Shazam! (2019)

Remember how Marvel Studios released a movie starring Captain Marvel last month? I bet you didn't realize that DC Comics has their own Captain Marvel too. No, really!

Their Captain Marvel made his debut in Fawcett Comics' Whiz Comics #2 in 1939, the creation of Bill Parker and C.C. Beck. He was a nearly instant success, his comics even outselling Superman's at one point in the '40s. But a combination of the dwindling popularity of superheroes following World War II and a lawsuit from DC Comics (who alleged that Captain Marvel was a ripoff of Superman), Fawcett Comics canceled all of Captain Marvel's comics by 1954.

He was eventually revived by DC Comics in 1972 after a little legal wheeling and dealing, but Marvel Comics had trademarked the "Captain Marvel" name in the intervening years. The original version's books were rebranded "Shazam!" as a result (eventually becoming the character's actual name during DC's "New 52" reboot in 2012), and the rest is history. The character was popular enough to spawn a live-action TV show that ran from 1974 to 1976 on CBS, and has appeared in in DC's animated work and the occasional video game (Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and Injustice: Gods Among Us come to mind), but he's never been one of their top-tier characters.

But then Hollywood came knocking, and now DC's Captain Marvel is getting his own blockbuster movie. Of course, the name is different, but not much else has changed. And while the DC Extended Universe has gotten a lot of flack in the past for how weak their movies have been, but I'll tell you this: Shazam! is a hell of a lot of fun.

Fourteen-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel) has spent most of his life bouncing in and out of every foster home in Philadelphia. He never stays for long, constantly running away to search for the birth mother he hasn't seen in years. As the movie begins, he's dropped off at a new home that's populated by a few other foster kids. Among them is Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer), a physically handicapped fan of superheroes who immediately welcomes Billy into their family.

Billy initially dismisses Freddy and his other foster siblings since he's not planning on sticking around for long, but he can't help but save Freddy from some schoolyard bullies. The bullies end up chasing Billy into a subway car, where he is magically transported to a cave called home by the ancient wizard Shazam (Djimon Hounsou). The dying wizard has spent centuries searching for someone pure of heart to inherit his powers and defend the world, and Billy is his last hope. All Billy has to do is say the wizard's name, and he is transformed into an adult (Zachary Levi) with a multitude of amazing superpowers.

An astounded Billy returns home and reveals his situation to Freddy, and the pair start exploring the adult Billy's new superpowers. Their training videos end up going viral online, and Billy starts irresponsibly using his powers to start busking around the city.

Doing so, however, draws the attention of Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong), who was called by the wizard as a child in 1974 but was ultimately deemed unworthy. He was left immensely bitter by the rejection and has spent every moment since then obsessed with claiming that power he believes is rightfully his. While Billy spends his time doing parlor tricks with his powers for tourists, Sivana accomplishes his lifelong goal and finds a way back to the wizard's cave. He steals a mystical orb that imbues him with the demonic essence of the Seven Deadly Sins, returning to Philadelphia determined to force Billy to surrender the powers of Shazam to him.

I can't say that I was all that familiar with Shazam before seeing the movie. I'd heard of the character, sure, but my previous experiences with him have been the video game appearances I mentioned earlier and a 2005 episode of Justice League Unlimited where he fights Superman. But I went into the movie excited because of how good the trailers were, and I was far from disappointed. Shazam! not only rivals Wonder Woman for the title of "best movie in the DC Extended Universe," but is genuinely one of the most entertaining superhero movies I've seen in a while. It's wonderfully charming, with lovable characters and a real emotional weight to it. It felt to me like a more modern, more comedic take on what Richard Donner did with Superman in 1978, and I am never gonna complain about something like that.

Shazam! is the third feature-length movie from director David F. Sandberg, and I thought he did a great job at the helm. He plays the movie more for comedy, which is a refreshing change of pace considering how seriously most movies in this genre seem to take themselves nowadays. The movie actually plays like a superhero version of the classic Tom Hanks movie Big, right down to a fight between Shazam and Sivana going over a giant piano on the floor of a toy store. That isn't a bad thing either, since it makes for an entertaining time at the movies. The DC Extended Universe gets a lot of well-deserved flack because of how unrelentingly grim Man of Steel and Batman v Superman were. While that doesn't necessarily apply to Wonder Woman or Aquaman, Shazam! does its own part to break the mold. It's not a bleak, dreary tale with no hope, but instead features characters that truly care for one another and a superhero that's actually having fun instead of feeling miserable.

I also liked that Sandberg focuses more on developing the characters instead of letting the special effects dominate the movie. The more the movie progresses, the more you want to see where Billy and his foster family go and how they grow together. Yeah, we've got the standard "hero vs. villain" effects-heavy showdown at the end of the movie, but it's still done in such a way that it feels like a logical conclusion for the paths the characters have taken.

The screenplay goes a long way in helping that, as well. Loosely based on Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's comic book story that rebooted Shazam as part of DC's "New 52" relaunch, the script by Henry Gayden (from a story by Gayden and Darren Lemke) has a huge amount of heart in it. It doesn't feel like your typical origin story, mainly because of the strong emotional depth of the movie. It's best exemplified by how Billy and Sivana are polar opposites of one another. Billy was abandoned by his mother and spent his whole life searching for her before stumbling into a family that loves him unconditionally. Sivana, meanwhile, spent his whole life searching for a way to get rid of the father and brother he hated, and was found by a group of monsters that use him for their own nefarious ends. Billy's powers were gifted to him, though he believed himself unworthy of them; Sivana stole his powers and greedily sought more. They're two sides of the same coin, their arcs moving in such a way that makes the story more fascinating to watch as it plays out.

