VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Devon Malcolm]

59 minutes ago, FelatioLips said:

When Marnie Was There

I never got around to watching Asteroid City but I did see a lot of people say it was the most Wes Anderson-y film of the Wes Anderson films. I have a similar opinion of this.
It has all the familiar notes of a Studio Ghibli hit; The teenage protagonist who gets mysteriously ill and has to move away, spirits and ghostly goings on, and a tragedy to bring everything together. It's page for page from the Ghibli notebook.
The issue with Marnie is that it fails to successfully bring them all together into a great film. The progatonist isn't particularly likeable in any sense - she's a sad sack who at one point in the film calls a girl who says she has pretty eyes a fat pig for no reason - and other than a couple of good turns from John C Reilly and Vanessa Williams, the supporting cast is very weak and forgettable. The main issue with Marnie though is that it acts as though you know the twist from the start, so there is a lot of dialogue and bonding between the two protagonists that feels weird and forced and only really pays off in the final few scenes of the film.

It's just as stunningly animated as other Ghibli films but lacks any really fantastic characters or places, and overall while it's an OK film it doesn't hold up compared to the rest of the Ghibli catalogue. Kiernan Shipka is just as bad in this as she is in everything else as well.

I think the most telling thing about Marnie is that the film is nearly a decade old and I don't recall seeing any of the characters on any merchandise or pop culture the way you do the other films.

[Chest Rockwell]

Candy cane lane was really weird and not in a good way. Bad film.

[FLips]

9 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Candy cane lane was really weird and not in a good way. Bad film.

You speak nicer words about it than my Mum did yesterday.

[FLips]

The Boy and The Heron

It may be recency bias but it very well might be my favourite Ghibli film. Visually breathtaking from start to finish. I was almost in tears at some of it just from the sights and sounds alone.

[Mr_Danger]

Saltburn. Barry Keoghan is a bit of a Mr Ripley, but weirder. I really liked this, not sure where the mixed reviews are coming from because objectively speaking it’s a well made interesting film with good acting. Jacob Elordi is rightly getting a lot of plaudits but Barry Keoghan is one of the most interesting actors around. Such an unsettling pitiful presence he carries in films but impossible to take your eyes off. Features Richard E Grant joyously saying he can wear his armour. 

[johnnyboy]

2 hours ago, Mr_Danger said:

Saltburn. Barry Keoghan is a bit of a Mr Ripley, but weirder. I really liked this...

Same, but I'd have to dock half a star for ruining Sophie Ellis Bextor for me.

[WyattSheepMask]

4 hours ago, FelatioLips said:

The Boy and The Heron

It may be recency bias but it very well might be my favourite Ghibli film. Visually breathtaking from start to finish. I was almost in tears at some of it just from the sights and sounds alone.

Going to have to wait for this as the closest place to me that’s showing it is 65 miles away, which I’m really annoyed at as I was really looking forward to it

[FLips]

2 hours ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Going to have to wait for this as the closest place to me that’s showing it is 65 miles away, which I’m really annoyed at as I was really looking forward to it

Yeah we had to go to the Odeon in Metro Center which was about an hour away. Cineworld was showing it but only select locations (not ours) and Vue advertised it as coming soon but then never actually showed it either.

Odeon by the way is a dive of a cinema compared to the Showcase we usually use.

[Weezenal]

Odeon have 20% off Limitless at the moment. Been waiting for this to rejoin. 

[HarmonicGenerator]

It's the end of the year and @Onyx2 asked where my annual post going through all the new films I watched this year was. It's here Onyx, I'm doing it.

As usual, there'll be objectively good films that I didn't like as much as I should have, and there'll be rubbish films (or superhero ones) that I did. I already know my opinions on quite a few films are totally different from the excellent regular posters in this thread. Sorry about that.

This might be a long post so it's going in spoiler tags so I don't muck up the thread and you don't have to look at my thoughts if you don't want to.

Spoiler

Altogether I saw 48 new release films this year. That's not a lot, but it's slightly more than last year's 44.

I'll go through them roughly by theme because I can't remember the order I saw everything in, and a ranking will reveal itself because it normally does.

