Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Avengers, assemble – Avengers: Infinity War brings together ten years and eighteen movies’ worth of stories to pit Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against the strength of Thanos (Josh Brolin) as he gathers the six Infinity Stones in order to impose his will on the universe. From Wakanda to Scotland, from New York to the moons of Jupiter, the Marvel Universe has never seen a threat quite like this one, and so it will take the gathered forces of the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and more to repel Thanos and his forces to save all of existence.

I don’t know if it’s possible to give a full review of Avengers: Infinity War without spoiling at least something (I’ll certainly try), but I do want to take a moment to applaud the “spoiler culture” of 2018, which has done a fairly remarkable job of not ruining the film. It’s a critic’s burden that a film this big carries with it the necessity of preserving at all costs the sanctity of narrative surprise; then again, I do have a sense that my main audience here will have already seen the film at least twice. Mum is, however, the word here; I can’t, for example, talk about my only major critique of the film because it’s a mammoth spoiler. Reserving a fuller take for later, I’ll say only that I think the absolute ending of the film doesn’t quite accomplish what it sets out to do, both for reasons that are extratextual and because the film doesn’t quite position the last character we see on screen as the film’s protagonist in a way that would make that figure’s journey the center of the film. (It does, however, stick the emotional landing, in an extraordinary way.)

What Avengers: Infinity War manages to accomplish very deftly – and very quickly, I’d say, within the first ten minutes – is establish the stakes of the film with remarkable precision and weight. For a film that assembles eighteen other films and umpteen million cast members, this is a film that feels amazing well-balanced, and it rises to the gravity of the occasion by presenting a story where it truly feels that anything can happen: not just that X favorite character will meet up with unlikely ally Y, but that any important character could die before this is all said and done, that this story will matter more than we might have been led to expect. At one point, Thor says something like, “It feels like it’s going to stick this time.” Despite all the fakeouts, both within this film and within the Marvel Cinematic Universe at large, Infinity War achieves what I call the “Indiana Jones in peril” moment, where – despite knowing that Indiana Jones won’t actually die – we gasp in shock as his car fritters near the edge of a canyon; only in Infinity War, that car might veer off the road and take a hero or two out with it.

As a film that is more a collision of stories than a singular narrative – Iron Man’s addiction to his technology, Captain America as a man out of time, Black Panther opening his kingdom to the world, etc. – the film very nearly buckles under the sheer weight of what it’s called upon to do. And yet the only characters who don’t get a fair shake are the ones who don’t appear at all; everyone else is placed in subplots that use them to their full range, bouncing them against unlikely but pitch-perfect foils. I wasn’t left wanting more of any one character; I was just left wanting more, period. In this way, Infinity War is almost a new ur-blockbuster, mashing together a decade’s worth of blockbusters to create a super-film that was, as early as Sunday morning, already the biggest opening of all time.

Infinity War is such a roaring success because it understands both its core audience and the audience who may not have caught all the preceding films. We don’t necessarily need to have seen Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, for example – though Star-Lord fills us in, just in case – because the film is much more invested in its characters than in their continuity. That’s the reason that each character’s arrival (and in at least one particularly electric case, a re-arrival) is such a crowdpleasing moment; regardless of where we left Captain America in Civil War, we’re just so glad to see him again because the Marvel folks have put the “care” back in “character.” From major players like Rocket Raccoon and Spider-Man to supporting cast like Wong and Okoye, Infinity War remembers why we love these characters and wisely keeps them to their strengths while nudging them out of their comfort zones. To review the performances in the film would require a scorecard – and maybe that’s a feature for another time, once the spoiler-warning reins have loosened – but suffice it to say that no one phones it in, treating each scene like just one more installment in their own films. Part of the electricity of the film, then, is the unforeseen chemistry between characters who might otherwise be poles apart (though, once more, it’d be terribly rotten to give all that away just yet), and on this count the filmmakers have continued to do the largely admirable work of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Aside from the popular appeal this film is likely to have, the ultimate “good time” popcorn flick, it represents the apotheosis of the very idea of the franchise – we now know that the largest film franchise can spawn the largest film of all time (dethroning The Force Awakens, which is really saying something in terms of hype), but what next? Avengers 4 seems poised to remind us one last time why we started down this journey back in 2008 and why we kept coming back for more, but it seems equally likely that it’ll set up the next ten years. If you don’t believe me, turn to the Marvel Zombie in your life after you see the post-credits sequence. The fullness of the universe is a major theme of this film, but the film is equally a reminder of the fullness of the Marvel Universe – and not just the Cinematic one. There’s always more, as the “_________ will return” credit acknowledges, and so too will the audience – return, that is, for the as-yet-untitled Avengers 4, for the two films (Ant-Man and the Wasp this year, and Captain Marvel the next) in the interim, for another viewing of Infinity War, and for whatever your personal favorite Marvel movie has been (for me, it’s still the masterful Winter Soldier). The Infinity Stones have been with us since the dawn of creation, and the success of Infinity War seems to promise that Marvel will be with us until the end of it.

