I have seen this movie twice and both times I left the theater astounded and horrified. The first time, I was with my friend and longtime roommate and both of us were very much single. The second time, I was on a second date with a handsome thirty something whom I liked enough to go on a third date with, but not a fourth. I include these details only because it is important to understand that my relationship to my fellow movie goer and therefore my mindset as an audience member was drastically different for each viewing, and by the time the credits rolled I had arrived at the same conclusion both times.

The Lobster is a horrible film to see if you are single, casually dating, or in a committed relationship and yet it is absolutely brilliant.

Set in what is presumed to be a dystopic not so distant future, the film reads more as a macabre satire of our present and it is in this aspect that the film finds its brutal genius. In the world of The Lobster, it is illegal to be alone. The film opens with our protagonist (Collin Farrell) being left by his wife of thirteen years and immediately checking into a hotel which has the sole purpose of finding loners new mates. Failure to find a partner condemns an individual to be turned into the animal of their choice, presumably so that they will have another chance at love as a different species.  Upon first examination, the concept seems whimsical and, at most, a parody of modern dating sites. (The metaphor was not lost on me, considering the second viewing date was facilitated by one such site).

It isn’t until the scenes depicting hunting of loners hiding out in the woods, torture as punishment for masturbation, attempted and botched suicide, or dog murder (I wish I were joking), that the audience begins to realize that this film is not a love story. You’ll have to see the film yourself to fully comprehend the level of discomfort it puts you through. Like the love child of Wes Anderson and Stanley Kubrick, the film combines gorgeous cinematography with haunting and at times gory scenes, all while shrieking violins play a Psycho-esque theme in the background. If all of this weren’t enough to make you lose your appetite and reconsider splitting that extra-large popcorn, the inevitable existential crisis about your love life just might.

As I said in the beginning, this film is not going to leave you feeling secure in your relationship status. In the world of The Lobster, the couples are shown to be together more out of security and convenience rather than genuine affection or desire. The hopeful daters are so terrified at the thought of joining the outlawed loners in the woods that they choose animal transformation or pretend to have something in common with another guest in order to secure a partner. And the loners are so determined to prove that they are better off alone that they punish those among them who do manage to find a genuine connection with someone. Does this sound a little too familiar?

There are moments of humor: our protagonist’s frustration at the lack of a bisexual option, the dog overpopulation problem because everyone chooses to be turned into man’s best friend, and the hilariously accurate mandate, “We dance alone. That's why we only play electronic music.” But the majority of the film is just a little too real to be enjoyable.

The Lobster is one of the most shockingly raw and poignant critiques of modern romance (or lack thereof) to grace the screens of contemporary cinema. Everyone will undoubtedly leave the theater philosophizing about what animal they would choose to be turned into and why or perhaps arguing about the ambiguous ending. But if you’re anything like me (or the couple that sat in front of me for the first viewing) you’ll also leave the theater openly and vehemently justifying why your relationship status is in NO WAY similar to what The Lobster portrays. But who knows, maybe the third viewing’s the charm.

Laika.

It is an animation studio that serves as one of NBC/Universal's best kept secrets. Emerging from the ashes of the dispossessed-of-Will-Vinton studios, and helmed by Henry Selick, the director of A Nightmare Before Christmas, it serves as the last refuge of a quickly dying art form in modern motion pictures, that of the stop-motion animated film. It is an art that goes hand in hand with cinematography itself in practice, from those earliest George Pal Puppetoons, to the body of work of famed special effects artist Ray Harryhausen.

This is the fourth film in as eight years to be released by the studio, beginning with its premiere effort, Coraline, to 2014 year’s critically acclaimed but box-office neglected sleeper hit, The Boxtrolls. These four films, along with Selick’s The Corpse Bride, have illustrated the sheer talent, the spectacle of animation, and the depth of storytelling that the studio has been consistently capable of. Sadly, they also have reported some of the lowest box office numbers in the history of summer movie releases for animated films. Kubo and the Two Strings has only been out a week so far, and it has already achieved the title of weakest weekend opening of any of Laika’s films.

It’s a shame, really, that this keeps happening to such an amazing studio, one that has at different points had visionaries like Selick and author Neil Gaiman behind it. One that ventures to go beyond even what Disney/Pixar is doing in the animated film format; breathing animated life into its plastic maquettes and giving them more joy and pain in their lives than any CG movie about talking inanimate objects ever could. Kubo is in fact the third of these four films to have a completely original screenplay, and it plays out on the screen in a way that is so intimate and telling of its author’s conviction that…well, it’d give away the movie to analyze just how much.

