Joel Schumacher – People Talking

Bat-Mania QUADRUPLE Pack – ‘Batman’ (‘89) – ‘Batman Returns’ – ‘Batman Forever’ – ‘Batman & Robin’

To be honest, as much as I love the Caped Crusader, I’ve never really been a fan of these movies.

Oh, I’ve enjoyed so many things they’ve inspired, like Danny Elfman’s original score, The Animated Series, the roller coasters, the stunt shows, etc., but the Burton/Schumacher series of films never did much for me as movies.

However, since I’ve seemingly reviewed every other live-action Batman movie except for the Adam West one, and also reviewed the greatest Batman movie of its generation, Mask of the Phantasm, it only seems fitting to give these a once over, too.

Bombs away.

1989.
A Number.
Another Summer.
The biggest movie summer ever by many estimations.

After all, you had, in order: new Indiana Jones, new Star Trek, new Ghost Busters, new Karate Kid, new Lethal Weapon, new James Bond, and both new Jason and Freddy, all in the same summer. Not to mention successful original films like Dead Poets Society, When Harry Met Sally, Turner & Hooch, Parenthood, The Abyss, Uncle Buck, and, of course, UHF (just kidding, it bombed; but it’s still worth watching).

Into this drops Tim Burton’s Batman, and, other than Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in the worldwide box office, it dominates and out-grosses all comers.

Why? Heck, I don’t know. I’d no sooner put Tim Burton in charge of Batman then I’d put Sam Raimi in charge of Spider-Man; but then I’m not a cocaine-addled Hollywood executive.

In all seriousness though, in the wake of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, and seeing that a comic book figure could be eminently successful on the silver screen, I think Dark Knight fans were just eager for their first taste of live-action Batman since 1968.

And, to be fair, the first twenty-five minutes are quite good; the misdirect introduction down Crime Alley is a good starting point, and the movie sets up like it’s going to great places, but, once the shooting starts at Axis Chemicals, the warts really come to light.

For one, the action is clumsy, and second, the script is some major weak sauce. I’ve heard the screenplay was being written as they were shooting, but what was the story they wanted to tell? As far as I can see, the last ninety minutes basically consist of two men fighting over a woman. That’s your superhero movie? A romantic comedy in Halloween costumes? Not to mention none of the one-liners other than “I’m Batman” have any punch. Also, making things personal with The Joker is a hack move. That was already cliche by 1981 (and still cliche in 2015).

Speaking of, couldn’t they have named Jack Nicholson’s character something other than “Jack”; I mean, what is this, a sitcom? I admit, I’m a little biased because to me he’s Jack Nicholson in every movie; sometimes it works (often, actually), sometimes it doesn’t, but to me he feels like the wrong choice here. I just see Jack Nicholson imitating Cesar Romero and I don’t find it special.

And another thing, while there is a good amount of investigating in this film, barely any of it is done by Batman. You know, that guy? The World’s Greatest Detective?

Now, to be positive, the Bat costume and Bat vehicles are unquestionably iconic, and I think Michael Keaton is fine in the “lead”, though largely wasted. And it’s no secret that Danny Elfman’s score holds the movie on its shoulders like Atlas, but the Prince songs stick out like a sore thumb as they don’t match the aesthetic of the film at all.

One last thing, as much as I ordinarily love and champion the use of miniatures, this movie is not the effects team’s finest hour.

All-in-all, not unlike Top Gun, Batman is one of those Eighties movies that’s culturally iconic, but when you look past the veneer, it’s really not very good; and as a Batman fan, I find it even more disappointing.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Did you know that Tim Burton is really into misfits, losers, and freaks?

Did you?

Did you know that?

I’d compare both of Tim Burton’s Batman films to Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, in that he seems deeply uninterested in Batman and would rather devote screen time to telling literally any other story (or stories, plural).

In the case of Batman Returns, he gets one thing right though: Catwoman.

Michelle Pfeiffer is great. She absolutely nails her role and may very well give the best individual performance of any of these four films.

Beyond that, this movie pushes things into fairy tale fantasy land, which might be okay if it was fun, or bright, or colorful, but it’s Burton’s dark fairy land, with all the black-and-white spirals and Elfman “la-la-la-la” score.

Despite the in-universe continuity, it may as well be totally unrelated to the previous film, but it’s no improvement either way.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

I mean, If you’re going to go comic book, you may as well go for it.

Out with Burton, Keaton, and Elfman; in with Schumacher (God rest him), Kilmer (who would have made a fine Dark Knight from the beginning), and Goldenthal (who created an admirable B-theme to Elfman’s A-theme for the Caped Crusader).

So, this movie has obvious problems, and, like Batman Returns, it’s over-laden with characters, but at least it takes an interest in its hero; and, while it’s somewhat annoying to have yet another movie with yet another romantic subplot, it’s nice to see Bruce Wayne actually care about someone else other than Alfred and the belle du jour.

Of course, I’m talking about Chris O’Donnell’s character of Dick Grayson AKA Robin. In fact, his whole introduction is one of the best parts of the movie, and his arc and how it affects Batman gives the film some much-needed heart. I would have loved to have seen Keaton handle this sort of material in either of the first two, but it just wasn’t there for him.

That said, the movie is no masterpiece. Jim Carrey is hit-or-miss as The Riddler, and I’m not sure Tommy Lee Jones had any real idea what he was doing as Two-Face.

But, we get more of a sense of scale from Gotham City compared to the Burton films, and many of the effects benefit from advances in technology, but also just execution.

Still, I don’t really give it a general recommendation.

Rating: ★★½ (out of five)

I remembered this movie being bad.

I didn’t remember it being this bad.

There are moments that are funny-bad (you can find super-cuts of them on YouTube), but this isn’t a movie like The Room. It doesn’t even earn that much kudos, in no small part because it’s TWO HOURS LONG.