Spoiler

Spoiler box within the spoiler box. Tar will be at the top of the list. 

Okay then...

BARBENHEIMER

May as well start with the biggest film weekend of the year. We did do the double-bill, Oppenheimer followed by Barbie. I... liked Oppenheimer more. It could have been half an hour shorter and lost nothing, but I was interested and it kept my attention throughout. I also was able to follow what was happening the entire time, which by itself makes this a vast improvement over Tenet. Barbie is one of those objectively good films that just didn't click with me like it should have. I liked lots of things about it, but for me the first half had a lot more going for it than the second. I felt bad about this until it turned out my wife liked it less than I did. I should probably rewatch it. 

Barbie had a John Cena mermaid (one of the objectively good things about it) so that will link nicely to

MERMAIDS AND OTHER DISNEY RELATED STUFF

The Little Mermaid live action remake is not good. Halle Bailey does a good job, but as with most of these films the soul is missing. And I'm a Lin-Manuel Miranda fan but that song he wrote for Awkwafina to do here is maybe the worst song he's ever done. 

The Haunted Mansion is a tiny bit better than The Little Mermaid, and I think this is because I remember the latter's worst moments but I can barely remember anything about the former. Except that it added way more story than "lots of ghosts in haunted house" needs.

Oh, speaking of films with ghosts that were instantly forgettable, it's not Disney but We Have A Ghost on Netflix left me totally cold. I remember unlocking the Galactic Legend Luke Skywalker on Galaxy of Heroes while it was on. Maybe that distracted me.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny probably fits in this section too. Didn't like it. It's a bit better than Crystal Skull - the reliance on CG was less egregious, no Shia LeBeouf - but I wasn't keen on Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character and it probably didn't helped that we'd rewatched Last Crusade earlier in the week. The best part is the chase through Morocco, but we'd been shown that whole sequence at Star Wars Celebration, and maybe that heightened my expectations, because I watched that and actually got quite excited for the film. Turned out the rest of it was not so good. Worst part is the pointless diving eel Antonio Banderas section. 

(Antonio Banderas, you say... Puss In Boots: The Last Wish - here's another objectively good film that just didn't click with me like it should have. It's fun, it's funny, it's got a lot going for it and I should have really liked it, I know ... but I thought it was just fine.)

And while we're on Disney-owned films...

SUPERHEROES

Three MCU films this year. One I had low expectations for that turned out to be tons of fun (The Marvels), one I had low expectations for that turned out to hit me right in the emotions (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3), and one I had low expectations for that will, by the end of this, be my least favourite film of the year (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania).

Taking those in release order... Quantumania was a pile of shite. Not that it matters now, but the big bad of the next two phases of the whole thing gets his arse kicked by Ant-Man. The entire film's a CG fuckfest where you can feel the greenscreen all the way through, and the whole concept of shrinky superhero going to realm where being shrinky means nothing because there's no sense of anything else's size to compare it to was a fatal flaw. I try never to nip off to the loo during films at the cinema but I did not mind (i) doing so and (ii) taking my time during this.

On the flipside, I'm in a minority but I really enjoyed The Marvels. I thought Iman Vellani's Kamala Khan and her family had just the right amount of levity, there's a whole thing with the cats that had me chuckling, and

Spoiler

Kate Bishop popping up at the end had me (silently) cheering.

I didn't have a lot of interest in Guardians 3 and I might not even have gone along if I wasn't such an MCU completist. I'm glad I did though, because this was far closer to the first Guardians (the good one) than the second one (the bad one). I didn't expect that. I definitely didn't expect to be bawling my eyes out at the end, and yet, I did. The main story is over, things are wrapping up, and James Gunn drops in the perfect song at the perfect moment and suddenly I'm in floods of happy tears. At Guardians of the Galaxy, for fuck's sake. They got me. And then, and then, they have the gall to set me off again during the credits by playing 'Badlands'! The BASTARDS!

So yeah, I've got an Marvel film in my top 5 of the year because of that. And because Chukwudi Iwuji hams it up spectacularly as one of the best baddies they've had in years.

