Bat-May: Batman & Robin (1997)

Last week, I assumed I was going to pan Batman Forever, but between my childhood nostalgia and a nugget of narrative complexity, I ended up finding things to admire about the film. (I might even go so far as to say it’s underrated when it stays out of its own way.) Now that we come to the end of Bat-May, we find ourselves in the dubious company of Batman & Robin, the film which killed the franchise stone dead for nigh on a decade. I’d argue that director Joel Schumacher’s career never really recovered, though he continued to work steadily.

And it’s also worth saying that, Catwoman (2004) aside, Batman & Robin changed the way that Hollywood treats superhero movies. Kevin Feige has said as much, and it’s certainly true that you don’t get an earnest Marvel Cinematic Universe without X-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002) looking at Batman & Robin as the wrong way to do things. It is, they say, always darkest before the dawn, and in this case Batman & Robin is a very dark night indeed, a film that, at best, has nothing to say beyond reveling in the most arch camp imaginable – and, at worst, exists only to sell merchandise. 

 

Gotham City has a new menace – Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger), whose diamond heists have plagued the city while he tries to cure his wife’s terminal illness. Batman (George Clooney) and Robin (Chris O’Donnell) suit up to save Gotham from a deep freeze when the villainous Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) and Alfred’s young niece Barbara (Alicia Silverstone) come to town, each ready to give the Dynamic Duo their own unique brand of headaches.

 

It may go without saying at this point – and perhaps it should – but I like movies. I like to enjoy movies. I don’t take a lot of pleasure in deliberately watching bad movies, nor am I often content to dislike a movie. As we saw last week, I’m almost always looking for some redemptive reading of a film, some kernel of potential or some recognition that the film accomplishes its own goals. I try not to judge a film based on how I would or would not have made it. If something in a film doesn’t work, I usually try to figure out why, instead of dismissing the film out of hand. So believe me when I say that I want to like Batman & Robin. It stars my favorite fictional character of all time, and it’s got actors who are really good in other films. The best I can say about Batman & Robin, though, is that it’s really hard to look away. With all the reasons I should enjoy this movie, I kept asking myself what wasn’t working. What did this film do wrong?

 

The answer, I think, is very simple. Batman & Robin has nothing to say. It combines the camp “crime doesn’t pay” attitude of Batman ’66 with the “look at this, look at that” mentality of a toy commercial. For all its faults, Batman Forever at least had some narrative integrity; it made some degree of sense to include Two-Face in a movie about psychological duality, with The Riddler as a kind of emergent repressed persona. Framing Robin as the redemption of Batman’s self-imposed curse, too, fits into the unified whole of the screenplay. (It’s the delivery that doesn’t work, but we talked about that last week.) Batman & Robin, on the other hand, is a collection of bits that don’t relate to each other at all; there may be a loose thread of family between the addition of Batgirl, Mr. Freeze’s love for his wife, and Poison Ivy’s demi-adoption of Bane – but that so-called theme never rises above the level of “Some people have families.”

 

Where Batman Forever – and indeed the preceding three Batman films – picked its villains because of their relationship to the central theme of the film, Batman & Robin seems to have chosen its antagonists based on who was unused but popular all the same. For context: Mr. Freeze had recently been reborn, thanks to Batman: The Animated Series; Poison Ivy was too sensuous to be included on Batman ’66; and Bane was a recent addition to the rogues gallery after a top-selling comics storyline in the early 1990s. They have nothing to do with each other, and the film doesn’t even play with the incongruity of a frozen villain teaming up with the embodiment of lush, verdant life. Worse, it neuters the character of Bane, strips him of his intellect and fighting prowess, and reduces himself to a grunting accessory. (Thank heavens for Tom Hardy.) 

I will say this about the lead villains, though: clearly Schwarzenegger and Thurman are having a blast in their respective roles. The campy atmosphere of the film gives both performers a license to overact, and they are devouring the scenery without discretion. Schwarzenegger cackles his way through the corniest of one-liners, but the only thing that makes his Mr. Freeze remotely compelling is airlifted from the animated episode “Heart of Ice.” Thurman, meanwhile, turns vamping into a whole new artform; her cartoonish Poison Ivy is equal parts Mae West and Eartha Kitt, a child’s idea of what dangerous sexuality looks like. These two fit right into what is essentially a high-budget episode of Batman ’66, but it is undoubtedly all spectacle, all surface.

