The Batman

I didn't mind it. I thought the subdued tone ramped up enough by the end -- enough to get by, though there's nothing earth-shaking here. It feels unnecessary, but valiant. It trades glamor for subtlety (as subtle as Batman can be, which is not subtle at all), and I always like subtlety. It can't ditch glamor entirely without losing lots of money, but I like that it's toned down. Again, this is all relative to previous iterations, especially the Nolans, which are really glamorous (Batmobile is a tank, Bruce is charming...). Relative to those, The Batman is almost underground. Most severe is Pattinson who doesn't smile once. What's all this for, for his depressive Bruce? The movie didn't give me any sense of his motivations, so I assume they don't exist, which is a big blow to empathetic investment. He doesn't feel human. It feels like he could slip into death at any point without making a sound. His one supposedly human moment with Alfred felt very forced to me. There were some loose threads -- another that comes to mind is the Riddler's bit about being orphan kin with Bruce. That felt underdeveloped or forced. I'm sure it's hard to craft epic Batman villains AND explain their motivations (The Dark Knight just says "some men just want to watch the world burn). I didn't buy the Riddler's motivations. But in a franchise rethinking one can forgive a couple loose threads. Not that a franchise rethinking was necessary in the first place.

I guess I'm fairly sympathetic here, especially given how stupid I find the idea of all these reboots. I didn't mind it. It wasn't great or thrilling or awesome, but I wasn't repulsed, and I think that says a lot. I didn't think it was as cheesy as the Nolans, nor nearly as repulsive as the other DC and Marvel stuff that's going on. Again, more subdued.

I'm ambivalent on Paul Dano's performance. It was one of the least subtle and most epic components. I've written on the progression of Oscar-royal Bond villains -- I resent the perceived need for increasingly alien villains (Skyfall...Spectre...No Time to Die). They're abstract and unrelatable. This trend transcends Bond though. Superhero movies also seem caught in a futile game of one-upping that pulls the ground out from beneath the villains. I understand the principle: the foreign terror is real; meeting these villains is akin to meeting the black hole in Interstellar. But it's getting too obvious and silly, especially for movies trying to be grounded. The Bond franchise has always been hyperbolic, of course, but their attempts to ground it in real human drama have largely failed thanks to ungrounded villains. The Batman is also going for something more subtle and underground than recent superhero movies, including the Nolan iteration -- yet simultaneously participating in the silly villain one-upping. By the end, Dano unhinges whatever subtlety persisted. His talk with Batman in the cell did it for me -- and that was his big moment. It felt like acting. It felt like There Will Be Blood. How do cerebral serial killers speak in reality? I don't know, but I'm guessing it's nothing like this. Hopefully Dano did some research, if not actually spoke to some. It felt ridiculous. Here's Robert Pattinson with his little bat ears, and Eli Sunday Paul Dano shouting pulp poetry at him... don't the actors feel dumb? Dano's performance was arresting, but excessive.

I'd be more qualified to write about all these superhero movies if I read the comics. But I like movies, and I'm interested in movies, and all these superhero movies are pretty questionable, even when fun.

One of my biggest problems here was not understanding Bruce's motivations. It didn't feel like he had anything to fight for, so any failures would feel inconsequential. At least Christian Bale had Rachel and other normal human instincts. Pattinson was a bat cave himself -- cold and empty. I think we need some reason to care about Batman's life and fate. I didn't sense much here. He felt like a martyr just waiting to be martyred for a city probably doomed anyway.

Inland Empire

It got too incoherent too fast. I gave up. I don't think it felt so hopeless in Mulholland Drive, my only other Lynch experience. This felt familiar after that -- actress playing actress, shifting identities -- but this felt out of control. I'm sure there are some threads of sense for the braiding, but I don't feel motivated -- it was too much. Too much chaos, not enough payoff. Mulholland Drive balanced these better. I believe I like and respect this movie, and most of the time my interest endured said chaos, but I really expected a more powerful experience. The experience lost its gravity too early. It needed to keep reeling in the viewer, honestly, building more trust before betraying it.

Maybe I was watching surreal movies too young, learning to succumb too soon. Often I've given up on difficult movies before others who are less acquainted with such movies, and I lose a lot. Often I fail to make sense of movies, possibly because I learned to give up too young. I gave up on identity-shifting movies like Mulholland Drive and I'm Thinking of Ending Things before my viewing partners, and missed some enlightenment thereby. I'm curiously bad at making sense of movies -- curious given my interest and experience.

All I'd really heard of Inland Empire was, from two independent and trusty sources, that it was terrifying. I'd seen Mulholland Drive a couple times since early high school when it scared the shit out of me and I composed one of my first movie reviews ever: "it went from dream to wet dream to nightmare". Mulholland Drive was formative for me. Peter Travers told me to succumb, and maybe, for the next decade of movies, I took him too seriously.

I didn't think Inland Empire was that terrifying. It was certainly nervy and grotesque, but, adolescence notwithstanding, I seem to remember Mulholland Drive being scarier, probably largely because it kept the viewer honest rather than severing all empathy. Laura Dern just seemed like a tired new iteration of Naomi Watts, and the incoherence onslaught came overswift.

I'm glad some threads connected near the end -- not sensibly, perhaps, but self-referential enough to ponder. I needed more of that. I also thought the setup in the first hour was effective, and could have gone somewhere. It really didn't.

This movie felt off-the-rails. It was a strong experience, but not a deep enough. It also lacks the sheen of Mulholland Drive, so it felt less beautiful and less impactful. I'm certainly interested though -- interested enough to finish up this post right now so I can go read about it for a while.

