frizzardi Reviews

Flu (2013)

Decent movie with some excellent imagery

[6/10 · 22 April 2024]

I saw this after the Covid-19 pandemic, so well after it was filmed. I'm european, so maybe some nuances flew over my head.

Acting is decent, even if a bit over the top at times. Min-ah Park is quite believable as the small child that causes most of the plot to move forward, the child actress is definitely talented but her character is annoying as hell.

The budget of the movie is more than adequate, with mass scenes that don't spare extras or special effects.

Just when I start thinking that this is just your run-of-the-mill disaster movie, the director hits me with some haunting, efective images (such as the orange peel grapple moving heaps of dead bodies to the fire pits).

Overall, a movie that's a bit better than average.

The Martian (2015)

I'm going to have to science the s**t out of this

[9/10 · 8 April 2024]

I'm an engineer, and I completely *adore* this movie. In fact I've just re-watched it this weekend for the umpteenth time, and it still holds up exceptionally well, from the beauty of the Martian landscapes, to the ingenuity and humor of Watney, to the beautifully scripted dynamics in NASA offices and laboratories.

Do you want movies with strong female characters? Here you have a commander and a computer scientist on a mission to Mars, a competent PR executive and a lowly employee who rises through the ranks and gets into meetings with the top guys - NASA is an equal opportunity employer.

There's no tacked-on love story aside from a chaste kiss through a spacesuit helmet; on the other hand you get plenty of technical details made interesting and funny.

And, maybe it's just me, but this dialogue cracks me every time (Daniels' and Glover's acting is spot-on): "I'm sorry what's your name again?" "Teddy. I'm the Director of NASA."

... I've just discovered that there's an extended edition somewhere. I must go and get it.

Zootopia (2016)

Finally a movie with a strong female character!

[8/10 · 26 March 2024]

...even if she is, you know, a bunny.

Judy starts her police training being smaller and weaker than the other recruits, but she overcomes all these difficulties not by some magical talent (live-action Mulan, I'm looking at you) but by sheer perseverance and cleverness.

She is bullied, mobbed and put down by her male colleagues, who are not intrinsecally bad or evil but simply old fashioned, and in the end Judy manages to show them the error of their ways.

I liked that the screenwriters didn't make Judy seem smarter by making every male around her look weak or dumb (True Detective Night Country, looking at you now): she actually comes up with some excellent ideas as to how to pursue the investigation.

Sure, she is scared and has her moments of weakness (who doesn't!) but this simply means that she is not a cardboard character. She's also a bit racist (understandably) but in the end she overcomes this bad trait and becomes a better person.

I wish more Hollywood storytellers would learn from this excellent movie when they try to tell stories about strong women! And, yes, the kids love this because it's full of fuzzy characters and funny jokes - but it's also a deep movie about racism, patriarchy and how to make them things of the past.

I.S.S. (2023)

Average, with some interesting parts.

[6/10 · 25 March 2024]

I watched this because it's about the ISS and doesn't have inane alien stuff like Life.

The premise has been done to deadh by now: let's trap people together in an enclosed space and watch cabin fever, paranoia and mistrust set in. This has the additional background of a Cold War turned suddenly hot.

I quite liked the acting of Ariana DeBose, and Masha Mashkova does a decent job too (the others were forgettable).

Special effects were believable if you don't watch too closely (some objects behaved as in normal gravity, some movements had the wrong inertia - I'm pretty sure most people won't notice this).

Overall, this movie is average, maybe boring or slow; I won't re-watch it, but I don't regret having given it a chance.

Madame Web (2024)

Actually a 6.5 stars

[7/10 · 25 March 2024]

I watched this with below-ground expectations, having read the reviews in the IMDB.

Actually it's not half bad, definitely not deserving the 3.something score that it currently holds.

I was waiting for the messy and incoherent script to materialize, and it never did: if anything, the story is linear and predictable - several other movies dealt with the predestination paradox in a more engaging fashion.

I've never read the source material so I cannot say if Dakota does a good job as Madame Web, but her dry wit - particularly the banter with coworker Scott, or the disaster at the baby shower - were rather funny.

It's a superhero movie, so don't expect Shakespeare; overall - and I see that I'm going against the mass here - I don't regret the time I spent watching this movie.

As a comparison, if I had a time machine - or clarvoyance powers - I would never watch Ant Man 3 or The Marvels again: *those* were movies with incoherent scripts.

