As a kid from the late 80s/early 90s and watching the original Ninja Turtles cartoon with the Turtles, April in the yellow jumpsuit, Shredder, Krang, Bebop, Rocksteady, and everyone breaking the 4th wall, the first turtles film was pretty dark for a kids films.

From the opening scene (great scene) showing how crime is occurring rapidly throughout the city, opening score song showing crime infesting the city, and Shredder recruiting and somewhat brainwashing runaway teenagers and I guess young adults and referring to himself as their father, this movie is pretty dark.

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Imagine you're a teenager, lost and confused and feeling somewhat abandoned from your family, and your salvation is a guy in a costume who convinces you that the world doesn't care for you as a person but he does.

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Still a pretty good film that was made 33 years ago.

Rotten Tomatoes: 72% (71 reviews) with 6.50 in average rating

Critics consensus: While it plays too much like a sizzle reel of DC's greatest hits to fully stand on its own two feet, The Flash has enough heart and zip to maintain a confident stride.

Metacritic: 60/100 (28 critics)

As with other movies, the scores are set to change as time passes. Meanwhile, I'll post some short reviews on the movie. It's structured like this: quote first, source second. Beware, some contain spoilers.

The early word on The Flash calling it one of the greatest superhero movies ever made was pure hyperbole. But in the bumpy recent history of the DC Extended Universe, it’s certainly an above-average entry.

-David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

Miller's the Flash goes back in time to change the future and connects with Michael Keaton's Batman. But the movie, after a smart and playful first half, gives itself over to comic-book bombast.

-Owen Gleiberman, Variety

In its best moments, “The Flash” touches on something new and exciting, but too often, its the past that tugs on, keeping it from speeding ahead.

-Kate Erbland, IndieWire: B–

The Flash is an ambitious superhero movie that largely pulls off its tale of two worlds, two Flashes, and two Batmans. The superhero fan service is strong with this one – perhaps too strong at times – but it never fully overshadows Barry Allen’s genuinely tragic and heartfelt story of grief. Though the visual effects aren’t always the best and the third act is a bit overwhelming, strong performances and a refreshing earnestness keep The Flash on track and running circles around many of the recent DC Universe movies. If this is the truly last stop on the Snyderverse express, then it’s a respectable way to go out.

-Joshua Yehl, IGN: 7.0 "good"

What it amounts to is a movie that spends all its time racing from one poorly-thought out story element to another, from one only modestly satisfying nostalgia shout-out to another, and with only questionable results. How fitting, yet how disappointing: “The Flash” has the runs.

-William Bibbiani, The Wrap

This is not a movie with any new ideas or dramatic rethinking, and – at the risk of re-opening the DC/Marvel sectarian wound – nothing to compare with the much-lauded animation experiment in the recent Spider-Man films. The intellect in this intellectual property is draining away.

-Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: 2/5

The movie’s stronger underlying themes, like the importance of living in the present and learning to let things go, are overshadowed by the multiversal gymnastics. And as much good stuff as the "The Flash" features, including a nifty scene where Barry slo-mo saves a slew of falling babies in entertaining fashion, the film can't help but get tripped up by the same old hurdles.

-Brian Truitt, USA Today: 3/4

Maybe nerd culture was a mistake. The first and last 10 minutes demonstrate the winning superhero saga this might have been, but the middle two hours are devoted to sloppy, shameless fan service.

-Alonso Duralde, The Film Verdict

The hype is real. DC’s The Flash may not be the greatest comic book movie ever made, but it comes damn close. Easily the best in the genre since Spider-Man: No Way Home, this fresh, invigorating, and hugely entertaining summer treat is as good as it gets when it comes to cinematic takes on superheroes.

-Pete Hammond, Deadline

The Flash ends on a purposefully open note (and a pretty good joke), so that if the film succeeds at the box office, Miller's Barry can run again another day. If it doesn't, the precedent is set for a full continuity reset. Whatever DC movies await us in the future, let's hope they avoid multiverses. It's well-trod territory at this point, even for a speedster.

-Christian Holub, Entertainment Weekly: C+

Merging Looper and Looney Tunes makes for some jarring transitions between time-travel melodrama and power-mishap shenanigans. That’s never more clear than in the movie’s tail end, wherein Muschietti, who seems like a slick Spielberg-acolyte crowdpleaser in the J.J. Abrams mode, struggles with whether The Flash is an emotional cautionary tale, a universe-resetting franchise play, or just a zany sci-fi farce, subject to channel-flipping multiverse gags. You can feel The Flash wishing it could steal a glimpse into the audience and revise itself on the fly accordingly; no wonder early screenings apparently hedged on an ending until the last possible minute. Fandom has created a culture where a fun, zippy movie can’t stop looking back over its shoulder.

