Clash of the Titans

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice overcame terrible reviews to crush the box office over the weekend. If you believe the critics, it’s pretty much the worst movie of all time and if you like it in any capacity then you are a stupid pathetic excuse for a human being.

As usual, I feel that the critics have vastly overstated the movie’s badness. Batman V Superman is not a terrible movie, unfortunately, it is also not a particularly good one.

Batman V Superman joins the ranks of Spider-Man 3, Iron Man 2, and Avengers: Age of Ultron as a vastly overcrowded superhero movie. It is the kind of movie that has so many things it needs to accomplish that it threatens to collapse under the weight of its many parts. It’s a sequel to 2013’s Man of Steel, it introduces several iconic DC comics characters, it sets up future sequels and spin-offs, and on top of all that it still has to attempt to tell its own story.

As a result, it sometimes feels like the movie is going through the motions, checking off items on the list of things it needs to accomplish. This is really too bad, since this movie had so much potential, but the end result is a little disappointing.

I didn’t leave the theater feeling like my spirits were completely crushed. Instead I was left feeling vaguely unsatisfied, which is not a good thing given the movie’s two-and-a-half-hour running time.

But at the same time, there were things about the movie that I liked. The opening scene, for example, is terrific. It presents the climactic city-levelling battle from Man of Steel from the perspective of the people on the ground, as Bruce Wayne rushes through the city, dodging falling debris as he attempts to reach one of his Wayne enterprises buildings. It conjures images of 9/11, and gives the movie a sense of real-world relevancy.

Unfortunately, this feeling doesn’t last for the entire movie, since it goes overboard by the end. This is exemplary of much of the rest of the movie: it has good ideas but doesn’t know what to do them, and ends up feeling like it’s going through that superhero-movie checklist.

For example, a lot of people on the Internet complained that the final battle in Man of Steel caused far too much collateral damage, and that Superman was irresponsible for allowing so much destruction to happen. The new movie runs with this idea, and presents some intriguing questions about what could happen if Superman’s godlike powers went unchecked. This does lead to a very bizarre dream sequence, where Bruce Wayne has this crazy nightmare of the end of the world that could happen if Superman turned evil, which involves black-clad Stormtroopers with Superman S-logos on their shoulders and weird winged creatures of some kind.

Wait, what? Yeah, it’s a weird scene. As soon as it started I knew it had to be a dream sequence of some kind, since there was no way that it could actually be happening. The scene contains some cool imagery but feels cheap, since you know from the start that it can’t be real, and it isn’t.

The movie was directed by Zack Snyder, who is a fantastic visual stylist but struggles with making the stories in his films as compelling as the visuals.

Take Lex Luthor. Theoretically the main villain of the movie, I honestly could not figure out what his motivation was. Seriously, what was his deal? Why did he do anything that he did? Is he just a power-hungry, absurdly rich megalomaniac? Does he just like screwing with people? I dunno. He’s basically an evil Mark Zuckerberg.

And Jesse Eisenberg’s performance didn’t really help. I like Eisenberg, but I feel he was miscast in this role. Snyder’s direction to him must have been “be as quirky as possible,” because Eisenberg spends the entire movie trying to out-quirk both Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey. Eisenberg’s is a truly odd performance, full of so many strange little tics that you’re never sure what this dude is thinking. Normally I would be okay with that, I don’t mind a little ambiguity but in this case the weirdness of Eisenberg’s performance leaves the movie’s central villain feeling like an enigma.

Not every performance in the movie is quite so frustrating, however. Amy Adams is perfect as Lois Lane, Henry Cavill makes an appealing Superman, Laurence Fishburne is fun as Perry White (Clark and Lois’ boss at the Daily Planet) and Diane Lane as Superman’s earth-mom Martha Kent gives the movie some much needed warmth.

But we’ve seen these actors play these characters before. Let’s talk about the real elephant in the room: how is Ben Affleck as Batman? The internet exploded when his casting was announced, does he totally butcher it like stupid people on the internet said he would?

Well…no. No, he doesn’t. He’s fine. Not fantastic, but fine. He won’t make you forget Christian Bale any time soon, but he does solid work as the Dark Knight. Much of the inspiration for the film’s interpretation of Batman comes from Frank Miller’s 1986 graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, which is a personal favorite of mine. The Batsuit Batman wears and the armored Batsuit he uses to fight Superman look pretty much exactly the same as they do in that book, and there are a couple scenes from the book that are directly referenced in the film, which is cool to see as a comics nerd.

Sadly, the movie muddles the Batman mythology. We see the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents, and young Bruce falling into the Batcave, and that’s about all we get for Batman’s origin. This is fine, since the movie has so much other stuff to get through and there’s a good chance many viewers will be familiar with Batman’s origin if they’ve seen any of the previous Batman films.

But that’s not where the problems come in. The movie presents Batman as a grizzled crimefighting veteran, multiple references are made to how he’s been fighting crime for 20 years. But this doesn’t jibe for me. I can’t make it work with how everyone seems to view Batman in the movie: he still seems like a complete mystery to the inhabitants of both Gotham and Metropolis. If he’s been around for 20 years, how come nobody seems to know anything about him? Even the cops don’t seem to know what to make of him, and there’s no Commissioner Gordon in the movie to tell them otherwise.

I don’t know, maybe this is something that would become clearer to me on subsequent viewings. But on my first viewing, it seemed jumbled. I certainly didn’t hate the movie’s version of Batman, Affleck was pretty good and I also liked the various bat-vehicles on display. But trying to condense so much of the character’s history (there are also Joker and Robin references) into a fairly limited amount of screentime can’t help but feel rushed. I’m not saying the movie would have been better without Batman (blasphemy!) but it’s a movie that would not have suffered by getting rid of a subplot or two.

One thing the film does deliver on is the action. The centerpiece title fight between Bats and Supes delivers the awesomeness. It’s a satisfyingly brutal battle that delivers on the promise of the trailers, and it is undeniably thrilling to see these two iconic characters on screen together. Zack Snyder may be uneven as a director, but one area he really excels in is the action scenes. He is a very good action director, staging fast-paced and brutal fights that are easy to follow and exciting to watch. I absolutely loved the scene where Batman busts into a heavily-guarded warehouse and lays down some serious whuppins on about 20 henchmen. That scene alone is probably the best Batman fight scene ever put on film. As a hardcore Bat-fan, it was just about the best thing ever.

The movie climaxes with a rather silly battle against an ugly monster called Doomsday. If you are a comics fan you know what Doomsday is most famous for in the comics, but this film handles him poorly. Most of the time I like big monster fights, but in this case I thought the monster was just kind of…stupid. Doomsday is a big, ugly, stupid brute with no personality. The only reason he exists is so that Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman can have something to fight against that is stronger than they are individually, so they have to team up to defeat it. I understand that, but this movie doesn’t handle that idea nearly as well as the Avengers movies did.

Part of what made the first Avengers movie so good was that it felt like a payoff. It had five movies of buildup leading up to it, so when it finally happened, it felt like a big deal. It felt like its own movie, and didn’t seem too concerned with setting up more sequels. Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is a clunky name for a clunky movie. It had all the necessary ingredients to be great, but instead has to settle for being merely okay. I didn’t hate it as many other people seem to, but I didn’t love it either.

And I forgot to even talk about Wonder Woman. She’s played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot from the Fast and Furious movies, who I thought was pretty good in the role. She shows up intermittently throughout the movie in her civilian guise and makes her actual appearance as Wonder Woman during the climactic battle. I liked Gadot but Wonder Woman’s inclusion in the movie felt like more sequel-baiting (she’s getting her own movie next year).

It also bothers me that Batman kills people in this movie. He blows up several truckloads of henchmen and brands criminals with a bat symbol, and there is never any discussion about whether or not he is taking things too far. Alfred is in the movie, played by Jeremy Irons, but he is relegated more to tech support and his usual role as Batman’s moral compass is largely if not entirely absent.