14 year old Art Parkinson plays Kubo, a small child whose life begins with the legend of how he was spirited away by his mother in order to be protected from a force of mysterious evil helmed by his grandfather (Ralph Feinnes), who gouged out his right eye, and additionally caused the disappearance of his father, the legendary samurai Hanzo. In addition to taking care of his rapidly weakening mother, he follows in the tradition of storytelling with the aid of his three-stringed shamisen, which has the ability to turn paper into living origami animals. One night, Kubo attempts to summon his father among the townspeoples’ festival of the dead, causing him to stay out past nighfall, and summon his aunts, multiple white-masked witches, all voiced by Rooney Mara. Kubo’s mother sacrifices herself one last time to send Kubo far away in search of the three pieces of legendary armor that will defeat the evil of his grandfather for good.

Once Kubo is set on this quest, the most familiar sets and scene-pieces of this film unfold. (Origami pun intended.) Charlize Theron plays Kubo’s monkey guardian, just a wooden charm given to him by his mother, she plays the role of strong protector with the same vive in her voice that she provides to the strong feminist roles she has portrayed in live action. Matthew McConaughey similarly disappears into his role as Beetle, a samurai warrior cursed by Kubo’s family to take the form of a human-sized black beetle. Kubo travels with these two in order to discover everything about his past, to learn his role within destiny, and to redeem the great evil which caused him his tragedy.
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You’re supposed to look at the movie as a traditional Japanese narrative, even though it isn’t, it is an original screenplay. The only Japanese actor in the entire picture is in fact George Takei, who only has a few lines as one of the many townspeople. However, the trickiness of the overall story is that it isn’t really even about its Japanese aesthetic either. Strip that away and you have the relationship of a small, creative, child and his family, the nuances of which would be too much to tell as, once again, I’d spoil much of the film. The general theme though is of the importance of story in society, how permitting one's self to appreciate mankind’s oldest tradition is the one thing that makes us all human beings.

Laika’s usual pedigree is at play here. We see all that the stop motion art form can currently apply, with the minor addition of some CG water and facial expressions that have been rendered with the aid of a 3-D printer. All of these stop motion movies seek to make some sort of achievement, and in the case of this film, it is that they actually animated a six foot tall skeleton torso puppet using a series of cranes, a green screen, and some standard camera work for one of the key action scenes. It is such a feat that they show part of the process during the film’s credits. It is impressive in both the place it stands in the film, and how it was achieved by the animators, who went the extra mile to show the stop motion itself is this film’s finest effect.

This review is going to be a bit brief because this is as far as I can go describing the film without giving away what I feel should be best experienced. I would like to add, though, that this is a film that absolutely NEEDS to be experienced, more than any film I’ve reviewed this year. I’m not going to go on a tirade about pulling up the sagging box office numbers. I know Laika will always be employed for its ability to create quality work in one of our oldest filmmaking traditions. Just…whenever you do have the opportunity to see this film, whether it’s on DVD shelves, through digital streaming, or in your grocery store’s Redbox, do NOT hesitate. This movie will make you feel something deeper than the simple enjoyment of cinema. It will make you love everything about art, the people who make it, and the people surrounding the people who make it. Take it from me. Best movie of the summer. 

It was halfway through watching this film that I came to a realization about what Disney’s long term plans are for family films in the ongoing. Between this and The Jungle Book, which ran this past April, I’ve discovered that Disney is trying to create a template for re-making live-action movies based on their previous animated properties. There’s a scene in the opening of this film where a 5 year old Pete, played by Levi Alexander, (a young kid stand-in for a slightly older kid, 10 year old Oakes Fegley) is standing in the woods about to be attacked by a pack of CG wolves. At that moment I very seriously wondered if those were the exact same CG wolves from The Jungle Book.

The entirety of the movie operates using that exact same level of quote-unquote “wonder,” for as much effort that a giant media empire can pour into any single movie property that they own, you can’t help but imagine this film sitting in a Wal-Mart DVD four-pack alongside this year’s Jungle Book, Maleficent, and-oh, that upcoming re-make of Beauty and the Beast starting Emma Watson.