 

Clooney, meanwhile, inherits the mantle of the Bat and has been of two minds about the role. On the one hand, it catapulted him from television’s ER into the role of Hollywood’s top leading man; on the other hand, the film is abysmal, and he’s admittedly not very good in the role. He plays an adequate enough Bruce Wayne, but he’s missing the nuance that Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer brought to the role. Clooney’s Bruce is all genuine, a civic-minded billionaire who’s less playboy and more socialite. (There’s also a very compelling argument to be made for a reading of this Bruce Wayne as gay, which the film probes not at all but which seems inescapable, particularly in the moment when Bruce hems and haws at the notion of marrying a lady.) I’ve long remembered Clooney as a commendable Bruce Wayne, but this time around, I think “passable” is the kindest word for the performance. As Batman, though, he’s nearly no good at all, stiff and unconvincing, with his only standout moments coming in his interactions with Robin.

 

On the subject of Robin, Chris O’Donnell remains strangely cast, playing the role as emotionally stunted, prone to outbursts of jealousy and impotent fury. One does wonder why this fully grown adult, bristling at his partner’s mentorship, still hangs around the Batcave at all. He has so little to do in the film that he’s barely referred to by name throughout much of the dialogue; by the time his name is spoken aloud for the first time, one almost forgets his name is “Dick,” assuming instead that Bruce has chosen that moment to resort to bratty name-calling. And then we come to Alicia Silverstone, who is so wildly out of her depth with a thankless role in a script that gives her nothing much to do at all. Indeed, one wonders why Batgirl is in this film at all; she arrives on the doorstep of Wayne Manor unbidden, with no real purpose for coming to town, and with no incentive to become a superhero other than the fact that her uncle Alfred has, inexplicably, taken the liberty of designing a molded rubber suit for her to wear.

 

As Alfred, Michael Gough is commendable, the only one of the cast who’s doing any acting at all. While the rest of the cast is competing to overact past each other, Gough is giving a delightfully restrained performance, deeply affecting and emotionally tender. The film’s decision to afflict poor Alfred with a nebulous medical condition notwithstanding, the genius Gough takes that opportunity to present Alfred as concealing his symptoms from his charges, halfway between the British stiff upper lip and a father’s fear that he will leave his children unable to care for themselves. Throughout the “Batman Quadrilogy,” as it’s come to be called, Gough has been one of the only steady unifying presences, and in this film you truly see why.

 

But the question of Alfred’s illness raises a larger point about the way the screenplay is put together. Batman & Robin is a series of MacGuffins and Chekhov’s Guns where plot elements only exist in the first half to come up in the second half, yet when these things resurface it’s without any logic or purpose. Bruce Wayne’s colossal telescope is only in the film to be used by Mr. Freeze in the climax (where it behaves like a telescope doesn’t); likewise, Alfred’s diagnosis with “MacGregor’s Syndrome” is only included so that he can get better. In the same vein, Barbara is introduced only so that she can become Batgirl – but why? There’s no narrative or thematic purpose for Batgirl in this story, and the only conclusion I can draw is that she’s been included to sell toys. And I can say that because I bought the action figure. I bought a lot of the action figures from this film.

 

Maybe there’s beauty in that, creating a superhero narrative to give children more fodder for their imaginative (and actual) toyboxes. But Batman & Robin is not a children’s movie in the way that, say, The Phantom Menace – a similarly “toyetic” film – was. There’s no place for children in this innuendo-laden film (I don’t even think there is a child in the film!). It’s more than just a cartoon come to life; Batman & Robin may as well be a children’s playground reenactment of a cartoon. You may see some redemptive beauty in that idea, but to me it seems sad to think that this film and these characters were cobbled together carelessly, with concern only for how these likenesses could be merchandised. It’s a sad fact of the comic book industry writ large, that unique site where art meets commerce, but after having seen some of the best films starring Batman, this one feels soulless. 

 

In that sense, that cold and emotionless cynicism of chasing valuables, perhaps Mr. Freeze is the perfect villain after all.

Batman & Robin is rated PG-13 for “strong stylized action and some innuendos.” Directed by Joel Schumacher. Written by Akiva Goldsman. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone, and Michael Gough.