Was I disappointed by this movie? Overall, yeah, I was. For me it’s not that it was completely terrible, it’s more that there was so much potential that the movie didn’t live up to, it can’t help but feel like a bit of a letdown.

On Love, Loss and Superheroes

Hey look, I’m writing about Batman again! I didn’t expect this to happen so soon, but this time I am talking about an animated Batman movie, 1993’s Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.

Mask of the Phantasm is done in the style of the animated series that began in the early 90’s, simply called Batman: The Animated Series. It is my humble opinion that the show was one of the best interpretations of Batman that has ever been done in any medium, and Mask of the Phantasm featured all of the elements that made the show so great, while also providing a deeply moving emotional foundation to rest its story upon. Mask of the Phantasm is one of the most tragic and affecting superhero movies ever made, and as a big superhero fan, and with the plethora of caped heroes running amok in movies and on TV these days, that is not a statement I make lightly.

Here’s the story. A masked, caped figure has been killing mobsters in Gotham, and since Batman had been seen at the scenes of some of these murders, the populace assumes he’s started whacking bad guys instead of bringing them in, and the police turn against him.

Long story short, Batman hasn’t become a murderer. There’s a new player in Gotham, and he’s the one knocking off mob bosses.

While all of this is going on, the movie repeatedly flashes back to a time before Bruce Wayne became Batman, and tells of how he fell in love with a woman named Andrea Beaumont. Bruce’s relationship with Andrea complicates his efforts to figure out how to keep his promise to his dead parents. The film never states specifically what Bruce promised his parents, but it doesn’t need to. Anyone who knows anything about Batman knows that Bruce made a promise to his parents to rid the city of the evil that took their lives.

And he desperately wants to fulfill his promise, but he’s terribly conflicted because his romance with Andrea has led to something he didn’t expect to happen: his own happiness. In the movie’s most wrenching scene, he goes to his parents’ grave and pleads with them.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t care anymore,” Bruce tells them. “I don’t want to let you down, honest, but…but it just doesn’t hurt so bad anymore. You can understand that, can’t you? Look, I can give money to the city, they can hire more cops. Let someone else take the risk, but it’s different now!” At this point, lightning flashes across the sky and thunder rumbles.

“Please!” Bruce continues. “I need it to be different now. I know I made a promise, but I didn’t see this coming. I didn’t count on being happy. Please…tell me that it’s okay…”

“Maybe they already have,” Andrea says from behind him. “Maybe they sent me.” Bruce turns to her, and they embrace in the rain.

Now I don’t care who you are or what you think about Batman in particular or superheroes in general, that is heartbreaking. It’s not that Bruce doesn’t still care about the promise he made his parents, or that he doesn’t still miss them, but the passage of time has helped dull the pain, and the introduction of Andrea into his life has led to him being happy in his life, and this kills me, because he didn’t expect this to happen. He didn’t count on being happy.

In the wake of his parents’ deaths, Bruce was so distraught that he didn’t think he could be happy again, and it took a person, Andrea, to show him he was wrong. And now that he has that happiness, he desperately wants to hold on to it, but he feels that to do so would be to let down his parents, which leaves him at a crossroads.

Man…just, man. This one scene in this one animated movie from 23 years ago is one of the best portrayals of grief I’ve ever seen. It’s also a brilliant deconstruction of the Batman myth, and shows heartbreakingly the sacrifice that Bruce makes to become Batman.

Bruce decides to change the plan and actually proposes to Andrea. She accepts, but their happiness is ruined when Andrea’s father gets in trouble with the mob, and the two of them go on the run. After she leaves, Bruce finally takes the plunge and becomes Batman, and doesn’t see Andrea again until she suddenly returns to Gotham years later, right around the time a mysterious masked figure starts bumping off mobsters.

Spoiler alert: it turns out that Andrea is the one killing mobsters, in revenge for their killing of her father earlier. In a further twist, it turns out the one who actually did the deed of killing her father was none other than the Clown Prince of Crime himself, the Joker, before he became the twisted villain we all love to hate. After she bumps off the other mobsters, she sets her sights on Joker, but in trademark Joker fashion, he isn’t going to make it easy for her.

I’m simplifying the story a bit here, but to me the real heart of this movie is about the relationship between Bruce and Andrea. Despite the genre elements, the relationship between them is complex and compelling. They both figure out the other’s secret, and Batman comes to her rescue when she bites off more than she can chew with the Joker.

But Andrea doesn’t want to be rescued. In some ways, maybe it’s too late for her to be rescued at all. “They took everything, Bruce.” She entreats him. “My father, my friends, my life, you. I’m not saying it’s right, or even sane but it’s all I have left! So either help me, or get out of the way!”

“You know I can’t do that,” Batman responds.

“Look what they did to us!” Andrea bursts out. “What we could have had! They had to pay!”

“But Andy,” Batman begs her, “what will vengeance solve?”

“If anyone knows the answer to that, Bruce,” Andrea replies, “It’s you.”

Wow. That exchange just floored me. Most blockbuster movies these days don’t have dialogue anywhere near that good, or emotional thrust anywhere near that powerful. Mask of the Phantasm is able to do in 76 minutes what some three-hour movies have difficulty achieving.

It’s also a very well-animated movie. Some animation from the early 90’s can look a bit dated by today’s standards, but the animation in Mask of the Phantasm holds up very well. It’s also surprisingly violent. The fact that it was a theatrically-released film probably allowed the filmmakers to get away with more violence than they would have been able to pull off in the TV series. It’s not gratuitously violent, but it’s still pretty noticeable (for example, late in the movie Batman kicks Joker in the face, which spurts blood and sends one of the Joker’s teeth flying).

The voice acting is also top-notch. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill will always be THE definitive voices of Batman and the Joker for me, and both are as excellent as always. Conroy lets you feel Bruce’s pain, and Hamill’s Joker is as unhinged as ever. He also gets to let out what has to be one of the all-time greatest Joker laughs. He just completely loses it.

Also strong is Dana Delany, who voices Andrea. Delany provided the voice of Lois Lane in Superman: The Animated Series, and she is great as Andrea. She has the kind of smooth, sexy voice that I could happily listen to read from the phone book, and she really nails the emotional ups and downs (mostly downs) of Andrea’s character.

Mask of the Phantasm is more than just a superhero movie. It’s a tragic romance. It delivers all of the things that made the animated series great: the story, the emotion, the (surprisingly brutal) action, it’s well-written, well-animated and the voice acting is superb.

I don’t think it’s been entirely forgotten, as I hope this post has demonstrated it still has its loyal fans. But it has been overshadowed somewhat by the bigger, flashier movies of recent years. It’s underappreciated these days, but still well worth checking out.

As a final note, the movie also provides one of the best explanations as to why I love Batman so much. After the final encounter, where Bruce fears he has lost Andrea forever, he sits despondent in the Batcave, and his loyal butler Alfred attempts to console him.

“Vengeance blackens the soul, Bruce,” Alfred says. “I’ve always feared that you would become that which you’ve fought against. You walk the edge of that abyss every night, but you haven’t fallen in and I thank heaven for that.”

That’s it right there. Batman walks the edge of the abyss, but he doesn’t fall in.

And I, too, thank heaven for that.

The Bat, the Cat, and the Penguin

I owe a lot to Batman Returns. If it had not been in theaters around the time I found myself in a toy store sometime in 1992 (it must have been 1992 because that’s the year the movie was released) I might not have bought my first-ever Batman action figure (but who am I kidding, I didn’t actually pay for it, I was like three, my uncle bought it for me). And if that hadn’t happened when it did, I may not have fallen in love with Batman when I did, and my life today would probably be a lot different.

But up until recently, I hadn’t actually seen Batman Returns. It occurred to me a few weeks ago that this amounted to a massive oversight on my part so I watched it. Twice. And boy oh boy, do I have some thoughts I’d like to share.