It’s a dull, cynical idea I’ve just thought, that’s for certain, but we mustn’t forget that this is Disney, a company that has always been in the business of doling out completely bland, inoffensive, family-targeted movie faire at the same rate as a fast food worker assembles a Jimmy John's sandwich. The original version of this film, a musical circa 1977, was a good and memorable film, which people surely have very fond memories of watching as children. But it came out at a time when kindly Uncle Walt had established a formula for his live-action features, rubbing shoulders with equally whimsical films like Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Herbie Rides Again, and The Apple Dumpling Gang. If you ventured to watch all these films together you’d lose sight of the point where one of them ended, and the other one began. Still, these movies possessed a sense of simple innocence. They all sought to make a film for kids, and then worked their way up to the adult audience. The only achievement this re-make has to his name is that it took that original Walt Disney concept and did it again, only without the music, without the spectacle, and without the heart. 

I watched this movie in search of anything that could have tied it to its original concept and came up with fool’s gold. I’m certain that a modern viewing audience would not stand for the story of a small kid and his allegedly imaginary dragon fleeing the clutches of a trio of abusive hillbillies and a sinister snake-oil salesman, with Jim Backus and Red Buttons along for comic relief. Instead we get an entirely domestic story about the open woods surrounding a small logging community. This Pete, garbed in Mowgli-esque rags instead of dirty overalls, lives a comfortable, if not entirely happy, existence in the trees with the constant help of Elliot, now a furry CG refugee from a Maurice Sendak illustration, rather than a personable Ken Anderson cel cartoon. A logging crew led by Karl Urban’s Gavin, the principal villain of the film, cuts too deep into the woods, exposing their home. Pete is yanked to civilization after making contact with a girl his age named Natalie (Oona Lawrence) and is taken in by her father Jack (Wes Bentley) and his girlfriend, a forest ranger named Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), leaving Elliot in the woods to become lonely and follow Pete back to town. The wise old man role, accomplished ironically in the original film by a drunk and erratic Mickey Rooney, goes to a far more sober and charismatic Robert Redford. It is through Redford’s tall tale of meeting a dragon in the woods, that all the characters seem to magically accept the existence of Elliot, a revelation that is less pleading to the concept of imagination, as it is a way to fill a big gaping plot hole.
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Several threads make up the emotional center of the film, but the combination of the short-run time and the film’s inability to commit to a theme leave all these concepts to float in the proverbial log-flume of its own generic existence. You can sense, for example, that they wanted to explore some themes about environmentalism, hence the logging. Grace falls short of that by virtue of the fact she’s engaged to Jack, who is the president of the logging company. Then there’s the concept of Pete as a feral child, something that provides a lot of the films kinetic action, as he’s always climbing a tree, or a fence, or even hitching a ride on the back of a school bus. Then again, he can also speak perfect English, and always has the adult characters hanging on his every word, so that doesn’t work either. Elliot’s motivations are either to follow Pete to remain at his side or leave him alone and let him live among his people, leaving him to do absolutely nothing in the city scenes except stand around while people do variations on “oh look, a dragon.” Even Karl Urban, who I think could have easily served as a good villain in this film, is forced to bounce between hunting Elliot to prove he wasn’t crazy by seeing him, to making the world’s most bland heel-face-turn so he can patch things up with his brother, who is, by the way, Jack, his brother, his boss, and Grace’s fiancé.

My initial thought upon hearing this that this movie was going to be remade was once as simple as “why?” They can’t make a film that was anything like the original, what with all the singing, choreography, and just plain un-pc depictions of Appalachians. In order for it to work it would have to be toned down significantly, and according to the final product, it most certainly was. The drawback is, without any of the outright zaniness, the daringness to create something that is a live-action cartoon to match its fantastical protagonist, this version of Pete’s Dragon is…well…I suppose it has a dragon in it. So at least it has got that going for it. Which is nice. 

In a world full of Adam Sandler and Tyler Perry movies, it’s a rare thing to find a comedy with real heart. Mike Birbiglia’s Don’t Think Twice gives audiences exactly that. Set in current day New York, the film follows the last days of an improv comedy group (The Commune) and their struggles with loss, love, ambition, and the age old question of what it means to be successful. Their theater is closing and being turned into yet another Urban Outfitters and it feels like the final days of high school; bittersweet and horribly sudden, but with all the added concerns that come with being in your late thirties and still not being sure what you want to be when you grow up.