For more Bat-May action, the good folks at Collected Editions posted my review of Batman: The Movies, the comic book adaptation of the Batman Quadrilogy. Give them a click - no one reviews comics like Collected Editions!

Pulp Fiction (1994)

You know, it’s movies like this that make me realize how much I need a “Top 10 Movies of All Time” list on this site.  What qualifies a movie for that list?  A spot-on script, top notch performances, flair without being too flashy, no moment wasted, unending rewatchability, and a smile on my face the whole way through.

My friends, Pulp Fiction delivers the goods, as securely as if Jules Winnfield himself were the bagman.

I’m reviewing this movie now because I recently had the opportunity to watch the movie with someone who’d never seen it before, and it helped me to recapture a lot of what I love about Pulp Fiction without simply resorting to Nostalgia Glasses that allow me to effectively tune out the movie and revel in the reminiscence of the dozens of times previous that I’d seen this film.  (I’m also reviewing it in the context of being Quentin Tarantino’s second, and perhaps best, film, in the run-up to December’s Django Unchained.)

What, then, is Pulp Fiction about?  Many things, really.  It’s a nonlinear narrative about a group of Californians who lead lives dominated or surrounded by violence – Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson), a pair of hitmen; their boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames); his wife Mia (Uma Thurman); boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis); and Pumpkin & Honey Bunny (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer), the two robbers and lovers who frame the piece.  Pulp Fiction is about these people and the meaningful – and often surprising – ways their lives intersect, but it’s also about how these people are confronted by opportunities to change their lives before the violence gets them, too.  In strange ways, it’s about the importance of love, about divine intervention and the power of miracles, about how much pop culture matters to us, and about following codes that make no earthly sense but have a ring of the divine to them.

It’s about so many things that some critics have charged Pulp Fiction with being about nothing.  Perhaps they’re right – perhaps Pulp Fiction is just the Seinfeld of the movie world.  But for a multiplicity of reasons – philosophical, aesthetic, existential, etc. – I refuse to believe that a movie this sublime, this enjoyable, this... perfect could be an exercise in nihilism.  What about Pulp Fiction merits so much revisiting?

Much of the film’s strength comes from the stellar cast of once-was and would-be-yet stars.  As one of only three characters to appear in all three segments of the film (Marsellus and Mia Wallace being the other two), John Travolta is a fantastic “leading man” for an ensemble cast such as this.  His role as the “comeback kid” in the behind-the-scenes mythos of the film takes a backseat to his perfect fit as an accessibility point for the audience; he shepherds us through the film, feeling dread when we’re supposed to feel dread, breaking the tension when it needs it, and entering the film as a kind of outsider who needs to relearn the game after a stint in Amsterdam.  And, boy, can he dance.  The impromptu dance sequence with Uma Thurman is a real treat – for better or for worse the film’s most recognizable moment – a spontaneous and exuberant indulgence in the film’s own pop sensibility.  The two dance for no other reason than Mia’s “I wanna dance” logic, a perfect analogue for why I still watch this movie:  because I wanna.

Travolta’s counterpart is Samuel L. Jackson, the devout Protestant to Travolta’s lapsed Catholic.  (There’s no specific invocation of religious denominations here, but I contend that the whole movie comes down to miracles and how the characters respond to them – the subject, perhaps, for another article on here.)  Jules Winnfield is a career-making role for Jackson, establishing his trademark hybrid of the sacred and the profane with the almost lyrical way in which he drops an F-bomb.  Yet Jackson is gifted enough to oscillate between irreverent comedy (“I’m a mushroom-cloud layin’ motherf--ker, motherf--ker”) and intense introspection (“I felt the touch of God”), making Jules perhaps the most human of the film’s characters.  His quiet monologue in the film’s concluding diner scene is almost chilling for its earnestness; it ought to be difficult to believe that the same cheeseburger-gobbling gangster from the first ten minutes has become a contemplative amateur theologian, but Jackson makes that transition palpable and cues himself for the well-deserved success he’s enjoyed in his career thus far.

