Where Doesn't It Hurt?

 

The Flash

starring Ezra Miller, Maribel Verdú, Sasha Calle, Ron Livingston, Kiersey Clemons, Michael Shannon, Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton

directed by Seth Grahame-Smith Rick Famuyiwa John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein Andy Muschietti (Mama, It, It Chapter Two)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

starring Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Toby Jones, Ethann Isidore, Shaunette Reneé Wilson, Boyd Holbrook, Antonio Banderas (?), John Rhys-Davies, Karen Allen and Mads Mikkelsen

directed by Steven Spielberg James Mangold (Cop Land, Girl, Interupted, 3:10 to Yuma, The Wolverine, Logan, Ford v Ferrari)

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DON'T READ MORE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW. WHAT ARE YOU, NEW HERE?

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I'm not mad that my children went to Japan without me. They're all adults now, in their early 20s, all three of them. They have the time and the disposable income at the moment to make it happen. I keep reminding the two still in college that there aren't going to be other parts of their lives later where they just don't have anything they have to do for three fucking months in a row, so they should be out there taking big swings while they can. And they're the kind of fortunate American kids for whom the divorce of their parents has really worked out for them as now they're not just limited to two incomes to support them. And on top of that, they're entering that delicate sibling transitional phase between a) when you're competitive, angry children who are convinced the other ones are your main competition for resources and affection so must be violently either reminded of their place or (ideally) destroyed utterly and b) when you're competitive, angry adults who realize you need to be able to call someone if your car breaks down.

So they're out there bonding over ramen and other things made with bonito-flake-umami out the wazoo and I'm here in Inland SoCal trying to figure out how to keep my house insured right as we're entering the peak of apocalyptic-cataclysm-by-absently-tossed-cigarette-out-a-car-window season. The stakes are a lot higher, so I should be nonstop engaged and thrilled, every second! And I suppose I am, but more in the way that is paralyzing than, say, a mind-expanding and experience-making trip abroad might. All things considered I'd rather be contemplating a bento box on a Shinkansen train from Tokyo to Osaka.

Instead what I've been doing is making everything else real, real small. There's a ton of free time since it's just me and the cat. I've invested some of it getting through a few movies I'd never gotten around to seeing. For some reason YouTube kept suggesting clips from Casino for me, which I'd never seen, so I gave it a try (boring, like an audiobook, except with interstitials of Sharon Stone acting her ass off). That led me to Raging Bull, which apparently all men have to watch (also pretty boring for the first 2/3, repetitive bad-people behavior of the same kind over and over, then explodes into a masterpiece in the last 25 minutes). And then one I've been putting off due to length, Lawrence of Arabia, which ironically only had the extra-long director's cut available (it was, indeed, long. Really beautiful, but kept being frustrated by not being able to experience the spectacle of it, both on TV and not in 1962, where it would have made my eyeballs burst). They get back this weekend, so maybe I'll introduce myself to French New Wave before then, but the idea is competing with the prospect of being asleep a bunch. I'm not taking bets on that competition.

The other thing you can do when you're hunkering is go to new movies by yourself, which is the only way films in theaters these days is affordable. Even the bad summer films I still like to make an effort to see (definitely not looking at you, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, sorry). So did I go see The Flash even though everyone told me it was going to be shite? Reader, I did.

I'm the most easily manipulated person in the world when it comes to hype. Tell me a movie is great? I definitely want to go see it. Tell me a movie is notably terrible? I definitely want to go see it. Tell me a movie is an almost certain historically-notable box-office disaster based on pre-release audience indifference and behind-the-scenes drama? Motherfuckers, I went to see Green Lantern in theaters AND the Fantastic Four with that boy from the drum movie. My bona fides here are unimpeachable.

Well, except for the last Shazam movie, I did skip that. Every building has a floor, even if there's a basement.

It looks like The Flash is on pace (ha) to be a real liability for DC/Warner/whatever they're called now. A $105 million domestic take vs a $200 million budget is not great, however you personally feel about how math works. I know domestic box office isn't everything, but it's still the lion's share of a lot of box office since Americans still don't like to do things outside. This is a smack.

And personally I was not excited about seeing Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny since the trailers looked like a cartoon of CGI shots trying to make 80-year-old Harrison Ford look spry, which, sadly for the first half of the film, it mostly was. And to date, it's $250 million-ish take vs its $300 million-ish budget looks better as percentages go than The Flash, but that might only be because of how I personally feel about how math works. Making $250 million is a lot of money! I'm sure that's more than Gone with the Wind made, but I also have to remind myself that that was when people were going to the movies for a nickel.

