Zack Qureshi

very pleasantly surprised at the extent of the barely veiled pro-Palestine allegory in a studio movie like this but like there’s a billionaire profiting off of the military industrial complex that has the government in his pocket who invents a war and manufactures consent for it plus the fictional country of Bovaria (with a European sounding name) is occupying Jarhanpur ((might be spelled a little differently) with a south Asian sounding name) whose people we see are brown and one carried a curved sword plus superman saves and is friends with a guy who owns a falafel stand beyond that it’s an interesting postmodernly ahistorical mix of influences from throughout Superman’s mythology obviously there’s a lot of all star Superman in this and some nods to the reeve Superman (the use of the Williams score though kind of bothered me) all of the characterization I liked, Lois Lane being into punk music and Clark being into more pop punk bands was a cool touch and I loved Skyler Gisondo as jimmy olsen that women are rightfully obsessed with also nic hoult was good as the extreme hater lex luthor disclaimer for some pretty extreme comic nerd stuff ahead: I liked how they handled guy gardner, as a lifelong GL mega fan I’ve been so tired of how battered GL’s representation has been with the terrible Reynolds movie and the Jonah Hill GL punch lines in the Lego movies so when I saw the trailers I was concerned that he would be a punchline in this but it threaded the needle of him being kind of comic relief without ever making fun of his abilities or anything also I liked metamorpho in this it was a cool use of his powers that he could like manufacture an artificial sun by combining hydrogen and helium and fusing them to boost superman  anyway good movie, funny but never cynical, a real balm to the irony poisoned marvel industrial complex that I think is indicative of a shift in culture towards sincerity and is also the correct view of what makes Superman compelling  also there’s a super catchy iggy pop song that plays over the credits that made for a cool sweet ending

wow this movie rules !just like parker posey’s character this movie is a lot smarter than it might appear I think it’s so clever and honestly layered and real while also having so much energetic subjectivity on the level of form there is some very sweet light orientalism lol not necessarily ideal but both the ending and the scene on the park bench were genuinely quite moving when there’s a stripper grinding on her and she yells “I’m serious about grad school!” that’s cinema right there  should go without saying but parker posey is so hot in this