There are actually two Marvel films in my top 5, because Christ, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a beautiful film. Saw this one twice, and I'm glad I did. I had a few issues with it on first viewing that vanished on a rewatch. I can't say it's flawless because it is just half a story, but it's close. Gwen's universe is stunning; Renaissance Vulture is insane; Mumbattan is spectacular; Miles and Gwen just talking is maybe the most thrilling part of the movie; Spider-Punk is crazy; the visuals are astonishing. Etc etc.

I didn't see any DC films this year.

Ranking 2023: so far

1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

3. Oppenheimer

4. Barbie

5. The Marvels

6. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

7. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

8. The Haunted Mansion

9. The Little Mermaid

10. We Have a Ghost

11. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

 

OTHER ANIMATION

Elemental should have probably been in the Disney section because it's Pixar. Oh well. We managed to catch this just at the end of its theatrical run, in a little cinema in the Lake District where we were practically the only people there, on our wedding anniversary. So it's going to rank highly because of the circumstances, but it's also a lovely film. It didn't get me emotionally in a Wall-E/Coco/Up kind of way, but it's a hell of a lot better than Lightyear last year. It makes you care about the characters, it's inventive, and it's just nice seeing a Pixar film on the big screen after Soul and Luca and Turning Red all got stuck on streaming.

It's kind of a live-action/animation mix but it was nominated for Animation at the Oscars, so... Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Am I getting upset and having my heartbroken by a tiny animated shell? Me? 

Yes. That beautiful sweet tiny animated shell. Seek this film out if you didn't catch it at the start of the year. Your heart will thank you.

Of the two Netflix animations I got round to this year, Nimona was very good. It's got style, it's got heart (heart again, heart is important), it's interesting visually, it's cool. 

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget ... not so much. I wondered beforehand why Aardman decided to make a sequel to Chicken Run 23 years later, and what new thing they had to say that meant they just had to do this film. After watching it, still not sure. It's okay.

It is better than The Super Mario Bros Movie which could not have been more generic, but at least looked Mario-ish and Chris Pratt wasn't as bad a voice fit as I'd expected.

(While I'm mentioning a movie based on a game, Tetris was surprisingly compelling. I didn't know much of the backstory behind the game, other than it was created in Russia, so everything in the film was new to me. Taron Egerton's very good in it. If you have Apple TV, it's worth a watch.)

 

DOCUMENTARIES

Linked from above because I mentioned Apple TV, and my favourite documentary I saw this year - and admittedly there've only been three - is on there. Still: The Michael J Fox Story was moving, illuminating and inspirational. Recommended.

The other two documentaries were both about music. Little Richard: I Am Everything did a great job of showcasing just how important Little Richard was to the development of rock, and how unfair it was that he wasn't listed among its pioneers in the way he should have been - but at the same time, it felt like there were a lot of gaps left untold, and I definitely still had questions after it finished (and after I'd downloaded the Best Of Sister Rosetta Tharpe on iTunes). Squaring the Circle: the Story of Hipgnosis has recently arrived on Netflix, and as a fan of a fair few of the albums they designed the covers for, I had a great time. Just hearing the stories behind Dark Side of the Moon, Houses of the Holy, Band on the Run... it was fascinating, and very much my jam.

 

FILMS ABOUT MUSIC, BUT NOT MUSICALS YET

Tar was one of the first films we saw this year. It was mid-January, and it's stayed in my head ever since. Every great film I've seen this year, I've thought "was that as good as Tar?" and it's always been "no, not really". Cate Blanchett is astonishing in this film. I was gripped from the first scene, which is just Lydia Tar being interviewed on stage and yet is totally cinematic, to the very end which left me with that "ooooooofff" gut-punch-but-in-a-satisfying-way feeling. It's magnificent. I said it in the spoiler box above, but nothing's beating Tar this year.

Especially not Maestro, which joins the other objectively good films I just didn't get on with. I know it's good, I know it's worthy, but the feeling I was left with was that bit in the Father Ted Christmas special where Father Jack shouts "Award! Award! Award!" over and over again.