Avengers: Infinity War is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout, language and some crude references.” Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Jim Starlin. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillen, Pom Klementieff, Zoe Saldana, with Josh Brolin, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and Chris Pratt.

Batman: The Animated Series - "Baby-Doll"

“Everybody loved Baby-Doll until you came along. You made them forget me. Now Baby’s gonna get evens.”

“Love That Baby” was the hottest sitcom on television. But when its star Mary Louise Dahl (Alison LaPlaca) tried to go legitimate, the show was cancelled. Years later, the stars of the show begin disappearing, leading Batman and Robin to Dahl, suffering from physical and mental ailments, held together only by her warped desire to reunite her “family” back together – and take revenge on the former child star she blames for destroying her career as Baby-Doll.

Most of the time, I forget that “Baby-Doll” is an episode ofBatman: The Animated Series, and when I remember, I never recall that Paul Dini is this episode’s author. And if I’ve ever said that Paul Dini has never written a bad episode of BtAS, it was a consequence of momentary aphasia, because “Baby-Doll” is unreservedly one of the least successful episodes in the show’s long history. It’s strange, it’s unsettling, and it doesn’t funnel its weirdness into anything productive other than to say that show business is a cruel place – a lesson that never quite fits into the morality of BtAS.

Perhaps more so than “Fire From Olympus,” “Baby-Doll” walks the uncomfortable line of presenting a villain who is quite obviously suffering from mental illness, and the discomfiting problem is exacerbated by the fact that Baby-Doll looks like a small child. Batman can’t physically attack a toddler, so the optics of the moments when he comes close are just bizarre. Never mind all the ways the episode tries to remind us that Baby-Doll is actually an adult (including the peculiar way LaPlaca plays her baby-talk voice as a deliberate put-on), Baby-Doll still looks like Elmyra Duff from Pinky and the Brain. To top it all off, the character is just plain irritating, squeaky and diminutive, with a plotline that pales in (unfair) comparison to the much stronger “Beware the Gray Ghost,” which similarly presented a dangerous nostalgia for a television series. Baby-Doll is one of only two new characters not to make the move from this show into the comics; we’ll spend time with the other one next week, but it seems apparent that I’m not the only one vastly underwhelmed by Baby-Doll.

And yet... despite this episode largely being rubbish, Paul Dini manages to turn in a deftly competent third act, though to be fair it does feel airlifted in from a better version of this episode in which Joker would have been the villain, echoing the better parts of “Be A Clown.” (Maybe Joker kidnapping the stars of his favorite sitcom because nothing else on television makes him laugh anymore?) Once Baby-Doll goes from the kidnapping plot to fleeing Batman through a nearby carnival, the episode swerves through a number of really successful moments, like the matter of Baby-Doll blending in with a crowd of children. Dini taps into a key Bat-insight when all the actual children run toward Batman, while Baby-Doll runs away; it takes the childlike innocence of youth to recognize that Batman is, despite his fearsome appearance, a force for good. And when Baby-Doll darts into a hall of mirrors, I may just be feeling the residual effects from similar scenes with The Joker, but I had a strongly emotional reaction to how Dini humanizes Baby-Doll as she confronts her own monstrosity.