To give it a modicum of praise, I think Uma Thurman realized what level of schlock she was in, and she does her best to have fun with it, but even so much of what she has to work with is just groan-worthy.

It’s a punishing slog; that’s it.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

P.S.
Even though I didn’t love any of these movies, I still loved spending time at The Mahoning Drive-In Theater. It may have been a little wet on Friday night, but the show carried on just fine. They truly are a beacon in these dark times.

Quick Thoughts – August Round-Up

Across 110th Street (1972)

Anyone who’s seen Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown is familiar with this title, as the Bobby Womack single of the same name (which appears on the soundtrack album but not in the actual movie?) plays at both the beginning and end of that film.

It gets lumped in with the Blaxploitation genre, but after seeing it, it’s clear that Across 110th Street doesn’t belong there. For one thing, the tone is too serious (there’s nothing really tongue-in-cheek about it), and there’s no strong, Black protagonist, because there’s no protagonist of any kind (we’ll come back to that).

Let’s back up for a second. Across 100th Street begins with the violent theft of a large sum of Italian mob money by three Black robbers. From there, it’s a race against time between the mobsters and the cops to find out who did it; the cops wanting justice for their gunned-down brethren, and the mob wanting to set an example to those who would try to steal from them.

This is where things get problematic for me, because the movie constantly cuts around between the three concerned parties (thieves, mobsters, cops), which is fine in theory, but in practice it doesn’t really allow you to connect with any character in particular, good, bad, or otherwise, and thus you never really connect with the movie as a whole.

This is not to say Across 110th Street is terrible. As well as having some entertaining moments, the movie addresses serious issues in a mature fashion, which is admirable. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so cold and flat from a stylistic standpoint. It’s one thing to go that route for a based-on-a-true-story movie (like Tora! Tora! Tora!), or a this-is-what-could-happen movie (like Contagion), but for a fictional police procedural I don’t think it’s the best idea.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

eXistenZ (1999)

If you made a cocktail out of Videodrome, The Matrix, and Inception, you’d have eXistenZ.

I was a bit nervous about seeing this one, given David Cronenberg’s infamy for gross-out material, but eXistenZ is surprisingly measured in the body horror department (even the “Chinese Restaurant” scene didn’t really bother me, although whether or not a lot of this stuff upsets you comes down to individual tastes and fears).

The movie takes a hard look at the concept of virtual reality, and, while it may not be an action movie, it feels appropriately dream-like (without question one of the movie’s strongest aspects). There’s also some commentary on videogames which gamers past and present will understand and appreciate.

Performance-wise, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law put in solid shifts, but I think I find the supporting roles more interesting (Ian Holm and definitely Willem Dafoe in particular).

Overall, eXistenZ may feel somewhat dated, give that it’s a late-90s vision of the future, but the way it questions our ability to unplug from the machine is as relevant now as ever. Kudos to David Cronenberg for that.

Rating: ★★★½

Red Mob aka Chtoby vyzhit (1993)

Information on this movie is sketchy at best, but if you understand Russian, you can enjoy the whole film on YouTube.

The boys at Vinegar Syndrome are putting together a Blu-ray release of Red Mob and I can’t wait for it to go on sale. It’s not on the same level of hidden gem as, say, Ninja Busters, but it is the right mix of incomprehensible and funny-bad that makes for a “magnum opus” of low-budget cinema (not to mention lots of guns and explosions).

I’m not going to bother to explain the plot, given that it took me until about forty minutes into the film to figure out who everyone was and what was going on, but I can tell you that it involves the Russian Mafia (obviously), weapons smuggling, former Soviet soldiers, kidnapping, and, if you can hold out til the end, some of the best helicopter flying I’ve ever seen committed to film.

One thing I know for sure about Red Mob is that it was shot in the former Soviet Union, maybe a couple of years after the Berlin Wall came down, and it makes use of a fairly wide variety of locations. The only one I recognized outright is what I assume to be Moscow, but I’m guessing they also filmed quite a bit in one or more of the Central Asian states.

Anyway, like I said, I can’t wait for the Blu-ray release. Definitely a bonkers kind of movie to be enjoyed with a group of friends.

Rating: ★★★½

(Update 05/26/17 – The Blu-ray is finally on sale: https://vinegarsyndrome.com/shop/red-mob-ltd/)

The Lost Boys (1987)

Before True Blood or Twilight or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there was The Lost Boys.

I can’t say with absolute certainty if it’s the first ever presentation of contemporary teenage vampires, but it seems to get the most credit as such. Regardless, it’s years ahead of its time from that standpoint

And yet, it’s also very much of its own time, not just in terms of music and fashion and all that (not to mention the first ever pairing of “The Two Coreys”), but because, for whatever reason, the 1980s were the heyday of the horror comedy (Gremlins and Ghost Busters come to mind), although there has been something of a resurgence of such films in the 2000s, but we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys.

He takes a lot of crap for Batman & Robin, which is fair (at least he owns up to it and doesn’t point fingers elsewhere), but I disagree with the popular notion that Joel Schumacher is a “bad director.” In addition to Lost Boys, he’s also directed Falling Down and the very much underrated 8MM. as well as other successful projects, but again, we’re not talking about those; we’re talking about The Lost Boys here.

The movie is a fairly classic type of story: a family moves to a new place and discovers things are not all as they seem But, in addition, the look of the film still holds up pretty well (I appreciate how they handled “flying” on a budget), there’s some great set design, the cast is pretty solid all around, and, most importantly, the tone is such that you can seamlessly move between horror and comedy.

If you’ve never seen it, especially with Halloween season coming up, I definitely recommend this stylish flick.

Rating: ★★★★☆