But perhaps the best part of Shazam! is its cast, all of whom hand in strong performances. I really enjoyed Faithe Herman as Billy's enthusiastic little sister Darla, while Jack Dylan Grazer is fantastic as Freddy. He's really funny in the role and proves himself to be the perfect sidekick for both the teenagew and adult versions of Billy.

Mark Strong, meanwhile, brings a real sense of menace to the character of Sivana. The movie establishes that Sivana's fatal flaw is how much he covets power because of how ineffectual he felt as a child. Strong effortlessly shows that, playing Sivana with all the jealousy and anger someone like that would feel towards people he felt looked down on him, and how corrupted he is by the power he has.

And that brings us to the two actors playing Billy Batson. Asher Angel is perfect as the teenage Billy, bring some serious feelings of longing and melancholy to the character. His loneliness is front and center, along with some of the ego he develops as the videos of his superpowers go viral, and Angel makes it all believable. Zachary Levi, on the other hand, is hilarious as the adult Billy. Not only does he convincingly play an adult version of Asher, mannerisms and all, but as his viral notoriety go to his head and he starts showing off more, Levi gets funnier and funnier as the movie goes along. He's obviously having a blast playing Shazam, and it's an infectious kind of fun.

And I could say something similar about Shazam! as a whole that I said about Levi: it gets better and better with each passing moment. By the end, you don't want it to be over because it's 131 minutes of pure fun. I honestly can't say enough positive things about the movie; I hate to sound hyperbolic, but it's true. And while Shazam! might be left in the dust once Marvel's Avengers: Endgame is released in three weeks, I'm happy that DC could provide us with an entertaining diversion before we get there. There's plenty of magic in Shazam!, and you'd be doing yourself a favor by checking it out.

Final Rating: ****

Aquaman (2018)

Out of all the superheroes in the DC Comics pantheon, Aquaman has to be the one with the worst public perception. The creation of writer Mort Weisinger and artist Paul Norris, he debuted in 1941, but has spent much of the last few decades as a punchline. A lot of people must've never seen anything other than his appearances on the old Super Friends Saturday morning cartoon from the '70s and '80s, because "Aquaman is lame because he talks to fish" is one of the hokiest, most tired jokes out there.

A movie based on Aquaman was even a recurring gag on the old HBO show Entourage, with a lot of humor stemming from how unlikely such a thing would happen in real life. But here we are, talking about the second movie featuring Aquaman in a major role. And it's a solo movie too! And you know what? The Aquaman movie is not a joke; it's actually pretty great.

The movie begins with a brief prologue taking us to Massachusetts circa 1985, where lighthouse keeper Thomas Curry (Temuera Morrison) finds an unconscious woman washed up on the shore during a storm. She awakens and introduces herself as Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), queen of the mythical underwater kingdom of Atlantis. The two fall in love and eventually conceive a son they name Arthur.

Atlanna, however, is soon forced to return to Atlantis to fulfill her side of an arranged marriage. Her young son grows up to be extraordinarily strong and fast, and finds he can telepathically communicate with aquatic life. He hones his abilities and becomes a skilled warrior under the tutelage of an Atlantean named Vulko (Willem Dafoe), but ultimately chooses to stay among the surface dwellers after discovering that his mother had been killed once the king of Atlantis learned she'd given birth to a surface dweller's child.

Cut to the present day, a few months after the events of Justice League. The adult Arthur (Jason Momoa) has styled himself into a sea-faring vigilante the media has nicknamed "Aquaman." He is approached by Mera (Amber Heard), the princess of another underwater kingdom. She comes bearing a warning, that the reigning king of Atlantis, Orm (Patrick Wilson), plans to instigate a war with the surface world with the combined armies of the Seven Seas.

Knowing nothing good could come from Orm's war, Mera has sought out Arthur so that he may use his status as Orm's older half-brother — and thus the rightful king of Atlantis — to challenge Orm's claim to the throne and prevent the war. He is initially hesitant to accept, still bitter about his mother's death. He's convinced to help, however, when a massive tidal wave manufactured by Orm wreaks havoc on much of America's east coast.

Their initial attempts to step in don't quite go as planned, and Arthur and Mera soon find themselves on the run. While they search for a mythical trident that will help Arthur stake a proper claim as king, they must avoid the machinations of both Orm and "Black Manta" (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a dangerous pirate armed with experimental Atlantean weapons and a personal grudge too settle with Arthur.

I've never been a big Aquaman fan. Nothing against the character, but I've never been really drawn to him. I haven't read any of his comics, and I missed out on quite a bit of his appearances in animation. My only past real experience with Aquaman before his big-screen debut last year was Alan Ritchson's appearances as the character on four episodes of Smallville. But I did like Jason Momoa's take on the role in Justice League, I'm a fan of the director, and I'll see pretty much every comic book movie that comes out, so I wasn't about to skip this movie. And truth be told, I can't say that I was disappointed. The movie feels like a throwback to the cheesy comic book flicks from the '90s. Sure, not all those movies were good, but that isn't an insult to Aquaman. Far from it, because Aquaman takes that and makes itself a hell of a lot of fun.

At the helm is James Wan, who honestly isn't the first person I'd think of when it comes to directing a movie like this. He's no stranger to action movies, having made Death Sentence and Furious 7 in the past, but I've always associated him with the horror genre. The guy co-created the Saw, Insidious, and Conjuring franchises after all. But Wan is a talented filmmaker no matter what genre you put him in, and he shows it with Aquaman. Starting with a 30-second sequence at the movie's beginning that sees Atlanna fight off a number of Atlantean soldiers in Arther's childhood home in one unbroken shot, we can see that Wan means business.