True Detective: Night Country: Part 1 (2024) Season 4, Episode 1

We watched this series so you won't have to.

[3/10 · 21 February 2024]

And, seriously, don't. Spoilers galore:

the cleaning ladies did it. The presence of about twenty armed women storming a facility with trucks and SUVs was somehow missed by the forensic team.

They made the scientists undress in the Arctic night instead of outright shooting them, but left their clothes nearby to give them a sporting chance. The Laocoön group of corpsicles stands as a good testimony of how well this went down.

The scientists had discovered that the Alaskan permafrost - thawed by the illegal activities of the mining company - held an amazingly miraculous bacterium. Instead of growing it in a Petri dish in a comfortable laboratory in sunny California, they remained in Alaska and allowed the mining company to keep polluting the land so they could get more specimens from the ground.

It seems that in this universe they never discovered DNA sequencing, since the destruction of a few samples of ice cores is enough to threaten the whole research and trigger the murderous instincts of the scientists.

The frequent appearances of ghosts and carved spirals and rolling oranges is never explained and does not further the plot in any way; they are there just to amp up the creepiness factor.

I posthumously gave three stars to all the episodes, even if some of them were even worse, since this is the overall value of the season.

I didn't see the previous installments of True Detective, so I cannot make comparisons; I was drawn to Season 4 when I saw that Jodie Foster was the lead.

If I had to explain her presence in the series, I could only hypothesize that she had a mortgage payment due.

Disclaimer: I'm a middle aged, non-American, non-Inuit white male. By reading the other reviews it seems that your ethnicity and sex is somehow relevant to your enjoyment of this series (or at least to your ability to "get it").

And here I thought that good storytelling had something to do with it, silly me.

True Detective: Night Country: Part 6 (2024) Season 4, Episode 6

Disbelief suspended by the neck until dead.

[3/10 · 21 February 2024]

My girlfriend and I watched this episode last night, and the only way to make this bearable was to comment it a' la MST3K, pointing out the absurdities.

The two detectives go hunting for clues in the ice caves - alone, in the Arctic night, without equipment or backup.

The missing scientist killed the Inuit woman because she was messing with his research on life-saving bacteria; he probably never backed up his hard drive, nor knew how to grow the aforementioned bacteria in a petri dish in the comfort of a non-Alaskan laboratory.

The cleaning ladies avenged the killing by showing amazing SWAT skills and removing every trace of their presence so well that the forensic team never noticed tire tracks or the presence of a veritable mob on the crime scene.

The laboratory has a secret submarine-like hatch concealed under floor tiles. Because reasons.

Jodie Foster falls in the Arctic waters under the ice and survives without hypothermia symptoms.

Jodie Foster randomly finds the only handprint that can be traced to a specific person in the whole town without need for a forensic analysis.

I really, really have issues with two cops discovering clues by beating, torturing and finally killing the only suspect.

If you are wondering why I watched this, I can only say that I fell for the sunk cost fallacy - having seen five episodes so far, I felt that I had invested too much in this series to skip the finale.

The Marvels (2023)

Sure, let's inject some comedy in the MCU universe...

[3/10 · 19 February 2024]

...since it went down quite well with Love and Thunder, right?

I've watched The Marvels twice now, since the first time I must have dozed off a couple of times. Even fully awake, however, I could not follow the plot due to some really, really unwise decisions by Disney executives: watching the MCU TV the series (in this case Ms Marvel and Secret Invasion) is becoming more and more necessary to understanding what's going on.

This puzzled me a bit when I watched Dr. Strange 2 ("did you miss Wandavision? Well, Wanda's evil now.") but The Marvels brings this to unprecedented levels: characters are introduced as if I already knew all about them, plot points and new locations appear out of nowhere, people keep referencing things that must have been apparent to whomever watched the series but were quite obscure to me.

I understand that Disney's ploy is to hook the customers with movies first, and then convince them to pay for the TV series too, but this is seriously backfiring: I watched only a couple of MCU series, considered them lacking and uninteresting, and stopped watching.

This means that by now there are several hours of MCU backstory that I'm missing, soon the movies will stop making any sense and I'll probably ditch the MCU franchise altogether. This is rather sad - I used to be so excited with every new release, up to and including Endgame.

Anyway, while I struggled to make sense of some of the story points, additional confusion was created by the superhero-swapping entanglement, to the point where I could not follow the action at all - to me it seemed that things were happening randomly.

