Superman Review: Yet Another Superhero Movie.

Over the last few years, I have slowly been growing tired of the MCU formula.
I was, however, intrigued by the concept of a new DC Universe from James Gunn.
After how badly handled the last universe was, it needed new hands to shape it, and Gunn seemed like the right guy for the job with his Guardians of the Galaxy movies and The Suicide Squad.
The first film installment in the revamped DCU is Superman, starring David Corenswet as the titular hero.
The movie begins three years after Superman revealed his existence to the world.
In the aftermath of Superman preventing the invasion of another country from its hostile neighbor, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) begins deploying every scheme he can to ruin the hero’s and destroy him.
With help from various other heroes, his dog Krypto, and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), Superman works to uncover Luthor’s plot and save Metropolis.

Luthor will go to any extent to destroy Superman.

In terms of quality, Superman is, well, another superhero movie.
Given that Gunn is an MCU veteran, the film feels very similar tonally to various Marvel movies, with lots of humor during serious moments.
If you are not yet sick of this formula, you will really enjoy Superman.
If, like me, you have grown tired of the formula, your experience will be more negative.
However, I think it does Superman credit that, despite me being tired of the humor and tone, I still found myself enjoying the movie.

There are some emotional scenes that are allowed to play out seriously.

For one thing, David Corenswet is great as Superman.
As a kid, I was never really a big fan of the hero.
I was more of a Batman fan.
Superman just seemed too perfect and one dimensional.
Corenswet sold me on the character, however, with his endless optimism, and the film actually does a great job of weakening Superman, making him more relatable.
Another highlight for me was Nicholas Hoult’s portrayal of Lex Luthor.
He does an excellent job of making me hate the petty narcissist.
But the big surprise for me was Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific.
I had honestly never heard of the character before I watched this movie but, after seeing it, I am more than on board for a potential Mr. Terrific movie.

Terrific’s constant seriousness mixes oddly well with the lighthearted tone of the film.

Along with the fun characters, the movie also has plenty of feel-good moments, most notably between Clark and his parents.
The message is also good, mixing well with Superman’s optimistic outlook on life.
“You think everyone is beautiful,” Lois tells Clark at one point, and it really shows in this movie.
However, there is also some bad with the film.
As I said, I have long since grown tired with the constant humor during serious moments.
Superman unfortunately follows this formula for the most part.
Granted, I did chuckle a couple of times, and the humor is far from aggravating, but I do wish they toned it down a bit.
The CGI is also a bit iffy at times but that is to be expected with these kinds of films.
My biggest issue though is some of the subplots.
For example, there is this subplot with Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) which ties into the main storyline, and that just felt bizarre to me.
Overall, though, Superman is still a pretty fun time.

I mean, the film has Krypto the dog. How could it be bad?

The performances are good, and it made me willing to see other superhero properities in this new universe, like the Supergirl movie which is coming next year.
I just hope the other films in this new DCU have different tones, and it’s not all just quippy humor.
We need some variation.

Barry the Final Season Review: A Fitting, Tragic, Hilarious End.

Going into the final season of Barry, I was quite excited because I had absolutely no idea where the story would go or how it would conclude.
Season Three ended with the fantastic episode “Starting Now”, which saw Barry (Bill Hader) finally being arrested, after falling into a trap laid by Cousineau (Henry Winkler) and Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom).
With Barry imprisoned alongside Fuches (Stephen Root), Sally (Sarah Goldberg) having left LA, and Hank (Anthony Carrigan) and Cristobal (Michael Irby) looking to start new lives after the horrors they survived in Season Three, it felt like the final season could go anywhere.
Indeed, the story does go in some wild directions, with Bill Hader directing all eight episodes.
He made some bold choices with this final season, as a certain turning point halfway through the season did prove pretty divisive.

Bill Hader certainly took a risk taking the story where he did.

Personally, I found this twist of the season to be warranted, as it fit in perfectly with the arcs of Barry and Sally, and lead up to the morbidly humorous yet tragic ending.
There was a lot of leg work to get this ending, however, and the show makes numerous funny and dark strides to get there; mostly dark because this final season is without question the darkest yet.
This is especially the case with the best episode of the season, “It Takes a Psycho”, which has two scenes that were just painful to watch but in the best of ways.

It was hard to sit through some parts of Episode Four because of how uncomfortable they were.