Wan's direction here is outstanding, filling the movie with one visually stunning scene after another. Whether it be the action sequences or even just the digital set design, Wan builds a movie that is amazing to look at. The undersea scenes, especially Atlantis, look like an aquatic version of the world from Avatar, a visual feast blues, purples, greens, and golds looking absolutely beautiful. It's also helped by the movie's amazing cinematography, which makes the movie look even more incredible if you see the movie in 3D like I did.

And as I said before, Wan might be particularly recognized for his horror movies, but he knows his way around an action movie too. I already mentioned Atlanna's fight at the beginning of the movie, and it gets even better and more exciting as we progress. There's a scene where Arthur and Mera fight Black Manta and the Atlantean commandos in Sicily, the heroic duo are pursued by and brawl with their enemies on rooftops and through homes with neither side being able to really get the upper hand until the very end of the scene. It reminds one of the thrilling parking lot chase scene from Wan's own Death Sentence. The scene is amazing, and just when you think it can't be topped, the movie ends up proving you wrong.

The cast is a mixed bag, though I can't complain much about what I disliked. Dolph Lundgren (who appears in a small role as Mera's father) and Temuera Morrison put forth likable performances, as do Willem Dafoe and Nicole Kidman. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II isn't bad, meanwhile, but he's forgettable. He only has three or four scenes in the movie, with maybe only fifteen minutes of screen time in the whole thing. Most of that is action scenes where he was most likely replaced by a stuntman or a CGI stand-in for the scenes where he's in the Black Manta armor. But I will say that whenever they get around to making Aquaman 2, I hope to see more of what Abdul-Mateen can do.

I also can't say I particularly cared for Amber Heard. She and Jason Momoa don't have much on-screen chemistry together from what I could tell, and her performance feels sorta one-note.  The whole "Mera thinks Aquaman is an idiot and the surface world is uncivilized, but then she changes her mind over time" thing and the belligerent sexual tension concept are played out but could be blamed on the script, but I didn't think Heard did much to make it tolerable.

But I will say, though, that we did get two fantastic performances from our hero and our villain. Patrick Wilson is no stranger to superhero movies (having starred in Zack Snyder's Watchmen adaptation), and he's also turned up on several of Wan's past movies, so I was excited to see him turn up here. He plays Orm as the ultimate douchebag. If the movie had been made in the '80s, he'd be accused of doing his best impression of William Zabka. Wilson plays Orm in such a way that you can't wait for Aquaman to put him in his place and punch him right in the mouth. It's rare that I've seen Wilson play a bad guy, and I kinda hope he does it more often in the future because I thought he was great.

Speaking of great, I can't say enough good things about Jason Momoa. He was one of my favorite parts of Justice League, and he does another awesome job here. Momoa plays Aquaman with a charming likability, but even when he's cracking jokes and being kind of a goofball, he always makes the character feel like a total badass. One gets the feeling that if you met this Aquaman in real life, he'd be the life of the party and your best friend if he liked you, but God help you if he didn't like you.

If there were any lingering jokes about Aquaman being lame, then James Wan and Jason Momoa have killed them dead. The movie has its flaws, sure, but they're easily overlooked because the movie is just so much fun. Aquaman never ceases to be exciting, providing two and a half hours of pure, unadulterated entertainment from beginning to end. So if you're on the fence about Aquaman, unsure about whether or not you should check it out, I'll totally recommend seeing it. It's most certainly worth your time.

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 mythical 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 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 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 also should'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 Wolverine, Magneto, and Professor Xavier. 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 I 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: ****

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 with 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 (Jared 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...
• ...and 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 starts 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, and those can easily be blamed on the movie's costuming and makeup departments. But Leto is also 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, and frankly repellent 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. It's like saying being punched in the face is better than being kicked in the balls. 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're 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: **

Ghostbusters (2016)

I don't normally worry when Hollywood cranks out a new remake of an old classic. I've seen enough good ones over the years that the idea doesn't bug me that much. But then I heard that Sony would be remaking Ghostbusters and my heart sank. The original movie is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I'd gotten my hopes up that one day we'd see them return in Ghostbusters III for one last ride into the sunset. Even after Harold Ramis died in 2014, I still clutched onto that belief.

But a remake? Really?! Why not just follow what Star Wars: The Force Awakens did and give us a sequel that revives the series and has the old cast hand the torch over to a new one? The idea of remaking Ghostbusters hasn't endeared itself to me at all, and before its release, the bits and pieces of the movie I'd seen as part of its promotional campaign were painfully unfunny. But I felt that I owed it to myself to see it anyway, to give it a chance and see if my preconceived notions were incorrect. And you know what? I didn't hate it. It's far, far from perfect... but I didn't hate it.

Years ago, Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) and Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) wrote a book that posited that ghosts just might actually exist. The book was a big fat flop, and an embarrassed Erin distanced herself from both it and Abby. Their lives take far different paths as time passes. Abby runs a parapsychology lab at a low-rent technical college, assisted by her rather kooky associate Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon), while Erin is a respected physics professor at Columbia University and is desperate to put her past behind her. But she quickly learns that the past can have a bad habit of encroaching on the present.

Erin is approached by someone asking her to look into a potential haunting at a local museum, producing a copy of she and Abby's book when she denies knowing anything about the paranormal. She is horrified to discover that Abby has had the book republished, something that threatens both her reputation and career. Erin approaches Abby and demands she stop selling it, but when she mentions the museum haunting, Abby and Holtzmann insist on looking into it and drag a reluctant Abby along for the ride.

