Halloween (2018)

I don't know if there's a whole lot of room for debate when I say that the original Halloween is an absolute classic. Say whatever you want about the sequels and remakes, but there's no denying that John Carpenter's original movie from 1978 was a landmark moment in the horror genre. It helped birth the rise of the subgenre of slasher movies in the 1980s, and has served as a tremendous influence on a lot of horror films and filmmakers ever since its premiere forty years ago.

And as the original celebrates its fortieth anniversary, Universal Studios and Blumhouse have teamed up to give us a sequel to it that's practically a fresh start for the whole franchise. Gone is the cult of Thorn in the middle sequels, gone is the '90s flair stolen from Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Gone is the seven-foot-tall beast from a white trash family that Rob Zombie gave us. This new entry in the saga of Michael Myers is a direct follow-up to the very first movie that eschews everything that followed it, and it's one hell of a ride.

Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) has spent the forty years since his brutal killing spree incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, and is soon to be transferred to a maximum-security prison. Or at least, that's the plan. Instead, Michael escapes when the bus transporting him crashes and he makes a beeline for his old stomping grounds of Haddonfield.

But waiting for him is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who has lived in unending fear that she might cross paths with Michael again one day. She lives alone in the middle of nowhere in a heavily fortified house. There are bars and tons of locks on all the windows and doors, security cameras and giant floodlights surround her property, and there's a panic room full of guns in her basement.

Laurie's inability to overcome her traumatic past, however, has heavily soured her relationship with her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), who forbids her own daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) from interacting with her grandmother. But once word gets out that Michael has returned to Haddonfield and has started adding numbers to his body count, Laurie heads back into town herself to protect her family and kill the monster that has haunted her for so long once and for all.

I'll admit that I've never really been a fan of the Halloween franchise. I just never really latched onto them growing up the same way I did the Friday the 13th movies. That said, I went into the theater hoping that at the very least, this new incarnation of Michael Myers would wash the taste of those godawful abominations that Rob Zombie directed out of my mouth. And you know what? This new Halloween kicks ass. It's a genuinely scary movie that I'd honestly call probably the best of all the franchise's sequels. (Or at least my favorite of the sequels with Michael Myers, because I do love me some Halloween III.)

While director David Gordon Green might sound like an odd choice to helm a movie like this due to his past work being a long list of comedies, he proves here than he can make one hell of a horror movie. Green does an amazing job actually building to scary moments rather than just trying to startle the audience with cheap jump scares. Take, for example, a scene at a gas station early in the movie. Michael ever so subtly moves in the background, just slightly out of focus. You might not even really notice him at first, depending on what part of the screen you're paying attention to. But then you start noticing just what Michael has been doing. And just as we begin to realize just how much trouble the characters are in, Michael strikes and takes tension to full-blown terror.

Green also doesn't hold back when it comes to showing just how much of a monster Michael is. The character almost seems like a blend of the cold, focused boogeyman from the 1978 original and the brutal animal from the 2007 remake. Roughly halfway through the movie, there is a three-minute sequence that is one unbroken shot of Michael walking down a street surrounded by trick-or-treaters. The camera follows Michael as he sneaks into different houses at random and kills the occupants inside. It's terrifying in its utter senselessness. Michael has absolutely no reason to do this, no greater purpose for it beyond pure sadism and malice. Green making this one unbroken shot gives us no escape; we're following a monster in a white mask as he cuts a bloody swath through a small town for no reason other than because he can, and there is no stopping him.

I also thought the movie benefitted from a strong script, written by Green, Jeff Fradley, and Danny McBride. (Yes, the same Danny McBride from Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, and Eastbound & Down.) I thought Halloween H20 was bold to remove the fourth, fifth, and sixth movies from continuity, but Green, Fradley, and McBride go as far as to ignore all the sequels, evidenced when Allyson dismisses the idea of Michael and Laurie being siblings as a bunch of malarkey thought up by a sensationalistic press. Much like H20, it streamlines things for people approaching the franchise for the first time, since you don't have to worry about having missed anything beyond one movie. And even then, you don't need to have seen the original to understand this one. They fill in enough of the gaps that you more than likely won't feel lost if you're new to the Halloween movies.