That said, even though the third act is quite strong, I can’t say it’s an effective counter to an otherwise dismal episode. “Baby-Doll” is a rare misfire from a creator who’s otherwise always in full command of his craft. Then again, perhaps there isn’t anyone who could have turned this stinker of a story into a strong episode, and Dini’s third act is the best he could muster. It is a bit like asking Dale Earnhardt to drive a clunker – he can only take it so far before his tools fail him.

Original Air Date: October 1, 1994

Writer: Paul Dini

Director: Dan Riba

Villain: Baby-Doll (Alison LaPlaca)

Next episode: “The Lion and the Unicorn,” in which the villain I guarantee you’ve forgotten turns up to spoil what could be an otherwise enjoyable Alfred episode.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Bane"

“I will observe the Bat in action. And when I understand how he thinks and fights, I will break him.”

After Batman closes down another of his illegal operations, Rupert Thorne (John Vernon) decides he’s had enough and hires the assassin Bane (Henry Silva) to rid Gotham of its Dark Knight. As brainy as he is brawny, Bane studies his opponent carefully, knowing that defeating Batman could be the key to taking the city for himself.

At a brisk twenty minutes, this episode feels much like a whirlwind. “Bane” introduces us to the eponymous criminal mastermind (himself only introduced a year and change earlier in the comics). The show largely preserves the character’s visual design from Graham Nolan’s original concept – the massive bulk, the stylized luchador mask, and the tubes of Venom running into his skull – but I feel it shortchanges the character by making him a gun for hire, twice removed from the ostensible main villain of the episode. “Bane” is an episode that could have really benefited from the two-parter treatment, giving the titular villain room to breathe in a plot that does him fuller justice. One could imagine, for example, a “Bane, Part 1” in which Bane roundly thrashes Batman and defeats him in a cliffhanger ending before the Dark Knight recovers and gathers himself for a second chance against his adversary. 

There’s a persistent internet rumor that the producers of Batman: The Animated Series didn’t much care for Bane and regarded him as gimmicky. I’ve never been able to source that claim, but there’s circumstantial evidence in that he only appeared once more, on The New Batman Adventures (and, to be fair, once on Superman: The Animated Series), and never again as the lead villain. It’s possible that this lack of enthusiasm for the character speaks to the disappointing way he’s depicted in this episode. There is much about the character that is, however, the direct opposite of gimmicky; he’s a far cry, for example, from Doomsday, who was created roughly around the same time and for largely the same reason (to incapacitate his heroic rival for a time). Bane is among Batman’s smarter adversaries, able to plan methodically his nemesis’s downfall, but he has a specific code of honor that prevents him from becoming a wanton force of destruction. For my money, turning Bane into a contract killer cheapens him, because I like the idea that Batman represents not a job but a personal challenge for Bane. This episode approaches that concept, but it’s again devalued when Bane takes the idea from Thorne’s assistant Candice, herself caught in a halfhearted seduction plot. (And if you want to talk about characters who never got their due, let’s hear it for the ever-capable, ever-cunning Candice, who matched wits with Two-Face and Bane and still came out on top.)

It’s a shame that this episode didn’t hew closer to the “Knightfall” storyline from the comics, particularly since it’s quite obvious that writer Mitch Brian had read them. Brian includes the obligatory “Bane lifts Batman over his knee” shot, maintains the language of “breaking” him, and even pits Bane against Killer Croc as a first foray into Gotham’s underworld. Hats off to Croc, by the way, for a great first act in which he, astonishingly, does not attempt to throw a rock at Batman and Robin; he does, however, become the butt of a surprisingly effective Bat-joke when Batman dismisses him with a droll “Later, gator.” What’s missing, though, is the sense that Bane is a player in his own game; here, he’s just a pawn in someone else’s.

I’ve spent the bulk of this week’s review diminishing the episode for what it isn’t. In the moment, however, “Bane” is exactly the whirlwind I mentioned earlier. The episode proceeds briskly and ably, doing well what it sets out to do – tell a kid-friendly version of the “Knightfall” story inside of twenty minutes and within the constraints of the universe established by BtAS (that is to say, in deference to the mobster underpinnings of Gotham’s underworld, never wholly supplanted by the more theatrical supervillains). It’s only on further reflection that the episode emerges as something of a disappointment, because in the moment it was enough to make me want to dig out my Bane action figure, who could hoist aloft another figure and (with the aid of a switch on his back) throw them to the ground. Luchadors, indeed – there is something elemental about a big guy taking on Batman, and this episode manages to walk the line between the philosophical weight of Tom Hardy’s Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and the heroically lunkheaded version we got from the late Jeep Swenson in Batman and Robin. 