They do encounter an actual ghost at the mansion, but embarrassing footage of their investigation goes viral after Abby posts it on YouTube and all three are fired from their jobs. Erin, Abby, and Holtzmann take this as an opportunity to become professional paranormal investigators. Their business mostly draws out kooks and pranksters at first, and their dimwitted receptionist Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) isn't much help either. But they're soon contacted by Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), a subway booth attendant who swears she saw a ghost in one of the terminals and wants them to investigate.

Their journey into the subway doesn't quite go exactly as planned, but it gives them the confidence to graduate from paranormal investigators to paranormal exterminators. Bringing Patty aboard as the fourth member of their team and armed with equipment built by Holtzmann, their public profile begins to rise and they adopt the name the media had given them, "the Ghostbusters." A sudden spike in supernatural activity leads the team to a strange little man named Rowan North (Neil Casey). An occult-obsessed weirdo, Rowan has sworn to completely demolish the barrier between the living world and the afterlife and allow untold scores of ghosts into our plane of existence. He's dangerously close to accomplishing that goal, and it's up to the Ghostbusters to stop him.

As I entered the theater to see this new iteration of the Ghostbusters franchise, a feeling of dread followed me. The advertising campaign hadn't done much to sell me on this new movie, the online arguments are frustratingly annoying, and I honestly haven't enjoyed what little I've seen of Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy in the past. (Honestly, I can only ever think of the dreadfully unfunny "Gilly" sketches from Saturday Night Live whenever I see Wiig in anything.)

But I thought to myself, "what if I had completely misjudged it?" And it turns out that I had, to a degree. The Ghostbusters remake isn't a particularly good movie, but it's got quite a few moments that are a lot of fun. Even at its absolute worst, I found it to still be an entertaining diversion that isn't a totally bad way to kill two hours of your time.

In the director's chair is Paul Feig, whose prior work I honestly haven't seen. Yeah, I know Bridesmaids was a huge smash hit and won all kinds of awards, and The Heat and Spy were no slouches at the box office either. But none of those movies actually appealed to me. They just didn't look like anything that would be up my alley, y'know? However, I wouldn't dare miss a new Ghostbusters movie, so I was went into the movie willing to give Feig a chance. Strictly speaking about his direction, Feig's work is serviceable, I guess. It gets the job done, but it isn't anything special. He puts the movie's 3D effects to good use,  throwing slime and lasers beyond the edges of the frame.

But past that, there isn't really a whole lot to talk about. The cinematography feels flat in the scenes that don't involve flinging things at the audience in 3D and the pacing is inconsistent, bouncing back and forth between "energetic" and "dull" like a ping pong ball at high speed. The movie doesn't feel big, but more like it's just kinda there.

I really can't say much about the script either. Penned by Feig and Katie Dippold, the script is probably the movie's weakest part. The original movie was a group of comedians stuck inside a horror movie, while this is a straightforward comedy from start to finish. Some of the jokes are funny, don't get me wrong. But there are so many that fall flat, or are good for a light chuckle but aren't the hilarious zingers Feig and Dippold may have been hoping for. (Did we need that stupid running gag with Abby and her wonton soup orders?)

I'm also curious why Feig and Dippold felt the need to tell us every tiny little detail about how the Ghostbusters got started. We didn't need to see how they built their proton packs, or where their logo and jumpsuits came from. And could the movie's villain have been any more lame? He's so utterly forgettable that I had to Google his name since I couldn't remember it otherwise. Gozer was an ancient god of destruction, Vigo the Carpathian was the spirit of a medieval tyrant... this guy is just some dweeb who wants to let ghosts take over New York City because he was picked on growing up. Was that really the best Feig and Dippold could come up with?

I said earlier that I enjoyed the movie, even though I haven't had a lot of nice things to say about it thus far. And that's because the thing that really drew me in was the cast. Well, the four main actresses did, anyway. The majority of the cast are forgettable, while Neil Casey is honestly not very good as our villain and Chris Hemsworth is irritating as the Ghostbusters' dimwitted secretary. Hemsworth gets a couple of chuckles here and there, but his character is written to be so painfully stupid that he starts quickly becomes annoying.

But I quite liked the four lead actresses. They're likable and engaging, with a believable chemistry between them. Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig have their moments, as does Leslie Jones, but the show is undoubtedly stolen by Kate McKinnon. I haven't watched much SNL over the last fifteen years or so, so I can't say I'm familiar with McKinnon (or Jones, for that matter). But she's absolutely the best part of the movie. McKinnon brings a madcap, energetic charm to the movie, so much so that it makes her scenes more fun than they might've been without her. McKinnon is utterly fantastic and practically carries the whole movie on her back.

Long story short, this new Ghostbusters movie isn't very good. Maybe I might've been carrying a slight bias against it since I'd wanted the old cast back in their old roles. I don't know. But that said, the new movie can certainly be enjoyable at times. And even at its worst, it's still a fun footnote in the Ghostbusters franchise. So who ya gonna call? These new four might not be your first choice, but they'll do in a pinch.

Final Rating: **½

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

It was in the summer of 2006 that Marvel Comics published Civil War, a massive company-wide storyline built around a seven-issue series by writer Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven. Civil War had a huge (albeit somewhat temporary) effect on the Marvel universe, shaking up the status quo in a number of ways, most notably with the public revelation of Spider-Man's secret identity and the assassination of Captain America.

And despite the mixed reaction it got from readers and critics during its original run, it still remains one of Marvel's most talked-about stories even a decade later. Elements of it appeared in the Avengers cartoons on Disney XD, it inspired the story for Activision's Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 video game in 2009, and now, ten years later, it has crept into the live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe with the release of Captain America: Civil War.