The film opens with the three main rules of good improv: 1) Say yes. 2) It’s not about you, it’s about the group. 3) Don’t think. What follows is a genuine and achingly raw exploration of how these rules apply to real life. In improv, “no” is the death of momentum. “No” halts the action and stalls whatever magic was being created. In life, “no” often seems to have the same effect. No, you didn’t get that dream job. No, your loved one isn’t going to be around forever. No, your life isn’t what you always thought it would be. And in the face of all of these personal failures and “no’s”, it’s easy to forget the people who tell you “yes”. Yes, things are hard but I’ve got your back. Yes, you can do it. Yes, I believe in you. It’s easy to think about all the things you can’t change and forget that happiness is a matter of perspective.

The central conflict of the film revolves around the closure of their beloved theater and their rivalry over which of them will be lifted from the trenches and hired at the coveted “Weekend Live,” an SNL parody late night show. While some among them view this as the definitive mark of success, others seem content with the intimacy and purity of their hole-in-the-wall operation. But, as with all life, nothing lasts forever and some things aren’t meant to be. In each character there is something to admire, pity, and root for. It’s a cast of underdogs that never get their Cinderella moment, but find a compromised version of happily ever after in their own ways.

The genius of Don’t Think Twice is that, much like real life, the moments of humor really do function as comic relief from the tension and drama between the characters. No matter how sad or awkward or tense the situation is, inevitably someone cracks a joke and everyone smiles and joins in. When the group returns from a trip to Philadelphia to visit Bill’s (Chris Gethard’s) father in the hospital, they compete over who can do the best impression of his father’s mumbled and warbly “Thank you,” as they left. At first glance, the scene feels macabre and inappropriate, but as Bill’s smirk slowly evolves into a smile it’s clear that the best thing about friends is their ability to lighten the mood and help us find the humor in even the darkest of moments.  It’s not that things are suddenly fixed or better, but nothing ever seems quite as bad when you’re laughing with people who understand.

At a Q&A and advanced screening at The Mayan Theater here in Denver, Birbiglia said that his favorite films “make you forget you’re watching a movie. They feel like real people and afterwards you wanna go home and Google them, find out if they’re okay.” It’s safe to say that Birbiglia’s direction and writing achieved just that. Anyone who has ever felt adrift or stuck in life will find comfort in Don’t Think Twice, a film that tells us that life isn’t fair, but it sure is funny.

In a strange way, I’m actually happy to see this film. If there is one genre that is completely unappreciated in the mass of mash-up categories that Hollywood provides, it is the R-rated, adult-targeted animated feature film. This is a genre that works better in other countries, particularly Japan, where the R is simply used to serve up a fair amount of violence, sexuality, and adult themes in an otherwise well-thought out and thematically sound film. But we Americans, with our perception of animation as a largely kiddy market, have always had the genre pigeonholed into niche, indy concepts, like those of the collected arthouse works of animator Ralph Bakshi, to make up our perception as a whole.

So here comes Sausage Party, another film from producer and lead actor Seth Rogen, a man whose only motivation is to take the concept of the stoner-buddy comedy and make as many films in that trope as humanly possible. The film, like many concept animated films, contains a branding by Sony/Columbia Pictures, but was completely animated in Canada with a staff that is a third of your typical Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks animated production. As it so happens, the lead animation director, Greg Tiernan’s only other major film credit is on a CG Canadian co-production of Thomas the Tank Engine.

And honestly, for what they were trying to accomplish, that is, to add Rogen’s frat-house shenanigans to a parody of the animated formula held by the current cartoon status quo, the film absolutely succeeds. It is amazing the notes that this little studio was able to hit. At one point, there’s even a song composed by Alan Menken. Yeah. No foolin’. The film’s entire runtime plays out through a cast of characters who, despite being almost endlessly potty-mouthed, sex-obsessed, and lending of themselves to near constant drug use, display the emotional range of your standard Pixar cast. It is an accomplishment that the concept of this film carries itself out that well, all the way through the picture.

Sadly, that’s really the only film’s accomplishment.

Sausage Party made its way through the indy rounds and into the mainstream cinema with one mission to accomplish, and it accomplished that mission, but what remains of the film beyond that is really nothing particularly special. A film containing this type of humor isn’t hard to come by. Hell, they’ve even made this film with a PG rating and called it The Angry Birds Movie. It’s not a spoof. It’s not a kindly homage. It’s 90 minutes of anthropomorphic food products, all with spindly black arms, white gloves, and Mickey Mouse shoes, toking, making entendre, and saying the F-word. At least you get what you paid for.