With the release of Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice next week, there was no better time to re-watch the original Tim Burton/Michael Keaton Batman films. I had seen the original one when I was a kid, but had never seen the sequel. I had mixed memories of the 1989 film but upon re-watching it I found it to be quite good, and was very pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up liking it.

Michael Keaton is a very appealing Bruce Wayne. There was quite the fan uproar when he was first announced as Batman, but nowadays his portrayal of Batman is well-regarded (this is worth mentioning when you consider the similar fan uproar that arose when Ben Affleck was cast as Batman).

Keaton’s performances as Bruce Wayne/Batman are emblematic of the films themselves: serious without being too serious, campy without being too campy. If the Christopher Nolan Batman films represent the dark and gritty Batman and the Joel Schumacher Batman movies represent the cheesy and over-the-top Batman, the two Tim Burton movies fit nicely in the middle.

I really like the visual design of both movies. Gotham City looks great, as do the vehicles, costumes, and makeup effects, and for the most part the special effects hold up well, although there are a couple shots that look a little fake for viewers whose eyes are accustomed to slick modern special effects. Gotham looks dark and gothic and somewhat stylized, but it’s not so stylized that you stop believing it’s a place that could actually exist.

Remember that ridiculously awful chase scene in Batman & Robin where the Dynamic Duo chase Mr. Freeze down the arms of this stupid building-sized statue that’s just hanging out in the middle of the city? Yeah, there’s nothing that dumb in the Tim Burton movies. Both 1989’s Batman and 1992’s Batman Returns do an admirable job of striking a balance between the more serious aspects of Batman as a character and some of the potentially sillier aspects. Tonally, they’re both pretty consistent, which is a tricky feat to accomplish with this kind of subject matter.

I will readily admit, however, that Batman Returns goes a bit overboard in this respect. What else can you say about a film whose climax involves the hero stopping the villain’s army of mind-controlled, rocket-launching penguins?

So yes, Batman Returns is more than a little over-the-top. In many ways it is just damn weird, even ranking among the strangest movies I have ever seen. But for all of its weirdness, it’s still more faithful to the character of Batman than either of Joel Schumacher’s attempts.

The Burton films come close to the precipice of being too over-the-top, but somehow they are able to pull back from the edge. Just barely, but they do make it. And as we all know, Schumacher’s movies light themselves on fire and go flying off that precipice, screaming nonsense all the way.

But what is it, exactly, that makes Batman Returns such a weird movie, aside from the aforementioned rocket-launching penguins?

Well, let’s start with the villains. The problem with Catwoman and Penguin in Batman Returns is that I have a hard time taking either of them as serious threats to Batman. Catwoman is a woman suffering from a complete psychotic breakdown, and Penguin is a freakish fat man who lives in the sewers. Neither of them seem very threatening.

It’s not that Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito give bad performances. Their acting is somewhat over-the-top, but still in keeping with the overall tone of the film. It’s just that neither of them is particularly scary or intimidating. Penguin is gross but not really scary, and certainly not in the way that Jack Nicholson’s Joker is scary in the previous film (seriously though, if you can’t make the Joker scary, then you have failed).

All right, so here’s the Penguin’s master plan (spoilers ahead for a 24-year old movie). He was abandoned by his rich parents shortly after he was born because he was so freakish, and I guess he was raised by penguins in the sewers. He eventually makes his debut in Gotham by pretending to save the Mayor’s son, so that the people of Gotham like him, and feel sorry for him when he reveals how his parents abandoned him.

He forms an alliance with a corrupt businessman named Max Schreck (played by Christopher Walken), who tries to get Penguin elected Mayor. How desperate must the citizens of Gotham be in order to think that the freaking Penguin would be a good choice for mayor? I mean geez, maybe they just figure that they couldn’t do any worse. Batman foils this plan by recording some of the Penguin’s rants and threats (like “I’ve played the people of this city like a harp from hell!”) and playing it back when Penguin tries to give a speech, turning the people of Gotham against him.

Penguin then sends out his henchmen to kidnap every firstborn son in Gotham and bring them back to his lair in the sewers so that he may kill them. Batman foils this plan as well. So after all that, Penguin is REALLY pissed, and he straps rocket launchers to the backs of his fleet of penguins and sends them out into the city to create havoc (he controls them with radio waves or something). Batman foils this plan by hijacking the radio signal that controls the penguins (I think).

Can you see what I mean when I say that the villains in this film aren’t very threatening? I mean, Batman foils Penguin’s schemes fairly easily every step of the way. And Catwoman doesn’t have much to do with the overall plot, she’s just kinda there. Penguin and Catwoman don’t accomplish anything in this movie. Think of the Joker or Bane in the Nolan films, who are able to bring the entire city of Gotham to its knees. Penguin and Catwoman in Batman Returns, by contrast, don’t achieve much of anything.

As I mentioned earlier though, both of Burton’s Batman films look great. I really like the Batsuit that Michael Keaton wears, it looks very good, although you can tell how uncomfortable in must have been to wear, and how much it must have restricted Keaton’s movements (instead of just looking up for example, Keaton has to throw his entire head back because the way the suit was constructed didn’t allow him to move his head independently. This issue would finally be fixed in The Dark Knight).

I also quite like the Bat-vehicles. The Batmobile in these films is one of my favorite versions of Batman’s iconic ride. It looks fierce and the armor plating that covers it when Batman leaves it alone is extremely cool. The Batplane that Batman uses to drag away Joker’s poison-gas-spreading balloons in the first film is also pretty badass, and Batman gets to use a sweet Batboat during the climax of Batman Returns. All of these vehicles look and sound great, and the effects that created them have held up quite well.

I do have one significant beef with these movies, however. Namely, Batman kills people. No two ways about it, he just straight-up murders several people. In the first movie he chucks a henchman off a clock tower, and blows up an entire factory full of bad guys. In the second, he sets a dude on fire with the Batmobile, and later he attaches a bomb to a henchman, grins at him, then punches him and walks away as the bomb explodes. Yep, they’re dead all right. As a Batman purist, this does bother me, but I would still argue that the Burton films are better interpretations of the character than the Schumacher films are.

Despite their quirks, I have come to quite like the Burton Batmans. They’re far from perfect, but they’re both utterly unique (especially Batman Returns). It amuses me that Batman Returns is rated PG-13 for “brooding, dark violence.” How many other movies have the MPAA described as “brooding?”

Fun fact: Batman Returns was so dark that either McDonald’s or Burger King (I forget which) cancelled a marketing tie-in with the film after parents complained. I don’t know why, but this kind of thing always amuses me. It’s kind of hard to blame them though, since Batman Returns includes scenes where the Penguin bites a dude’s nose off and Catwoman cuts a guy’s face open with her claws. No wonder parents complained.

There’s never a bad time to talk about Batman, but with the fast-approaching release of Batman vs. Superman, it seemed an appropriate time for a rewind of the earlier films. See you in a few weeks to talk about the new movie!

Coincidence and Tragedy

My favorite movie is and most likely always will be Die Hard, but if I had to pick a movie to call my second-favorite movie of all time, it would be The Dark Knight. I’ve seen the movie probably dozens of times since it was released way back in 2008 (the same year the first Iron Man movie came out) but it’s the kind of movie where you notice something new and different with every viewing.

I re-watched the movie a little while ago after not having seen it for some time, and there were two big things (hint: see the title of this post) that really stood out to me that I wanted to talk about here.

The first is coincidence. I’ve read a lot of stuff in various corners of the Internet ever since The Dark Knight came out complaining about how the Joker’s various diabolical schemes in the movie don’t make sense, and that much of the plot is coincidental because there’s no way the Joker could have planned out every single thing that happens in the film. These complaints have always bothered me, and re-watching the movie recently helped me figure out why.

People always talk about how the Joker must be clairvoyant or something, because he always seems to know what’s going to happen. But the point of the Joker isn’t that he knows everything that’s going to happen, it’s that he’s prepared for every eventuality and he reacts according to what other people do.

