The Flash

Essential on continuity, as the film that formally closes the DCEU, and it is impossible to discuss separately from its circumstances. Its lead's widely reported legal difficulties during production and release meant the studio barely promoted it, and it lost a great deal of money.

The premise is the best the continuity ever had. Barry goes back to prevent his mother's murder, succeeds, and finds a world where almost nothing else survived the change: no Superman, a different Batman, and a version of himself who never suffered and is therefore insufferable. A superhero film about grief and about the damage of undoing it is a real idea, and the supermarket scene where he sees his mother alive is genuinely moving.

Michael Keaton returning as Batman after thirty-one years is the film's main event and he is excellent, playing a man who stopped decades ago and has been alone since. Sasha Calle's Supergirl is given a strong introduction and too little to do.

The effects are the standing complaint and they are not a small matter: the speed sequences render people as rubbery digital figures, and a late sequence involving multiple universes as collapsing spheres includes recreations of long-dead performers that many viewers find distasteful. Watch it for Keaton and the premise.