Bradley Cooper at the next Academy Awards, there.

That's as good a link as any to some of the other Oscar-y films I saw this year.

I liked, didn't love, The Fabelmans. Some beautiful Spielberg-y moments, but it hasn't stayed with me since we saw it in January, and the clip of Jack just above very much applies to Michelle Williams in that film.

Past Lives and Killers of the Flower Moon are likely to get a bunch of nominations next year, and deservedly so in both cases. Past Lives had a big emotional impact, in a wonderfully confused and complicated "I don't know how to feel and I know that not knowing is how I'm meant to feel" kind of way. It's excellent, even if I didn't fall as deeply in love with it as a lot of reviewers. Meanwhile, if Lily Gladstone doesn't win an Oscar for Flower Moon there's something wrong. Hers is an incredible performance; she's in there with DiCaprio and De Niro and is by far the most interesting presence on the screen. The film as a whole was another like-not-love for me. I was never bored, and while I'm very glad it's a feature film we saw in a cinema, it felt at times like it could have worked just as well if they'd made it a four hour miniseries.

But! There's one more film about a composer I haven't mentioned. 2023 was a good year for films about composers, wasn't it? Chevalier came and went at the cinema very quickly, and just as quickly got buried in the Disney+ algorithm, but if you've got an interest in history it's well worth checking out. A Black composer in 18th century France, on the level of Mozart at one time but virtually written out of history by the 19th century, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges is an absolutely fascinating figure, and the film almost does him justice. It also has Samara Weaving, and that by itself deserves your attention.

 

OTHER FILMS ABOUT FRENCH HISTORY

If you didn't catch The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady at the cinema, you missed out. Fantastic French adaptation of the novel, the splitting into two parts actually works (though I'm counting them as one), it's very well cast (Eva Green's never been better), looks great, and the plot canters along at a great pace with loads of action. And their HATS. I wish I could wear a hat as well as anyone in these films.

Napoleon has lots of good things in it, but suffers overall from not really having a point. It's mainly just a bunch of stuff that happened, in order. There's no angle, and it kind of needed an angle. Ridley Scott knows how to film a battle, though, and Joaquin Phoenix is brilliantly able to balance his character as someone who's simultaneously incredibly awkward and weird in a one-on-one or social situation, but who, when you stick him on a battlefield, is so completely in control that he only has to move a hand and thousands obey him.

We're getting there.

Ranking 2023 so far

1. Tar

2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

4. Oppenheimer

5. Still: The Michael J Fox Story

6. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

7. Elemental

8. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady

10. Past Lives

11. Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis

12. Barbie

13. Killers of the Flower Moon

14. Little Richard: I Am Everything

15. The Marvels

16. Napoleon

17. Nimona

18. Tetris

19. The Fabelmans

20. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

21. Chevalier

22. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

23. Maestro

24. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

25. The Super Mario Bros Movie

26. The Haunted Mansion

27. The Little Mermaid

28. We Have a Ghost

29. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

 

FUNNY FILMS (OR FILMS THAT WERE MEANT TO BE)

It was a decent year for comedy. Theater Camp, which has just arrived on Disney+, had me laughing out loud a lot, it's great fun even if it wastes Ayo Edebiri. It's about musicals, but it's not technically a musical itself, which might make it safe for some of you to watch. Unlike Wonka which is 100% very much a musical. The songs are okay - Timothee Chalamet can hold a tune, and a few of them have stuck around in my head since seeing it, which is a good sign - but the best thing about Wonka is that very Paul King-y heightened sense of reality he creates in his films, where magical things can happen and feel completely believable within that world. It's no Paddington or Paddington 2, but then what is.

Magical things? Must be time for Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves. It's a proper shame this didn't do well on release because it's loads of fun - Jarnathan and Rege-Jean Page alone make it worth watching - and while I am biased because I saw some of it being filmed and got to spend time with Michelle Rodriguez and Chris Pine (HE'S SO HANDSOME), I genuinely had a good time with the finished movie. It'll be streaming on Paramount+ now. If you have that, get on this, it's good, honest.

