Batman: The Animated Series - "Trial"

“Court is now in session! The good people of Arkham Asylum vs. the self-righteous vigilante called Batman!”

Gotham’s new district attorney Janet Van Dorn (Stephanie Zimbalist) is frustrated that Batman’s brand of vigilante justice ties the hands of the court, shipping Poison Ivy off once more to Arkham Asylum rather than a life sentence at Blackgate. Ivy’s not too thrilled with her incarceration, either, though her mood sweetens when she learns that the inmates are truly running the asylum this time, with a harebrained scheme to capture Batman and place him on trial for creating them. Craziest of all, the rogues gallery pressgangs Van Dorn into defending the Dark Knight, with the Joker (Mark Hamill) presiding over the zaniest trial of them all.

Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, fantastic episode – you know the drill by now. Let’s talk about why this episode is so good and why it’s held up in my memory. First of all, this episode really captures the feeling of a kid playing with a box of action figures. All your favorites are in this episode, hanging around and waiting for their moment to shine, before they all converge and attack Batman. I’m pretty sure we all played out a version of this episode with our Bat-figurines (though I’m still sore I never had a Harley Quinn), right down to the figures who remained silent in our play but still nevertheless had to be there for reasons unknown even to our imagination. (Here, it’s Scarecrow and Riddler, who remain silent but would have felt like notable absences otherwise.)

For Dini, this episode feels like the culmination of so much of what he’s done with the show – bring out its best villains and present them in their best, scene-stealing form. Here Batman is almost incidental, a catalyst for the episode’s action, but he spends most of his time mute and bound. This is that apex genre of Batman episodes which could not take place in any other universe but needs not its ostensible protagonist to captivate an audience. And because it’s a Dini episode, we get some more spot-on Joker moments, from his Porky Pig impression to his hammy Irish accent, from his indifference to shooting his own allies to his stunned revelation about proper court proceedings – “Record? Is someone supposed to be writing this down?” Paul Dini and Mark Hamill surely belong on the Mount Rushmore of Batman: The Animated Series (joined, I am confident, by Kevin Conroy and Bruce Timm, with Arleen Sorkin impishly true-to-form looming with Harley’s giant hammer).

The greatest delight in this episode is the way that each witness’s testimony showcases their off-kilter personality, their warped sense of reality, and their sterling visual design. It’d be a shame to spoil each testimony by describing the subtle surprises in this episode. There’s a reprise from “Pretty Poison,” a smart reminder that the show frequently consults its own history, while the show also remembers the abusive core of the Harley/Joker “relationship.” Joker as judge is inspired, but so too is the Ventriloquist’s role as a soft-spoken bailiff. Even Killer Croc returns to his preferred method of personal injury with another callback to “Almost Got ’Im.”

Perhaps the biggest (and most welcome) surprise is that Dini and co-writer Bruce Timm also find a great one-episode arc for DA Van Dorn, who raises the very sensible concern that Batman’s involvement in crimefighting may be causing as many problems as it solves. There’s a delightful and typically Dini note of irony in the moment that Janet Van Dorn goes on a date with Bruce Wayne. Between the fact that she’s Harvey Dent’s ostensible replacement and the way in which the plot creates a credible shift in her perception of Batman, it’s a shame we didn’t see more of Janet on the show. But it is a treat to see her defend a case against former district attorney Two-Face. Dini closes the episode on a confident restatement on her character’s core – “I’m still going to work towards a city that doesn’t need Batman” – before breaking our hearts with a chilling “Me, too” from Batman, a sobering reminder that for all its colorful characters and outlandish plots, this show is about one man’s quest to save an entire city from the pain that scars him to this day.

Original Air Date: May 16, 1994

Writers: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm

Director: Dan Riba

Villains: All of them! The Joker (Mark Hamill), Ventriloquist & Scarface (George Dzundza), Killer Croc (Aron Kincaid), The Mad Hatter (Roddy McDowall), Two-Face (Richard Moll), Poison Ivy (Diane Pershing), Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin), The Scarecrow, and The Riddler

Next episode: “Avatar,” in which thankfully no blue people appear.

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

Black Panther (2018)

At this point – a week after its release and eighteen films deep into the reliable Marvel Cinematic Universe – you probably don’t need me to tell you that Black Panther is great. I can’t say it’s the best superhero film ever, and indeed it’s hard to say if it’s the best film of Phase Three, which includes first-rate features like Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming. But I will go out on a limb and say that it’s the best first entry in a Marvel sub-franchise since Iron Man, doing the work of building out the larger franchise’s world, distinguishing itself as a story in its own right, and managing to entertain the dickens out of a diverse audience who are helping it to shatter records.

After the death of his father, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) assumes the mantle of King of Wakanda, a secretive nation in Africa guarding technological advances and a massive cache of vibranium, a rare indestructible metal. T’Challa also takes on the identity of his nation’s defender, the Black Panther, who is called to action when Erik Stevens – the Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) – and arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, upping the mania from Age of Ultron) steal a vibranium artifact from a London museum. All the while, T’Challa wrestles with his father’s legacy, wondering whether Wakanda should remain hidden from the world.