Then there’s Bruce Willis, the star of the film’s middle third.  It seems odd to say it, but I always forget that he’s in this movie until I start watching it.  Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Butch Coolidge section isn’t exclusively Tarantino’s script (co-written with Roger Avary), or perhaps it’s that “The Gold Watch” is such a traumatic and trippy piece that I psychologically block it out.  It’s not that I actively dislike “The Gold Watch” – indeed, Willis does some great work here as the sympathetic boxer, and the unforgettable Christopher Walken monologue that opens this chapter is equal parts touching, spooky, and weird (meaning it’s yet another Christopher Walken performance).  But “The Gold Watch” veers so hard and fast into disturbing territory that moviegoers likely won’t be prepared for where the film takes them.

“The Gold Watch,” though, is often underrated because it’s sandwiched between two classically Tarantino pieces – Travolta’s dance number with Thurman and the infamous bloody car cleanup.  But as with Inglourious Basterds, “The Gold Watch” is a segment where Tarantino displays his impeccable gift for generating tension; danger is around every corner in this portion of Pulp Fiction, with death or worse fates awaiting Butch and ensnaring those close to him.  The sensitive scenes with Maria de Medeiros (as Butch’s naïve lover Fabienne) are haunted by her question, “We’re in a lot of danger, aren’t we?”  Honey, you don’t know the half of it; “The Gold Watch” is dogged by the sense of impending and unrelenting doom.  It makes for uncomfortable viewing, especially when you find out what Zed and Maynard are really up to, but aesthetically it’s genius filmmaking as Tarantino pulls back on his trademark peppy dialogue and lets the visual language – long takes and intimate close-ups – do all the talking.

But lest you get the wrong idea, Pulp Fiction really is a barrel of laughs.  (Or, if it’s not, I’ve just outed myself as some kind of nut.)  It’s either genius or bizarre filmmaking when Tarantino turns an exploding head into one of the most riotous scenes in the film, allowing that trademark snappy dialogue to take over as Travolta and Jackson degenerate into a shouting match.  The film is told out of chronological order, which allows some of the more difficult bits to go down easier – as when a deceased character returns to the film in scenes from before his death – and it allows the film to reach a comfortable happy ending without sacrificing the danger that still waits for violent men who continue to act violently.

Though Inglourious Basterds concluded with the not-so-subtle intimation that it was Tarantino’s masterpiece, but I argue that Pulp Fiction retains that place in his oeuvre.  It’s quite simply a perfect film.

Pulp Fiction is rated R “for strong graphic violence and drug use, pervasive strong language and some sexuality.”  Where do we begin?  This film is unflinching in its depiction of shootings and their oh-so-bloody aftermath; profanity flows liberally with almost 300 F-words and nearly every other indecent verbiage included.  Drugs include alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, with numerous nicknames given.  Butch and Fabienne share an extremely intimate but fully clothed rendezvous which runs for a very long time, and there’s a scene of semi-graphic nonconsensual homosexual intercourse (everything seen but the body parts in question) that might be the film’s most disturbing scene of all.

Thanks for sticking with us all week, and have a very Happy Thanksgiving with your near and dear ones!  Come back here next week for our regularly-scheduled “Monday at the Movies,” as well as a review of Denzel Washington in Flight for Wednesday.

Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004)

I've made no bones about my gripe that the Kill Bill duology should have been one film. I think that, as independent films, the series is total rubbish, a series of uneven vignettes, and much like watching any ten consecutive episodes of 24.

Watching them back to back is a more liberating experience, giving the more even feel that I'm sure Quentin Tarantino intended when he made his ten-chapter revenge epic. On its own, though, Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is much more even than its predecessor.

After dispatching the first two names on her list, the still-unnamed Bride (Uma Thurman, who flexes her acting muscles here more than in Vol. 1) has three more to go - retired Budd (Michael Madsen), who had some sort of fall-out with his brother, presumably over the killings at El Paso; "hateful bitch" Elle Driver (the brutal Daryl Hannah), who is every much the Bride's match sans one eye; and finally Bill (David Carradine), Budd's brother, the leader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Flashbacks tell the story of the killings in the El Paso wedding chapel that "put this whole gory story into motion" and the training that the Bride endured under the merciless white-eyebrowed Pai Mei.

Vol. 2 is certainly more judicious in its use of nondiegetic music than Vol. 1, which at times felt more like a songbook of Tarantino's favorites (I'm thinking specifically of his use of Santa Esmeralda's "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" during the final battle with Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishii, which should be a tense battle scene between equals but gets thrown off by the catchy/hip Latin beat). Malcolm MacLaren's "About Her" doesn't seem to fit in Vol. 2, but the rest of the soundtrack - which is dominated by Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores like A Fistful of Dollars - lends the film that epic feel that perhaps the more modern Vol. 1 was lacking.