Much like the comic that inspired it, the movie seeks to shake up the status quo by pitting the Avengers against not a god, not alien invaders, not an army of killer robots, but one another. And in a summer that already gave us one horrible attempt at pitting hero against hero, it's nice to see someone take that idea and make a good movie out of it.

We begin in Lagos, as the Avengers have arrived to stop members of Hydra from acquiring a deadly biological weapon. They are successful in stopping Hydra, but an attempt by Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) to thwart a suicide bomber accidentally causes a number of civilian casualties. With public opinion of the Avengers already drastically declining following the incident with Ultron, this only adds fuel to the fire and leads to the United Nations to pass what it calls "the Sokovia Accords." These accords would establish a committee to oversee the Avengers, essentially putting them at the UN's beck and call.

The Sokovia Accords split the Avengers right down the middle, with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) on one side, believing that forfeiting the team's autonomy would make them political pawns instead of protectors. On the other side, however, is Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), whose guilt over his role in Ultron's rampage has convinced him that the Avengers need to be governed by outside sources who would hold them accountable for their actions.

But things get really shaken up when it comes time for the Accords to be ratified in Vienna. Ten people — among them, the king of the African nation of Wakanda — are killed when the UN conference building is bombed, with all evidence pointing to Steve's old friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Already an international fugitive because of his past actions as the Winter Soldier, he immediately shoots to Public Enemy #1 across the globe despite his protests of innocence.

Not only does this mean that every law enforcement agency in Europe is looking for Bucky, but so are the Avengers that have agreed to sign the Accords. Also on the hunt is Prince T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) of Wakanda, who has vowed to kill him and avenge his father's death. Steve is steadfast in his defense of Bucky, however, further ruining the strained relationship between he and Tony and forcing the Avengers to pick sides as the tensions rapidly reach a boiling point.

DC Comics just can't catch a break. It's bad enough that Batman v Superman was met with terrible reviews and awful word of mouth, but Civil War is pretty stiff evidence that Marvel Studios can make what is essentially the same movie and do it a hell of a lot better. Civil War is everything that Batman v Superman is not: fun, exciting, serious but never dour, and willing to let its heroes actually be heroic even in spite of their personal flaws and their quarrels with one another. And even when the movie is at its weakest, Civil War is still proof that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is firmly standing at the top of the superhero movie mountain.

Returning to direct the continuing adventures of Captain America are Joe and Anthony Russo, who once again do a fantastic job behind the camera. The movie itself is essentially Avengers 3 in all but name, but considering that the Avengers are actually fighting one another instead of some giant alien threat or an army of killer robots, it has a different feel than Joss Whedon's two movies. It feels more personal, more intimate. By putting the focus entirely on the Avengers themselves rather than their battles with some new supervillain, the Russo brothers add a level of drama you don't really see in movies like these. We the audience have spent the better part of the last decade watching these characters develop on the big screen, seeing their universe blossom and grow as they fought alongside one another. And to see them come to blows really makes the movie feel a lot more drawn in, if that makes sense. Things look differently when you're fighting your friends instead of your enemies.

But that's not to say the Russos don't cut loose and give us the spectacle we've come to expect. Oh, there's plenty of that. While I'd say the airport battle royale pitting Captain America's Avengers against Iron Man's Avengers is most certainly the movie's biggest draw and quite a bit of focus is put on it, the Russos make sure that each action sequence is the right blend of exciting, tense, and emotional. And as I said before, that feeling of intimacy makes the action feel different. The stakes feel higher since the Avengers are their own opponents for a change.

While the Russos direction is solid, the script penned by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely isn't always perfect. I doubt Mackie and McFeely wanted to write another political thriller in the same vein as The Winter Soldier, but I actually would've liked seeing that. The Sokovia Accords don't really seem that important in the scope of things, as the movie becomes more about the Winter Soldier being the wedge driven between Captain America and Iron Man rather than the Accords. The fact that this seemingly important plot device doesn't really seem that important at all makes me wonder why they even bothered. I mean, I'm sure future Avengers movies will show us that it's changed the MCU's status quo much like Millar and McNiven's comic book did, but for now, it feels a little pointless.

Speaking of pointless, I really don't see why the movie needed appearances from Ant-Man and Spider-Man. Outside of showing off that Marvel Studios had reached a deal with Sony that allowed Spidey to join the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe, I just don't get why either he or Ant-Man really needed to be in the movie. But I will admit, however, that their presence here is still quite welcomed at the very least.

I'm also surprised by just how little the movie's actual villain appears in the movie. The vast majority of the movie's plot is set into motion by Helmut Zemo (played by Daniel Brühl), who is barely in the movie at all. I'd honestly be surprised if the total sum of his screen time surpassed twenty minutes. Did they just not come up with anything for Brühl to do? Did they prefer a villain who was working in the background so as not to distract from the whole "Steve vs. Tony" dynamic? It's probably more the latter than the former, but it still sometimes gives the impression that Zemo is a non-factor. Maybe I'm just used to seeing the villains being put on something even remotely resembling equal footing with the protagonists in these movies as far as screen presence goes, I don't know.

But let's move along to the cast, pretty much all of whom hand in strong performances. It seems like that's par for the course with the MCU, but it's still worth saying. Tom Holland and Chadwick Boseman are great as Spider-Man and Black Panther respectively, and I really liked what Elizabeth Olsen brought to the table as Scarlet Witch. I wish she'd been able to do this in a smaller movie more focused on her character rather than playing a secondary role among an ensemble cast, because I'd love to see how Olsen would play Wanda when the spotlight is shining on her alone. Olsen playing Wanda as being scared of her powers accidentally hurting people and being unsure of herself make for a fascinating bit of character study had the character's arc not been one of a whole bunch of different things going on in the movie.