Bad movies

Films I Have Seen

I haven't seen many legendarily bad movies. The bad movies I've seen are mostly throwaway kids movies when I was a kid. I've seen some bad movies as an adult, but not "worst films of all time" or "so bad it's good" territory. I'm not sure I really believe in that anyway -- I mean I'm sure it could be interesting and ironic, but I doubt I could really enjoy that fare. I do believe some people enjoy it. But I think usually when I've seen bad movies it has felt soul-crushing. Either way, I doubt I'd prioritize it.

As a side note, here was one of my worst film experiences as an adult, of a film whose critical reviews are not even that bad: Review: Razor's Edge. I still don't understand that experience.

I think the only movies I've seen on Wikipedia's List of films considered the worst are the Friedberg/Seltzer parodies and Batman & Robin (which I didn't mind as a kid).

I might add more thoughts when I get a chance.

Zach Snyder's Justice League

I watched its four hours in maybe two. At some point in the last couple years I scrubbed through the theatrical cut. Of course I'm no student of the theatrical cut, but I didn't notice much difference, for my purposes. Personal and artistic takeaways were roughly equivalent -- just cheap thrill for a lifelong movielover. I guess I could tell which was which if I blind-tested them back to back? Probably just by Snyder's general grunge. But in the scope of my life it'd be splitting hairs -- both are so insignificant the differences hardly matter. It's still all interesting to me -- I can't help it -- but I can't call either movie very good.

I'm consistently disappointed by superhero movies (as mentioned recently). I'm not sure I've ever seen a superhero movie I'd call really good. The Dark Knight was supposed to be the one, but my last viewing was quite underwhelming. I think part of the trouble is we're trying to make immature material mature. The comic books were written for a different audience than these movies, and the translation doesn't work. I'm not trying to say comic books are intrinsically, universally immature -- but there's something about them that doesn't translate to blockbuster Hollywood. Example: I was watching an ostensibly dark, mature moment in The Dark Knight, and I noticed the ears on his suit, and it looked stupid, and I felt stupid and confused for watching this, which tore me out of the immersion. Some of this is just ridiculous. The comic books were probably never intended to be translated like this.

It's like Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, where they tried to make a mature blockbuster epic out of a children's fairy tale. Everything is supposed to be epic these days. Not everything can be epic. Some things will die before they're epic. Tolkien's Hobbit wasn't designed for epic. Maybe these comic books weren't either. It's just silly to treat them so -- and as far as I'm aware, not a single great movie has come of all these colossally-expensive attempts.

But will I keep trying? It's hard to resist. I'm so interested.

Note: Wikipedia's take on the differences between the two cuts sounded as biased as anything I've ever read on Wikipedia. I guess I'll trust Snyder's cut should be considered more authentic, but boy was Whedon vilified for (again, for my purposes) vaguely equivalent cheap entertainment.

Batman Begins and The Dark Knight

Less mature than I remembered. My expectations for superhero movies are consistently too high. I still get excited about them, which is interesting given the consistent mediocrity. I might even say I like the genre, without loving a single movie in it. I get excited, and they're all less subtle and mature than I expect. This must reflect some difference between me and the mass audiences obsessed with these movies. The similarity is the excitement; the difference is the fulfillment. It's largely about the writing -- I'm attentive to writing, which is a weak point for this genre. The Dark Knight with exactly the same story but better dialogue may have been great. Instead it's childish.

The Dark Knight was probably better than Batman Begins, although I'm more attracted to the idea of Batman Begins. The Dark Knight has too much chaos, not enough Batman. It's centrifugal; it needs more digging into the Batman character. But Batman Begins is probably not original enough or epic enough. Both are stunted by juvenile dialogue.

Even back in high school I wasn't impressed with The Dark Knight Rises, so I don't feel the need to watch it now. There are ways to make superhero movies feel real; you can manipulate the materials of reality without affecting its dynamics; and these movies fail, because the dynamics don't feel authentic. This isn't how people would react to singularities like Batman and the Joker. You need a good "straight man" type -- people reacting to absurd situations the way you would. But these movies are unrealistic, ignoring the singular characters: not even the extras are believable. It doesn't feel real. I can't empathize. It's all superhero fiction.

West Side Story (2021)

Ansel Elgort's puffy, sleepy face ruined it for me. I just couldn't buy a relationship between one so lifeless and the other so full of life. This is largely a love story, of instant, intense infatuation. That's Romeo and Juliet and that's West Side Story. Such infatuation isn't credible when one severely underwhelms the other's energy. She wouldn't care about him. He'd be like Chino. This isn't so in the 1961 film. There, Tony has a spark in his eyes, spring in his step, big smile, facial muscles capable of expressing emotions.

I wonder what the rest of the cast thought. We're all so multi-talented and vivacious, and then there's Ansel. It's really a bummer. It's a bigger bummer for the romance than anything, but also a bummer for his other scenes. He doesn't fit in, and it blunts the whole movie.

Everyone else is excellent: Maria, Bernardo, Riff, Anita. They are inspiring and energetic. I got the feeling there was less dancing this time around; I could have used more of it.

I wouldn't mind sleepy Ansel in other contexts. Sometimes I idolize that archetype. But it doesn't work here. Would it work in any musical theater? Why does it seem this obvious incompatibility went unnoticed?

The only other flaw that really stuck out was some confused tone/mood. There were moments the emotions were poorly guided and I felt confused or awkward. I know that's what real life is like -- lots of ambiguity -- and some movies pull it off intentionally, but here it felt accidental. It felt like I was supposed to be swept up in a tide that was baffled by destructive interference. Movies can be sweeping or ambiguous, and pull either off, if it's subtle. I think this one fumbled a few times between the two. It wasn't a huge deal though. Maybe wakeful Ansel would've been enough to secure the sweep: the final bristle.