The acting is also... well, it's present. Vol. 1 is more of a popcorn film, with samurai swords and quick action cuts, while Vol. 2 relies on acting and character development to move the plot forward. With the flashbacks, it feels more like a complete story, especially since the "Last Chapter" gives us the ultimate confrontation between Bill and the Bride (who, yes, is finally named in Vol. 2) and closes the story [even though QT has said he's got plans for a third film]. The dialogue, too, is more even, with characters consistently remaining in a set speech pattern, without the fluctuations that made Vol. 1 so distracting.

If I have an overarching complaint about Vol. 2, it's that Bill, the assassin mastermind we spent so much time hating, becomes too sympathetic - or at the very least, too interesting of a character to kill off. Maybe that's my own personal hang-up, but Bill seems to be the only character who expresses any degree of remorse over what he did to the Bride (Budd does say that she deserves her revenge, but he's not above shooting her with rock salt and burying her alive... so that negates that idea). Plus, the Bride has tears in her eyes as {perhaps this is a spoiler, but the movie is four years old, as well as pretty much telling you how it ends in the freaking title of the film} she delivers the killing blow to Bill. What should have been a moment of finality is instead an ambiguous note of "Is this the right way to end?"

Perhaps the Bride got her emotions too involved with Bill. Ah, well. Revenge is, after all, a dish best served cold.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003)

In mining for films to review, I've been digging back into movies that I love but haven't seen in a while. Quentin Tarantino's fourth film, the first volume of his Kill Bill revenge epic, fell squarely in that category, so I felt it needed to be viewed again.

I'm almost sorry I did that. KB1 is not as good as I remember it being. Though it's still rip-roaring good fun, it's not exactly high cinema. Is there anything wrong with that? Not really... but this is one of those postmodernist moments where the simulation - my memory of the film - is better than the actual thing.

What I loved about the movie - and still do - is its unique structure, which divides the story into ten nonchronological chapters over two movies. The basic throughline of the movie is the story of The Bride's quest for revenge against her assassin cohorts who tried to kill her when she left their organization. The Bride (Uma Thurman) has five names on her list, and in the first volume she gets to two of them - O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox).

It's tricky to review Vol. 1 without acknowledging Vol. 2, so at least some comparisons are necessary. Vol. 1 is a lot more action-packed and a lot more colorful than its successor, but I'm not sure that makes it a great movie. It's a lot of fun, for sure; the action scenes, incredibly violent though they are, are rousing at a visceral level, instilling "Ew" and "Ah" at all the right moments, even on subsequent viewings. The direction, despite being lifted as "homages" to other works, is visually stimulating, with angles conveying more at times than the performances.

Of course, this being a Tarantino movie, we expect two things: a powerhouse of a soundtrack and snarky dialogue that predates Diablo Cody by more than a decade. On the first count, Vol. 1 delivers in a big way; the songs Tarantino chooses fit perfectly with the scenes on screen, but at times it seems like too much of a good thing, at times overtly showy. Then again, this is the film that introduced "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" and "Woo Hoo" to American listeners, so it's certainly not all bad.

As for the dialogue, I used to love its snappiness. Now I look at Vol. 1 and realize just how uneven it is. The Bride (whose name is cleverly never mentioned in the first film, although you can see it if you freeze-frame her plane ticket) alternates between intellectualism and street speak, sometimes distractingly so within the same scene. Though the writing is clever and well-organized, it's this dialectic disparity (which fortunately seems rectified in the second installment) that hurts the overall authorial reputation Tarantino earned from the likes of Pulp Fiction.

I suppose I would like Vol. 1 more if it were coupled with Vol. 2 in one movie-going experience; that would probably launch into great movie status, since a four-hour movie wouldn't be as easily dwarfed by these shortcomings. The thing is, I don't believe Tarantino set out to make an enduring classic of cinema. I believe he wanted to make his own movie that captured all the fun and excitement of the campy flicks he grew up with. And in that endeavor, he succeded. "A roaring rampage of revenge," the film describes itself. Oh, it roars, and it rampages, and it leaves the audience slightly breathless.

Perfect it isn't, but bloody satisfying? You betcha, kiddo.