The movie also boasts some great moments from Sebastian Stan and Paul Bettany (who returns as Vision), and the aforementioned Daniel Brühl makes the most of his limited screen time. But the stars of the show are very obviously Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. Both of them once again step up to the plate and knock it out of the park as Captain America and Iron Man. Their performances are exactly whet this movie needed; both characters are justified in their beliefs, and Evans and Downey play their parts in a way that a viewer leaning one way or the other as to whose side they'd chose to be on is totally reasonable.

While I personally think Civil War is the weakest of the Captain America trilogy, it's only because The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier are just that damn good. Civil War is still a very entertaining, very exciting way to spend two and a half hours at the movies. And that's a hell of a lot more than I can say for that absolute mess Zack Snyder and DC Comics made with Batman and Superman.

Final Rating: ***½

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Some of the most heated debates you'll ever see begin with a single question: "Who'd win in a fight?" Pick any two popular fictional characters, and the idea of them doing battle is enough to send any geek's imagination running wild. We'll even occasionally end up with these arguments bearing fruit, with movies like King Kong vs. Godzilla and Freddy vs. Jason hitting theaters and wars between the Alien and the Predator sprawling across comic books, video games, and two movies. But other than James T. Kirk versus Jean-Luc Picard, the one argument I've seen the most is who would win between DC's legendary superheroes, Superman and Batman. It's a battle that's actually happened in the past, most famously in the pages of Frank Miller's seminal comic book The Dark Knight Returns, but never on the scale of the newly released flick Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But I should have taken the movie's Rotten Tomatoes score (as of this writing, it sits at 30% and will probably drop lower) as a warning, because I don't know if I could have been more disappointed with it.

Eighteen months have passed since the city of Metropolis was left devastated by General Zod and his band of rebel Kryptonians. And while his intervention on that fateful day and his acts of selfless heroism since then have led many to trust Superman (Henry Cavill) as a benevolent force, there are those who are convinced otherwise. Among the doubters is billionaire industrialist Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), who witnessed firsthand the death and destruction caused by Superman's battle with Zod and is now fearful of the day that he might switch from savior to conqueror. He's bound and determined to prevent this, using the expertise and equipment he's acquired as the masked vigilante "Batman" to develop a means to neutralize Superman should the need ever arise.

Wayne's paranoia is surpassed, however, by that of Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), an eccentric businessman who has grown obsessed with proving that Superman is far from the altruistic hero that appears to be. Luthor begins secretly orchestrating ways to sully his enemy's good name and shift the public's perception of him, while using his vast wealth and political connections to get access to the top-secret laboratory built around the wreckage of Zod's ship and find answers to all of his darkest questions about our superpowered visitor from another world. But his primary goal: to subtly stir the tensions between Superman and Batman and manipulate them into a fight, a clash of titans that that he hopes will end with Superman either dead or exposed as the villain Luthor believes him to be.

I wanted to like this movie. I honestly did. I went in thinking to myself, "There's no way it can be that bad." But I was wrong, dead wrong. Batman v Superman is a bloated mess of a movie that tries to accomplish way too much in the time its given yet never really does any of it right. It's painfully obvious that they're trying to play catch-up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet missed every single thing that Marvel Studios did well so wildly that it's almost like they were doing it on purpose. The movie practically assaults the audience with all of its failed potential and wasted efforts. Between that, the inconsistent writing, and the oppressively dark tone, Batman v Superman is an absolute chore to get through.

Zack Snyder returns to direct the movie after helming Man of Steel, and I'm not one hundred percent convinced that Warner Bros. was wise to bring him back. Snyder has always been accused of preferring style over substance, a criticism that is none more accurate when applied to Batman v Superman. There's absolutely nothing worthwhile about the movie beyond what's on the surface, and what is on the surface isn't very appealing. The movie's dark, downright bleak tone makes it really depressing to watch, as if the entire project was one big experiment Snyder was conducting in an attempt to discover the antithesis of fun. It's like he was actively trying to make a movie that was utterly devoid of any sort of happiness or glee, instead preferring to make a movie so gloomy and joyless that it makes me simultaneously sad and angry that this was the best Snyder felt that he could do.

It's also relentlessly dull until the climactic fight scenes, because it feels like Snyder and the writers are trying to cram so many things into the movie that nothing really ends up happening. And the fight scenes... oh dear, the fight scenes! By the end, it felt like Snyder was beating me over the head with a pipe while trying to make me go deaf and blind at the same time. It's one giant terrible mixture of cacophonic light and sound, an all-out assault on the senses that stops being entertaining and becomes annoying halfway through.

And then there's the piss-poor script credited to Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer. It feels like Terrio and Goyer just cobbled together pieces from other, better stories without trying to make any sort of coherent narrative out of it all. It feels bloated, trying to cram numerous movies worth of material into one 150-minute project just because the Justice League movie starts filming this summer and they've got to hurry up and get all this stuff out of the way now while they still have a chance. There's just so much going on that it does not allow for any sort of narrative flow at all. The story bounces around like it's trapped inside a pinball machine, with no chance to make any sort of sense of it or to give the audience a chance to care. You'd think that a movie that is ostensibly a sequel to Man of Steel would be more concerned with just being that. But instead we have to clumsily introduce Wonder Woman, shoehorn in cameos from Aquaman, Cyborg, and the Flash, and give Batman the lion's share of the movie's focus.