That said, what I felt made the movie so strong was not only its fresh take on the franchise, but in how Green, Fradley, and McBride depict Laurie Strode. This Laurie is so different from the one we saw in H20. She's not trying to hide from her past at the bottom of a liquor bottle and keep it a secret from the world with a new name. This Laurie has suffered all kinds of trauma, so much so that it has left her an utterly miserable person even decades later. She can't let herself move on because the psychological wounds are too deep to heal. Sure, Laurie was messed up mentally in H20 (so much so that Jamie Lee Curtis's cameo as the character in Resurrection was set in a mental institution) and in Rob Zombie's second movie, but it feels more believable, more real here.

But I'll also say that I didn't think the script was perfect either. And it's for one reason: the Dr. Sartain character. I got the feeling that Green, Fradley, and McBride wanted to put a Dr. Loomis kind of character in the movie but didn't have the heart to recast the role, so they came up with Dr. Sartain instead. Dr. Sartain has none of the gravitas of Dr. Loomis, and a stupid third act twist does the character no favors either.

And then there's the cast, the glorious cast. The supporting actors are fun (I especially liked Jibrail Nantambu in his small role as a smart-aleck kid being babysat by one of Allyson's friends), and Judy Greer is quite good as Laurie's estranged daughter. Greer especially gets to show off once her character is stuck facing her unhappy childhood once Michael starts coming for her family.

James Jude Courtney, meanwhile, is terrifying as Michael Myers. Nick Castle plays Michael in a handful of scenes, reprising the role he played back in 1978, but it's mostly Courtney we see on-screen. Courtney has an aura to him that makes Michael scary to even just look at when he's standing still. I never really got why Michael was always called "The Shape" before, but now I think I do. Courtney's Michael is the shape of evil, the shape of what goes bump in the night. And honestly, this is probably the scariest depiction of Michael I've seen since the original movie.

And I can't talk about the cast without discussing Jamie Lee Curtis. Some people might be seeing this movie just for Michael, but Curtis as Laurie is just as important. Her depiction of Laurie here is of a woman not to be trifled with. She reminds me somewhat of Linda Hamilton's performance in Terminator 2, how she'd transformed from naive young woman to hardened warrior. The difference between them, though, is that Laurie feels much more raw. Her pain, worry, and paranoia are much more palpable, and Curtis plays the role with an intensity that keeps your eyes on her. If Michael Myers is the shape of evil, then Curtis makes Laurie Strode the shape of unprocessed rage caused by trauma and a desire to make sure nobody hurts like she does.

The opening credits of the 2018 version of Halloween are a montage of names next to a rotten, destroyed pumpkin. But as the names flicker by and John Carpenter's iconic theme reaches is crescendo, the worn-out pumpkin rebuilds itself into a vibrant jack-o'-lantern. It seems rather fitting, as if it represented the Halloween franchise as a whole. Michael Myers hasn't had it easy through his last few movies, but this new one is the perfect way to remind us why Michael and the Halloween name are so important to the horror genre. And I can't wait to see where the franchise goes from here.

 Final Rating: ****

Justice League (2017)

Even before I actually started reading comic books on a regular basis, I loved DC Comics. I grew up watching DC's characters in cartoons, TV shows, and movies, and I've always held them very close to my heart even if I hadn't always been familiar with their origins on the printed page. So when I'd heard that Warner Bros. was going to borrow an idea from Marvel Studios and create a shared cinematic universe featuring DC's heroes and villains, I was excited... until I actually saw the movies.

As good as Wonder Woman might have been, the utter awfulness of Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad really dampened any sort of excitement I had for what's been named "the DC Extended Universe."But regardless, I was still drawn to Justice League. I mean, how could I not go see it? And while it's certainly a very, very flawed movie, I still enjoyed it for what it was.

Thousands of years ago, Earth was invaded by the warlord Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds) and the armies of the dystopian planet of Apokolips. He was ultimately repelled by the combined efforts of humanity, the gods of Olympus, the Amazons, the people of the undersea kingdom of Atlantis, and members of the Green Lantern Corps. Steppenwolf's weapons, three powerful artifacts known as "Mother Boxes," were separated and hidden away.

Fast forward to the present day. Humanity has become much more bitter and cynical than ever before in the wake of Superman's death. It is this despair that reactivates the long-dormant Mother Boxes and draws Steppenwolf back to Earth to search for them. Realizing the high likelihood that he might succeed in doing so, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) begin putting together their own team of super-powered individuals to fight him. Their recruits:

• Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa), the half-human heir to the throne of the mythical lost continent of Atlantis
• Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), a nerdy college student who uses his ability to move at superhuman speed to operate as a vigilante known as "The Flash"
• Victor Stone (Ray Fisher), a former college football star whose body was rebuilt with cybernetic enhancements via a Mother Box after a near-fatal accident

And while the team puts up a good fight against Steppenwolf in their first encounter with him, Batman decides that they need a little extra something to bring to their next battle: a resurrected Superman (Henry Cavill). It's a risky plan, one that might not even work, but it might be their only hope.