Joker tells Harvey Dent that “I’m like a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I caught one! I just…do…things.” The Joker doesn’t make plans. As he also tells Harvey, he’s the one who shows people how foolish their plans really are. He disrupts everyone else’s plans, and basks in the resulting chaos.

Also, think about one of the Joker’s first appearances in the movie, where he disrupts the meeting of the mobsters who are talking about what to do with their dirty money. The mobsters are all convinced to go along with Lau’s plan until the Joker shows up and tells them that there’s no way Lau’s so-called plan will be able to withstand Batman’s interference (and for the record, Joker turns out to be right about this).

This also feeds in to Joker’s status as Batman’s foil. He’s the opposite of Batman, a dark, perverted reflection of everything Batman represents. Because if you think about it, Batman’s tactics when it comes to fighting crime are not dissimilar from Joker’s tactics of instilling terror on the citizens of Gotham. Both use unpredictability and fear as weapons. The people of Gotham are scared of the Joker just as criminals are scared of Batman.

Remember in Batman Begins, when Bruce Wayne tells Alfred that he needs to become a symbol? His words are something along the lines of, “As a man I can be ignored, I can be destroyed, but as a symbol…as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.”

All of that applies to the Joker.

Just as Batman is the symbol of hope, the Joker is the symbol of terror.

All of this is to say that it really does not matter if the Joker’s schemes in the movie don’t completely make sense. Do Batman’s actions completely make sense to the criminals of Gotham? Probably not. But we see the movie from Batman’s perspective, so his actions make sense to us, the viewers, while the Joker’s don’t always. The Joker is all about creating an air of panic and disorientation, and this applies to Gotham’s citizenry as well as the viewers of the film.

We see Bruce and Alfred talking about what to do about the Joker; we don’t see Joker and his henchmen talking about what to do about Batman. We see Joker telling the mobsters that they need to kill Batman, yes, but he doesn’t share the details of how they are going to accomplish that. This serves to keep the viewer in suspense, and it also serves to bait the mobsters into thinking what Joker wants them to think, so that when they get desperate enough, they’ll turn to him. Just like Leo DiCaprio in Inception (which Christopher Nolan made after The Dark Knight), Joker plants the idea in their minds so that when the time comes, it’s him they’ll be thinking of.

But even aside from all of this, put very simply, the Joker’s actions drive the story, and the details don’t really matter. The Joker is the main force driving the plot of the film forward, and the actions of all the other characters are based around what he does. Christopher Nolan (who also co-wrote the movie) doesn’t waste time getting bogged down in the details of the Joker’s actions, because he knows that that would detract from the story, and from seeing the story through to its incredibly tragic conclusion.

And this, in an extremely roundabout way, brings me to the second main point I want to discuss about The Dark Knight, which is tragedy.

Superheroes, at their core, are all about sacrifice. And The Dark Knight is a movie that explores this theme in ways that no other superhero movie really does.

As much as I enjoy superhero movies, I can definitely concede that they tend to be predictable in terms of plot. Villain tries to destroy/take over world, hero stops him, day is saved, everyone is happy, everything is okay.

But at the end of The Dark Knight, everything is NOT okay. Yes, the Joker has been captured, and the immediate threat he poses has ended. But the crime-fighting trifecta of Batman, Commissioner Gordon, and Harvey Dent has been irreparably damaged. Not only is Harvey Dent physically dead, but so is his reputation. He pulled a full-blown Anakin Skywalker and descended into murderous madness, only to meet his end while in the process of attempting to murder Commissioner Gordon’s children. How many other superhero films end with a previously-heroic character pointing a gun at a child’s head? I sure can’t think of any.

The Joker has been stopped by the end of the film, but Batman, Gordon and Dent have had to sacrifice so much of themselves in order to accomplish that that it ends up being a Pyrrhic victory. They’ve all had to sacrifice their integrity on so many different occasions that it’s a wonder they have any part of their souls left at all. Take, for example, Batman using Fox’s sonar device to track every cell phone in the city. He knows it’s wrong to spy on so many people, but he does it anyway because the Joker has backed him into a corner and he has no other choice.

The Dark Knight is a movie in which so much more is at stake than the physical well-being of the characters. The characters’ very souls are at stake, making the movie as a whole about so much more than just saving a city from a madman.

The Dark Knight is a masterpiece. I admit that it’s not perfect, despite what I said about how the feeling of disorientation is intentional to some extent, I will agree that the film’s storytelling is a bit muddled at times. For example, I still don’t really understand the whole bullet-reconstruction sequence, that part of the movie has never made much sense to me. But I have come to accept it for what it is, which is a way to advance the plot. The specific details are kind of irrelevant.

And if the Joker’s actions don’t always seem to make sense, it’s because the Joker isn’t a typical villain and his actions aren’t driven by the kind of motivations that you would expect. Remember the scene where he burns the huge pile of money? He does that because he doesn’t care about money. He’s not motivated by it.

I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m trying to pass off the movie’s flaws by saying they’re all intentional. The film does strain believability a couple times, and the action sequences can be hard to follow. But the acting is tremendous and the ending is devastating, and it’s the most moving superhero film I’ve ever seen.

I still think it’s absurd that the movie wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, if ever there was a superhero movie that deserved to be nominated for Best Picture it’s this one. The stupid Academy of Motion Picture Snobs and Douchebags seems to enjoy stiffing Christopher Nolan, since they snubbed him for Inception and Interstellar as well.

Oh, well. The Dark Knight is still a masterpiece, and it’s a movie that has remained in the public consciousness for very good reason. It’s kind of amazing that Warner Bros. had the balls to let Christopher Nolan make the movie the way he wanted to, but it’s a gamble that paid off big time.

After 75 years (he celebrated his 75^th anniversary last year), Batman has proved that he is still relevant. And it is a great time to be a fan of the Caped Crusader. I can’t wait to play the upcoming video game Batman: Arkham Knight (I’ve put off buying a next-gen console until Arkham Knight comes out) and everyone has an opinion about Zack Snyder’s Batman/Superman movie due out next year. Batman is the greatest superhero of all time, and his many fans still have a lot to look forward to.

Everything is Awesome

Sometimes, I don’t understand myself.

When I first found out about The Lego Movie, I thought, “Well, Hollywood has officially run out of ideas. A movie where everything is made out of Legos? That sounds kind of dumb.”

I clearly remember thinking this, and being confused when the movie came out, got rave reviews, (96% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes) and was a huge hit.

Well, last week I decided to get over myself and watched the movie. I loved it. It was fantastic. Contrary to my stupid assumption that The Lego Movie was proof of Hollywood’s lack of good ideas, The Lego Movie is actually an incredibly creative and fun movie, with gorgeous animation, top-notch voice acting, and a lot of heart. It’s also hilariously funny and is just a joy to watch.

The movie is about Emmet, an ordinary Lego guy who just wants to fit in. He promptly becomes involved in a spectacular adventure involving Batman, Morgan Freeman, a cop with split personalities (both of which are voiced by Liam Neeson), a Lego love interest (my mom cracked up when I used the phrase “Lego love interest”) and an ultimate superweapon known only as…the Kragle.

If none of that makes sense, that’s okay. I’m not going to spend much time talking about the details of the plot, although it did occur to me that the plot is basically that of The Matrix, except that everything is made of Legos.

This is just a really, really fun, creative movie. Sometimes movies can enlighten you and make you consider deep philosophical questions about life and the human condition, and sometimes you need that. But there are other times that you just need to watch Lego Batman say “I’m here to see…YOUR BUTT.”

And I love what they did with Batman in this movie. I love Batman and I will defend Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies all damn day for being the serious treatment of Batman that the character deserves, but The Lego Movie’s Batman is just freaking hilarious, and pokes fun at the character in a way that is never cruel or mean-spirited, but just really funny and clever.