Original Air Date: September 10, 1994

Writer: Mitch Brian

Director: Kevin Altieri

Villains: Bane (Henry Silva), Rupert Thorne (John Vernon), and Killer Croc (Aron Kincaid)

Next episode: “Baby-Doll,” in which I recall Paul Dini turning in his first and only clunker.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Monday at the Movies - April 16, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a movie described by the Hollywood Reporter as “the Godfather 2 of road movies.” 

The Trip to Italy (2014)– The Trip was a miniseries turned film about Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, a pair of comedians playing fictionalized versions of themselves, touring the English countryside, reviewing restaurants, and antagonizing each other. Its sequel is the best kind of sequel – more of the same, self-aware of the absurdity of just doing it again, and just as riotously funny as the first. Coogan and Brydon continue to one-up each other on every topic from careers to impressions (on the latter, they’re in Italy, so you can imagine the Godfather allusions that proliferate, including one direct reenactment), from philosophical observations to precise trivia about seminal English poets. The pair have an undeniable combative chemistry, which really manifests in the deleted scenes, where they occasionally break “character” and laugh at the absurd rhetorical circles into which they chase each other. Where Coogan was more the straight man in the first Trip, exasperated by the ease with which Brydon can trigger a laugh, here he’s more laidback, more ready to get in on the fun, as when a conversation about Batman delves first into dueling Michael Caine impersonations before musing on the fact that Tom Hardy is “in a contest to see who can be the least understandable.” A subplot about infidelity is surprisingly sobering in The Trip to Italy, wallpapered over though it is by a stammering Hugh Grant impression, and one wonders if director Michael Winterbottom is musing about boorish vacuity or if he’s likening the fictional avatars to the storied biographies of the poets they’re chasing. There is a third film, The Trip to Spain, and the laughs-per-minute quotient here guarantees that the third will be well worth seeing.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Batman: The Animated Series - "Catwalk"

“I was the cat who walked by herself, and the city was my hunting ground.”

Retired from a life of crime, Selina Kyle, the former Catwoman (Adrienne Barbeau), finds herself unable to fit into Gotham high society. One gala event ends when she butts heads with Veronica Vreeland (Marilu Henner), apologizing to their mutual flame Bruce Wayne for her struggle to blend in. Outside, though, Selina receives a tempting offer from Scarface and The Ventriloquist (George Dzundza) – a way to play to her strengths and stick it to the Vreeland name. But even the best robberies have a catch, and soon the feline felon finds herself in a cat and mouse game between Scarface and Batman.

Not only had I forgotten entirely about this episode, I was equally amazed to (re)discover that Paul Dini was its author – he of the greatest episodes Batman: The Animated Series has ever seen. So “Catwalk” is something of a double treat, or perhaps even a triple when we consider the wildly unexpected team-up of Catwoman and Scarface. As good as Scarface’s debut episode, “Read My Lips,” was, this episode might even be better; moreover, it’s far and away the best Catwoman episode thus far, remaining faithful to this incarnation’s animal rights activism without losing sight of the cat burglar core of the character. Dini doesn’t give her cat fever or turn her into a literal cat-woman but rather plays up her flirtatious rapport with Batman and her weakness for shiny things.

That a Paul Dini script is unbearably clever is no surprise by this point. As ever, Dini gets right down to the nugget of his characters and bounces them off each other in unforeseen ways. “I needed a dummy to keep the cops busy” is a fantastic line when you put it in the mouth of a ventriloquist dummy, and the idea that an enraged Catwoman might see Scarface as a “scratching post” is the kind of gag that’s obvious in hindsight but takes a special kind of mind to put together. The opening and closing narration, in which Catwoman likens herself to something out of Rudyard Kipling, is perhaps too clever by half, especially for a show that has largely eschewed voiceover narration, but it does remind one of the best bits of “Tyger, Tyger,” in which Kevin Conroy was called upon to read some William Blake poetry. But Dini keeps it light, including one of his many riffs on Looney Tunes when Scarface growls, his unique speech impediment giving an even better impression, “I t’ought I taw a puddy tat.”