I entered Justice League with a fair bit of trepidation for a number of reasons. One was the movie's shaky production, which I'll get into later. There's also the fact that DC's movies don't exactly have the best track record lately. Not only have the movies building to Justice League been lousy (with the exception of Wonder Woman), but they've also felt like they're just there to be there, with

When Marvel started their initial build from Iron Man to The Avengers, the majority of the major players got their own individual movies (or plenty of significant screen time if they weren't flying solo) so that the audience would know who they were and connect to them. They took the time to build their universe and mapped out everything, sometimes even years in advance. Each successive movie plants at least some tiny little seed to be expanded upon in later installments, whether we notice it at first or not. And considering that their continued use of that formula has made them billions of dollars at the worldwide box office, I'd be willing to bet that they won't be changing it up much in the future.

DC, on the other hand, hasn't really done any of that. It's really evident that they only had the idea to do a shared universe was something they came up after the success of Man of Steel instead of something they'd planned all along. Their movies seem disjointed, disconnected, none of them remotely feeling like they should or could be taking place in the same world. Yeah, Batman and Flash might've made cameos in Suicide Squad, but the build to Justice League comes across like trying to put together a puzzle with none of the right pieces.

I don't really believe I'm exaggerating when I say I think they've been rushing to get to a movie starring the Justice League but didn't care how they got there. Rather than have a concise game plan from the start, DC has just thrown whatever they could at a wall and ran with whatever they believed would stick. And it's honestly hard to make a connection to these characters when the movie hasn't earned it. Man of Steel and Batman v Superman were the kind of movies you'd have expected to be made by some 16-year-old edgelord who thinks the idea of clearly defined good guys and bad guys is stupid and that idealism is for chumps, while Suicide Squad is basically what you'd get if Guardians of the Galaxy was made inside of a Spencer's Gifts with characters who weren't as developed or likable. Wonder Woman was a fantastic way to let us get to know the character after she showed up in Batman v Superman, but that still leaves us with the rest. Could Warner Bros. and DC not been a bit more patient? Would it have killed them to establish as many major players as they could' before approaching the Justice League?

It wouldn't have hurt anybody if they'd waited another year or two to make this movie. Give the audience something to establish this Flash and show us what sets him apart from the Flash that Grant Gustin plays on that show on The CW. Give the audience something to show that Aquaman is more than just the "lol he talks to fish" jokes that have been told about him for years. Do something, anything, to show us why Cyborg belongs in the Justice League and that he's more than just "that one Teen Titan that says 'booyah.'" (I'm of the opinion that they could've gone with the Martian Manhunter or one of the Green Lanterns instead of Cyborg, but that's just me.) I'm not saying give them their own solo movies right out of the gate; Marvel's Black Widow and Hawkeye haven't had their own solo movies and I still couldn't imagine the Avengers without them. I'd have just appreciated a little something from the newcomers other than "oh yeah, these guys are here now, we'll fill in the details later if we get the time."

The movie's rocky production did it no favors either. While Zack Snyder is credited as the movie's sole director, he left the movie during post-production to deal with his daughter's tragic suicide. Joss Whedon, who Warner Bros. had previously brought on to rewrite Chris Terrio's script, was tagged with completing the movie. This included not just finishing post-production, but doing extensive reshoots too. You can definitely see Whedon's influence on the final product, especially in the dialogue and in the movie's sense of humor. It doesn't feel anything like the dark, morose movies that Snyder made. Elements of Snyder's typical style are still here, but they're toned down, almost as if Whedon was trying to reign in what he couldn't completely change.

The bad part is that with Whedon taking over only a few months ago, the final product feels rushed. There's the dodgy CGI, for starters. Steppenwolf looks like absolute crap, as does most of the final battle against Steppenwolf and his Parademons. And the less said about the hysterically atrocious work they did removing the mustache Henry Cavill had to grow for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the better. One also gets the feeling that quite a lot of the movie was left on the cutting room floor to keep the movie at a two-hour running time. Maybe that's where all of Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg's backstories went?