To add insult to injury, Nick Fury is reduced to comic relief; there's a Bollywood moment that stops the movie cold, and please give a prize to the man who thought that a song from Cats was fitting as a background for the space station evacuation. A prize such as the Golden Raspberry.

As a final note, decades ago somebody wrote that Clint Eastwood had only two facial expressions: when he was shooting, and when he wasn't. Well, Brie Larson follows this lead: when she's not fighting anyone she opens her eyes wide, when she's fighting she narrows them.

The Killer (2023)

Does exactly what's written on the label.

[8/10 · 19 February 2024]

Skip this if you are looking for action scenes (even if the only one, in the middle of the movie, is excellently choreographed and quite violent).

Fassbender's character is chillingly methodical, with great attention to tiny details, and paints a beautiful portrait of a psychopath.

I was a bit doubtful about this movie since the IMDB synopsis describes it as "a case study of a man [...] slowly losing his mind" and I wasn't interested in psychodramas; actually The Killer is nothing but rational and logical.

The plot is straightforward, but then again - if you are looking for intricate plots, go watch Tenet. What matters here is the execution, stylish and well crafted, and the acting skills of the main (and secondary) characters.

A small inside joke - you'll get this if / when you see the movie: the titular Killer must have seen the first John Wick movie.

True Detective: Night Country: Part 5 (2024) Season 4, Episode 5

I cannot say this is sloppy writing...

[3/10 · 15 February 2024]

...because that would be offensive to honest sloppy writers.

IMDB ratings made me hope for an improvement in the series, but this was one of the most baffling episodes so far. I cannot understand how the producers could have read the script and still splurged money on this mess.

I'll write a few spoilers so you won't have to watch this episode: Jodie Foster made a big discovery about the mining company being in conflict of interest, but wait - this big reveal later fizzles out for no reason.

The dumb cop gets talked into killing a man in exchange for a better job, seems reluctant at first but then commits murder in cold blood as if it were a walk in the park. In front of a witness.

But wait, he gets killed a few moments later.

But wait, boxer cop says that the best thing to do is to hide all evidence and dispose of the bodies, for no reason.

The girlfriend of Jodie Foster's daughter gets seriously beaten by riot police that appeared out of nowhere in a small Alaskan town.

The wife of the young cop throws him out because he's willing to work long hours and bring home a paycheck.

Jodie Foster's daughter gets thrown in jail but later is released.

The young cop discovers Jodie Foster's cover-up of a murder, but does nothing about it.

Jodie Foster says that the investigation must stop at once, and is very vocal about it. But wait, a bit later she says just as firmly that the investigation must continue.

(Ok, I admit it - I made up one of the spoliers. I bet that you didn't notice which one.)

Frankly, how bad must a series be to make me consider stopping here instead of watching the next episode, that's supposed to be the last? (I watched the other five because I am usually a big fan of Foster. I could have watched two/three better movies instead of investing my time in this badly acted random collection of events.)

At least this episode didn't have ghosts or rolling oranges in it.

For All Mankind: Goldilocks (2023) Season 4, Episode 5

An Italian on Mars

[8/10 · 5 February 2024]

Note: I'm Italian and I'm watching this show dubbed in my language.

Aside from the intriguing storyline, good production value and acting talent that is above average for a TV series (I expecially like the acting chops of Coral Peña) this episode had a detail that I found rather unusual.

"Goldilocks" introduces a minor character, Luka Gurino, and I immediately thought "hey, they put an Italian on Mars!".

...it was only after the episode was over that I noticed that I had immediately (and correcltly) tagged the character's country of origin, even if no one addressed him by name, he had no obvious Italian flag on his uniform, and of course everyone was speaking Italian!

So, it must have been some minor clue (speech inflection? A bit of regional accent?) showing the attention to details from everyone involved in the production of this series. A tip of the hat to the excellent Italian dubbers!

True Detective: Night Country: Part 3 (2024) Season 4, Episode 3

Waiting for something to happen

[3/10 · 1 February 2024]

I started watching Season 4 after reading that Jodi Foster was in it (I've never seen other seasons of True Detective, so I didn't know what to expect exactly).

Well, the first two episodes were mildly interesting, but this one bored me to death - the plot was not pushed forward, characters weren't developed, the horror / supernatural themes are increasing.

Acting is below par, surprisingly even from Foster. The native music / chants of this episode were particularly grating.

