Val Kilmer – 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.

Twofer Movie Review – ‘Only The Brave’ and ‘The Snowman’ – Fire and Ice

Ordinarily I can find some kind of connection when reviewing two films at once, but I’m at a loss here, other than these two having the same release date.

Only The Brave

Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Written by Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer, based on the GQ article “No Exit” by Sean Flynn
Cast: Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, James Badge Dale, Taylor Kitsch, Jennifer Connelly, Andie MacDowell, Geoff Stults, Alex Russell, Thad Luckinbill, Ben Hardy, Scott Haze, Jake Picking, Ryan Jason Cook
Soundtrack: Joseph Trapanese

A few weeks ago I woodshedded a pair of “based on a true story” films and I was not eager to do the same thing again this week.

Fortunately, I don’t have to.

I hesitate to call it great, but Only The Brave is very good. A bit uneven perhaps, but it’s a fitting and deeply heartfelt tribute to a group of men who battled not flesh and blood, but rather the fierceness of nature itself.

In a word: wildfires.

If you’re unfamiliar with the world of wildfire firefighting, don’t worry, the movie gives you a pretty clear picture, so much so that I won’t even bother to provide a primer, but suffice it to say it’s not the sort of work for the faint of heart, to say nothing of the physical demands.

It sounds like the most obvious thing in the world, but Only The Brave has realism on its side. I don’t know all the true life facts, I know for sure there’s some timeline shifting, but, on the whole, you don’t get the impression that there’s a lot of Hollywood-ing going on, which is nice for this sort of movie; and, outside of a few dream sequences for Josh Brolin’s character, nothing is even shot in a way that would seem unrealistic.

Speaking of Josh Brolin, this movie has a great cast (including Jennifer Connelly, who’s still as captivating as ever, and James Badge Dale, who’s probably my favorite actor who’s not yet a household name), and they all do solid work, though because it’s a feature film and not a miniseries, not a lot of people get much to do (there are twenty guys on the hotshot crew alone, let alone the other supporting characters, so screen time is at a premium for just about everybody). It’s hard for me to be critical because maybe everyone is portraying their real-life counterpart perfectly, but if there’s one performance I found puzzling at times, it’s from Taylor Kitsch, but, again, I don’t know.

Given that I didn’t know the story going in, I’ll assume most people won’t know the story going in either, so I’ll leave that to be discovered, but it’s most certainly a story worth telling, and I think Only The Brave tells it well.

It may feel a bit by the numbers at times (I mean, Peter Berg has had a near-monopoly on this kind of film the past few years), but I’d say it’s a movie absolutely worth seeing theatrically.

Just make sure you bring some tissues.

Rating: ★★★★☆

The Snowman

Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Written by Peter Straughan, Hossein Amini, and Søren Sveistrup, based on the novel Snømannen by Jo Nesbø
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Ronan Vibert, Toby Jones, Genevieve O’Reilly, James D’Arcy, Adrian Dunbar, Chloë Sevigny, Anne Reid, Jamie Michie, Alec Newman, Jamie Clayton
Soundtrack: Marco Beltrami

Boy, was this a disappointment.

The Snowman has pretty much all of the elements you need for a pulpy crime thriller: based on a novel (one book in an expansive series; if they were planning on a movie series, that ship has now sailed), a drunkard detective, a murderer with a gimmick, intrigue, flashbacks, and, perhaps most importantly, an A-list cast devoting themselves to B-level material (somebody even plays twins).

This could have been so-good-it’s-good, so-bad-it’s-good, or, at the very least, just some trashy fun, but the execution was totally lacking (and, if recent rumors are to be believed, so was 10-15% of the script).

Right off the bat, there’s a lethargy to this film that it never quite shakes, and I don’t know that it could be fixed purely with editing. I was never so bored that I completely checked out, but, make no mistake, this was a bit of a chore to watch.

In contrast to Only The Brave, The Snowman thoroughly wastes its tremendous cast. Honestly, there’s not one standout performance in the whole bunch, at least not in a good way. Val Kilmer has a strange role that’s made doubly stranger by some truly awful dubbing, which I have zero explanation for, but that’s about it.