The movie also suffers from having a ridiculously weak villain. I'd never even heard of Steppenwolf prior to seeing the movie. And the character as he's presented here isn't much. He just doesn't seem like the kind of character that would need the entire Justice League to take him down. Maybe Warner Bros. mandated that they had to save Darkseid for a potential sequel? He probably wouldn't have been half as awesome as the one in the comics, or the one Michael Ironside voiced in the various DC cartoons developed by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini during the latter half of the '90s and early '00s. But still, I'd have loved to have seen Darkseid.

I'll say this much, though: the majority of the cast is great, so the movie at least has that going for it. Ray Fisher is forgettable as Cyborg and Ezra Miller is honestly kinda annoying as the Flash. But everybody else is great. Ben Affleck once again makes a better Batman than people thought he'd be when he was first hired for the role. I spoke of solo movies earlier, and I'd really like to see one starring Affleck's Batman.

Jason Momoa, meanwhile, is a total badass in his first outing as Aquaman. He gives off a vibe of being the coolest guy in the room, and easily makes one forget all the corny jokes about Aquaman being lame. I also thought that Gal Gadot was once again fabulous as Wonder Woman. She plays the role with a ton of heart and conviction, and again reaffirms my belief that they couldn't have hired a better actress for the role.

And then there's Henry Cavill, who finally gets to play the Superman I always dreamed he could be here. Despite how poorly Zack Snyder wrote the character in the past, Cavill has always shown a ton of potential that he could be a fantastic Superman with the right material. And there's some strong glimpses of it here, even if Cavill doesn't have a whole lot of screen time compared to the rest of the cast. Seeing him save the day by laying in a few punches to Steppenwolf before dropping everything to save some civilians in peril, all while Danny Elfman's brief interpretation of John Williams' classic Superman theme from 1978 plays? Oh yeah, I want to see more of that Superman!

A Justice League movie could've happened back in 2007, believe it or not. Mad Max creator George Miller was hired to direct what would've been called Justice League: Mortal, along with a cast. But it was canceled due to a combination of budgetary woes and the Writer's Guild strike. Ten years later, the Justice League have finally hit the big screen and the results are... okay, I guess. It's not a particularly bad movie, but it also isn't that great either. It's one of those movies that's just kinda there. It's at least the second-best entry in the DC Expanded Universe, though that's damning it with faint praise. Could've been worse, though; I could've been stuck watching Batman v Superman again.

Final Rating:**½

Wonder Woman (2017)

After the critical and box office failures of Catwoman and Elektra a decade ago, Hollywood seemingly became convinced that female-led superhero movies couldn't work. And ever since then, nobody seems to have made any serious attempt to try again. Yeah, we've had Mystique, Storm, and Jean Grey in the X-Men movies, but they've spent nearly two decades stuck in the shadow of Xavier, Magneto, and Wolverine. The closest any major studio has gotten to giving a female character a role with any real, significant, meaningful substance to it in all that time has been Scarlett Johansson having a major supporting role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

But then along came Wonder Woman to shake everything up.

Created in 1941 by William Moulton Marston and an uncredited H.G. Peter, Wonder Woman brought a big dose of girl power to the male-dominated superhero genre. She wasn't some damsel in distress that needed a hero to rescue her; she was the damsel that saved herself. And through all the ups and downs the comic book industry has gone through, and through numerous retools and reimaginings, Wonder Woman has persisted, staying in print on a regular basis since her debut and becoming just as important to DC Comics as Superman and Batman.

But unlike her caped colleagues, Wonder Woman hasn't seen a whole lot of success beyond the printed page. With the notable exception of the classic 1970s TV show starring Lynda Carter, she hadn't really appeared anywhere beyond the various cartoons based on the Justice League. However, when Warner Bros. decided to follow in Marvel's footsteps and create their own cinematic universe starring the heroes and villains of DC Comics, Wonder Woman finally got her big break as a movie star. Her appearance in Batman v Superman was one of the few genuine highlights of that dreadful movie, and with the release of her own theatrical solo adventure, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited to see it. And after the string of misfires the DC Extended Universe has had lately, the Wonder Woman movie is exactly the shot in the arm it needs.

Welcome to Themyscira, a beautiful, secluded island in the Mediterranean Sea that is called home by a proud race of warrior women known as the Amazons. Created by the gods of Mount Olympus to protect humanity, the Amazons relentlessly train as soldiers in preparation for the prophesied return of Ares, the villainous god of war who slayed his fellow gods before being defeated by a mortally-wounded Zeus.

Unique among the Amazons is Diana (Gal Gadot), daughter of Queen Hyppolyta (Connie Nielsen). Despite being imbued with all of the same physical gifts as the rest of her people and trained ten times harder than anyone else, Hyppolyta still attempts to shelter her daughter from combat and discourage her from being like the other Amazons.