I also noticed that this season has only six episodes so we're halfway through; with the long list of loose ends and unanswered question that we've gathered so far, the only ways to resolve this mess are "an evil spirit did all this" or "there was LSD in the water" (or "it was all a dream").

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)

Star Wars meets Sucker Punch

[4/10 · 4 January 2024]

I didn't watch this for the plot, since even the slim synopsis made me understand that this was a remake of Seven Samurai set in space.

I hoped that Snyder could manage to inject something new into the old plot, but it was just eye candy and slow-motion fight scenes; it's really Sucker Punch all over again, with short cool sequences held together by the thinnest of threads.

The actors actually try their best to roll with the punches thrown at them by the script; sometimes they fail, sometimes they succeed, but nothing they do can actually save this wreck.

A note about the bad guys: in recent movies the scripts evolved from "evil emprire" or "evil Sauron" to something more complex and layered (there are movies where we actually root for the bad guy because he has the moral high ground); this movie is a huge step back towards a "main characters good, adversaries bad" simplicity.

Ferrari (2023)

Actually deserving seven-and-a-half stars

[7/10 · 18 December 2023]

I wasn't actually interested in this movie after watching the train wreck House of Gucci; reading that Adam Driver would play another Italian icon looked like a disaster waiting to happen.

I saw Ferrari yesterday evening, after a friend who knows all the ins and outs of Formula One asked me to go with him; when the movie ended I thanked him: the movie is good, direction by Mann is tight and the script is rather faithful to actual events.

I didn't know much about Enzo Ferrari, so I didn't see "Driver as Kylo Ren"; his acting is good, especially after his latest string of failures ("65" comes to mind).

Penelope Cruz has a tendency to overact that is nicely reined in here; Dempsey was clearly enjoying himself (I managed to counter part of my friend's barrage of information by telling him that Dempsey is an avid racer in real life).

I quite liked Daniela Piperno's minor role as Ferrari's mother; actually the only actor who was clearly miscast was the bank clerk, whose lack of skill stuck out like a sore thumb.

The races and the Italian countryside were beautifully shot; overall I was quite glad I gave this movie a chance.

Loki (2021–2023)

Hiddleston is good, too bad for the script

[6/10 · 1 December 2023]

I just finished Season 1 and I won't come back for Season 2.

It started rather well with Hiddleston being fantastic as always as Loki, it held itself with some good moments and surprises for a few episodes, but the final episode was a mess of loose ends that just screamed for a second season.

I can understand leaving a few hooks to hold the viewer interested in the show, but there should be some kind of resolution at the end of a season.

Here we are just introduced to an annoying, overacting, much-too-talkative "villain" who is supposed to be the next big bad guy.

Near the end Loki becomes less and less deceitful and resourceful, turning into a sentimental wimp.

This is the second MCU TV series that I've watched (the other one was "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier", also known as "The Less Said, the Better") and it will probably be the last; since it seems that TV series are becoming a required viewing to understand the plot of the recent MCU movies, I'll probably stop watching them too.

Loki: For All Time. Always. (2021) Season 1, Episode 6

What a letdown!

[3/10 · 29 November 2023]

I just finished watching the episode, and seriously - what was everybody thinking?!

It's just a hour-long infodump with one of the most annoying villain that I've ever seen, rambling endlessly and repeating the same thing at least three times to make sure everybody understands the huge dilemma the Lokis are facing.

The screenwriters tried to spice up the endless monologue by adding CGI-animated puppets to show what the villain was telling, but I couldn't really care less.

The animated clock at the beginning of the episode added some more monologue in case we felt there was an urgent need for that.

Near the end the Lokis fight just for the sake of it (the screenwriter must have felt the need for some action).

Hiddleston is painfully out of character; he's not the God of Deceit anymore, his dialogue is so saccharine laden that it should come with a high-calorie warning.

Several threads are left dangling, probably they'll be tied up in Season 2 - too bad that I'm not willing to invest any more time in this series.

There's Still Tomorrow (2023)

An excellent debut

[9/10 · 29 November 2023]

This is Cortellesi's first movie as a director, and I cannot wait to see the next one!

I can hardly find any faults in this movie; it drags you into post-war Rome from the very first scenes, putting the black and white to good use.

Acting is top notch starting from Cortellesi herself, to Mastandrea's portrayal of an abusive husband, to Colangeli as the obnoxious grandfather.