Another one that went right under the radar (albeit on a smaller scale) was Polite Society. Nida Manzoor created the utterly brilliant We Are Lady Parts (get to Channel 4 right now and watch it if you haven't yet) so I was really excited to see her debut feature. It goes to some strange places, but there's great stuff in there, and it owes a big debt to Edgar Wright's filmmaking style, so if you like his stuff, definitely seek this one out.

Sticking with British films, Rye Lane was super charming, but sadly joins the list of objectively good films that didn't completely click for me. This was a Disney+ rather than cinema watch, though, which can make a difference sometimes. Bank of Dave certainly didn't require a cinema release. Brit-film-by-numbers, but I watched it with my parents and they had a good time, so that should count for something.

Next Goal Wins and Asteroid City have a few things in common. Okay, maybe one thing. The latter is Wes Anderson at his most Wes Anderson-y, it could not be more Wes Anderson-y and if you like his stuff that's probably a good thing. Not as good as French Dispatch but still good. The former veers into Taika Waititi at his most Taika Waititi-ish, to the point where you wonder if every character really needs to act like Korg from the Thor films. There's some unpleasant stuff with a trans character in the film. It gets better in the way it treats that storyline by the end, but by that point it's like it's fighting against itself... that aspect is not good. But it does succeed in making you root for the group of characters in that traditional sports-movie way.

Finally, I remember having a lot of fun watching Joy Ride, but admittedly I've forgotten most of it since. And while I haven't forgotten Renfield, it's mainly because I remember being disappointed by it. The best bits where the scenes with the guy who plays Isaac in the American Ghosts, which really shouldn't be the case when you've got Nic Cage playing Dracula.

 

FILMS ABOUT BIG LIZARDS

This section is mainly an excuse to rave about how AMAZING Godzilla Minus One was. I'd heard so many good things, including from Godzilla-loving friends, but I didn't expect to love it quite as much as I did. I laughed, I was moved, I was terrified, I was thrilled, it was EXCELLENT on every level. If you can catch a screening, go, go, GO. It's SO GOOD. Straight into the top 3.

65 didn't live up to its premise. Meh.

 

EVERYTHING ELSE

I found myself enjoying Extraction 2 despite myself, and despite not liking the first one. They just went all-out with the action and that was fun. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part One had what was my favourite action sequence of the year (until Godzilla Minus One) even if several of its big set-pieces were very similar to ones I'd played on Uncharted games. The train sequence had me gasping constantly. But I really didn't like the big character decision that happens about two-thirds of the way through. The film lost me there, and while the train stuff got me back to an extent, I couldn't completely engage with it after that moment.

Rebel Moon Part One is objectively not good, and I know this, but it was perfectly fine to have on in the background while wrapping Christmas presents.

The Creator is one I liked more than I should have. I give it a pass because I like Gareth Edwards, and I like Alison Janney, and I like Gemma Chan, and it was just nice to see a film like this that, formulaic as it was, started off as a film and not a comic or a novel.

No One Will Save You had some cool alien designs, but I felt it struggling to stick to its gimmick in a way I never did with the Quiet Place filims.

Cassandro was oddly uneventful for a film about somebody so interesting - great as it was to see a film about someone so interesting from the world of lucha.

And finally, the last film to mention, is one which will end up somewhere middling on the final list. Honestly if you've read this far you deserve something more than The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which was okay. I like the world-building it does, and the ending plays more convincingly on film than it did in the book. Rachel Zegler's good in it.

That's the lot!

Ranking 2023: the final list

1. Tar

2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

3. Godzilla Minus One

4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

5. Oppenheimer

6. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

7. Still: The Michael J Fox Story

8. Theater Camp

9. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

10. Elemental

11. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady

13. Past Lives

14. Squaring the Circle: the Story of Hipgnosis

15. Wonka

16. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part One

17. The Creator

18. Polite Society

19. Barbie

20. Killers of the Flower Moon

21. Little Richard: I Am Everything

22. The Marvels

23. Rye Lane

24. Napoleon

25. The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

26. Nimona

27. Joy Ride

28. Tetris

29. Extraction 2

30. Asteroid City

31. The Fabelmans

32. Puss In Boots: The Last Wish

33. Chevalier

34 Next Goal Wins

35. No One Will Save You

36. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

37. Rebel Moon Part One

38. Cassandro

39. 65

40. Renfield

41. Maestro

42. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

43. The Super Mario Bros Movie

44. Bank of Dave

45. The Haunted Mansion

46. The Little Mermaid

47. We Have A Ghost

48. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

 