That all changes when Diana rescues Air Force captain Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) from drowning after his plane is shot down just off the island's coast. He reveals under interrogation that, unbeknownst to the Amazons, World War 1 has been raging for four years and that he is an Allied spy. In Steve's possession is a notebook he'd managed to steal from Dr. Isabel Maru (Elena Anaya), a chemist working under the command of General Erich Ludendorff (Danny Huston) of the German army. In this notebook is evidence that Maru has not only developed an advanced, even deadlier version of mustard gas, but that Ludendorff plans to use it in an attack on London.

Diana believes the war to be the handiwork of Ares and agrees to accompany Steve back to England so he can deliver Dr. Maru's notes to his superiors. But when Diana and Steve are stonewalled by the Allied forces' top brass as an armistice is close to being signed, they're forced to the front lines to stop Ludendorff and Maru from releasing their gas and changing the tide of the war.

The fourth time's the charm, it seems. I say that because after three movies that struggled to achieve even mediocrity, the DC Extended Universe finally has a winner. Wonder Woman is, no pun intended, wonderful. The movie is a 141-minute adventure that is exciting, compelling, at times awe-inspiring. It's not a flawless movie, but it is a strong effort that I absolutely loved.

At the helm is Patty Jenkins, who has spent the better part of the last decade working in television. Wonder Woman is only her second feature-length directorial effort, following the Aileen Wuoronos biopic Monster in 2003. And while Monster and Wonder Woman are on completely different ends of the specturm in terms of both the size of their productions and the personalities of their main characters, Jenkins proves herself more than capable of playing with the boys in their summer blockbuster territory.

Jenkins does not approach the movie with the overbearing gloom and senseless destruction we saw in Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, nor does she turn the movie into a ridiculous mess like what Suicide Squad turned out to be. She instead seems to draw inspiration from Captain America: The First Avenger. Both movies feel rather close in style, especially considering that both movies are period pieces that see superheroes sent to a war in Europe. But that's not to say that Jenkins merely copied that movie wholesale. That doesn't strike me as being the case at all. She does more to capture the horrors of war here than Joe Johnston did in The First Avenger, and to be honest, as much as I love Cap's first adventure as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are parts of Wonder Woman that blow it out of the water.

Take, for example, the scene where Diana leaps out of the trenches and marches into "No Man's Land" so she can liberate a German-occupied village, brushing off bullets and mortar shells with her shield and wrist bracers. It's an utterly amazing, breathtaking scene that how much of a warrior and how much of a hero Diana is. Jenkins puts the scene together masterfully, a perfect blend of cinematography, music, stunts, special effects, and actors perfectly encapsulating their assigned roles. Just thinking about that scene gives me goosebumps. And the moment shortly thereafter, when Diana leaps into a second story window and takes out a group of German soldiers set to the strains of her leitmotif from Batman v Superman, is one hell of an adrenaline rush.

She also has an amazing cast to work with as well. Everyone contributes a fine performance, but I'd be lying if I said anyone other than Gal Gadot and Chris Pine were the standouts. Pine is charming and charismatic, and he and Gadot have a palpable chemistry together. And I'll confess that it's kinda neat seeing a movie where a man is the female hero's token love interest instead of the other way around.

But honestly, nobody is seeing the movie for Chris Pine. Everybody is seeing it for Gal Gadot, and those that are will not be disappointed because Gadot is tremendous here. She captures everything Wonder Woman is and should be. Gadot makes her more than just a warrior; she's graceful, hopeful, idealistic, an agent of peace and compassion that has no qualms about standing up for what she believes in. For the last forty years, Lynda Carter alone has been associated with the role, but Gadot makes it her own with her fantastic performance. In short, Gal Gadot puts the "wonder" in "Wonder Woman."

When I said earlier that the movie has flaws, I wasn't lying. The plot is nothing exceptional and Diana's climactic confrontation with Ares is practically interchangeable with the final battle from pretty much any other random superhero movie from the last fifteen years. But if those are the only negative things I can think to say about Wonder Woman, then the movie is doing pretty damn good for itself. I honestly cannot say enough positive things about the movie; it's everything I'd hoped it could've been. And between you and me, I have yet to figure out why it took so long for Wonder Woman to get her own starring role in a movie? Superman and Batman can get fourteen movies between them 1978 and now, but Wonder Woman just now gets one? Here's hoping she gets a few more to make up for lost time.