Seth Rogen plays Frank, a leader of an 8-pack of hot dogs including a small deformed one named Barry, played by Michael Cera. Oh, actually, they’re called “sausages” through the film, in order to fit that many more penis jokes into the script. Frank’s only desire is to finally “seal the deal” with Brenda (Kristin Wiig), his white-bread hot dog bun girlfriend, once both their packages are bought together and taken out of the Shopwell’s supermarket into “the great beyond.” An incident with a severely shell-shocked jar of honey mustard (Danny McBride) causes Frank, Brenda, and several other food products to tumble out of the grocery cart, sending Frank on an adventure to discover the reason for Honey Mustard’s emotional and literal breakdown, and uncover the truth about what actually happens to food when it leaves the supermarket.

Along the way they come across further exiled food-things, all of which fill up the supposedly parodic but more-often offensive stereotypes this film has been accused of having. They make sidekicks in the form of Sammy Bagel Jr. (Ed Norton) and Kareem Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz) a bagel and a naan who are in a border conflict caused by sharing the same ethnic-food shelf. Frank quickly encounters a set of shady characters called the “Non-Perishables,” Firewater (Bill Hader), a Native American bottle of liquor, Twink (Scott Underwood) a camp-gay piece of crème-filled sponge cake, and Mr. Grits (Craig Robinson) that’s…enough said there. Meanwhile, a momentarily displaced and confused Brenda finds a friend in Teresa Del Taco (Selma Hayek), who is not only a Mexican taco shell, but one interested in a hot dog bun in a way that’s, well, once again you can fill in the blank. I suppose this was where the humor was supposed to get offensive, but sadly, even the attempts to stick a pin in every potential non-white member of the audience tends to fall completely flat throughout the film’s brisk run.

Sausage Party, much like the singular food product that makes up its main protagonist, does everything it can to be a fulfilling food substance, but has too many randoms mixed in its stuffing to leave the audience affirmed that it is mystery meat. Frequently, it doesn’t even play by its own rules, and anthropomorphizes different objects at random, but only when it can be played for laughs, like with a roll of toilet paper voiced by Conrad Vernon imitating Ed Wynn. His only line: “You don’t even want to know.” Then there’s the film’s main non-human antagonist, a literal douche, voiced by Nick Kroll, who “juices up” and goes looking for revenge on Frank and Brenda for the crime of keeping him from his ultimate purpose. I had thought with the distinct look of some of the character animation, that some of the art in this film was designed by Ren and Stimpy director John Kricfalusi. His name never appears in the credits, but who knows? It happens John actually trained a lot of animators in Canada.

In the end, Sausage Party does what it sets out to do, and that’s admirable. There are a few funny moments, but in the same way Family Guy has them, in that the film is so in-your-face there are bound to be jokes that stick. However, it lacks the pathos of a good episode of Rick and Morty, the strong themes of an episode of South Park, or the outrageousness of an evening watching [Adult Swim]. A good amount of time watching truly good American adult animation on TV will help to wash down whatever this film will leave stuck in your craw. ​

Oh, uh, um……hey, um……uh…wow. 
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So, here’s the thing. Suicide Squad, judged completely on its own merits, is a decent, interesting, and completely fun flick. You can sit in the theater, hug your popcorn and grotesquely large soft drink, and have a good little time with it. In the sense that it can fulfill the need of the casual movie goer it works perfectly. However, when you consider the lengths it took for this project to get off the ground, the amount of promotion it was given, and the role it is intended to play, as another film in DC’s attempts to build a film continuity around the topsy-turvy concepts presented by Zack Snyder, then what you’re left with is a film that’s an even hotter mess than the pre-revamp Harley Quinn. 

Am I getting ahead of myself? Yeah, that might be too easy a thing to do with this picture. 

The most interesting thing about this movie is that we seem to actually know what happened with the film, all through its production. It began as a script written by David Ayer in 2009, and was fought for vehemently by the screenwriter, citing that DC comics’ supervillain super-group had enough notoriety thanks to their occasional appearance on The CW’s Arrow TV series. Information on casting, and production was abounding, almost as though the movie was promulgated by the internet itself. Finally, as production wrapped Batman v. Superman hit theaters, and the cast returned to re-shoot a dozen scenes because, supposedly, a film starring a mass of supervillains needed its tone to be lightened against the outright bleakness of a film starring two of DC’s biggest superheroes. 