And honestly, none of it ever goes anywhere. It's setting up for movies down the road without worrying about taking care of itself. Instead of being a self-contained movie where Superman fights Batman, it's basically giving you an entire franchise worth of Cliff's Notes just so Snyder and Warner Bros. can skip straight to the Justice League movie with as minimal effort as possible, and then give all of the characters that aren't Batman or Superman their own movies after the fact. It's a classic case of trying to put the cart before the horse. Rather than treat this movie with love and care, they just slap everything together in a great big rush and shove it out into theaters without really caring how good or bad it is because the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made nearly ten billion dollars combined at the worldwide box office and they want some of that action too. But rather than develop a world a world of heroes and villains and build towards Justice League as the natural payoff towards all of their hard work, it's like they've convinced themselves that people would rather just see all of the characters lumped onto the screen together and have a bunch of monotonous action scenes thrown at them without things like story or character development or good acting getting in the way.

And how about that acting, huh? One almost gets the feeling that even the majority cast realized how awful the movie was going to be and couldn't bother to even half-ass it. The rest were so hampered by the lousy material that even if they'd given their absolute best, they'd have barely made it out intact. Granted, there are a couple of good performances, but the majority of the cast is just disappointing at best. Among the good is Ben Affleck, who is a strong Batman. When his casting was first announced back in 2013, it drew an absolute ridiculous amount of criticism. How dare they hire the guy that played Daredevil? But now that the movie has been released, Affleck shows that he's a lot better in the role than anyone could have anticipated. He approaches the role with a grizzled, jaded demeanor that really suits the character. Affleck's Batman is haunted by years of emotional grief, his fight to protect Gotham City having taken a toll on him. We're only privy to bits and pieces of it ― the broken-down state of Wayne Manor, a desecrated Robin costume kept as a memorial in the Batcave ― but Affleck manages to convey so much through his actions, his facial expressions, his tone of voice. This Batman has been through absolute hell, and it's Affleck who shows us that.

I also really enjoyed Gal Godot as Wonder Woman. She isn't really given a lot to do until the finale (and Wonder Woman is completely irrelevant to the plot, to be honest), but Godot absolutely nails the role. Godot's Wonder Woman is a strong, charismatic heroine, just as she should be. Once she leaps into battle, you can't take your eyes off her. She commands your attention with a ferocity that makes one curious as to why it took so long for Warner Bros. to work Wonder Woman into a movie. But word is that they're making one as we speak with the intention of it coming out next year, which I'm actually excited for because I can't wait to see Godot actually have something to do as the character.

And while the movie does boast those good performances and some decent ones among lesser members of the supporting cast (Jeremy Irons, Laurence Fishburne, and Diane Lane are all fantastic, by the way), they're outweighed by the bad and the ridiculous. Henry Cavill, for starters, certainly looks the part. But the way his character is presented, he's stuck playing a whiny, emo bitch. This is not the big blue Boy Scout we all know and love; it's instead an emotionally conflicted wuss that feels more pathetic than heroic. I get the reasoning behind writing Superman that way, as I'm sure Snyder & Co. felt they were giving him more depth that way. But what's wrong with the traditional depiction? Regardless, Cavill seems to be trying hard, which I appreciate, but he just can't overcome how poorly written the script is. He's not playing a character to believe in, but to pity. And that is no Superman that I want any part of.

And why is Amy Adams even here again? She's dull as dishwater, having absolutely none of the likability, charisma, or spunk that made Lois such a beloved part of the Superman mythos. It doesn't help matters that Adams and Cavill have zero chemistry whatsoever either, but that's more the fault of the casting director than Adams herself. She is a talented actress, don't get me wrong, but Adams honestly doesn't feel like she was the right person for this role. One wouldn't be surprised if the only reason she was playing Lois at all is because someone wanted a multiple-time Oscar nominee in the role.

Speaking of roles that are woefully miscast, Jesse Eisenberg sucks. This has to be one of the absolute worst performances I've seen in quite a while. He's an annoying doofus that does nothing but inspire anger and frustration every time you see him. Eisenberg is painfully inconsistent, wandering all over the place throughout the movie, hitting all points of the map sometimes within a span of a few moments. This isn't Lex Luthor at all, but a schizophrenic hipster instead. Had Superman just torn his head off and punted it into orbit, I'd have been perfectly fine with that just so I didn't have to see Jesse Eisenberg in this movie anymore.

As I said earlier, the whole thing makes me think that Warner Bros. saw Disney raking in cash hand over fist with the Avengers and went into full-blown panic mode. And in doing so, they entrusted the franchise to a director who has made it abundantly clear that he has doesn't have a single clue as to what makes these characters so wonderful. Zack Snyder has given us the cinematic equivalent of all those crappy comic books from the '90s, the ones full of violent, brooding antiheroes because being "darker and edgier" was what they thought was cool, as if all the bright, shiny, happy stuff that had come before it had somehow suddenly become lame. I've loved the heroes of DC Comics since I was a little kid, but Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice makes me want to rethink that. Watching this movie hurts. It hurts a lot. If this is how the road to a shared cinematic universe starring DC's characters gets started, then I should probably just stick with the Avengers.

Final Rating: *½

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)

Nobody could have possibly expected Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity would have been such a huge hit after Paramount Pictures plucked it from film festival obscurity and released it nationwide in the fall of 2009. It grossed nearly 200 million dollars and spawned a number of sequels, a Japanese spinoff, and a mockbuster from The Asylum while practically killing the Saw franchise in one fell swoop. But like many franchises before it, the Paranormal Activity saga started running out of steam after a while. As much as I enjoyed the first three, I was ultimately burned by the tremendously disappointing fourth and fifth chapters.

