"The Batman" Review: The Greatest Depiction of The World's Greatest Detective
The Batman is difficult to write about because there are so many things to talk about. Where do you start? Simply put, this may be the greatest depiction of the world’s greatest detective on the big screen!
The film starts in a Gotham City where criminals fear the bat symbol in the sky, but the Gotham Police Department doesn’t quite trust the masked vigilante yet. That’s not entirely true, at least one person does, James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). So when the mayor is killed by The Riddler (Paul Dano), Batman (Robert Pattinson) gets to visit the scene under skeptical eyes.
This is the crux of this Neo-noir film. Key political figures in Gotham are getting picked off by The Riddler one at a time and Batman has to solve it. Along the way his paths intertwine with Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz) aka Catwoman. I’d rather you go into the film as cold as possible so that you can enjoy the movie like I did, but I will talk about key elements here that don’t spoil the plot.
The direction from writer/director Matt Reeves is spectacular. This is the same man that brought us films like Cloverfield, Dawn of The Planet of The Apes, and War of The Planet of The Apes. So every moment and action sequence is well thought out and planned. Reeves partnership with cinematographer, Greig Fraser, paints Gotham in shadows and red. The red hues of dusk and dawn are used throughout the film for exterior shots. Fire burns and bullets also fly to illuminate characters with natural lighting. It sets a tone for this film that is kept throughout.
The ensemble cast at work is amazing in part because of the writing and due to the diligence of the film’s performers. The characters feel lived in and real. They aren’t comic portrayals as we’ve seen in some iterations of Batman movies, but people with histories. While some of the history is told in the film, much of it is in the physicality of the actors. Zoe Kravitz is on one as she plays three roles in this film in my opinion. There’s the girl who works in the club, Selina and Catwoman. Each hat she wears has varying levels of vulnerability. Jeffrey Wright gives a solid, subdued character performance as usual. You may hear people say that Colin Farrell is unrecognizable as Oswald Cobblepot and it’s true. The makeup and prosthetics have a lot to do with that physically, but he brings the trauma that Oz (as he’s called) would have gone through over the years into this character who has a chip on his shoulder with visions of power. Multiple outlets have reported that Paul Dano lost sleep in getting into the Riddler’s mindset and it shows on screen. Not bags under his eyes, but the twisted evil genius is there. His motivation is palpable.
Perhaps the major question you want me to answer is how is Pattinson as Batman. If I answered that, I’d taint the film for you either way. However, this is one of the first times I’ve seen Batman as an authentically feared entity. Criminals are supposed to fear him and they have in prior films but not like this. Here, the score from Michael Giacchino is fantastic being both brooding and haunting. It can play as a horror score at times and western showdown at others. Sound and the lack of it is used to accentuate the mythic status Batman is starting to achieve in this world. Reeves camera pushes into the darkness and looks for the boogie man like it would in a horror film.
The film is written in a style reminiscent of an old gumshoe. Batman narrates at points throughout the movie. As I said in the opening, this may be the greatest depiction of the world’s greatest detective because finally, we see the intelligent, detective side of Batman. We’re led throughout the two hour and fifty five minute run time by screenwriting that gives us what we need to know and keeps us asking what’s coming next. So use the restroom ahead of time and try not to get a large icee. This is absolutely one you don’t want to miss!
Rating: A
"Swiss Army Man" Review
My first Swiss Army Knife was crimson colored and already missing the toothpick. These things are either midnight QVC showpieces or elementary flirtations with danger and utility--passably good at widdling sticks into spears and not much else. Perhaps one would suffice in a dire circumstance, but TV shows like Naked and Afraid have demonstrated the value of a simple machete in survival situations. Swiss Army Man trades on the cinematic junk of wilderness survival movies. The setting either molds or swallows up its players, but such movies succeed on the spirit and imagination of their creators. Like a kid with a Swiss Army Knife, the tool as a portal is greater than the sum of its cheap parts. Swiss Army Man also reflects how much we’ve been raised on the pop culture junk that litters our earth much as our minds and souls. In the world of Swiss Army Man, the forest floor is decorated with a constant carpet of waste, 20 years of Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Editions, food wrappers, plastic bottles, and one talisman bag of cheese puffs.
The film’s titular body Manny (a spectacular Daniel Radcliffe) has the supernatural abilities of his title, but has neither a memory of his pre-corpse life nor humanity at all. Meanwhile, Hank Jones (Paul Dano) is buried in the memories of his own life and lacks the courage to pursue love and friendship. He can’t gather the courage to talk to the winsome girl on the bus (Mary-Elizabeth Winstead), though the secret photo he snapped of her is prominently displayed on his smartphone. It is this photo that churns the friendship between Hank, the man-child and Manny the corpse-man.
Hank discovers Manny just as he is about to end his own life on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. He soon discovers that, while the body appears dead, it contains an unfathomable amount of flatulence. So powerful is the corpse’s rear-engine that Hank is able to ride it/him across the water like a bare-assed jet ski, before capsizing and washing ashore on the mainland. In case you didn’t know what you were getting into, Swiss Army Man drops its trousers early. If you keep watching, it gets even better.
Manny’s transition from farting corpse to wood-chopping, fire-lighting, water-spewing Swiss Army Man takes place mostly in montages. Even though he is returning to life through the shared conversations with Hank, Manny is the one saving Hank’s hide. Chalk it up to the sparks between them--bromance, necro-mance, or otherwise. Manny is a like a scatological marriage of Pete’s Dragon Elliott, Zooey Deschanel’s Summer (500 Days of Summer) and a dash of Encino Man. At times, Hank is very easily carrying Manny’s farting corpse through the forest and other times really struggling with it. Dano apparently preferred to carry Radcliffe’s actual weight instead of a dummy. So the otherwise brute strength of a survivalist flick is realized in Hank’s very real struggle with a limp body. Likewise, Radcliffe wanted to do as much stunt work as possible, so the magical realism is grounded in very physical acting.
Written and directed by first-time film dabblers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Swiss Army Man is fresh and thoroughly motivated. Daniels, as the team is known, garnered fame for their music video for Lil John & DJ Snake’s “Turn Down for What” plus many other short compositions. Swiss Army Man sometimes feels like series of individual explorations that are self-contained enough to be a series of music videos starring the same characters. The soundtrack was composed by Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull and Robert McDowell (both of whom appear in cameo roles). The score evolves from Hank’s frequent choral renditions of songs like “Cotton-Eyed Joe”, where his voice is doubled and looped into a mesmerizing chorus that often touches the life-affirming buzz of a Polyphonic Spree song. Hank’s songs take on a supernatural quality and reveal one of Hank’s only coping mechanisms for his lonely life. Additionally, they reinforce the film’s theme of scatological alchemy, spinning fart’s and Eurotrash music into gold.
Swiss Army Man, for all its weirdness, seeks to prick the very real emotional center of existential crisis. It does so by shuffling performances of wilderness ritual with juvenile sensibility and arrested development. When the two leads are trapped in a valley, with little to do but re-create the bus-stop interaction that initially motivated Hank’s suicide, the movie channels Michel Gondry and shines because of its commitment to weirdness and not in spite of it. Swiss Army Man uses the beats of rom-com and survival movies to jostle an audience laboring under the delusions of pop-culture truths. Witness a triumphant film that throws a lot of paint on the canvas and beams proudly at its mess. Swiss Army Man is a bit aimless, but packed with committed performances and a weird beating heart.
Rating: B+