This can’t be emphasized enough, mostly due to the chintzy way Suicide Squad attempts to prove it is a universe film. Government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) walks down the street and side-glances at a man selling post-mortem Superman t-shirts. It’s almost as if that was added in post! There’s also a scene involving Captain Boomerang,  that…hell, you’ve probably read about it already on the internet. 

Ultimately that’s what is most problematic about Suicide Squad: it’s a movie that needs to be a superhero/continuity movie when it doesn’t really have to be. Ayer’s early descriptions of the film suggest it to be a “Dirty Dozen with supervillains.” Only, since we’re a mere three films into this supposed Snyder-verse, the only established villains so far have been General Zod, who has since died…twice, Lex Luthor, who is in jail, and The Joker who’s…Oh, wait, he’s actually here, played by Jared Leto, baring no resemblance to, or really, even showing the same level of menace as he did in Nolan’s The Dark Knight, so whoop-dee. 

So in terms of charismatic villainy, they’re really going to have to reach for this one, and the movie invites the audience to reach along with them. Will Smith is in the full protagonist role as Deadshot, a no-miss gun for hire who is all business, and haunted by the one moment he was begged by his civilian daughter not to take the shot, against Batman. Then there’s Margot Robbie, debuting as all-time favorite DC supervillain Harley Quinn. She’s insane, because she always tells people that she’s insane, all the time. She manages to match the skills of a no-miss hitman using only a Vegas-decorated revolver and a baseball bat, so you know she’s badass. But she’s only biding her time until she gets rescued by her puddin’, and her superpower seems to be the ability to get away with absolutely everything, with everyone. The third most prolific role belongs to Jay Hernandez as El Diablo, an ex-gang-banger who possesses, “The gift of the devil,” which means he can control fire, though his abilities have a pretty spectacular payoff in the third act, at least worth the price of admission. The rest of the team is rounded out by Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and Katana (Karan Fukuhara), who have about as much character development as I have just suggested. Oh, but there a mention of Katana’s sword stealing the souls of the dead, and at one point Captain Boomerang convinces Adam Beach’s Slipknot to escape, leading to an explosion that proves Amanda Waller is, gasp, actually serious about her intentions.
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But within Waller’s conviction lies the hammer that completely shatters the narrative of this film. It comes as no surprise, as this is a Snyder-verse movie, that Waller is responsible for the event that led her to form this villainous team in the first place. That is, she attempted to control the deity Enchantress (Cara Delevigne) by both sealing her heart inside a box containing a time-bomb, and having her military liaison, Col. Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) fall for the human body she possessed. Enchantress unsurprisingly breaks loose and goes full Gozer on a building in the center of the city, thus giving the Suicide Squad their first task of destroying the demonic entity that wouldn’t have been unleashed if Waller wasn’t so gung-ho about blackmailing villains to do black-ops. Waller is completely unapologetic about this, as she even has the team take a detour to rescue her from her own war room, and still commits the squad to their sentence, despite her entire plan being a complete wash and her own fault. 

It’s aggravating that the Snyder-verse is so completely committed to taking what are supposed to be DC Comics’ most powerful humans (and alien) and brilliant tacticians: Superman, Lex Luthor, Batman, and yes, Amanda Waller, and making them the people responsible for the most collateral damage this series of movies has ever seen. Ultimately, it becomes easy to root for the Suicide Squad, because as bad a bunch of criminals as they possibly are, they can’t possibly be as destructive as the good guys. 

The most frustrating thing about Suicide Squad is that the entirety of the time you watch it, you wonder, what if? What if this was actually allowed to be a gritty movie about super powered criminals? What if this movie was really allowed to be gritty and tragic, instead of nice compared to Zack Snyder’s most recent beginning of summer brand angst-and-punch? What if we had a truly menacing Joker or a fully fleshed-out Harley Quinn, and what if those characters could serve as a contrast to the fully-formed Justice League, which won’t even exist in the Snyder-verse for a whole other year. Suicide Squad will serve its purpose. It will make us believe in such a thing as a DC comics film continuity. The problem that still exists amongst us fans, however, is that the stories still feel like they’re in the wrong box order.