Asteroid City (2023)

Wes Anderson is one of those directors who knows what sort of film you are going to get before you even see it. He has a style that is unmistakable and I think having a style is something that we don’t see enough of in today’s movie world. 

I love the way the film looks, I love the way the camera moves and the colours that were used in this film were beautiful. I wanted to spend time in this world and it's been a while since I have been able to say that. The plot isn’t anything flashy but it doesnt need to be and it works for this film. I think that Anderson’s quirky style can be a bit off-putting for a lot of people but I think when it works like it does in ‘The Grand Budapest hotel’ then the time flies and it's one of the most beautiful looking films i have seen. 

It would not be a good review without talking about the performances and they are really good. Jason Schwartzman is very good as Augie but I found Scarlett Johansson to be very good as Midge. She has shown in films like this and ‘Jojo Rabbit’ that she is more than Black Widow and can act really well. There are way too many big names to include in this review and for the fact that you probably want to get on with your life then i will limit it to Tom Hanks as Stanley Zak, Tilda Swindon as Dr. Hickenlooper, Bryan Cranston as The Host and Edward Norton as Conrad Earp. Each one of these gives a performance which shows how good they can be when the material and the style of the film allows them to. I always like watching Bryan Cranston and despite the perhaps limited character, he makes his short (ish) screen time count.

Asteroid City is a very good movie and one that should be seen. I was slightly disappointed with ‘The French Dispatch’ but this was a return to form. Is it as good as ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’? I’m not sure. I think plot wise then Hotel is the better film but in terms of visuals this is by far his best film.

The Flash (2023)

Now I suspect that I am going to be in the minority on this one and say that I enjoyed this film. Ok it's not perfect by any means but I think that this film turned out to be a lot better than it really should have been. The troubles of Ezra Miller almost meant that we weren’t going to see this film and perhaps most people wish we hadn’t.

The film was sold to me on Michael Keaton returning as Batman. I always have a soft spot for Keaton’s Batman films. It was a shame we didn’t get more of his Batman in films but its nice to see the Keaton renaissance continue. The only issue I had with Keaton’s involvement in the film is that he has to do a lot of action scenes and at 72 it did stretch believability that he was able to beat up people half his age. I know its a superhero film but stretching logic can only be done so much.

I think that the biggest issue with the film is how bad the special effects look. The opening part features CGI babies being put into microwaves and just trying to not fall to their deaths and they look so bad. Sadly that wasn't the last we would see bad CGI in this film as the matrix world or whatever it was looked cheap and naff. I can’t believe that someone looked at that and thought it was good enough to  be released. By the way I am not blaming the special effects or visual effects workers because they were probably given little time to make it look acceptable. 

The scene where we see multiple Superman’s and Batmans were quite good and I liked the inclusion of Nicholas Cage’s version as we never got to see that. I thought it was a nice little nod to what could have been. I know some people might not have been impressed with the visuals in this bit but i thought it was one of the few times when it looked good. The inclusion of George Clooney at the end was head scratching. He is probably the worst Batman/Bruce Wayne so to have him appear just goes to show how low the character went at one point in time. 

The Flash is better than it should have been and the fact it wasn't a dumpster fire is impressive. I don’t think that Ezra Miller deserves the credit for that and think that Andy Muschietti managed to native the potential disasters of trying to cram too much into the story rather well. It’s unlikely that we are going to get anymore Flash movies for the foreseeable future although it was always going to be tough to make a Flash movie work.