2. WW84 is a cartoon from start to finish. The problem is it's a bad cartoon. It's like they took a bunch of plots, tossed them into Christopher Nolan's Inception machine, and whatever came out was filmed and put on the screen. Say what you will about Zach Snyder but, good or bad, at least the man had a vision. I don't know what to say about this mess other than if you don't have HBO Max, save yourself the time and aggravation. If you like cartoons... well, there are better cartoons.

An excellent show with an excellent host, this program is a shouldn't miss weekday afternoons. It's more than worthy of expansion. I look forward to the days when Ms. Wallace returns to 30 Rock along with her "favorite reporters and friends."

The cast was fantastic. Sandler was excellent as Howard Ratner, one of those gamblers who is always down on his luck and has a scheme to dig his way out. Sandler is supported well by Julia Fox, Idina Menzel, Lakeith Stanfield, Eric Bogosian, Judd Hirsch, and Kevin Garnett. The movie is... uncomfortable to watch, despite the marvelous performances and the script eventually ties every scene together like a patchwork quilt. My rating may improve if I can ever convince myself to watch the flick a second time.

I first planned to see this movie in July when it was first scheduled. For whatever reason, STX, the distributor, decided to postpone its release until September. Later, they postponed it again to this weekend against movies like Frozen II and It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. So, despite my excitement at wanting to see a crime flick headlined and co-produced by the star of Black Panther, Chadwick Bozeman, my expectations fell to a low. Bozeman is André Davis, the son of a decorated NYPD police officer killed in the line of duty. 19 years after his father’s death, Davis is under investigation by Internal Affairs because he’s been involved in a lot of officer-involved shootings. One night, two dudes raid a drug gang’s cache at a restaurant in Brooklyn. However, instead of finding 30 kilos of cocaine, they find 300. They decide to take 50, but before they can get away, four policemen show up at the door to the restaurant. One of the dudes, Ray Jackson (Taylor Kitsch), rather aggressively takes out of the four cops, but backup arrives, and Jackson takes them out as well. Jackson and his partner, Michael Trujillo (Stephan James), leave Brooklyn and head over to Manhattan to meet up with their contact. Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn, precinct captain McKenna (J.K. Simmons) drafts Davis to find and dispatch Jackson and Trujillo with extreme prejudice to spare, as we saw in the trailer, the policemen’s families the trauma of “trials, appeals and parole hearings.“ It would seem that someone like Davis with his reputation would be the perfect judge, jury, and executioner. The FBI tries to take over the case, but Davis and McKenna convince them to give Davis until morning to find the shooters. Davis has a plan: shut down all transportation in and out of Manhattan. He also has lots of questions: questions about why things went down the way they did. So, he and a narcotics detective, Frankie Burns (Sienna Miller), set out to find the two shooters before dawn breaks. Director Brian Kirk revs up the tension from the moment the drug heist begins, and he doesn’t let go until the movie ends. That’s not easy to do when he’s directing from the script by Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael Carnahan. Not that the script is weak, but it’s somewhat predictable. However, Kirk has some advantages from the score by Henry Jackman and Alex Belcher and the stellar cast headed up by Boseman, Simmons, Miller, Kitsch, and James. There are some other recognizable faces including Keith David and Alexander Siddig. The cinematography by Paul Cameron is excellent, not burdened with a lot of CGI, and there’s a stellar performance by the city of Philadelphia as Manhattan. This is one of the first productions from Joe and Anthony Russo’s AGBO Films; they brought the script to Boseman, who also produced the movie along with his partner, Logan Coles and others. Unfortunately, this film opened against Frozen II and It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, but hopefully, you’ll head back to the theatre and take in 21 Bridges. It’s a welcome treat for adults.

Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix team for an unconventional comic book movie about a man and a city’s descent into madness. There has been some discussion that this isn’t a comic-book movie, but it undeniably is. It is an origin story. Arthur Fleck is a devoted son. He lives with his mother, but he is not dependent on her. Rather, he takes care of her, and he does it by working as a clown for hire. His job takes him to various places: for example, a music store going out of business and a children’s hospital. Arthur also suffers from a (real-life) condition, which causes him to laugh uncontrollably at inappropriate times. So much so that he carries a card that can explain it to people when he cannot. The construction of the story is masterful and subversive, and it requires the audience to think and deduce some of the action going on before them. Phoenix’s performance is nuanced and skilled. It captures some of the cartoon-like nature of The Joker without it being cartoony. In some form, you respect Fleck’s struggle, and then he shocks you with his behavior. In a sense, Fleck has a code, and until the very end of the film, he never violates it. To tell you more would spoil the experience. Rated R by the MPAA for strong bloody violence, disturbing behavior, language and brief sexual images, Joker is the best comic book film with that rating since Logan. I highly recommend it. ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ 9 out of 10