THE BATMAN: Another Dark Reboot Rises

Now raking in over $300 million at the multiplexes:

THE BATMAN (Dir. Matt Reeves, 2022)

Batman begins yet again.  

The first standalone film for the DC comic book icon since Christopher Nolan’s holy DARK KNIGHT trilogy concluded a decade ago brings us a new brooding Batman in Robert Pattinson, an actor who sure has made leaps and bounds in his career since his pretty-boy TWILIGHT days.

 

Pattinson’s debut thankfully isn’t another origin story as it presents the caped crime-fighter already established as the conundrum of being a vigilante who works with the police. So while director/co-writer Matt Reeves’ take doesn’t go as far back to where we’ve gone so many times before - i.e. the killing of Bruce Wayne’s parents - it does get back to bat basics by exploring Batman’s early detective roots.

 

The film follows Batman’s investigation, aided by Lieutenant Jim Gordon (the reliably gruff Jeffrey Wright), into the murders of prominent Gotham City political figures by the Zodiac killer-inspired Riddler (a definitively unhinged Paul Dano). Along the way to the inevitable spectacle-filled climax In Batman brushes up against The Penguin (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell), mob boss Carmine Falcone (the always welcome John Turturro), and Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz, whose crazysexycool-style really sizzles).

 

THE BATMAN contains a stellar cast, a gorgeously gothic look, a hypnotically murky tone, and an undeniable gravitas that makes it a mighty addition to Batman mythology. However, while I appreciated these elements, I had trouble fully engaging with it. It’s all too easy to complain about how many big event movies are too long these days, but at just under three hours, THE BATMAN can be justifiably slammed for its punishing length.

 

There are too many scenes that drag beyond the point that they are supposed to be making, and lost me in the foggy scenery. However, these plodding set-pieces are routinely broken up by the action showcases like the movie’s most thrilling part, the Batmobile freeway chase sequence. Such things helped me stay awake when my mind felt like it was being numbed by the Bat procedural.

 

It also didn’t help that the film felt horribly humorless throughout. Maybe that’s pure intent, as Batman has often been made to be a pretty silly commodity whether it be via Adam West or Lego®, and many fans want it to be as serious as a heart attack, but a few witty lines here, and there wouldn’t have hurt.

 

After so many incarnations, I believe I’ve come down with a major case of Batman fatigue. Pattinson’s performance as the legendary character is solid, and I bet he’ll be further up to the task in the inevitable sequels, but maybe my mind is too cluttered with every other Dark Knight actor to fully embrace him. Maybe only when memories of Ben Affleck (or Batfleck) have fully faded can that happen.

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Christopher Nolan’s Mind-Baffling TENET

I originally wanted to see this film on the big screen months ago, but, you know, with the pandemic and all, I chickened out more than once. With its home video release earlier this month, I caught up with it. So let’s get to it:

TENET (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2020)

Christopher Nolan’s 11th film was an unfortunate victim of bad timing as it was scheduled for release in July, one of the worst months of the pandemic. TENET was delayed three times until its release in September when it was declared a flop. Although it definitely underperformed, largely due to its ginormous budget, the movie did make enough to make the top #4 on the top grossing films of 2020 worldwide, but of course, that’s because of its lack of competition.

But enough about how much money it made, let’s get to the question - is it a worthwile watch? Well, I would say for the most part it is, but parts were confusing as Hell, and many times throughout I was thinking that I didn’t know WTF was going on. On its simplest level, TENET is a sci-fi tinged spy thriller. At its most complex, it’s an overly cerebral action picture that relies on a high falutin concept as a means to an end.

It’s gonna be hard as hell to describe this film, but I’ll try to work it out. The protagonist, a CIA agent strongly portrayed by John David Washington (BLACKKKLANSMAN), is actually credited as “The Protagonist” (that’s right, and people actually address him that way), is recruited by an organization named Tenet to track down where inverted bullets from the future came from so that World War III can be inverted.

“Inverted bullets,” you may ask? Well, the most important word in the movie (even more than its title) is inversion is when the entropy of a person, or item, is reversed so that they move backwards in time. This is explained over and over, but still never seems to grab hold as an accessible concept. 

At one point, our hero asks what’s going on, and someone says “they’re running a temporal pincer movement.” Well, that clears that all up!

Anyway, Washington’s Protagonist is paired with an operative named Neil (a yet again solid Robert Pattinson), who knows more than he’s letting on about their mission. They literally bungee-jump into the world of arms dealing, and forged paintings, and encounter Kenneth Branaugh as Sater, a menacing Russian antagonist (though he’s not named Antogonist), and his abused wife, Kat played by Elizabeth Debicki, who The Protagonist becomes sweet on.

There are several big action sequences in which planes, boats, cars, and explosions run backwards - the best involving a convoy being ambushed in Tallinn, Estonia – but they are stitched together by countless scenes of exposition. One bit was so full of tedious talking bits that I was unsure what was going on in the scene following involving setting up the crash of a 747 aircraft. Why are they doing this again?