Final Rating: ****

Dr. Strange (1978)

At the tail end of the '70s, Marvel Comics teamed up with CBS to translate some of their superheroes from the printed page to the world of television. But while the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno-led The Incredible Hulk proved to be a big hit and became a memorable part of that era's pop culture, other efforts weren't so fruitful. A Spider-Man TV show lasted only a handful of episodes that aired sporadically between 1977 and 1979, while there were two incredibly hokey Captain America movies that ultimately never led to a series.

And then there's the case of Dr. Strange. Despite the success of the title character's comic books, he's so unlike Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Captain America that I'm actually surprised that they decided to give him a shot at TV stardom. I'm guessing that it wasn't much of a success, considering that it never made it past a pilot episode that aired on CBS on September 6, 1978. But there's nothing wrong with trying, is there? So as the Sorcerer Supreme makes his big-budget theatrical debut today as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I figured I might as well look back nearly forty years and see if Doctor Strange could have had as much success on the small screen as I'm sure he will on the big screen.

Beyond our world lies a realm of such mystic wonder that only a select few can truly comprehend it. This realm is host to a constant war between good and evil with our plane of existence hanging in the balance. Defending us in this battle is Thomas Lindmer (John Mills), a powerful wizard who holds the title of "Sorcerer Supreme." With him out of the way, the vile beasts opposing him would be able to invade and conquer Earth.

But the battle is taking its toll on a weakening Lindmer, who must soon pass the Sorcerer Supreme mantle to a successor before all is lost. Realizing that this will be their best time to strike, evil sorceress Morgan Le Fay (Jessica Walter) is sent by her dark masters to eliminate their foe before his successor can be found.

To do this, she arrives in New York City and possesses a young woman named Clea Lake (Eddie Benton), who she uses to push Lindmer off a bridge. He survives unharmed, but the possession leaves Clea so mentally scarred that she is taken to the nearest hospital's psychiatric ward and left in the care of brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten). Lindmer and his assistant Wong (Clyde Kusatsu) follow her to Dr. Strange, discovering that the fates have aligned to make him the next Sorcerer Supreme.

Despite his initial skepticism, Strange becomes intrigued by what Lindmer is trying to sell him and follows him down the rabbit hole into a world of magic and mysticism. And it's a good thing too, because Le Fay is to be defeated and the world saved, Strange will have to fully tap into his potential and embrace his new role as the Sorcerer Supreme.

Thanks to a combination of low ratings and poor reviews at the time, CBS chose not to pick up Dr. Strange as a series. And honestly, I can see why. While this pilot really picks up during the second half, the first act is so lifeless and dull that by the time something interested happened, I'd begun to mentally check out by that point. It wasn't until the last thirty minutes of the movie that it really re-captured my attention. But it isn't bad, either; it actually shows some promise. The cast is good, and the effects aren't bad for a made-for-TV pilot at the tail end of the '70s. And had it gone to series, I could've seen it finding something of a cult following similar to Kolchak: The Night Stalker. But it's not perfect, so let's get into why.

This pilot was written and directed by Philip DeGuere, who was no stranger to television. At the time he made Dr. Strange, he'd most notably written episodes of Baretta and The Bionic Woman among others, and would go on to create the long-running show Simon & Simon just a few years after this. But I can't say I was particularly enthusiastic about DeGuere's work here. As far as his script goes, there's not a lot here to justify its 90-minute length. A lot of scenes feel like padding or don't really add much to the story otherwise, but my guess is that these scenes were here to add threats that would be followed if the pilot got picked up as a series or in any potential sequel movies. But all it does here is make the movie feel like it had 45 minutes of story stretched out to an hour and a half.

The story also suffers from having a tremendously weak villain. The depiction of Morgan Le Fay here is a shallow, one-dimensional character who does practically nothing except for giving people the stink-eye for the majority of the movie. The ending implies a change for the charactor's methods, but considering that there was never any follow-up, we're just stick with this boring, uninteresting villain.

DeGuere's direction is a bit better than his writing, though I wasn't really too impressed with it either. I know I should probably judge a 1970s TV production differently than a theatrically released movie, but there's isn't a lot worth talking about here. At least not until the movie is almost over, anyway. Thanks to all the meandering around that it does in the first half, the movie is almost a chore to watch for quite a bit of time. DeGuere does spice things up in the second half by picking up the pace and giving us some action and the occasional trippy visual, but it's almost too little, too late. By the time things really get interesting, it's almost over.

