Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

It didn't help that an hour in our internet cut out and my viewing partner accidentally drummed up the original 2017 cut, not this 2021 refashioning by Zack Snyder, leaving us perplexed by scenes we'd already seen playing out of sequence, but even once we got back on track this unnecessarily long re-release stretches a bad two-hour movie to an interminable four-hour slog: a first hour and a half of false starts, a muddled middle split pointlessly between Batman's Justice League recruitment drive and Steppenwolf's "mother box" raids (the raids are doing the recruiting, making Batman's story redundant), and a finale that comes only after too many musical lamentations (each time Wonder Woman appears), too many dopey Flash close-ups, far too many little-boy shrugs from Superman, and way too much of that cyborg character so stiff and miserable we never once connect — four hours later, it isn't Justice League so much as Justice beLeaguered.

★★☆☆☆

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The Accountant (2016)

Seemingly conceived and made by people who forgot an audience needs to watch it, The Accountant has its narrative split between the mysterious exploits of Ben Affleck's Batman-with-Asperger-Syndrome, Christian Wolff (an unlikely mix of Clark Kent nerdiness, Batman solemnity and Jason Bourne machismo), and the efforts of a government agent hot on his tail trying to catch up on everything we the viewers already know or can guess about Wolff from the beginning: that Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters has untapped the mutant accounting skills of this man who now tows around a stainless steel Airstream batcaravan freelancing as a bookkeeper for dangerous gangbangers who mustn't realise he has a propensity to turn around and take out entire criminal entourages with his assault weapons....did I understand that right?

★☆☆☆☆

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State of Play (2009)

A Washington Globe reporter, the friend of a US Congressman, investigates the murder of a petty thief, a pizza delivery guy and the woman the politician was having an affair with, and in doing so uncovers political shenanigans, in this ripping political mystery that holds together well except towards the end when there are revelations that would have 'out' earlier in the natural course of a story not so desperate to prolong its mystery.

★★★★☆

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Live By Night (2016)

A long, sprawling gangster epic that tackles weighty matters in the Prohibition era like religion, the Klu Klux Klan and the advent of organised gambling in America, shouldn't feel this lightweight, with Director, Producer and star, Ben Affleck perhaps still in Batman cartoon mode, relying on an array of brightly coloured fedoras to enliven his trademark lamppost presence in a movie that feels like you are watching someone play Grand Theft Auto V.

★★☆☆☆

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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Zack Snyder opens this with the trauma of Bruce Wayne's childhood - a backstory no-one needs to see, not now, not again - and from this tired start it is clear he has approached his job of launching DC Comics' Justice League franchise like an overzealous fanboy wanting to include evvveeerything, mashing together Nolan's Dark Knight series with his own 2013 Henry Cavill Superman movie and ending up with a monstrous, laborious, not-fun-at-all Justice League origin story that briefly features a personality-free Wonder Woman and an overly familiar Lex LuHeathLedgZuckerbergJokethor...surely jumping straight into an already assembled Justice League-proper movie would have been more fun than this!?

★★☆☆☆

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Gone Girl (2014)

Gillian Flynn's screenplay based on her keep-you-guessing Ira Levin-esque book is brought faithfully to the big screen by director David Fincher; it's an elaborate thriller and melodramatic portrait of a dysfunctional relationship, mainly of interest because of its gleefully twisted endnote.

★★★☆☆

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