The voice work in the movie is fantastic too. Emmet is voiced by Chris Pratt, an immensely likable actor who will soon be seen in Guardians of the Galaxy, and he gives Emmet an inherent likability that makes him so easy to root for. Batman is voiced hilariously by Will Arnett, whose gravelly Batman voice manages to make him both a good depiction of Batman and also completely adorable. Unsurprisingly, he’s my favorite character in the movie.

There’s also Morgan Freeman as Vitruvius, the Morpheus-esque leader of the Lego resistance who wears a Lego tie-dye shirt and what I can only assume are Lego bellbottoms. Elizabeth Banks voices Wyldstyle, the aforementioned Lego love interest (who is totally not a DJ), Will Ferrell is the evil Lord Business, and of course, the great Liam Neeson is both Good Cop and Bad Cop. My favorite Bad Cop line is when he’s waving his little Lego hands around and says “Do you see these quotation marks I am making with my claw hands?” There’s also Gandalf, Dumbledore, Wonder Woman, Shaquille O’Neal…the list goes on and on, and part of what makes the movie so much fun is spotting all these characters in the background.

The movie was directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, a directing duo who can pretty much do no wrong these days. The visuals in this movie are frequently nothing short of breathtaking, and I was particularly transfixed by the Lego ocean in one scene, which looks exactly like rolling waves of Lego bricks. I have no idea how the animators pulled this movie off, but everything in it looks spectacular. Lord and Miller also directed 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street, and in The Lego Movie they manage to work in a pretty hilarious joke about how annoyed Lego Superman is by Lego Green Lantern, which is even funnier once you realize that Superman is voiced by Channing Tatum and Green Lantern is voiced by Jonah Hill.

The phrase “fun for the whole family” gets tossed around a lot, but The Lego Movie really is the perfect example of a movie that will appeal to pretty much everybody, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

When I wrote about Transformers a few weeks ago, I said that a fire-breathing robot T-Rex is a perfect representation of what you would find in the brain of a 12-year-old boy. The Lego Movie is similar, but in a way that is so much more meaningful than anything Michael Bay has ever been able to accomplish. This is a movie that has a really good message, and I know that it seems like every piece of children’s entertainment has to have sort of message for the kids these days, but this movie manages it so much more gracefully than most. The final scenes of the movie are genuinely poignant, and I found myself actually being moved by a movie about children’s construction toys. That alone qualifies The Lego Movie as one of the most memorable cinematic experiences I’ve had all year.

I write about a lot of dark and violent movies on this site (which isn’t going to change much because I’m going to write about The Raid 2 soon), but it’s important to remember to have a little levity every now and then. I’m not in a great place in my life right now, and I’m always grateful when a movie like The Lego Movie comes along to remind me that hey, everything will be okay and life will get better.

Everything is Awesome!

And now that song will be stuck in your head for the rest of the day. You’re welcome.

 

Scary Scenes from Non-Horror Movies

I recently read this article from a pop-culture website I like where the various writers on the site wrote about their favorite scary scenes from movies. What really interested me about the idea of listing scary movie scenes, as opposed to scary movies in their entirety, was that it left things open for a much wider range of films. There are plenty of scary scenes in movies that themselves are not otherwise meant to be particularly scary. So, I decided to completely rip off that list I read online and create my own list of movie scenes that scare me, the only requirement being that none of these movies are actually horror movies themselves.

Gravity and The Grey (the entire movies)

A friend of mine described Gravity as being “Like The Grey, but in space.” It’s an apt comparison. Both films are survival stories of the most harrowing variety. These are two of the most relentlessly intense and suspenseful films I have ever seen. The Grey is more punishing to watch, due to its graphic violence, but Gravity takes one of my biggest fears and puts it right up there on the screen, front and center. And it’s right there on the poster I pictured above. Alone, floating through space, slowly running out of air, completely helpless…shudder. When I first saw the trailer for Gravity, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle it. But I did, and I’m glad I did. Neither one of these films is an easy watch, but both are very much worth the effort. You might even learn something about yourself. I’m pretty sure I did.

Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson Return to Their Roots

Before they started making blockbusters, Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson cut their teeth making ultra-low-budget horror films. Raimi’s most famous was of course The Evil Dead, and Jackson’s was Brain Dead (or Dead Alive, whichever title you prefer). But neither filmmaker left their horror roots completely behind. In Spider-Man 2, there’s a scene in a hospital where Doctor Octopus’ robotic arms come to life and kill a roomful of doctors. It’s an intense, frightening scene, made all the more startling by its appearance in what is otherwise a pretty family-friendly movie. Raimi even throws in a reference to The Evil Dead and its sequels when one of the doctors picks up a chainsaw in an attempt to ward off the murderous appendages.

Peter Jackson, meanwhile, seems to have a thing for bugs.

 

Remember this scene? Of course you do. Who could forget the bug pit in King Kong? The completely unnecessary, thoroughly squirm-inducing bug pit scene? Where this poor sap gets his head chomped by a giant worm monster? That’s Andy Serkis by the way, he played Gollum and did the motion capture for King Kong himself. Peter Jackson repaid him for all his hard work by feeding him to a giant sharp-toothed slug-monster (true story). YouTube comments on this scene include such gems as “Oh my God, giant urethras devoured Smeagol holy shit” and “Christ this looks painful and disgusting.” Well said YouTube commenters.

 

And if anyone tells you they weren’t squirming through the entire Shelob scene in Return of the King, do not believe anything that person tells you ever again, because that person is a LIAR.

Heck, Jackson even co-founded Weta Digital, the special-effects company that worked on all three Lord of the Rings movies, King Kong, and a little movie you may have heard of called Avatar, also known as the number one highest-grossing movie of all time.

 

That lovely gentleman? That’s a weta, one of the world’s largest insects.

Look familiar now?

Drowning and Claustrophobia in The World is Not Enough

I wrote about this Bond flick last year at Christmas, and I bring it up here because the final showdown in this movie encompasses not one but two of my worst fears, said fears being drowning and really enclosed spaces. Generally I’m not that claustrophobic, but being trapped in a really confined space would freak me out to be sure. And drowning is just…well…gah. I don’t want to even think about it. Watch the scene in The Grey where the guy drowns and you’ll see what I mean.

Bond’s final showdown with the villain in The World is Not Enough takes place on board a sinking nuclear submarine. I have no desire to ever be on a submarine, combining really confined spaces with being underwater just does not sound like fun to me. In the movie, the sub is of course flooding, and Bond and Christmas Jones (there she is again, much as I try to forget about her) are in danger of drowning the entire time, while attempting to stop the villain from blowing up Istanbul. The scene freaked me the hell out when I saw the movie in theaters when I was around 11. It’s lost some of its impact for me since then, but it’s still a tense, effective sequence.

 

Of course, every scene that has her in it is also scary, but for entirely different reasons.

Beating of a Sensitive Area in Casino Royale

 

Yes, this scene. We all remember the one. You’re all squirming right now just thinking about it. I’ve traumatized you all just by mentioning it. Let’s just move on.

Every Time the Joker is Onscreen in The Dark Knight

Well, okay, this image won’t have you feeling any less traumatized I suppose. But seriously, I still almost can’t believe that’s Heath Ledger. He disappeared into that role so completely it’s just mind-boggling. Ledger’s Joker is one of those characters who’s so terrifying you almost can’t look at him, and yet Ledger’s performance is so magnetic he steals every scene he’s in, and you find yourself unable to look away. The Dark Knight is a modern masterpiece, a sprawling crime epic that deftly mixes social commentary and real-world relevance with the requisite genre elements required in superhero movies. Thanks to Ledger’s disturbingly mesmerizing Joker, it also mixes in quite a bit of white-knuckled terror.

Escape from the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin

 

Don’t judge me. This scared me when I was but a wee lad. I think I mentioned in my “I Miss the 90’s” post that seeing Aladdin in the theater when I was a kid is one of my earliest moviegoing memories. It was also one of my most traumatizing, since the scene where Aladdin escapes from the Cave of Wonders on the magic carpet with Abu and the lamp scared the heck out of me when I was like 4. There are plenty of other Disney movies with scenes that can scare little kids and I’m sure there were some that scared me too, but for whatever reason that one scene in Aladdin really got to me when I was little. I suppose that’s a little ironic, since I’m now an action-movie junkie.