None of this really matters, however, because, in the end, this movie isn’t worth seeing or talking about any further.

I questioned whether it would be worth full price, but it’s not even worth a matinee.

Shame.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Quick Thoughts – July Round-Up, Part 1 of 2

‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ (1930)

Of all the armed conflicts in human history, perhaps none was more senselessly brutal than World War I. Early 20th Century Europe was a powder keg waiting for one good spark, and when it came, the continent (and beyond) was plunged into darkness for four long years. Worse yet, the battlefields and high seas were the most violent Petri dishes imaginable, as aging military tactics met groundbreaking new technology: airplanes, submarines, tanks, chemical gas; pretty much anything that could be weaponized was put to such use.

Based on the seminal novel by Erich Maria Remarque, ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ is an equally important motion picture, as it captures the madness of “The Great War” from the level of the common soldier; from enlistment, to training, to combat, to back home, and, ultimately, to death.

It doesn’t seem logical that a film made four score and six years ago about a war that happened a century ago would feel at all contemporary, yet ‘All Quiet’ somehow manages to do just that. The battle scenes, though not filled with the blood and gore we’re accustomed to now, are as harrowing as can be. What I find even more striking, however, are the characters and their conversations, trying to simultaneously hold onto their humanity while also numbing themselves in order to be effective. If you’ve seen ‘Fury‘ or ‘American Sniper‘ in recent years, you can draw lines back to ‘All Quiet’.

If I have one major criticism, it’s that you feel the movie’s length (it runs over two hours) and sometimes scenes don’t quite flow together, but given how long ago it was produced, that can be forgiven.

There’s little doubt that this is an all-time great film that everyone should see at least once.

Rating: ★★★★½

‘Top Gun’ (1986)

When people ask me what my favorite arthouse film is, I always say it’s the first few minutes of ‘Top Gun’, before “Highway to the Danger Zone” comes in, because it’s nothing but a bunch of long, gorgeous “magic hour” shots of flight deck operations aboard the USS Enterprise, set to that beautifully ambient Harold Faltermeyer score. Really, until Mr. Loggins comes storming in, my brain tells me this is going to be one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, but then reality eventually sets in, and I retreat to a place of disappointment.

That’s right. ‘Top Gun’, that awesome movie you loved when you were a kid, is actually terrible. In fact, by and large, if there aren’t airplanes, Tom Skerritt, or Michael Ironside on the screen, the movie’s a hot mess: the script is bad, the story is dumbed-down, and the romantic sub-plot is horrendous and needlessly log-jammed into the middle of the film. It’s bad. It’s a bad movie.

Now, that’s not to say it’s totally irredeemable, because F-14s are awesome, and F-14s taking on other fighter jets are even more awesome, but all that action doesn’t quite make up for the fact that almost every other element is cringe-worthy.

Basically, ‘Top Gun’ is the kind of movie you put on and fast forward through all the boring parts. There’s absolutely no need to spend all 110 minutes watching the whole thing.

Rating: ★★½

‘Risky Business’ (1983)

‘Risky Business’ is another movie I throw in the Overrated bin. Not unlike ‘Beverly Hills Cop‘, this film lives in the muddled middle: not funny enough to be an effective comedy, and not intense enough to be a cool high school crime drama.

Frankly, the movie is sophomoric, and I get that as a high school story maybe it should be that, but what I really mean is at certain points it feels like it was made by an actual 10th grader. Perhaps the ultimate example of this is when Joel and Lana (Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay) are attempting to get intimate on a Chicago “L” train and the soundtrack is blasting Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”; it’s just such a poor creative choice that made me hate the movie in that moment.

However, there is some good work here, especially the Tangerine Dream score, but not enough for me to recommend the movie outright. Stick to ‘Ferris Bueller’ if you’re looking for a Chicago-area high schooler wish fulfillment movie.

Rating: ★★½