The Suicide Squad.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Could've done with hacking out all the Harley stuff in the middle, adds nothing and slows the pace right down. I assume including her in this was purely a marketing decision.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Harley Quinn wasn't in Gunn's original script at all, or one of the people who gets killed early doors.

[SOMK]

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Harley Quinn wasn't in Gunn's original script at all, or one of the people who gets killed early doors.

I think there's an unfortunate 'thing' with the intersection between the performance and the marketability of the character (at least in the film universe), ends up being treated with kid gloves which leads to her being a kind of incoherent adornment, like a doll action figure being bounced around a bedroom.

Spoiler alert

On paper the idea of a Fidel Castro type wanting to marry Rose West because their people find her so inspiring is wonderfully unhinged, but left completely unexplored and just a prompt for her to have her "I'm over the joker" speech which feels like a perennial thing with this iteration of the character, the big action set piece with her feels like old boy mixed with speed racer but the lesser part of each, a psychotic gymnast with a baseball bat sounds like something you can have more fun with than generic action hero roaring while charging with machine guns blazing.

[close]

I can see there is an attempt to have the character as a kind of side and lead at the same time, it almost works, but it ends up being a neither one nor the other.

All the same the unevenness of the film is part of it's charm. The quality of my life will not be dramatically improved by slightly better R-rated super hero type films, indeed the opposite may even be the case.

[phantom_power]

To be fair, Harley's relationship with The Joker has always been an important part of her character, and her enslavement and emancipation are big parts of her general character arc, as has her being a sidekick with aspirations to being a supervillain in her own right.

[Thomas]

It made me realise I don't miss anything about the cinema experience at all. This would've been the first film I've been out to see in a year, but there was nothing that made me think "I should do this more often." I saw the trailer for No Time To Die, and it just looked so bland. Utterly by the numbers for an action blockbuster. I don't think there's any upcoming mainstream release I really care about seeing currently, except possibly Dune, and I've set my expectations fairly low for that.

It's also made me think on how the notion of the communal experience of watching cinema and the solitary experience of watching a film at home have switched places for me, as I only ever go the cinema alone and when I watch films at home it's usually streaming with a group, maybe that's why cinema watching feels profoundly unsatisfying now.

I sometimes feel this way - cost is another contributing factor - but seeing Knives Out in a packed cinema was a really fun communal experience. Nobody chatting or rustling too loudly - only a full, bright sense of enjoyment. More recently, Another Round was a worthy cinema trip. It was interesting to feel the mood directed from well-humoured to reflective. As the credits rolled, I overheard somebody quietly asking their partner, 'are you okay?' - I felt there must have been some personal significance in the film's themes.

It was also a laugh watching people storm out at different stages of Mother!.

[mothman]

Finally saw this and, yeah, enjoyed it. Not great, better than the first but quite how much better, I'm still processing.

A few thoughts: I spent the whole film thinking Polka-Dot Man was Patrick Fischler not David Dastmalchian. Found Rick Flagg a lot better a character this time around,  Joel Kinnaman really needs to do more comedy and

Spoiler alert

it's a shame he got killed off.

[close]

I found Peacemaker's tonal shift quite jarring. The film sets him up as a buffoon, albeit a sufficiently murderous one. So

Spoiler alert

when he suddenly goes the full Waller, it felt... unearned, sort of. Especially since before I saw this I'd already seen the TV show trailer which heavily plays up the buffoon angle. I doubt it'll spend a lot of time dwelling on him murdering Flagg, somehow!

[close]

[Goldentony]

he's the Ugly American isn't he, Reggie Jackson in Naked Gun

[dissolute ocelot]

I enjoyed this a lot, I thought it was one of the most fun comic book movies for a while, and a lot more comic book-like than many, whether Marvel or DC. (And I'm not a huge Guardians of the Galaxy fan.) It manages to go for the utterly bonkers big stakes plot without being po-faced. And lots of great, weird characters, reminiscent of Mystery Men (which I guess also slightly wasted its cast.)

It definitely had tonal weirdness. It started with your standard boring action movie plot about a gang of mercenaries attacking a third-world nation, pretty much the same plot as The Expendables and lots of other things, but it did subvert it and mess it up, and build to a big climax that you probably couldn't predict from the start.

Great character design and costumes. Nice character touches. Good casting, which also helps create characters instantly. And I liked the chapter titles, and the soundtrack. All good fun. Or to look at it differently, competent filmmaking.

Harley Quinn is annoying, but it seems to clearly recognise that she is annoying right from her introduction barging past everyone with her luggage. She didn't work terribly well and was definitely there for contractual reasons, although her later scenes were better than the earlier. Did Robbie stop doing the annoying voice later on?

Best bit was obviously

Spoiler alert

where Pete Davidson dies. Nah, but it's definitely a fun opening sequence. Although the film could be a bit shorter, I thought the tower falling down was fun too. And the colourful piranhas and lots of other fun details. Better a giant starfish than the usual interdimensional alien blue light.

[close]

Maybe it is just low expectations from so many shit superhero movies, but more fun than I expected. And now you'll expect it to be good, and be sad.

[mothman]

Harley's presence at least felt more integrated in this film. What was happening to her throughout actually had relevance to the plot rather than just being something to switch to from the main action. In the first film everything would come screeching to a halt each time so they could do a Harley sketch. It was like in Demolition Man and Denis Leary appears and everyone just stands around watching while he does a quick version of his early 90s "I Like Smoking" stand-up routine.