So, there you have it. Proof that a movie doesn’t have to be in the horror section at the video store in order to still potentially traumatize you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a movie to watch.

Some Really Bad Movies

My moviegoing philosophy is to try to find something to like in every movie I watch. Here, in no particular order, are seven films that made that extremely difficult.

Torque

Whenever I think about the worst movies I have ever seen, Torque is always one of the first that comes to mind. Talk about not being able to find anything to like in a movie. This movie isn’t even fun in a silly-action-movie, so-bad-it’s-good sort of way. It’s so bad it’s just really, really bad. It’s a braindead, plotless, terribly executed, mind-numbingly stupid Fast and Furious rip-off. Just watch this video and tell me that isn’t some of the stupidest crap you’ve ever seen. In the immortal words of Roger Ebert: “I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated it. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.” Ebert wasn’t writing about Torque, but he might as well have been.

The Core

Why, Aaron Eckhart, why? You’re such a good actor, why do you keep making crappy movies? You were so good in The Dark Knight! I haven’t seen Olympus Has Fallen, but you’re a perfect choice to play a movie president! Hell, I’d vote for you in real life! You wouldn’t even have to have a platform! You could just say, “Hey, I’m Aaron Eckhart!” and I would say HELL YES and commit some kind of voter fraud on a massive scale to give you a couple million more votes! That’s how much I like you! But The Core is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen! You did your best to make it watchable, but even you couldn’t save this crapfest!

Please Aaron, I’m begging you.

Come back to us.

Please.

Stealth

 

Speaking of Fast and Furious rip-offs, here’s the director of the original The Fast and The Furious film trying to rip off his own damn movie. Hey, let’s make FF again, but with PLANES!! Great idea, right?

No dude, it wasn’t.

It really wasn’t.

Batman and Robin

Now here’s one that really, truly needs no introduction. This movie was so infamously bad that director Joel Schumacher freaking APOLOGIZED for how bad it was!! Bat-nipples!! Ice puns!! Everything in this movie was so inconceivably bad I have to use two exclamation points to express how bad it was!!

Perhaps even worse is that I loved this movie when I was a kid. It came out when I was ten so I think that says a lot about its target audience.

I was young and naïve!

Please don’t judge me too harshly.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

This obviously isn’t even the actual movie poster, and yet it sums up so perfectly what this movie is all about.

Whoops, where did that come from? Honestly, I have no idea.

I will defend the first Transformers movie, but Transformers 2 represents bloated Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking at its absolute worst. This and Batman and Robin are hands-down the two worst big-budget summer blockbusters I’ve ever seen. In both films, the characters are grating and obnoxious, the plots nonexistent, the action boring, the…

 

Gah!! How does this keep happening??

What was I saying? I don’t even remember anymore. I hate Transformers 2 so much. Ebert called it “a horrible experience of unbearable length,” which couldn’t be more accurate.

LEAVE ME ALONE MEGAN FOX!!

Miami Vice

 

Getting a bit more serious for a second, it really pains me to put this one on here. Michael Mann is one of my favorite directors. Collateral in particular is one of my top-ten favorite films. Heat is a modern crime classic, and Mann’s adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans with Daniel Day-Lewis is thoroughly epic. I even enjoyed Public Enemies, as flawed as it was. Miami Vice even has the distinction of being the first R-rated film I ever saw in a theater by myself, which makes it something of a milestone in my film-going career.

If only the movie itself were as memorable. I really couldn’t tell you anything at all about the plot, because there really wasn’t one. As good of a director as he is, Michael Mann’s main priority in this film seemed to have been to give every one of his main cast members multiple shower scenes. It’s just a boring-as-hell movie, which is really disappointing since it could have made for some good trashy fun. Instead it was just overly long, overly complicated, overly serious, and ultimately forgettable.

Sucker Punch

 

Zack Snyder is one of the more polarizing directors working these days. The man has his share of strengths and weaknesses to be sure, but for the most part I’ve liked his movies well enough. His remake of Dawn of the Dead was actually pretty good as far as modern remakes of classic horror movies are concerned. 300 is something of a guilty pleasure and I thought Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen was about as good a film of that book as anyone could realistically be expected to make. I’ll even defend Man of Steel against its (surprisingly many) haters, but even I have to admit that HOLY CRAP SUCKER PUNCH WAS BAD.

The plot is utterly nonsensical in ways I don’t have time to explain here. The characters have stripper-sounding names like Baby Doll, Rocket, Amber, Blondie, and Sweet Pea. The action scenes admittedly look pretty cool, even if nothing in them makes any sense. Why are these stripper-sounding gals suddenly fighting dragons, robots, giant samurai, and World War I steampunk German zombie soldiers? Who the hell knows? Because Zack Snyder directed this movie with a part of his anatomy other than his brain, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, there are seven really, really bad movies. It’s my birthday today, and my gift to myself is that I don’t have to watch any of them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a (good) movie to…

AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I Miss the 90’s

When I was a freshman in college, one of the common curriculum classes I had to take had this final project that was very open-ended. The class itself was pretty informal, and the final project was to get in groups and do a presentation on…well, pretty much anything you wanted, as long as there was an interactive element to it. One group did finger-painting, my group did T-shirts, and there were a couple others. Like I said, pretty open-ended.

One of the groups I remember the most was this group of easygoing folks who got up and talked about how awesome the 90’s were. Classic Disney movies, Third Eye Blind, GoldenEye on Nintendo 64…good times. In addition to being a fun, lighthearted project and a nice bit of relief during the stress of finals week, it was a great reminder of how the 90’s were just a great decade to be a kid in.

I was born in 1988, (also the same year Die Hard came out, though I was of course ignorant of this at the time, having just been born) but as this group pointed out, I am not a child of the 80’s, I am a child of the 90’s. I was born late September of 1988 anyway, so I was only around for less than two years’ worth of the 80’s. I am a product of the 90’s, through and through.

And I gotta say, I have a lot of fond memories of the 90’s. One of my earliest moviegoing memories is of seeing Aladdin in the theater, which is still a great movie.

 

I watched it a while ago and busted a gut for like five minutes laughing at this. Crazy Hakim’s Discount Fertilizer is totally on Facebook by the way. Seriously, Google that.

Beauty and The Beast in 1991, Aladdin in ’92, Lion King in ’94, Pocahontas in ’95, Hunchback of Notre Dame in ’96, Hercules in ’97 and Mulan in ’98…Disney doesn’t make ‘em like that anymore. Did you know that Disney’s upcoming Lone Ranger movie starring Johnny Depp with a bird on his head has a budget of $200 million-plus? Unbelievable. Probably won’t have one-tenth of what made Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King and Mulan so magical.

 

SERIOUSLY. There’s a BIRD on his HEAD. Even Depp looks like he isn’t quite sure how it got there. And why is his face white? Did the bird poop on him?

But getting back to the 90’s, they were awesome (Hell, people forget that The Matrix came out in 1999, even). Everything these days is so messed up, it always seems like we’re only a few days away from the next political scandal or school shooting or natural disaster. In the 90’s, things were simpler. Things seemed more…hopeful, somehow. Nowadays it’s all doom and gloom. The economy’s in the toilet, war, famine, disease, disaster, etc. etc. etc. The 00’s (oughts?) and the 10’s (teens? I don’t really know the proper abbreviation for the last few decades) are just so damn depressing in comparison.

