• I freely admit the main reason I went to “The Flash” was with eager anticipation for the return of Michael Keaton as Batman. So be it, but as “The Flash” and its time- and universe-bending plot undertook its twists and turns, I found so much more to enjoy than Keaton being back in the bat-saddle as the Caped Crusader. For his performance, I (and, it must be said, the entire preview audience) was enraptured and cheering—but this is a Flash movie

  • Whatever happened to misbegotten youth? Don’t you long for the old days, when young misfits were French, ran everywhere and stole things? What happened to the old days, when a good American movie character could look forward to a life of crime on screen? Nowadays they take medication. And moan about not being popular. And make mix tapes and try to get people to feel sorry for them. Has American youth taken a turn for the

  • We Need to Talk About Kevin isn’t the first film this year to outlast its immediacy. A novel written by Lionel Shriver in the wake of the Columbine school killings, director Lynne Ramsay has been trying to make the film since her last feature, Morvern Callar, in 2002. The unusually long gestation period has stripped the story of its ripped-from-the-headlines quality. It now plays like a quaint, violent memory. These are the under-parented demon children of not so long ago