With the release of a sixth chapter in the form of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, I find myself drawn to it not by any real desire to see the progression of the story or to have any unresolved questions answered, but by a feeling that I've seen all the other ones, so I'd might as well keep going. Besides, how often does one get to see a found footage movie in 3D? Outside of that fleeting possibility, however, The Ghost Dimension just isn't worth bothering with.

Christmas is fast approaching, and Ryan (Chris J. Murray) and Emily Fleege (Brit Shaw) are preparing for the holiday season in the new home in suburban California with their daughter Leila (Ivy George). As Ryan and his brother Mike (Dan Gill) decorate the house, the pair finds a stack of decades-old VHS tapes and an oversized video camera. The tapes depict young Katie (Chloe Csengery) and Kristi (Jessica Tylor Brown) from the previous movies being indoctrinated into a cult, while Ryan notices that the camera is picking up strange things around the house that are invisible to the naked eye, quickly realizing that it was custom built to be capable of spectral photography.

That'll come in really handy, as a series of strange events start happening around the house. Each incident seems oddly focused on Leila, whose behavior grows more and more strange with each passing day. Ryan sets up a video surveillance system to capture these occurrences in conjunction with his investigation into the tapes of Katie and Kristi. It quickly becomes evident that the demon we've come to know as "Toby" is in their house and has nefarious plans for Leila.

Wow. Just... wow. I don't know where to even begin describing just how disappointing this movie is. And that's really saying something, considering I wasn't expecting much to start with. The movie is painfully dull, the plot is nonsensical, the acting is mediocre at best, and as I sat in that theater watching, all I could think during the entire movie is that I wanted to stupid thing to hurry up and end so I could go home. It might not be as frustrating to watch as The Gallows, but Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension is almost as lame.

Gregory Plotkin makes his directorial debut here, and his efforts are poor, poor, poor. I say that because Plotkin violates what I consider to be the cardinal rule of the horror genre: The Ghost Dimension is not scary at all. There is nothing frightening, no suspense to be had. The scene where Toby chases Ryan and Mike into the kitchen comes close to mustering up a little tension, but it's dashed away almost immediately by a character making a stupid joke and the fact that the scene just stops. The chase has no payoff, no moment where Ryan and Mike barely get away and Toby is briefly repelled. It just cuts to the next scene like nothing happened. Even the token "boo!" jump scares are ineffective, serving only as an annoyance because it feels like the movie is suddenly shouting at the audience instead of trying to scare them. Throw in some of the most laughably bad CGI this side of the ending of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and you've got a horror movie that was doomed for failure from the start.

Plotkin doesn't even try making the franchise's transition into 3D worthwhile. The majority of the movie is actually in 2D, believe it or not. You can take off the glasses for long stretches of the movie and not feel like you're missing anything. Only a few brief instances of depth come from the bits and pieces being shot from the spectral camera. And even then, the 3D is very rarely ever used well. The franchise was built on a very angry demon throwing around everything it can get its hands on. Hell, the most famous moment of the very first movie (and arguably the trademark moment of the whole franchise) was Micah Sloat getting thrown at the camera at full force. That would make you think that a jump to 3D would be a perfect fit, right? But nope, The Ghost Dimension is actually relatively tame by comparison to the other movies in the franchise. There are one or two big moments, but outside of those, not a lot happens and the 3D goes underutilized for the most part.

Plotkin's direction may be underwhelming, but he isn't helped by the script, credited to Jason Harry Pagan, Andrew Deutshman, Adam Robite, and Gavin Heffernan. For starters, I am genuinely surprised that it took four people to write this movie. It really needed that many people to come up with this piece of crap? Did they each write their own script, then lump them all together in one great big pile? Was there some kind of Writer's Guild mandate that said they had to credit so many people? But with that many names attached to the script, I'm astounded that they couldn't collectively come up with something worthwhile.

I can overlook the movie featuring stupid and unlikable characters since that's actually par for the course with the Paranormal Activity movies, but I can't get over just how abysmal the story is. It's all over the place, as if it were having a panic attack brought on by the vague mess that is the franchise's mythology. None of it makes any sense, and some parts actually seem contradictory to the point that I think I'd honestly have to sit down and come up with some kind of flow chart to make heads or tails of any of it.

The acting suffers too, with Chris J. Murray only really standing out from the rest. The majority of the cast are just kinda there, going through the motions, while I was actually upset that Toby didn't kill Dan Gill's character early into the movie. Gill is annoying as the movie's token comic relief, a clichéd character that I'm getting tired of seeing in movies like this.

I think it's ironic that Paranormal Activity dethroned Saw as the horror franchise du jour. Both began with strong first chapters, their sequels starting out good too. But each franchise started going downhill from a creative standpoint starting with their fourth respective chapters, finally coming to an end with a so-called "final chapter" released in 3D. And much like Saw 3D, I walked out of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension asking myself, "Is this it? Is this really the way they wanted to end these movies if this really is the last one?"

If The Ghost Dimension really is the end, then it's a really lame note for the franchise to go out on. I'm stunned by just how genuinely boring and ho-hum this movie is; the majority of it feels like it's just doing a half-assed copy of things we saw done better in the first five movies. Hell, that forgettable Japanese spinoff was better than this. And that's the really disappointing part; the Paranormal Activity movies got off to such a promising start and ended up here. The movie's tagline is "for the first time, you will see the activity," but you know what? I wish I hadn't.

Final Rating: *½