Films and Feelings

      Some will say, "We don't need another edgy superhero!" But that's not what makes the utter mediocrity of DC's new Supergirl so devastating. People were saying "We don't need another X superhero" since 2012, and the post-Infinity saga stupor we've slogged through was not triggered by piling one-too-many superheroes onto the camel's back.     The Flash sucked because its perversion of the butterfly effect theory was convoluted and ham-fisted. Black Adam sucked because nobody on that film knew what a moral dilemma actually looks like. "Love and Thunder" sucked because, despite what everyone thought in 2017, Waititi's style only barely worked in "Ragnarok" and was not going to work in a script which feels like it was farted out half-past midnight.     Supergirl had none of those issues. The real tragedy of Supergirl is that it so easily could have worked.     Drifting around the universe has mostly worked for Sup...

It can feel hackneyed, and even a little lazy, to echo that oft-repeated sentiment that “they really just don’t make ‘em like they used to.”  That kind of nostalgic wallowing has us forget that, yeah, even the old masters sometimes produced real stinkers. And it’s also not fair to the many storytellers today who, working against ever turbulent conditions, still manage to create something deeply profound and worthy of the deepest reverences …       But there are absolutely times where it’s really easy to believe this anyways.      Let me explain by describing my recent experience watching Argylle for the first time earlier this year. The film was designed as a spin-off from the “Kingsmen” franchise and saw poor Bryce Dallas Howard playing Elly, a reclusive spy novelist, whose life is turned upside down when a host of malicious agents converge on her demanding that she write her final book because the events in her novels have predicted real w...