Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

#StokerScore 6/10

Imagine you want to make a movie and you want to make sure it includes all of your favourite comic characters. You have research material for those characters that dates back to 1938 and to top it off, these dramatis personae are iconic to the point that everyone is aware of even small background information, meaning you could theoretically throw the audience into the middle of a story and they'd have a good chance of understanding individual motivations. Here's a quick quiz....

                  1. Is Batman a) a bat, b) a man, c) a genetically engineered man/bat hybrid?

                  2. Was Superman born a) on Krypton, b) on Earth, c) in the wagon of a travelling show,                            whose Momma use to dance for the money they'd throw?

                  3. Is Lex Luthor a) the good guy, b) the bad guy c) the ugly guy?

                  4. Is Wonder Woman a) Amazonian, b) Amazuluian c) Platitudinarian

My point is that that's just how goddamn ICONIC they are, as each new age has dawned since 1938, these guys have been there

Finally, you won't need to worry about box-office returns as the movie is likely to be seen by just about everyone.

There's a lot to like about the new movie. Afleck makes old Batman his own with a believably world-weary performance, ably assisted by the always brilliant Jeremy Irons as Alfred. Gal Gadot looks suitably sexy, feisty and capable but just wasn't really given enough to do to give a realistic assessment. Jesse Eisenberg seems to have gone for a "what-if-I-cross-Mark-Zuckerberg-with-Gary-Busey" idea for his Luthor portrayal and whilst it sometimes comes off as petulant, he certainly seems to be enjoying himself

It's Superman, In my opinion unreasonably saddled with the blame for the destructive events at the end of Man of Steel, who doesn't seem to be enjoying himself. Batman enjoys beating up criminals, Wonder Woman enjoys fast cars and light S&M, Superman gets a brief moment to enjoy bath time for two, but that's it, the rest of the time he's just miserable.

In fact the tone of the movie is pretty miserable too. There's no colour, the season seems to be that moment in Autumn where it rains a lot and the trees are leafless, and for pity's sake how many more cities need destroying?

I have to say that I blame the writer, director and studio for a number of less than positive things about the movie. As a nerd I was able to get most of the references casually thrown about but there were more dream sequences than A Nightmare on Elm Street and as much as I understand the anger over the destruction of Metropolis, surely a vigilante master detective could deduce that Superman wasn't to blame? 

The inevitability of needing a problem so big, it needs the combined powers of the three DC heroes to bring it down is understandable enough as Supe's and WW's virtual immortality is going to need destruction on an epic scale but god help us when we add in the rest of the Justice League, most of whom BVSDOJ gave us a glimpse of, along with an Apokoliptic (sic) sense of doom to come.

I think that at two hours and thirty minutes it was thirty minutes too long. three quarters of the movie is really just set-up for the final battle and the coming JL movie. Did we really need to be shown Bruce Wayne's origin story again? I'm starting to think that there's a contract at DC that says every new reboot of the role warrants a retelling of Batman's origin.

As a blockbuster movie it's ok, but for all of the on screen spectacle it was still missing a WOW factor. I certainly didn't leave the two showings of the movie, one in 2D and the better one in 3D, thinking that I couldn't wait for the oh-right-they've-split-it-into-two-parts-again-to-milk-the-cow-dry Justice League movies.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

#StokerScore 4/10

There was a time when the numbers after a movie meant the sequence order for a movie franchise. You know, like Evil Dead 2 or the parodistic Naked Gun 33 1/3. Obviously that was only if the movie didn't come with some sort of a pithy subtitle as with the Friday the 13th movies who soon got fed up with numbers: Part 2, Part III, and went with The Final Chapter for number four in the series before the flogging-of-a-dead-horse that was part five's The New Beginning. No, these days, the number after the movie is more likely to tell you which remake, relaunch or reboot you're watching, such is Hollywoods seeming lack of imagination. 

That being said, there are good remakes out there; John Carpenter's "The Thing"? was a grerat remake of a terrible B-Movie from the early 1950's. But of course for each of those there are also bad movies such as Matthijs van Heijningen's "The Thing (2011)"? Here is a movie that scores 35% at Rotten Tomatoes and which is, in my opinion, a pale imitation of a copy. 

Of course it all depends on your personal taste and first of all you have to come to terms with if you even think a movie should ever be remade because the first one is just too damn good, Sir! I hear friends who like movies often suggesting that even thinking of remaking a film such as Apocalypse Now or The Godfather is worthy of the death penalty for all involved, and maybe Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho would validate that argument. As I said, personal taste.

So it was with zero trepidation that I approached Guy Ritchie's movie version of the 1960's tv show The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015). Here is a director who continues to write great dialogue, choose great casts and make great movies (I've deliberately forgotten Swept Away for the benefit of those last statements). Ritchie's recent success with the Sherlock Holmes movies assured me that I would be blown away by his style and penchant for cartoon violence mixed with great dialogue.

Leaving the cinema I could only think "a swing and a miss" and a few days to digest it and consider it further hasn't changed that initial thought. The 60's tv show had a suave, debonair lead in Robert Vaughn's Napoleon Solo and seemingly youthful exuberance in the form of David McCallum's Illya Kuryakin, even though they were both virtually the same age when they made the show. Vaughn was coming off the back of macho roles in movies such as The Magnificent Seven, and McCallum from a significant role in The Great Escape. The casting in this new movie is equally as iconic with Superman playing against The Lone Ranger, the problem is that there just seemed, in comparison with the tv show, to be so little understanding of the roles or chemistry between the two men. That the dialogue wasn't as punchy as is Ritchie's norm definitely didn't help either. The two leads were mainly wooden with only some brief glimpses of anything approaching fun. The villains certainly came across better and it was only with the introduction of Hugh Grant's character that the whole thing warmed up.

It's an ok movie and I've certainly seen worse this year, but I guess I just expected too much....