Now, take all of what I’m saying here with a grain of salt. I was a kid in the 90’s, things are always easier when you’re a kid (at least in hindsight). So I think it’s safe to say that my outlook in my formative years was perhaps a bit more rosy than it is now. I mean sure, people who know me would tell you that I’m not always a ray of sunshine, I get depressed and uncommunicative sometimes (sorry, Mom). But when I’m in a good mood I like to think that I’m a decently fun guy to be around. I know the 90’s had its fair share of political turmoil and natural disasters and whatnot (like Columbine in 1999) but my point is nothing more profound than that it was just a good time to be a kid.

In a way, I feel kinda bad for kids these days. I can’t imagine the 00’s are anywhere near as much fun to grow up in as the good ol’ 90’s were. I could very well be wrong, I don’t have kids or anything (that I know of…JUST KIDDING MOM. Really). I had a great childhood, and the easygoing, fun-loving spirit of the 90’s was a big part of that. The facts that I had (and still have) a wonderful family and a great home and went to a good school all helped too of course. But the 90’s just had this…quality to them. After all, how could you not love a decade that produced such awesome TV series like The Pirates of Dark Water…

 

THIS SHOW WAS AWESOME. And Amazon tells me it is now available on DVD. I must buy it immediately. Damn shame they never finished it.

Or Gargoyles…

 

Seriously, this title card is so badass it could be the cover of a DragonForce album.

Or what I still consider to be the Greatest Animated Television Series of All Time, Batman: The Animated Series?

 

Also one of the greatest versions of Batman in any media, and you can even see its influence in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films. There’s even an episode where Batman has to stop Scarecrow from poisoning the Gotham water supply with fear toxin…sound familiar anyone? Mr. Nolan did his homework.

But what got me thinking about the 90’s anyway? Well, the party most directly responsible is a band called Nine Days and an album called The Madding Crowd, which just for fun I popped into my CD player in my car (yes, I still listen to CDs while I drive, call me old-fashioned) while on my way home from an appointment yesterday and promptly fell in love with all over again.

 

The title of the album is a reference to a novel called Far From the Madding Crowd by an English novelist named Thomas Hardy, whom I know nothing about but apparently had a brilliant mustache:

 

JUST LOOK AT THAT ‘STACHE. Magnificent.

Anyway, someone please tell me I’m not the only one out there who remembers this Nine Days album. The actual CD is out of print but I’m pretty sure you can still find it on iTunes. There are just so many great damn songs on this album. Who could forget the song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)”, a chart-topper from 2000? Yes, the album did technically come out in 2000, but in encapsulates that fun-loving spirit of the 90’s so well that I will always associate it with the 90’s. “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” is one of the songs that got me started listening to music in the first place, along with Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind, an anthem of the 90’s if ever there was one (people say it’s a drug song but who cares? Just try not to tap your foot to that beat).

What I love about “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” in particular is that it is a song about love. “This is the story of a girl/ who cried a river and drowned the whole world/ and while she looks so sad in photographs/ I absolutely love her/ when she smiles.” I love these lyrics. They’re open to interpretation, sure, but to me this is a song about love, about hanging in there when things are tough.

And the thing is, people don’t write lyrics like this anymore. These days it’s all a bunch of rappers going on and on about how they make more money that you and get more girls than you and all this other crap which is all utterly meaningless, and these people make millions, and I just don’t understand it. in the 90’s (okay early 00’s, Mr. Nitpicker) you had other songs from Nine Days like “If I Am”, another wonderfully hopeful song. “You should never let the sun set on tomorrow/ before the sun rises today.” Beautiful. Now you can’t even watch the video for “If I Am” on YouTube without an ad for Rihanna staring at you from the side of the screen.

Sigh. Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong era, but then I listen to songs like “If I Am” and think that maybe I wasn’t after all.

“The answers we find/ are never what we had in mind/ so we make them up as we go along.” So true, Nine Days.

So true.

My Top 5 Favorite Movies

My Top 5 Favorite Movies

1. Die Hard- This one will be obvious to anyone who read my post about Die Hard last Christmas. I still consider Die Hard to be the best movie I have ever seen. It is smart, funny, exciting, and packs a surprising emotional wallop. There’s not much more to say here that I didn’t put in my earlier post, so in an utterly shameless act of blatant self-promotion I am going to advise you to read my post about the Greatest Movie Ever Made to get all the juicy details. Coincidentally, the fifth Die Hard movie, the stupidly-titled A Good Day to Die Hard, is out on Valentine’s Day and I am very much looking forward to it, stupid title and all.
2. The Dark Knight- As much as I loved The Dark Knight Rises and Batman Begins, my favorite Christopher Nolan batflick has to be the second installment, which I personally consider to be the Greatest Superhero Movie of All Time. It’s beautifully acted, technically flawless, tremendously exciting and engaging, and makes you feel the weight that Bruce Wayne carries on his shoulders. Far from being perfect, Wayne is a very flawed and human protagonist, and he has to deal with pain and loss just like everyone else. The late, great Heath Ledger’s performance is instantly iconic and remains utterly chilling and captivating. He is a textbook example of a villain who is terrifying yet magnetic- you don’t want to look at him but it’s impossible to look away.
3. Hot Fuzz- I love this movie so much. A brilliant and hilarious British sendup of the buddy-cop genre (think Lethal Weapon, Point Break, Bad Boys, etc.) that just never gets old. My dad and I quote this movie to each other constantly and get a good chuckle or two every time. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are perfect comedic foils, and Edgar Wright’s zippy direction gives the film heart and style to spare. An endless supply of memorable lines and some hilariously over-the-top gore effects are icing on the delicious, delicious cake. I also love Pegg, Frost, and Wright’s zombie sendup Shaun of the Dead, which is my favorite zombie movie, and I eagerly await their next collaboration, The World’s End, due out later this year.
4. Casino Royale- There was a lot of hullaballoo when Daniel Craig was announced as the new James Bond circa 2005. I too had my doubts, but Craig had completely won me over before the opening credits had even started. Last year’s Skyfall was similarly excellent, but for me it is a very close second. Casino Royale reinvigorated Bond and made the often-outlandish character grounded and relatable, making him a human being with a soul instead of an unstoppable superman. He gets hurt and he actually bleeds! Did Roger Moore or Sean Connery ever emerge from a gunfight or climactic showdown with even a hair out of place? I don’t think they did. Casino Royale is a remarkable movie, and Craig’s Bond is closer to the Bond of Ian Fleming’s books than any previous incarnation. I think that if Fleming were around today he would be very pleased with where the character is now. I know I am.
5. Gladiator- I’m a big fan of swords-and-sandals epics, and Gladiator is my favorite of the bunch. I liked Braveheart and LOTR and Kingdom of Heaven, and I even fully own up to liking 2004’s much-maligned Troy movie. Yes, the one with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom. Don’t judge me. Anyway, Gladiator. It was a landmark movie for me, since it was the first R-rated film I ever saw, and it made a big impression on me. Russell Crowe has never been better, and Joaquin Phoenix has never been slimier. I’m a big Ridley Scott fan and while I agree that his most recent films Robin Hood and Prometheus had plenty of flaws, I still enjoyed the actual experience of sitting in a theater and watching them. He’s got a hell of an eye for spectacle, and Gladiator has plenty of that with sympathetic characters, great acting, despicable villains, and epic action in abundance. What more could you ask for?

So there you have it- my top 5 favorite movies of all time. I have plenty of other favorites, and I’m thinking about maybe making this an ongoing series and adding another five periodically. Matter of fact, I already have the next five in mind.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a movie to (or five) to watch.

2012: The Year in Villainy, Part Two

Yay, more villains! There were a lot of memorable cinematic villains in 2012, so let’s get to it.

Loki in The Avengers

Loki is another example of the villain needing to match the strength of the hero. That was a sizable task in The Avengers, which had no less than six superheroes. Joss Whedon’s megahit superhero flick managed to make Loki enough of a threat that it required the combined efforts of six superheroes to stop him, and it made sense to the viewer that one hero alone would not be enough to defeat him. Loki was far more interesting here than he was in Thor, and Whedon pulled off the not-inconsiderable task of giving all of the main characters a reason to hate him. There were so many ways The Avengers could have failed, but it didn’t, becoming the highest-grossing film of the year by a sizable margin and one of the year’s best popcorn movies. Bring on the next round of Marvel movies, starting in May with Iron Man 3! I’m so ready.

