Movie Review Monday: Justice League - Flashpoint Paradox

Welcome to another edition of Movie Review Monday!

This week's film is the 2013 animated film, Justice League - The Flashpoint Paradox.

I love this movie. I watched it for the first time with my brother a little while back, and revisited it recently since it is now available on Netflix.

The plot follows Barry Allen (The Flash) as awakes in an unfamiliar world, ravaged by war, and where he is no longer the beloved Scarlet Speedster. He eventually discovers that something happened to alter the timeline, and he has to work together with these very different versions of superheroes from his world to get back to his own reality.

This is not a great movie for kids. It is rated an appropriate PG-13, since there is visceral violence, dark themes, and the story may be a little too much for a child. This isn't to say it is bad however. It is a really great story and overall movie. There are emotional moments, intense action sequences, and intriguing changes to the stories we all know about the members of the Justice League.

The animation in the movie is also well done from what I can tell. Watching it over again, I can notice some sequences of obvious CGI, but they're brief and don't take away from the overall experience. The entire package of this movie is fun to watch, and sets up a cool world that just begs to be explored (and you can in Flashpoint comics that were released). DC strikes gold again with this movie, and continues their positive streak of animated films.

Go check out Justice League - The Flashpoint Paradox, streaming right now, on Netflix.

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Summer Movie Musings: Avengers - Age of Ultron

This past weekend saw the wide US theatrical release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the much anticipated Marvel team-up film that continued the momentum of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) started all the way back in 2008 and has continued with several awesome movies and television shows.

It's hard to top the unique movie event that was the first Avengers movie, but Age of Ultron (AoU) succeeds at being a ton of fun, just like all of the entries in the MCU. With some amazing action set pieces, cool new characters, and a global scale to the proceedings. Ultron is a suitable villain, but these movies still are struggling to create as good a villain (and as persistent a one) as Loki.

Even with a stuffed cast of characters, a frenetic pace, and some universe building to do, the movie doesn't feel as unfocused as other superhero films were trying to do the same (Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes to mind). We get precursors to future solo movies (most importantly Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther) as well as the Infinity War saga. I appreciated these nods as well as the introductions of Vision, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch. They're all cool new characters that fit right into the established MCU.

Ant-Man is the next entry in the MCU (which I am really curious to see) and it will continue to expand the history of the Avengers, SHIELD, and looks to keep the same vibe of action and fun. I'll continue to review all the movies I see this summer, which will (hopefully) include Pitch Perfect 2, Inside Out, and Ant-Man (there are other movies this year I'm looking forward to as well, they just come out way later).

What did you think of Age of Ultron? Did you see it in 2D/3D? IMAX?

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