A special mention goes to Vergano as the daughter - she is much more expressive than many botoxed Hollywood stars, and can speak volumes with her eyes.

There are a few laughs - sometimes bitter ones - even if this is far from being a comedy; the story is well written and the dialogues are crisp.

I didn't foresee the twist at the end of the movie, even if Cortellesi dropped plenty of hints, so I was pleasantly surprised.

I highly, highly recommend this movie. Brava Paola!

Ghosts of Mars (2001)

Better than I remembered

[6/10 · 21 November 2023]

I saw this movie in the theathres with one of my best friends when it came out in 2001, and afterwards we coined the unit of measurement GoM to determine how bad a movie was.

So a "meh" movie like Blue Beetle is about 500 milliGhostsOfMars, excellent movies like Inception are 0 milliGoMs and so on.

Carpenter's movie, being the gold standard, scores an exact 1000.0 milliGoMs; I thought that was the maximum until Ant Man 3 came out at a staggering 1250 milliGoMs tearing the fabric of reality.

Anyway, yesterday I re-watched the movie with the same friend and his teenage daughter, since he thought necessary to have some common ground with her to rate movies on the same scales. A calibration movie night, so to speak.

Well, starting with dim memories of the plot and below-ground expectations we were all pleasantly surprised.

The plot makes some sense, acting is bad but tongue-in-cheek, special effects rely on practical models instead of CGI and it shows.

All the scenes take place at night not to create some kind of claustrophobic atmosphere but simply because Carpenter is not a morning person.

Big Daddy Mars rocks, giving out some serious Kurgan vibes; kudos to the costume and make-up department for bringing this villain to life.

It was nice to see Statham and DuVall in one of their first roles, even if Statham's macho attempts at courship were cringeworthy.

The teenage daughter's final comment was "...well, I liked it!" so we had to convene that Ghosts of Mars earns 750 milliGoMs. This will create all kinds of havoc with the National Institute of Standards and will probably complete the job of tearing the fabric of reality.

Slumberland (2022)

Why wasn't this promoted like it deserved?

[8/10 · 5 November 2023]

I stumbled upon this movie by chance, and giving the decent IMDB rating I decided to give it a chance.

I'm quite glad I did - and I've just tried to improve its rating by giving it a solid eight.

I wasn't familiar with the source material (aside from the iconic scene of the walking bed) so I cannot say if it stays true to the source or not, and frankly I don't care too much; the important thing is that the end result is quite enjoyable, with a sensible, coherent plot and excellent writing.

You care for Nemo from the beginning, Marlow Barkley has excellent acting skills and her Nemo is quite believable. Her father and uncle were also great (the latter is a refreshing departure from the overused trope of the evil step-parent: he is boring and bumbling but you can see that his heart is in the right place).

Jason Momoa as Flip was the cherry on the cake: it's quite clear that he had enormous fun on the set, and it shows in all the scenes he's in!

Bonus points for the slumberland scenes that feel like real dreams - people riding giant geese, babies talking with grownup voices, endless stairs...

I'm well out of the intended age bracket for this movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I definitely recommend it.

Bodies (2023)

Satisfying series with good plot and acting

[8/10 · 3 November 2023]

I was intrigued by the plot summary and I liked the fact that there's only one season with eight episodes, so I could watch the whole series in a few days.

I'm glad that I did - the plot is interesting, the four timelines have excellent scenography and costumes, all the actors do a good job, no one does stupid things to advance the plot.

The best part was the fact that there were no hanging threads or unsolved plot lines (some minor details such as the tattoo on the wrist of the time travellers are left unexplained, but I'm not complaining).

Reading some other reviewers puzzled me a bit about supposed plot holes: Mannix could have memorized what stock to buy and when, since records of the London stock exchange go back 300 years; he didn't have to memorize the plans to build a nuclear bomb since stealing / buying one would have been left to his followers - Mannix knew of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and of the six bombs that the US has lost since the fifties. The same goes for the cell phone used as a detonator: he left some instructions for his sect to follow (since he is a prophet to them, he could have told them "once cell phone are invented, buy one and use it as a detonator" even if nobody understood the instructions at first).

As for the whole plot being a time travel paradox, it's something that science fiction uses quite a lot - the Heinlein's story "All you zombies" comes to mind.

Definitely recommended.