At least the cast, for the most part, is what really elevates the movie. The exception is Jessica Walter, who you'll most likely recognize from her roles on Arrested Development and Archer, isn't really given much to work with here. She's not awful, but Walter is wasted playing a flat character with nothing really going for it.

I could very nearly say the same for Eddie Benton, who would be credited as "Anne-Marie Martin" for much of her later career (which includes 251 episodes of Days of Our Lives during the first half of the '80s, as well as co-writing the script for Twister). Benton doesn't have a lot demanded of her here, and I get the feeling that the character would have developed more over the course of a series. But Benton does what she can with the role, and puts forth a watchable performance at the very least.

On the other hand, I really liked John Mills, whose earnestness in the role made him feel very much akin to Alec Guinness' performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi. He contributes possibly the best performance in the whole thing, with Peter Hooten coming in a close second. I thought Hooten started off a bit on the dull side at first, but really began to win me over as the movie progressed. He's got a unique charm to him that really makes me wish for some kind of follow-up to the movie, be it a series or a sequel, because I'd enjoy seeing Hooten play the character as the fully fleshed-out Sorcerer Supreme that we saw in the closing moments here.

If this review feels like it's all over the place, I'll take part of the blame for that. It's not often that I watch or write about failed television pilots from the '70s. But to be fair, the movie is kinda all over the place itself. Its imperfections are boldly on display for anyone and everyone to see. Could Dr. Strange have worked as a TV series? Sure, I believe so. I saw some real potential deep down here. And I did leave wanting to see where they could have gone next creatively. But when it's said and done, Dr. Strange is just sorta... okay, I guess. But at least that's better than bad, right?

Final Rating: **

Suicide Squad (2016)

Two years ago, Marvel Studios gave us a movie starring a gang of morally-ambiguous misfits that, in the realm of the comic books they originated from, were D-list characters at best. So when Guardians of the Galaxy turned out to be a big fat hit at the box office, DC Comics decided that when it came time for them to create their own cinematic universe, they'd do something similar...

Cue the Suicide Squad. The group initially appeared in 1959 as a team of elite commandos taking on dangerous missions following the disbanding of the Justice Society, but the concept was completely reimagined by writer/artist John Ostrander in 1987. Drawing inspiration from The Dirty Dozen, Ostrander revived the Suicide Squad as a covert ops team with a revolving roster of minor villains wrangled into the group. The Suicide Squad has made a number of off-and-on appearances in the comics ever since, and eventually popping up in animation, video games, and now their own live-action movie. And folks, if you thought that was Batman v Superman was bad, you're probably not gonna like Suicide Squad very much either. 

The death of Superman has shocked the world. It's also left its political leaders with an unshakable sense of dread. Superman may have been one of the good guys, but what would happen if another being with similar abilities decided he wanted to be a villain instead? To combat this, government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has convinced the CIA to sign off on a project she's conceived called "Task Force X." The project would see a number of dangerous criminals cobbled together and sent into black-ops missions with the promise of reduced prison sentences and extra perks during their stay in jail. And if things go south or someone goes rogue, that's where plausible deniability comes in.

The team is placed under the command of Special Forces member Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and expert swordswoman Katana (Karen Fukuhara), and all it needs are a few lucky recruits. And for her merry band of misfits, Waller has assembled...

• Deadshot (Will Smith), the world's deadliest assassin
• Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a former prison psychiatrist who became a mentally-disturbed loose cannon after being seduced by one of her patients, the notorious Joker (Jaret Leto)
• Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), an Australian bank robber whose nickname comes from his preferred weapon of choice
• El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), an ex-gangbanger who can summon and control fire
• Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who was born with an incredibly rare genetic condition that has made him into a reptilian beast
• Slipknot (Adam Beach), a mercenary whose specialty lies in the use of ropes and grappling hooks
• Dr. June Moone (Cara Delevigne), a meek archaeologist whose body hosts the spirit of an ancient and powerful sorceress known as "the Enhantress"

Things take an immediate turn south, however, when Enchantress takes full control of June's body and decides that if humanity will no longer worship her as they did millennia ago, they must be exterminated. She awakens her brother, the demonic Incubus (Alain Chanoine), and the duo begin building a mystical weapon with which they will accomplish their ultimate goal. Waller deploys Task Force X to the city that Enchantress and Incubus are occupying with orders to extract a high-profile target, but standing in their way are two pissed-off godlike beings and a bunch of creatures under their control.