-Jesse Hassenger, Paste: 7.0

While I have a few complaints and there are a couple of head-scratching loose ends, "The Flash" is still a funny, emotional, action-heavy crowd-pleaser that ranks among the best DC movies ever made.

-Ben Pearson, /FILM: 7.5

Oddly, The Flash being so brilliant actually gives DC a bit of a headache. The studio’s new head honcho, James Gunn, is currently planning a much-publicised reboot of its comic book movie universe that may not include the Scarlet Speedster. Throw in Miller’s even more publicised personal problems and a poorly received film could have provided the perfect opportunity to have him (and the bad press) jog off into the sunset. Given the critical buzz and potential box office bump, that looks unlikely now. The Flash’s future is starting to look a lot sparkier than his past.

-Alex Flood, NME: 4/5

This feels like the definitive Flash movie.

-Mike Ryan, Uproxx

This much-beleagured cinematic universe has finally hit upon a winning film, and one that will be forever tainted. It’s not the most tragic thing regarding the person whirling at the center of it all — not by a long shot. But it is a reminder that you can make a superhero movie that seeks to unite all worlds but can’t quite reckon with the one outside the theater. And it’s proof that you can always run as fast as your superhuman intellectual property can manage, but there are things that you simply aren’t able to hide.

-David Fear, Rolling Stone

The Flash clearly wants its audience to get caught up in the excitement of multiverse adventures, returning superhero favorites, and fun antics of Barry Allen, to the point that they never consider that the time travel aspects make absolutely no sense, and only hurts the larger story in the way that it’s handled here. Thankfully, those antics are enjoyable and hard not to get excited about, but unfortunately, this isn’t a story that holds together on a narrative level. Cameos and fan service are fine to have, but the story has to be there to back them up, and it’s not quite there with The Flash.

-Ross Bonaime, Collider: C+

One of the most spectacular and frustrating mixed bags of the superhero blockbuster era, "The Flash" is simultaneously thoughtful and clueless, challenging and pandering. It features some of the best digital FX work I've seen and some of the worst. Like its sincere but often hapless hero, it keeps exceeding every expectation we might have for its competence only to instantly face-plant into the nearest wall.

-Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com: 2.5/4

Even despite being saddled with the baggage of the DCU’s failures, that the story that works in The Flash manages to shine through the noise is no small feat. The bitter irony, of course, is that even its artistic victories are tempered by the film being released in the shadow of Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which hits nearly every story beat and big swing for nostalgia attempted here, but with exponentially more finesse, grace, and emotional power. Nothing Batman or Supergirl do in The Flash to save the world is more effective than what Barry does to save it with a hug and a can of tomatoes.

-Justin Clark, Slant: 2.5/4

Considering how “The Flash” makes many of its characters face death and inevitability throughout, “The Flash” should not feel as hollow as it does. But you can’t blame Barry for it. He’s just a high-energy tour guide here, as everything around him becomes a blur leading us to the next reference. It has taken so long for a feature-length “The Flash” to finally hit theaters, and he’s too late. Barry is barely the lead character of his own movie.

-Nick Allen, The Playlist: C

It’s clear that DC doesn’t really know what it’s paying tribute to, other than the knowledge that other comic book movies exist. The Flash, much like Barry himself, has been stranded with no real sense of history, and no real sense of the future, either. It does the best it can.

-Clarisse Loughrey, The Independent: 3/5

PLOT

Barry Allen / The Flash travels back in time to prevent his mother's death, which traps him in an alternate reality without metahumans. Barry enlists the help of his younger self, an older Batman and the Kryptonian castaway Supergirl in order to save this world from the restored General Zod and return to his universe.

DIRECTOR

Andy Muschietti

WRITER

Christina Hodson

STORY

John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein & Joby Harold

MUSIC

Benjamin Wallfisch

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Henry Braham

EDITOR

Jason Ballantine & Paul Machliss

RELEASE DATE

June 16, 2023

RUNTIME

144 minutes

BUDGET

$220 million

STARRING

• Ezra Miller as Barry Allen / The Flash

• Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne / Batman

• Sasha Calle as Kara Zor-El / Supergirl

• Michael Shannon as General Zod

• Ron Livingston as Henry Allen

• Maribel Verdú as Nora Allen

• Kiersey Clemons as Iris West

• Antje Traue as Faora-Ul

• Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne / Batman

Very unfortunately Astrud Gilberto, the Brazilian who sang The Girl From Ipanema, died today and it got me thinking that for sure I’ve seen some movie where that song was used as a highly unlikely accompaniment to the on screen action but I can’t remember which (maybe you can). Then I started thinking about others and Clockwork Orange and Singing in the Rain comes to mind. What are some others where happy, cheery, playful music is incongruous with the action; more cheery music than say Reservoir Dogs and Stuck in the Middle for example.