BUT ACTUALLY

On Valentine's Day we went to see the 25th anniversary re-release of Titanic and that was far and away the best film I saw this year. Never watched Titanic on the big screen before, and my god. It's a masterpiece. It's a fucking masterpiece and I'll hear no arguments. Spectacular filmmaking. 

So it's technically Tar... but really it's Titanic.

If you don't want to read my pointless thoughts but still want to know, Tar was my favourite new film I saw this year, and the third Ant-Man was my least favourite.

Edited December 27, 2023 by HarmonicGenerator

[Devon Malcolm]

@HarmonicGenerator I've still got a bunch of 2023 stuff I want to get through before the end of January and we're catching Godzilla and The Boy and the Heron at the cinema shortly. But Tar, Across the Spider-Verse and Still will solidly be in my top 10 by the end of it, barring a flood of other great stuff. Always good to read more positive stuff about Polite Society and Rye Lane too. British cinema's in good hands, I think.

[Hannibal Scorch]

@HarmonicGenerator a great write up. So glad to see the love for Polite Society, Dungeons and Dragons and The Marvels there. 3 films which had little impact and deserved more. Marcel the Shell was in my top 3 last year because I watched a US stream of it as it took about 6 months for it to find a UK release, great film. 

[johnnyboy]

On 12/26/2023 at 8:14 PM, FelatioLips said:

The Boy and The Heron

It may be recency bias but it very well might be my favourite Ghibli film. Visually breathtaking from start to finish. I was almost in tears at some of it just from the sights and sounds alone.

I was exhausted.  Miyazaki might really be retiring after that as he put everything in it.  Very dense and buckets of animated bird shit.

 

Spoiler

Parakeet phobia unlocked.

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by johnnyboy

[Devon Malcolm]

Silent Night (2023)

Great fun. Surprisingly downbeat with a couple of brilliant sequences. Not sure the silent gimmick always sticks but it's a solid actioner even it's well short of John Woo's American best (Hard Target / Face/Off / Broken Arrow in equal first place).

Police Academy 2

Aside from Jones, this has nothing going for it. This series took a fast dive.

A Christmas Story (Prime)

Americans are mental. This is very funny.

A Muppet Family Christmas (YouTube)

The entire Muppet Cinematic Universe in one very funny hour long TV movie, what more do you want? Mind the icy patch!

Scrooged

The greatest Christmas film ever made.

Trading Places

YEAH.

Local Hero

Is Bill Forsyth one of the greatest British filmmakers of all time? Yes, yes he is.

[Dr. Alan Grant]

The Muppet Christmas Carol - just the best Christmas film. 5/5

Jack Frost - strange fact: I’ve seen the trailer for this film more than I have any other because it was at the start of a bunch of the Friends VHS tapes. (The Michael Keaton one, not the horror) 3/5

City Of God - I always disliked the “Brazilian Goodfellas” tag this got at the time. Great cast all around. Lil Zé is a marvellously despicable bastard. 4/5

How The Grinch Stole Christmas - I love Jim Carrey in most things, this included. Throw in Christine Baranski as a sexy Who and you’re onto a winner. 3/5

The Flash (first watch) - Christ. What a mess. PS3 standard CGI. Who on Earth thought that opening scene with the babies was a good idea? Why does Ben Affleck’s chin not look anything like Ben Affleck? Oh yay, two Ezra Miller’s for the price of one. Double the shoddy acting. The Chronobowl of dead actors and Nic Cage was the icing on an already shitty cake. Saved from one star solely by Michael Keaton and a few snippets of Danny Elfman’s Bat theme. James Gunn has his work cut out for him. 2/5