I wanted to like Suicide Squad. I desperately wanted to walk out of that theater and write a rave review where I'd tell you to run to the nearest theater and see it as soon as you possibly could because Suicide Squad is the coolest movie ever. But I'm unable to do so. The truth of the matter is that Suicide Squad is kinda weak, to be honest with you. As I implied in the introduction, one gets the feeling that Warner Bros. and DC Comics saw the success of Guardians of the Galaxy and chose to make their own version, right down to having a bunch of classic rock and pop songs on the soundtrack. But Suicide Squad has none of the charm or heart that made Guardians so much fun. The direction is lazy, the plot is hokey, the characterizations are wafer-thin, and the whole thing is just plain unappealing.

Writer/director David Ayer is no stranger to action movies, having worked on quite a few over the last few years. You'd think he'd have plenty of experience in making them, but he left Suicide Squad lacking. It feels like some generic, low-budget flick that would've gone straight to DVD and ended up in the $5 discount bin at Walmart within a year, not a summer blockbuster starring a bunch of DC Comics characters. It doesn't help that the movie's schizophrenic pacing puts it all over the place, never letting it establish any sort of consistent flow. It's hard for a movie to get into any real groove when it feels like it's been edited with a chainsaw.

Ayer's script also leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. A lot of the dialogue is hokey and hackneyed (Rick Flag's exposition and introductions of Katana and Slipknot stand out in particular), while other parts try so desperately to sound cool when they're corny almost to the point of being laughable. Take, for example, when Harley comments "that's a killer app!" when Flag remotely detonates one of the explosive collars that Task Force X wear, or when Deadshot tells Harley to "stay evil, dollface" after the two come to an agreement about their fates. If lines like these are supposed to be jokes, they aren't very funny. If they're supposed to be serious, then they just sound lame.

The characters are also almost all one-note caricatures, with any sort of development being slim to nil. You can make a movie about villains and antiheroes and give them some depth, but it seems Ayer couldn't be bothered with that. The characters only seem to exist to go from action scene to action scene while making cute little quips every so often, and that's it.

The movie also suffers from having some extremely weak villains. Enchantress is an absolutely boring villain, and Incubus is even worse than that. The Suicide Squad themselves might be relatively flat, but that's more than I can say for Enchantress and Incubus. They're sub-generic baddies who are only there as an excuse to bring our protagonists together. Enhantress and Incubus also suffer because the digital effects used to create them is ridiculously dodgy. Cara Delevigne's live-action face looks really awkward on a badly animated CGI body, while Incubus doesn't even remotely look realistic (especially during his fight with El Diablo during the climax). I've heard the movie cost $170 million to make, and if that's the case, couldn't they have funneled a little more towards the digital effects budget?

A talented cast could probably elevate mediocre material, but the majority of the cast barely register at a level I'd call "okay, I guess." Jai Courtney has some funny moments as the sleazy Captain Boomerang, but the best among the cast are Will Smith and Margot Robbie. Smith and Robbie are a lot of fun as Deadshot and Harley (even in spite of the occasional dodgy bits of dialogue I mentioned earlier), so much so that I'd say this whole slog of a movie is worth sitting through just for them.

But I'd gladly take actors phoning in their performances over the utter shitshow that is Jared Leto as Joker. The garish costumes, metal teeth, and the stupid tattoos on his face are bad enough, but Leto is laughably bad in the role. Every second he's on the screen, you can't help but wonder just what the hell he was thinking. And for that matter, what the hell was Ayer thinking when he let Leto carry on with this utterly ridiculous, unlikable performance. This was really the best he could get out of Leto? I get that the actors who've played Joker in the past have all been beloved and iconic in their own ways, and that Leto probably wanted to go in his own direction with the character. But he's just so awful here that he becomes memorable for all the wrong reasons.

If Batman v Superman wasn't enough of a sign, then Suicide Squad is further proof that Warner Bros. is so focused on the billions of dollars that Marvel Studios and the Avengers are raking in that they're ignoring why those movies are so successful. Suicide Squad itself is just an absolute mess of a movie. A poor script, lackluster direction, and only two decent performances from its sizable ensemble cast make it an absolute trainwreck from start to finish. It's slightly better than Batman v Superman, but that's just damning it with faint praise. I'd only really recommend seeing it if you absolutely have to see every single comic book movie that comes out of Hollywood. You otherwise aren't missing a lot otherwise, and you'd probably better off waiting for it to turn up on Netflix or HBO. It's just another stumbling block for Warner Bros. and DC as they attempt to catch up to their competition, and I really hate to say that.

Final Rating: **