IMO it’s Bishop from “Aliens”. At the beginning of the film, you get an initial sense of distrust due to Ripley’s first encounter with an android in the first film. Here, you see Bishop already has a hill to overcome with not just Ripley, but the audience as well. The trust doesn’t start to develop until the beginning of the 3rd act when Bishop volunteers to go attach the dish to the outside of the installation with the hopes of remotely bringing down the drop ship. IMO, the reason he doesn’t get enough appreciation is due to the following;

• If it wasn’t for Bishop, they wouldn’t have determined that the colony site was going to have a nuclear meltdown, thus killing all of the survivors.

• Bishop volunteering to attach the dish ensured that the drop ship would make down in time because the explosion.

• There is a moment of doubt, when Ripley is ready to be picked up, and she and the audience both assume that Bishop has abandoned them. This temporarily makes you feel like your trust was misguided. In the last minute, he shows.

If it wasn’t for Bishop’s actions, Ripley doesn’t get to be in a position to be the hero of the movie.

I’m re-watching Mean Girls for the umpteenth time and I felt a wave of nostalgia as I realized this movie is so quotable that people I know still quote it and it’s so reflective and reminiscent of my own high school experience. It really hurts that mid 00s feeling of the awkwardness of high school and the kinds of cliques that were being parodied.

There are so many other films, dramatic and comedic that are said to “define a generation or life experience”. What other films would you consider as meeting this definition?

One of those movies you get instantly drawn into, half way through felt like 10 minutes and definitely worth watching.

I thought the movie did peak halfway through, the epic moment when Ahmed saved and carried John through the mountains, truly a beautiful piece of determination despite the cultural differences they shared.

I do think the ending was good but like I said, it peaked for me halfway in and just wanted the reconnection between them after John came back and found Ahmed again to be a bit more emotional after what they went through.

Still, a great movie and enjoyed it a lot. What’s your take on it?

Directors who come to mind are Cameron Crowe who casted Emma Stone in an Asian role in Aloha (2015), Matthew Bright who directed the Mcconaughey-Oldman dwarfism movie Tiptoes (2005), and Ralph Fiennes’ sister who directed Ralph and Kristin Scott Thomas’s second movie together Chromophobia (2005).

The guy who directed Tiptoes, Matthew Bright apparently quit the entertainment industry because the producers re-edited his finished movie into a romantic comedy poking fun at dwarfism. Also in the movie we’re Kate Beckinsale, Peter Dinklage, and Patricia Arquette.

Martha Fiennes’ movie received such low reviews that cited nepotism and self importance that it has nearly disappeared from existence. It’s nowhere to be found. The only footage on the internet of this movie is its trailer. It’s a shame because it’s the first reunion of English Patient leads who starred alongside Penelope Cruz and Ian Holm (Bilbo in LOTR).

Of all these movies, I’d only seen Aloha and I enjoyed it. As an Asian American who’s lived in Hawaii, I think Emma Stone has the whitest voice I’d ever heard. Rachel McAdams would’ve been a better fake Asian because I have an Wasian friend who looks like her.

One of my all time favorite surprise movies. I feel like each time I watch it, I like it a little more. I feel like the first film scratched the surface of what this universe could be.

Maybe too much time has passed, but I would love if they kept going at this story, and this universe. The story ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger too.

Anyone agree? Feel free to share other movies that are deserving of sequels as well.

Are there any movies like this? Movies you don't dislike but wouldn't mind seeing anyone taking another crack at its premise?

Scanners

It's a good thriller and body horror flick BUT there's this cool premise of The Scanners needing to find ways to distract themselves or they'll fall into madness that they don't do much with

It would be cool to see a version that goes more into their mind and we visually see what makes them tick and struggle to keep their composure rather than just focusing mostly on the thriller elements IMO

I love the novel and movies. So interesting. Its super creepy the Thing. It can infect a person act like they are them then when they are ready to prey they turn into a monstrosity. In the films the heroes go lucky and stopped it from getting to the public. But lets pretend it did. How fast do you think mankind would be taken over? Realisticly.

Me... I'd say the whole world would be taken within a year. Curious what you guys think