A massive flop, a near masterpiece, an overpraised indie and a cooking show.

The Flash

Expectations were sky-high for The Flash even before the whole Ezra Miller fiasco. In fact, they were sky-high before that motherfucker was even born. Hollywood has been trying to develop a movie featuring the superhero since the 1980s. They came close in 2007 with writer/director David S. Goyer (Nolan‘s Batmans, Blade Trinity), but then another WGA strike came that shelved the project. In 2010, writers of the Ryan Reynolds‘ turd Green Lantern were brought on to write a treatment for a script. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t pan out, so really talented creatives such as James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring), Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Lego Movie, 21/22 Jump Street), and Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) were brought on at different stages, all exiting for various reasons.

Eventually, the writers of Dungeons & Dragons (the good one that came out this year, not the early 2000s garbage), John Francis Daley (Sam Weir from Freaks & Geeks) and Jonathan Goldstein were brought on. They wrote the script for the movie that was eventually used. The Flash was slotted for a 2018 release date, but God had other plans. God being Ezra Miller in this case. Filming got delayed because of their commitment to portraying a considerably less toxic monster than they are IRL in a Harry Potter prequel. Then Covid-19 hit. Remember that? Eventually the studio turned to It and Mama helmer Andy Muschietti for a final product and last week the movie finally saw the light of day. The opening weekend was a failure both critically and commercially, and to this critic, a real ass-numbing and frequently tedious experience.

I’m not a superhero movie guy by any means and while I’ve certainly trashed the MCU to near Scorsese-levels of critical sass, I really have to hand it to them on knowing (for the most part) how to execute on the most vanilla of mildly satisfying formulas. The Flash is all over the place and the fact it’s as long as GoodFellas doesn’t do it any favors. First of all, it’s impossible to separate the real life Ezra Miller from Barry “The Flash” Allen, especially when they’re given lines that frequently hint at their real-life terrorism. Miller doesn’t even turn in a good performance, it’s super awkward and so obviously the product of acting on a green screen. The scenes Miller shares with their double are even more jarring. It would have been an awkward performance even without all their violent-cult-leader-with-a-blood-altar bullshit, but combined with that it’s awkward and disturbing. The supporting cast is a real mixed bag, but I won’t shit on any of these performers for the mere fact they had to keep their composure acting opposite of this fucking lunatic.

The highlight of the movie, by leaps and bounds, is Michael Keaton‘s participation as one of the timeline’s Bruce Waynes. It’s such a satisfyingly self-aware and fun performance that is completely wasted on an anything but memorable movie. In fact, the thirty or so minute chunk he has is the only time the movie ceases to be a slog. The lowlight of the movie, even more so than Ezra Miller‘s participation, if you can believe that, are the cloyingly awful visual effects. This movie looks like shit, which is unsurprising since I’m already the furthest thing from a fan of Andy Muschietti‘s visual style. The Flash makes It look like Blade Runner, everything about it reads cheap and tawdry, like a bad video game from the early 2000s a la Doom 3. The General Zod (the criminally underutilized Michael Shannon) sequences in particular look like this, and after a while it succeeds in distracting you from Ezra Miller. Then you have another scene where they say something like “People think I’m crazy!” or some shit and a part of you dies. Grade: D+ (In Theaters)

Past Lives

I saw this and The Flash back-to-back on the same day, and it reminded me of that feeling when you get out of a jacuzzi on a cold winter night. Past Lives is a hot tub’s luxurious and healing jet-stream waters, while The Flash is the cold, sobering, and overly chlorinated water of an inner-city YMCA swimming pool.

Sure to become a new indie classic, Past Lives is a small but carefully crafted story about Nora, a Korean-Canadian-American playwright who is so goddamn sick of immigrating that she’s not moving again, even if it is to be with Hae Sung, the childhood friend she is so clearly head-over-heels for. Instead of meeting IRL, they carry on a relationship over Zoom, and we watch them fall for each other before they even realize it. Russian Doll and The Morning Show‘s Greta Lee perfectly plays the playwright, while the childhood friend is rendered with beautiful, quiet intensity by South Korean actor Teo Yoo. They give fantastic performances alone, but together their chemistry is palpable.

Twelve years pass, and each gets married to different people, all the while the two never having seen each other in person since childhood – until he decides to visit New York. From there, the movie really comes alive in a low-key, cerebral way only a non-mainstream film can, with brilliantly written, sometimes achingly sad dialogue delivered to perfection by three great actors – the third is Nora’s writer husband, wonderfully played by First Cow and The Many Saints of Newark (Young Silvio) actor John Magaro whose character is neither a wimpy dip shit nor an aggressive prick. That’s maybe the biggest victory of the movie, the handling of the obligatory husband character. Grade: A- (In Theaters)

Top Chef: World All Stars

It’s seemingly impossible for me to get my greedy little pork links on any of the photo assets for Top Chef: World All Stars, so I’m going to be a real fuck and just use pictures of Taco Bell. Take that, Padma and Tom! You gourmet asshats! This was honestly one of the best seasons of this show I’ve ever seen, at least since it stopped being a trashy Bravo reality program. I miss those early seasons where James Beard award-winning chefs acted like total Vanderpump Rules dickheads. This season pits winners and finalists from Top Chef competitions all over the world (U.S., Mexico, Middle East, Germany, Poland, etc.) against each other to decide which chef is not necessarily the best but can handle the pressure of a televised competition the best. I can’t remember when the dishes had ever been this delicious-looking and technically proficient. There’s not much in the way of personal drama on this show, and by design. It’s 100% about the food now, and as a very hungry boy, I can totally get behind that. Grade: B+ (Peacock)

A Thousand and One

Somewhat overpraised indie drama about Inez (an absolutely spectacular Teyana Taylor), a young woman fresh from prison, trying to reconnect with her 6-year-old son, Terry. Terry (Aaron Kingsley) grows up over the course of three segments, the movie checking back in with him at ages 13 (Aven Courntey) and 17 (a great Josiah Cross.) First and foremost, the movie does a damn fine job authentically capturing the time periods it resides in – 1994, 2001 and 2005. All the technical aspects from the cinematography, to the sound design, to the production design, really stand out for an independent film. The score is the best I’ve heard all year. The problem really comes from the structure of the movie, which a similar indie like Moonlight managed to do far better, especially in fleshing out the POV and the character of the kid in the center of it all. Ultimately, A Thousand and One has a brilliant opening twenty minutes, an even more brilliant closing twenty minutes, and a merely all right middle eighty minutes. The middle eighty isn’t bad by any means it’s just very uneven and when in direct comparison to how good the book ends of this story are, it really stands out like a stubbed toe. In terms of a debut, this is very good work and makes me interested in seeing what writer/director A.V. Rockwell does in the future. Grade: B (Peacock)