Although Season Four is quite dark, this does not mean the show is without its fantastic humor, with multiple great gags of the morbid variety.
The action is also, as always, very well shot when it happens.
But it is once again the character work where Barry truly shines.
Barry, Cousineau, Hank and Sally all have great conclusions, whether they be tragic or not.
The character I was not expecting to like the most this season, however, was Fuches.
Not only did he provide the biggest laughs of the season for me, with him embracing the role of the Raven, but his arc of accepting who he was resulted in a surprisingly moving conclusion to his character.
This was certainly something I was not expecting, what with how sociopathically manipulative Fuches was in the first three seasons.

I was surprised by how much I loved the conclusion to Fuches character.

Fuches’ conclusion, and the ones of the other characters, is what makes the final episode “Wow” such a fitting finish.
Barry’s ending is also especially well done but I will not say any more than that.
As for the final scene of the series, it is extremely fitting, although I do think there is a bit of a plot hole to it.
This plot hole was not enough to detract any enjoyment out of the ending for me, though, because of how fitting a conclusion it was.

There is one part of *Barry*‘s ending that does not make much sense to me but, other than that, this was a perfect ending.

In my review for the first three seasons of Barry, I said that if the final season stuck the landing then it would be among the greatest TV series of all time.
Now that I can say the show has stuck the landing, I stand by this sentiment entirely.
Barry is definitley in my top ten favourite shows of all time.
It is darkly comedic, has phenomenal characters, and now an ending that is somehow fitting, tragic and hilarious all at the same time.

Barry Review: One of the Best Shows on Television.

For a while now, I have heard constant praise about the show Barry, with plenty of people making comparisons to other amazing shows like Breaking Bad when refrencing it.
Knowing that the third season was about to be released, I decided to watch the first two seasons and then the third as it was airing and, after finishing Barry, I can say that all of the praise and comparisons to other fantastic series is definitely warranted.
Created by Bill Hader and Alec Berg, the show stars Hader as the titular character, Barry Berkman, a former marine turned hitman who feels lost in life.
After being sent to Los Angeles by his handler, Monroe Fuchs (Stephen Root), to kill a man for the Chechen Mafia, Barry finds himself being drawn into an acting class taught by disgraced actor Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler).
Barry comes to believe that he has found his calling, and tries to get out of the hitman business to pursue acting, with both hilarious and dark results, sometimes a mixture of the two.

The dark comedy of *Barry* can be both hilarious and terrifying.

Along with the dark comedy and excellent writing, what also keeps the show together is its stellar cast of characters.
Hader is incredible as Barry, making the hitman trying to be an actor someone I sympathised with while feeling guilty for doing so because of the absolutley horrible things he does.
Winkler is also amazing as Cousineau, a sympathetic mentor figure who probably bears the biggest loss for letting Barry into his life out of any of the main characters.

Seeing what Barry puts Cousineau through is some of the most tragic stuff in the whole show.

Fuchs is probably the scummiest character in the entire series, with his sociopathic manipulation of Barry and those closest to him to get what he wants.
Noho Hank (Anthony Carrigan) is the exact opposite of this; a somehow charming member of the Chechen Mafia, who I am so glad they did not kill off in the first episode, like they originally intended to do.
Last, but certainly not least, there is Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg), Barry’s acting classmate and later girlfriend, who maintains the trend of characters being flawed yet sympathetic excellently, with Goldberg delivering various fantastic monolgues.

One monologue from Sally in Season Two was so fantastic that I would have been rendered speechless had it not been for the following joke making me bust a gut laughing.

The situations all of these characters are placed in, and often cause in Barry’s case, are also darkly humorous, resulting in multiple masterpiece episodes, like “Loud, Fast and Keep Going”, “Know Your Truth”, “Ronny/Lily”, “Berkman > Block”, and “710N”.
The final episode of Season Three, “Starting Now” is a particularly intense ride, with Bill Hader stating he wanted the episode to feel like an anxiety attack.
He definitley succeeded in giving the episode this effect, with there being one scene that absolutley terrified me, not because of what we see but because of what we hear.

This is probably one of the best examples of sound being scarier than sight. I felt like Hank in this scene: Horrified and helpless.

The ending to “Starting Now” in particular surprised me because now I have absolutley no idea where Season Four is going to go, making me even more excited for it.
Barry is an absolute masterpiece of a show and, if its series finale lands correctly, whenever we do get the final season, it could very well stand alongside the likes of Breaking Bad as one of the greatest TV series of all time.