The Critical Corner

Another summer season has come to a close, and with it, we bid adieu to the summer blockbuster movie season. As you all get ready to move on into a season full of cozy jackets, colored leaves and pumpkin spice lattes and start preparing for “Oscar-bait” movie season, it’s time to look back at the movies I liked from the past three hot months. It was an eventful summer with many anticipated sequels and a couple surprises. Yet it was a personal odd summer in the movies department for me. Despite the sheer volume of movies that came out, it’s almost a personal “shame” to declare there were a couple of movies I was anticipating to see that I ended up not watching for one reason or another. Whether it was other things vying for attention, the higher volume of new content coming to streaming services and the ever changing viewing habits (seriously, the early release of digital movies just months after release makes it tempting to just wait to watch movies that way), I wish I had a bi...

The show heads into the finale with the strongest episode of the season, probably the entire series.  Near the end of March, things had been looking a little too bleak for Season 3 of "The Flash". The plot progression of the story had been stifled by the writer's reluctance to reveal the identity of Savitar, and the show was becoming a little too self indulgent with repeating the same story beats over and over. Even their return episode to kick off the final stretch of the season, "The Once and Future Flash" , gave the impression Season 3 would stay the course with its obvious strengths and obvious weaknesses. Oh boy, was I wrong.  In my initial write up for Season 3 , I mentioned how if there was a show that had the potential to pull itself out of its funk, it was this one. The last three episodes, "I Know Who You Are", "Cause and Effect" and this week's "Infantino Street" have served as a well deserved reprieve to ...

Earlier today, my final post about the current state of The CW's "Arrow-verse" focused on "The Flash" went live . In it, I mentioned the things the show had been doing right in the midst of a lot of things it's gotten wrong in Season 3. Coming into this final batch of episodes, the show needed to pickup the pace with its "Savitar" storyline after the show pulled off the wrong move in teasing their audience in a bad way with the last episode, " Abra Kadabra ".  What they delivered tonight was a mixed bag. If anything, "The Once and Future Flash" is actually a microcosm of everything that has defined this season, in both good and bad ways. The episode picked up right where the previous one left off. With Barry still determined to fully uncover who Savitar is, he fulfilled his promise to Joe and Iris and made a time travel trip to Central City 2024. Even with a mild detour at the beginning of the episode with a showdown with...

Once the head of the pack, "The Flash" has experienced plenty of highs and lows in Season 3. In the final part of my look back into the current state of The CW's "Arrow-verse", I turn my attention to the most popular show of the pack. The one show that was once the undisputed king of The CW's shared universe, held back this year by a mix of highs and lows. The Flash Grant Gustin as The Flash Back in 2014, no one would have predicted that the first spinoff from "Arrow" would have been as successful and as special as it was when it came out. From its inception, "The Flash" was that rare show that came out of the gate fully formed. Out of all the 4 "Arrow-verse" shows, this was the one that knew what it wanted to be, what it wanted to do, and how far it would go to achieve that. It was unapologetically comic book-y.  It was unapologetically charming. It was unapologetically heartwarming. It knew when to make you feel...