Weekend Movies: The Joke’s on Us

Given the way that Marvel and Disney own the comic book movie market, DC and Warner Bros. are desperate to catch up. This weekend, they throw a Hail Mary with a first-of-its-kind supervillian team-up flick. At the same time, there’s a live-action talking pet comedy that I literally had no idea existed until today.

Opening on more than 4,200 screens is ‘Suicide Squad‘, a cartoony comic book action movie that puts several of DC’s iconic (and not so iconic) supervillians on a ‘Dirty Dozen’-like mission to save the world. The villains include Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Enchantress (Cara Delevingne). Jared Leto cameos a few forced scenes as The Joker, Viola Davis plays the government agent who puts it all together, and Joel Kinnaman plays her right-hand man. You might even get a couple other DC character cameos – especially if you stick around for the credits.

‘Suicide Squad’ has a load of potential. Occasionally, it meets it. All too often, it doesn’t. It’s messy, like the puzzle pieces of two different movies were smashed together even though they don’t match. The end result is not only reminiscent of ‘Batman v. Superman’, it’s worse. Let’s just hope that Warner puts out a cleaner, more concise edit of ‘Suicide Squad’ on Blu-ray like it did with ‘BvS’.

Does the title ‘Nine Lives‘ ring any bells for you? Me neither. This family-friendly 2,200-screen release stars Kevin Spacey as a busy billionaire businessman who neglects his family all too often. Just when he’s at the pinnacle of a new career move, he finds himself trapped in the body of the family cat. Without having seen a trailer for this thing, I imagine he’ll have a Scrooge-like awakening in his feline state so that when he’s restored to his human form, he’ll be a better man, a better boss, a better husband and a better father. Bah humbug! Jennifer Garner, Cheryl Hines and Christopher Walken co-star.

A couple limited releases also take the stage this weekend, but nothing of note that’s stirring any buzz.

4 comments

  1. Timcharger

    Luke: “Let’s just hope that Warner puts out a cleaner, more concise edit of ‘Suicide Squad’ on Blu-ray like it did with ‘BvS’.”

    If by “concise,” you mean longer, lengthier,
    more expansive, 30 more minutes. Then,
    okay.
    🙂

    • Luke Hickman
      Author

      “Concise” means the delivery of the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time. The theatrical cut was a mess that couldn’t convey ANY information within its 151-minute runtime. It took a three-hour cut of ‘BvS’ to deliver all of the information needed for it to make any sense, so I’d absolutely use the word “concise” to describe the ultimate cut.

      • Timcharger

        Yes, “concise”-in-quotes.

        Just to extend that reasoning out,
        many legitimately still don’t think
        the Ultimate Cut is good enough,
        so if Snyder makes a 4 hour cut
        that conveys even more
        information to make the plot
        more sensible. That would be
        even more “concise” for you. Just
        using your reasoning. No hate,
        no harm.
        🙂

      • EM

        This explanation of concise—particularly its emphasis on maximizing information—rang false; but rather than rely purely on my intuition, I consulted four dictionaries of English: Oxford, Merriam-Webster’s, American Heritage, and Nelson Gage Canadian.

        All four emphasized “few words” or “brevity”. Not one mentioned “the most amount” [sic] or something synonymous, though two—AH and Gage—did include “expressing much” in their definitions. (“Much”, of course, is not “the most”. Oxford also included much in its description of an “obsolete nonce-use” in a quotation where, unusually, a room was described as concise.) AH and Gage limited the concept of concise to the use of words; only Oxford and M-W admitted to its application to other forms of expression.

        This is just my nonconcise way of saying that concise indeed does not fit what you were going for here, in describing making a long-form work even longer, regardless of concomitant benefits of clarity. Sorry.

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