I have to say: neither of these movies are terrible. And I'd go even further to say The Flash even walks right up to the border of "watchable." The employment of the character's super powers is interesting and fun, the performances are engaged and interesting (including Ezra Miller in a dual role), the CG is... well, it's not good, which is pretty important when you're trying to tell a story about reality bending, like the decidedly non-superhero Everything Everywhere All At Once, which was 100 times more effective with a fraction of the budget. And the plot... well, it's a ripoff/retread of The Flashpoint Paradox to some degree, with Michael Keaton bopping around trying to make us all nostalgia horny so we'd forget they were pretty thuddingly leaving out the Big Plot Twist from Flashpoint Paradox that made that story so compelling and tragic. The shoehorning in of Michael Shannon and the Man of Steel plot made it all pretty convoluted and kind of dull, honestly. Sasha Calle standing in for Henry Cavill was fun enough, but she got almost nothing to do but get replaced by CG versions of herself a bunch and then die (and die and die...). It ends on a Big Twist of its own that really only made the rest of it feel like it counted for very little, which I guess... it's a DC movie, and that's pretty much their mission statement. Did I say it was almost good? I feel like I just talked myself out of that position.

As a GenX dork, I definitely have more history with Indiana Jones movies. I didn't hate Temple of Doom like everyone else, but Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is rightfully dragged for being aimless and without purpose, unless you count getting Karen Allen back in the fold, which almost justifies the whole thing, including Shia LeBoeuf, the Ezra Miller of 2008, swinging with the stupid monkeys. I said almost. In Dial of Destiny, they leave out Shia LeBoeuf, which is fine, but also kinda negates a lot of the point of Crystal Skull, which thus feels even cheaper in retrospect, the same way Rise of Skywalker hand-waved away all the interesting shit in The Last Jedi. There's nothing less endearing a film can do than to have you feel like you wasted your time, money and emotional investment retroactively. "You were stupid to care about the thing we asked you to care about before," they say, which is a violation of the contract between this cultural frippery and we the cultural-frippervores. You can't take my money and the laugh at me for it later. This shit was all your idea, you dicks.

Harrison Ford is OK, but well past it. I know the weariness is supposed to be kind of the point, but there are times when the greatest movie star of maybe my whole life gets absolutely shoved off the screen by Phoebe Waller-Bridge or Mads Mikkelsen. Now, there's no shame in that. Both are legitimate stars that the camera absolutely adores. Waller-Bridge is one of my personal favorites, absolutely ablaze with effortless natural charm and supreme ability to make more out of whatever she's given, from her own humans-on-earth-right-now-tragicomic prose (please see Fleabag if you haven't) to let's-have-a-chat-with-the-real-Archimedes schlock like this. I'd be happy to watch her chase MacGuffin whatsits all over time and space, but alas, the box office renders this unlikely in the future.

The movie itself saves all of its emotional weight for the ending, which retreads some beats from Last Crusade, but then goes WAY over the top enough to snap everyone out of the tiredness that is evident in some scenes (I think there are four car chase scenes?) and saps the momentum here and there, to a degree that goes all the way around to being effective. The actors believe the most nonsensical parts the hardest, which makes it so you can't help but love them. The weight of the tiredness pays off and we get Karen Allen back to re-ground us where we all want to be grounded. It's a long plane-ride-illustrated-by-a-red-line-advancing-across-a-sepia-toned-map to get there, but it gets there.

I guess the other contender for biggest movie star of maybe my whole life, Tom Cruise, will be here shortly to save the 2023 box office and moviegoing as an idea when the next Mission: Impossible comes out. That series has found its footing as a mix of fresh-ideas action movie stuff with expert filmmaking and an expanding cast of wonders (Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell and Vanessa Kirby are in this one movie. Your theater screens will combust). It'll be necessary because with the relative failure of these two, plus the profitable-but-damp-squib of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania showing the vulnerability of Marvel IP, that the window is closing on how and when hit movies can spring into being. As the risk increases and the studios become more and more just assets in portfolios of private equity dipshits, they'll become more averse to trying and failing to the point that sometimes they won't even try. For safety, every movie idea is going to become a TV limited series for half the price (or less) than a bigtime feature, get chucked onto streaming for two years, then shelved forever if they don't feel like paying residuals to any of the creators who birthed it. And then there will be all these theaters with nothing to put on them, including superhero movies. All the space in the world for indies and a second New Wave and finally, at long last, Martin Scorsese can shut the fuck up about the tragic state of cinema.