I mentioned that this is Catwoman’s finest episode, and it’s because Dini is careful to give her an arc that takes stock of her history on the show but doesn’t bind itself to that odd batch of storylines. (Remember, in her debut, Catwoman fought international terrorism in order to save some mountain lions, because apparently there are wild mountain lions in Gotham City.) Even just within the boundaries of this episode, Dini manages to give Catwoman an arc that’s better than anything she’s had to date: she’s a criminal trying to go straight for the man she loves, but she can’t escape that part of her that wants to punish the morally bankrupt and line her own pockets in the process. The temptation Scarface presents is all too apparent, and Dini ably scripts the nuances of their first meeting, in which Catwoman first scoffs at taking orders from a “log” before realizing that his plan might be mutually advantageous. Her fury in the third act and her impatience with the simpering Ventriloquist gives her the kind of dynamic range Dini has always brought to villains like Harley Quinn, The Mad Hatter, and Poison Ivy.

It’s hard not to fall in love with an episode that features the memorable line, “Could you please give me a hand? This dinosaur seems to have fallen on me.” It’s equally hard to fathom that there was a forgotten Dini gem in the pile. But for handily the best Catwoman episode since “Almost Got ’Im,” “Catwalk” is one that shouldn’t be missed.

Original Air Date: September 13, 1995

Writer: Paul Dini

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villains: Catwoman (Adrienne Barbeau) and The Ventriloquist and Scarface (George Dzundza)

Next episode: “Bane,” in which the show does its strongest anti-drug episode yet.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

The Last Jedi (2017) [Score-Only]

Anyone who has known me long enough has heard me say some version of the following: so much of what works in Star Wars is due to the music of John Williams. I said over and over when I reviewed the prequels four years ago that if anything in those films works, it’s because John Williams crafted scores that, quite frankly, the films neither deserved nor lived up to. I even claimed, “Put the dialogue on mute, and the score alone could carry the plot better than the acting.”

With the home video release of The Last Jedi, I finally have the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is, because the digital copy of the film includes a score-only version – that’s the visuals, the John Williams score, and nothing else; no sound effects, no dialogue, not even subtitles to walk you through the film. It’s just you and the maestro. I won’t say that it’s the definitive version of the film, and I won’t say that the score-only version will necessarily work for everyone; my sense is that it might work better with a few listens to the score under your belt, because it’ll be easier to notice how the score is playing off the visuals when you have a sense of where the score is going. But I will say that it’s a special treat to watch The Last Jedi with Williams alone in your ears, particularly for those who haven’t been impressed with the Sequel Trilogy’s score work thus far. John Williams is still doing grand work, if only we had ears to hear it.

(I’m going to loosen the spoiler reins a bit, and by dint of talking about the score I can’t help but spoil a few things, particularly character interactions. I’ll keep it to a minimum, but please do watch The Last Jedi; it rises in my estimations each time I see it.)

Batman: The Animated Series - "Time Out of Joint"

“If it’s any comfort, my revenge will encompass more than just you. I intend to pass a most timely sentence on the entire judicial system.”

In retrospect, it should have been obvious, but Batman and Robin are shocked when Temple Fugate – the Clock King (Alan Rachins) – steals an antique timepiece at auction by using a device that allows him to slip between seconds and freeze time. The Dynamic Duo rightly assumes that Fugate is about to continue his quest for vengeance against Mayor Hamilton Hill (Lloyd Bochner), but stopping a man who can stop time is an entirely different sort of challenge.