One character, a scientist played by Clémence Poésy, even says “Don’t try to understand it,” early on.

Branaugh (in his second Nolan film after DUNKIRK) as Sater is a pretty clichéd sadistic bad guy character with his clichéd Russian accent, yet he has a few moments of effective villainy. Giving a greater sense of gravitas is Hindu star Dimple Kapadia, but she is saddled with perplexingly cryptic dialogue. But then, seemingly everyone else is too. In his eight appearance in a Nolan film, Michael Caine avoids this trap, but that’s probably because he was one scene, which, of course, he nails.

The majority of Nolan’s films have been mind-boggling, but TENET is more mind-baffling. By the end, which involves inverted and non-inverted armies battling each other in the rubble of a destroyed city in Siberia, I think I could follow things better than before, but the inscrutable plot points that got me there were still getting in the way of having fun with this maze-like material.

I would only really recommend this bloated epic (2 and half hours!) to hardcore Christopher Nolan-heads, or folks that love complex sci-fi. Otherwise you may wind up as confused and mind-baffled as I was after a viewing. A repeated line in the film, said by Washington and Pattinson to each other is “What happened, happened.” That’s the only thing I can be sure of - TENET happened.

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A Couple Of Indies: WORDS AND PICTURES & THE ROVER

A couple of indies currently playing at an arthouse near me...

WORDS AND PICTURES

(Dir. Fred Schepisi, 2013)

Fred Schepisi's WORDS AND PICTURES, written by Gerald Di Pego, pulls off a mean feat - it manages to be cloyingly cutesy and numbingly pretentious at the same time.

Taking place at a fictional posh prep school in New England (filmed in Canada), Clive Owen portrays a scruffy, douchey English teacher who's way into words, while Juliette Binoche plays a newly arrived art teacher, who, you guessed it, is all about pictures.

The couple clash, and Owen comes up with some kind of school-wide competition in which words and pictures will fight it out via the students work.Owen's job is on the line because he hasn't produced anything of substance in years, and he has a drinking problem (a "hobby," he calls it).

Binoche suffers from rheumatoid arthritis which limits her ability to paint - she does manage though with the help of crutches, and braces to do some Jackson Pollack-type splatter art.

Owen's character - the former literary sensation going to seed - is one we've seen many times (replace the booze with pot and you've got Michael Douglas in WONDER BOYS), and his pseudo inspirational teaching scenes, are insufferable especially when he tells his students that a haiku is an “early tweet.”

Binoche and Owen, of course, get together which has the film seemingly say that the battle of words against pictures inevitably ends in a tie with sex.

Director Schepisi (ROXANNE, SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION) has made some drecky rom dramedies in his time but this saccharine and preachy exercise is the worst I've seen of his.

The famous quote, oft repeated in this film, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” may be true, but this motion picture sure isn't worth anywhere close to that. Which is why I'm stopping here.

THE ROVER (Dir. David Michôd, 2014)

Set in Australia “ten years after the collapse,” as an opening title tells us, there’s definitely a MAD MAX vibe going on in this new thriller from ANIMAL KINGDOM writer/director David Michôd.

But don’t go looking for the action, or commentary on modern society, that the soon to be rebooted MAD MAX franchise has as its calling cards, as this is a spare, single-minded narrative, that never really gets going.

The bare bones of the premise posit a grizzled Guy Pearce, only identifying himself as a former farmer, trying to track down his car, which we see getting stolen at the film’s beginning by a roving gang of skuzzy criminals led by Scoot McNairy (KILLING THEM SOFTLY, ARGO, MONSTERS).

Pearce enlists Robert Pattinson (TWILIGHT, COSMOPOLIS), as the brother of one of the thieves, to go on a trek across the infinite Australian desert to find them and retrieve his vehicle. The slowly paced adventure across the outback that Pearce and Pattinson go on mostly involves going to desolate locations, whether they be an abandoned town, an opium den, a seedy motel, or an army base, and shooting creepy characters in them in the head.

I won’t spoil the mystery of why Pearce is so driven to get his car back, but I’ll just say that the film is too dreary and drawn out for the conclusion to have the emotional impact it's trying for.

As intense and invested as Pearce is, his character is impenetrable, much like the rest of the movie, but Pattinson actually contributes some of his finest acting so far in his career. The on the cusp of manhood theme that James Frecheville embodied in ANIMAL KINGDOM bleeds through Pattinson’s edgy acting as the unhinged, possibly brain-damaged youngster caught up in a messy mission.

Apart from Pearce and Pattinson’s on point performances, and a smattering of blinding visuals courtesy of cinematographer Natasha Braier, THE ROVER is a dull slog through tired terrain. I bet it could be cut down into a killer 20 minute short though.

More later…