Oslo (2021 TV Movie)

A study in diplomacy

[8/10 · 3 November 2023]

I saw this movie to get a better understanding of the current situation in Israel and Palestine, and I was saddened by the fact that the story - now exactly thirty years old - is constantly repeating itself.

As I write (in November 2023) Israeli and Palestinians are at each other's throats again. This movie helped me understand how deep the roots of this conflict go.

Do not expect action, explosions or witty one-liners (even if there is more than a bit of humor); the acting is solid and believable and the screenplay gave me a glimpse of what actual diplomacy looks like. The final bit with the handshake in front of Bill Clinton - who took no part in the process whatsoever - was a nice bit.

Hypnotic (2023)

Why is the IMDB rating only 5.5?!

[7/10 · 23 October 2023]

I watched this movie with low expectations due to the bad IMDB ratings, but it was a pleasant surprise.

The premise is a bit run-of-the-mill, but the plot has several twists and turns that kept me engaged, without being too complicated or nonsensical.

Minor characters are well rounded (I quite liked the biker, even if the has only a few minutes of screen time), Alice Braga delivers a credible performance and William Fichtner is suitably creepy as the villain. Affleck as usual has only a couple of facial expressions, but I expected that so I wasn't disappointed.

Admittedly it's a low budget movie, but I recommend it - it's much better than the latest batch of superhero tripe.

Hijack (2023)

So much wasted potential

[5/10 · 2 October 2023]

After the first episode I was expecting a hijack situation solved by a battle of wits between Elba and the terrorists.

This devolved quickly into a "let's try to subdue the terrorists by force" situation; it turns out that the hijackers aren't actually terrorists (and indeed have been forced to hijack the plane!) and the reason behind their actions is money.

The silliness piles up episode after episode - a police officer discovers that a boy is being held hostage in London while he's in the countryside; instead of calling the nearest police station he *drives* all the way to solve the situation personally.

Terrorists shoot people up in the bathroom because it's easier to clean up - but they forgot to explain why it was needed to leave a clean, tidy house after the shootings.

The hijacker who is supposed to land the plane shoots the captain for no reason at all (she planned to lock herself in the cabin, leaving the main pilot alive wouldn't have changed the outcome at all).

When the plane lands, passengers are made to disembark using a single ladder instead of the more reasonable deployment of emergency exits - this was made to ensure that the interior of the plane is suitably dark for the final confrontation between Elba and the leader of the hijackers.

Elba does a decent job, but the script is a complete mess.

Guy Ritchie's the Covenant (I) (2023)

This is a 7.5/10, actually...

[7/10 · 16 July 2023]

...but IMDB doesn't allow half-stars.

The story is intriguing from the beginning, and it doesn't hold its punches when it comes to the reality of the war in Afghanistan.

(I must say that this doesn't feel like an ordinary Ritchie movie - there are no badass one-liners, no over the top characters, everything feels real and gritty.)

I liked the fact that, aside from the Talebans being cardboard cutout bad guys, other Afghans are depicted with a lot of depth; even casual encounters with disposable characters feel well fleshed out.

The two leads are capable of expressing their feelings with a minimum of facial expression (the final, simple nod between them speaks volumes); I'd say that Dar Salim as Ahmed manages to outstage Gyllenhaal in some scenes.

I definitely recommend this movie, not only to Ritchie fans.

The Flash (I) (2023)

This is how superhero movies should be made

[8/10 · 26 June 2023]

I bought the tickets for this movie with some misgivings - previous DC movies were a mixed bags, always falling short of being a good story.

Well, The Flash delivers on all fronts: I've never been so entertained in years, and all the people in my group felt the same.

The plot is a bit complex but can be followed without taking notes; CGI is cheesy in the Multiverse Arena (but it's meant to be) and top notch everywhere else.

Ezra Miller surprised me with good acting, especially in his interactions with his younger, goofy self and with his mother.

The various multiverse versions of Batman were quite interesting (MCU, take note: *this* is how multiverses are dealt with, instead of the mediocre Dr. Strange and the downright unwatchable Ant Man 3)

Humour and jokes never fall flat, from the initial scene with the falling babies to the unexpected (but, on hindsight, quite predictable) effect that phasing has on beer bottles.

I highly recommend this movie, and indeed I'm of a mind of watching it in the theatres again (something that I've not done in years). I was disappointed by the downward spiral of the last five or six MCU movies and thought that the age of superheroes was coming to an end, but it seems that DC has finally picked up the torch.