This episode tickles a lot of my fancies, beginning with the title’s reference to my favorite Shakespeare play (though it’s a real shame we never hear Alan Rachins deliver that line in this episode). Moreover, the episode challenges our conception of what a Batman story can do while simultaneously proving the elasticity of the character in his ability to accommodate something like this episode’s far-out science-fiction concept of altering the passage of time. You’re probably sick of hearing me say that Batman stories can go anywhere in a way that other characters can’t oblige, but this episode proves just how effective Batman’s detective skills can be when faced with an adversary whose modus operandi defies the very laws of physics. Simply put, Batman has to imagine himself into another universe in order to stop the Clock King.

And hello to the Clock King, the maestro of minutes, the sultan of seconds, and – I will go so far as to assert – the most underrated villain in the rightly well-regarded canon of BtAS episodes. At only two episodes, the Clock King leaves me screaming for more, more, more – more of his unique elitist snobbery, more of his pinpoint precision, more of his clever crimes, and more of that astoundingly elegant costume design. In this episode, he trades in his brown suit for a sleek black one, though he retains his clockface spectacles and minute-hand cane. He also clings to his single-minded desire for revenge on Mayor Hill, a drive that puts all of Gotham in danger through that particularly comic book form of metonymy (e.g., you have wounded me, ergo the city you lead must suffer). I had previously described Rachins’s performance as “an arrogant nasal clip of a voice, a perfectly irritated how-dare-you quality that can’t believe Batman would interfere with his perfect plans,” and I haven’t come up with a better descriptor. Now that we’ve met The Riddler (we hadn’t by the time of Fugate’s debut in “The Clock King”), it’ll forever be a tremendous sorrow that this show didn’t pair them up for the ultimate battle of wits.

Though I recalled liking this episode, it presented a few surprises. I was pleasantly surprised to see this episode riff on “See No Evil,” an episode which I had assumed no one else remembered. “So we don’t have another invisible man running loose,” Batman muses, a nod to another episode which strained the limits of believability but which was nevertheless ably carried by Batman. (Both “Time Out of Joint” and “See No Evil” were, incidentally, directed by BtAS mainstay Dan Riba.) I was also delighted to hear Roscoe Lee Browne in a small role as Dr. Wakati, the unwitting inventor of Fugate’s chrono-device. Browne has a long and illustrious pedigree as an actor, but this reviewer will always remember him as the definitive Wilson Fisk on the mid-90s Spider-Man cartoon, which shared a curious number of its alumni with Batman: The Animated Series (including, most bizarrely, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., as Doctor Octopus).

The Clock King’s pair of appearances stands as a great example of fine episodes that you wouldn’t expect of this show but which display the level of craft, thoughtfulness, and entertainment that made this series so much more than a kid’s cartoon. Back to back, “The Clock King” and “Time Out of Joint” are a case study in how to introduce and develop a villain in two distinct single episodes, a fine golden moment for a supremely underrated villain.

Original Air Date: October 8, 1994

Writers: Alan Burnett and Steve Perry

Director: Dan Riba

Villain: The Clock King (Alan Rachins)

Next episode: “Catwalk,” in which two unlikely villains have a team-up I can’t believe I didn’t remember.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Monday at the Movies - April 2, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, I double the number of John Wayne movies I’ve seen in my life.

The Searchers (1956)– How do you review a film that was in the inaugural class of the National Film Registry? It’s hard to believe that this is only the second John Wayne movie I’ve seen in my life, or that it’s roundly considered a classic and I’ve only just gotten to it with more decades of birthdays under my belt than I’d care to admit. But maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve only just seen The Searchers, because so much of what I enjoyed about the film was the level of deliberate craft on display, which has to be appreciated before it can be enjoyed. Take the starring performance of John Wayne, deliberately self-conscious in a world that doesn’t quite have room for him – reflected in the way other characters treat him, but also in the number of doorways he has to stoop to enter. As Ethan Edwards, Wayne is notable as a character whose moral center the film clearly endorses – he is, after all, the hero – but his narrative arc isn’t contingent on the other characters in the film coming around to his way of seeing things. Director John Ford is not interested in that kind of metaphorical harmony; he is instead interested in surprisingly long takes, harsh and unforgiving landscapes, and all the ways that Ethan bristles against the world he inhabits. The Searchers is the kind of film that I am sure I will need to see more than once to fully comprehend it, now that I know the basic shape of it, but on first viewing it looks pretty good to my eyes.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!