Bane in The Dark Knight Rises

It’s become cool since TDKR came out on DVD to gripe and complain about it, and for a bunch of jackasses to stick their noses in the air, look down on people, and say condescendingly, “It wasn’t that good.” I am here to tell you that those people are stupid. Do not listen to them. TDKR was a fantastic film, probably my favorite of the year. There are people out there (see above) who would simply say that my Batman fandom blinds me to any problems the film may have and that my opinion is therefore not valid. On the contrary, I am fully aware that TDKR is not a perfect film, in many ways it is quite flawed. But it is still fantastic, and Bane was one of the most original and memorable cinematic creations of the year. I don’t care that his origin story was slightly different from how it was in the comics, it still worked in the movie. Following in the footsteps of the late, great Heath Ledger was no easy task, but Tom Hardy gave a fantastic performance, and was completely convincing as a match for Batman both physically and mentally. Love him or hate him, you certainly won’t forget him.

As a side note, I’m not including Catwoman on this list because in my opinion she wasn’t a villain. More of an antihero, or antiheroine as the case may be. Certainly still a memorable character though.

The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man

To be honest, the Lizard was one of the weaker elements in The Amazing Spider-Man, a movie which otherwise gets my vote for Most Surprisingly Good Film of the Year. He looked a bit cheesy and Rhys Ifans seemed a bit bored as his alter ego, Dr. Curt Connors. But I still liked the film, and the Lizard was still enjoyable to watch. Another evil lizard: does anyone hate that stupid Geico gecko as much as I do? Seriously, it seems like you can’t watch TV for five minutes without that little green bastard popping up somewhere. Does anyone even think he’s still cute or whatever anymore? GAH. I hate you gecko. You give geckos a bad name. Okay, rant over.

Vilain in The Expendables 2

Ah yes, Vilain the Villain. The rather pointlessly evil bad guy played by the Muscles From Brussels himself, Jean-Claude Van Damme. He had no personality and no motivation whatsoever, but every action movie needs a villain so why not Van Damme? The Expendables 2 was thoroughly silly but I still enjoyed it immensely. Just listen to the way Van Damme pronounces “Don’t challenge me” and you’ll see what I mean. Amusingly, if you watch the blooper reel on the DVD, it seems like Van Damme had a hard time remembering his lines. Maybe he took too many spin kicks to the face back in the day.

Ares and Kronos in Wrath of the Titans

Most people have already forgotten Wrath of the Titans, the not-needed sequel to 2010’s mostly unloved Clash of the Titans. But it still had a couple of good villains. One was Ares, the God of War, played by Edgar Ramirez, an actor I like who does a good job of being evil but still a little sympathetic. Call me crazy, but I felt kind of bad for him. Kronos is a giant lava monster, so that’s pretty cool. There’s no kraken in Wrath of the Titans, but I thought that Kronos was one of the cooler-looking CGI creations of the year. The special-effects guys did a great job with him. He’s really just another giant monster bent on destruction, but at least he provided some snazzy visuals.

Silva in Skyfall

Shudder. Just thinking about Silva, played so brilliantly by Javier Bardem in the latest excellent James Bond film, is enough to send chills down my spine. He was so creepy. I liked Quantum of Solace, the previous Bond film, though I agreed with the common criticism that the villain was boring. I like the idea of an evil environmentalist, but Dominic Greene was pretty dull. Oh boy did they fix that in Skyfall. Silva is not only one of the best villains of the year, he’s one of the best Bond villains ever and one of the greatest cinematic villains of all time, period. Casting the Oscar-winner Javier Bardem as a Bond villain was an inspired choice, one that paid off in spades. Silva is completely unhinged and utterly terrifying, but just like the Joker in The Dark Knight, you can’t take your eyes off him and you kind of miss him when he’s not around. Utterly repellent and utterly fascinating, Silva embodies all the qualities of a great villain.

Mad Dog and Tama in The Raid: Redemption

One of the best straight-up action films of the year, the Indonesian martial-arts flick The Raid: Redemption also boasts a couple of thoroughly nasty villains in the form of ruthless gangster Tama and his main henchman, the aptly-named Mad Dog. These two do all kinds of horrible things to people and it is extremely satisfying when both get their inevitable comeuppance. Seriously, if you like action movies and you haven’t seen this one yet, stop reading this and go to Netflix or something RIGHT NOW.

The Convicts in Lockout

One of the many great ideas about setting an action movie on an orbiting space prison is that, by definition, pretty much everyone up there is a murderous psychopath. You’ve got an entire setting chock-full of bad guys! Think Arkham Asylum in space and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the kind of folks you will find populating the space prison in Lockout. My favorite was the main guy, I don’t know if he had a name but if you’ve seen the movie you’ll know who I mean. He’s the guy the President’s daughter interviews, who promptly kills all the guards and wakes up all the other inmates from cryosleep. This guy is so loony and has such a thick accent that it’s hard to even understand what he says. He’s skinny and emaciated and covered in tattoos, and just generally repulsive. Seriously, if they had to pick just one prisoner for the President’s daughter to interview, why did they have to pick the one guy who’s clearly crazier than a bag full of… I don’t know, something really crazy? It’s almost enough to make one wonder about the decision-making processes of the folks who run the space prison…

Tobin Frost in Safe House

Safe House was an early-year hit, and in my opinion it’s not hard to see why. Denzel Washington is the kind of actor who makes any movie he’s in worth watching, and he had great chemistry with Ryan Reynolds in this film. Think of Safe House as 3:10 To Yuma meets The Bourne Identity. I thought it was a great action flick, and I’m surprised to say that I find myself liking Ryan Reynolds more and more these days. Washington plays Tobin Frost, an ex-CIA agent who has since become a traitor. Despite his turncoat ways, I’m a bit conflicted calling him a villain since there are other characters in the film who might fit that description more aptly. But Washington’s is still the most memorable character in the film, and I liked how he and Reynolds had to depend on each other to survive. Safe House is a smart, punchy action flick, and while it may not be the most original story it is still worth checking out.

Clas Greve in Headhunters

Headhunters is a Norwegian crime thriller that only had a limited release in the States, so if you’ve never heard of it I forgive you. I’m cheating with this one a little since I think it was released in its native country in 2011, but I discovered it in 2012 so what the heck. The plot concerns a fellow named Roger, who has some serious inferiority issues. He uses his job as a corporate headhunter to find out which potential employees are in possession of valuable artwork, which he then steals. He bites off more than he can chew when he steals a valuable painting from an ex-soldier named Clas Greve, played chillingly by Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, best known to American audiences as Jamie Lannister from HBO’s Game of Thrones. Seriously, the dude is extremely badass. I would like to cast my vote for Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to be the next Bond villain. Headhunters is a great movie, if you’re into tense, smart, Hitchcockian thrillers you should absolutely check it out.

Azog the Defiler in The Hobbit

The Hobbit really didn’t need to be made into three movies, but I find myself looking forward to part two next year. Part of that has to do with the wonderfully-named Azog the Defiler. A completely invented character whom you will not find in Tolkien’s books, Azog the Defiler is a hideous albino orc monstrosity that the filmmakers invented to be a nemesis for badass dwarf hero Thorin Oakenshield. Azog is not really necessary to the plot in any meaningful way, but damn did I get a kick out of him.

So there you have it, my picks for the most memorable cinematic villains of 2012. Some 2013 villains I’m looking forward to seeing: General Zod in Man of Steel, The Mandarin (played by none other than Gandhi himself, Sir Ben Kingsley) in Iron Man 3, and whoever Benedict Cumberbatch is playing in Star Trek Into Darkness.

Are there any villains I may have missed? Who were some of your favorites?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a movie to watch.

Also, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!