Marvel has not really made a bad movie since the inception of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008. Your mileage may vary, as in the case of The Incredible Hulk and Thor: The Dark World (which I liked but have never felt compelled to rewatch), but by and large the MCU has been a case study in crowdpleasing. When introducing new characters to the universe, though, Marvel has struggled to break out of the mold set by Iron Man. With its scientific macguffin, Ant-Man is largely (no pun intended) “Tiny Iron Man”; when Doctor Strange has to set his ego aside to embrace a higher calling, it’s difficult not to see him as “Magic Iron Man.”

Black Panther is not, however, the story of a Tony Stark type who takes the throne and learns humility; it’s about a prince coming into his own, grappling with the weight of history and some very compelling arguments from his enemies. It might be Marvel’s most philosophical movie, and it’s certainly the most political (such is bound to happen when your protagonist is a king), but moreover it’s one of the more unique, giving audiences something we’ve truly never seen before in a superhero movie – a fully-realized alternate world which is entirely plausible and rousingly engaging. Wakanda is unlike anything in recent memory (though parts do feel as though it’s a pilot launch for a new Disney theme park, which I’d happily attend), and director Ryan Coogler is wise to give us Wakanda such as it is without the crutch of a point-of-view character; we’re dropped into the world, which displays a consistent internal logic without being overly explained. Even the film’s introductory history lesson, though expositional, gives weight to the film as we begin to wonder to whom the story was being told.

After seeing the film twice, I was glad to see that Black Panther really holds up, and that two different audiences had a consistent baseline of reactions to the film’s twists, punchlines, and triumphs. Black Panther contains a number of surprising reveals, each well-executed without the need for an explanatory pause. Perhaps the greatest surprise, though, is that the film’s ostensible villain, Killmonger, actually makes a lot of sense (surprising, I know, for a man whose name might as well be Murderman). “Where were you?” he asks of the isolationist Wakanda after recounting a litany of history’s horrors. Killmonger is a welcome relief from the generic world-conquerors Marvel has been known to give us, distinctive and fantastically performed by Jordan (proving that Marvel continues to be the rehabilitation clinic for former Human Torches). That he poses both a physical and philosophical challenge to T’Challa is one of the film’s greatest strengths.

Really, though, Black Panther is so full of good performances that it’s tough to single one out. Jordan has rightly gotten his fair share of critical accolades, and we knew from Civil War that Boseman had the kingly presence required for the Black Panther. As T’Challa’s sister Shuri, Letitia Wright steals her every scene; whether it’s playing Q to T’Challa’s 007 or testing out her sonic wrist cannons, with her infectious charm and rebellious streak, Wright is the next face to watch in the Marvel movies because she ought to be in every one of them going forward. (Can you imagine her bonding with Rocket Raccoon or Peter Parker?) I would say she steals nearly every scene because Winston Duke, as rival tribe leader M’Baku the Man-Ape, is an unexpected hoot, with an intimidating presence and a gregarious sense of humor to match. Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira are just two of the many badass women in T’Challa’s life and by his side, and it’s remarkably refreshing to see a film so full of women who are always working together, never devalued by the male protagonist or by each other. (And yes, the film passes the Bechdel test.)

Look, I could go on and on, running down the cast list and finding something to praise. There’s not a bad performance in the bunch, and there’s not a single sequence that wastes time in the film’s 130+-minute runtime. I had worried that Black Panther might feel like a holding pattern before May’s Infinity War (to which, we’re told, this whole universe has been building), but instead it feels heroically fresh, such that I’m almost more excited to hear about Black Panther II. It’s equally gratifying that, as Marvel approaches their ostensible endgame, they’re loosening the reins on their house style and letting some fresh voices like Taika Waititi, James Gunn, and Ryan Coogler do their thing in the Marvel sandbox. It gives one the idea that Infinity War might not be an ending but rather a beginning, a prismatic expansion point from which the Marvel Cinematic Universe can spread out, diversify, and challenge our ideas of what a superhero movie can be. Wakanda forever, indeed.

Black Panther is rated PG-13 for “prolonged sequences of action violence, and a brief rude gesture.” Directed by Ryan Coogler. Written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole. Based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Starring Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis.

Batman: The Animated Series - "A Bullet For Bullock"

“We are speaking of the same person, are we not? Harvey Bullock? The detective who looks like an unmade bed?”

Harvey Bullock (Robert Costanzo) is no one’s favorite police detective, but one night he’s attacked in a drive-by shooting. Shaken but no worse for the wear, Bullock recruits Batman to help him identify his would-be assassin. Batman mounts a parallel investigation, but there’s no shortage of suspects – abuse from Bullock is in ample supply, including to those who would help him find the killer.

The word I keep reusing with this show is “solid.” “A Bullet for Bullock” is just one more solid episode in a show populated with winners; it doesn’t misstep, it does something new and interesting, and it proves to be roundly entertaining. Best of all, it does that quintessentially BtAS thing of turning its attention to a supporting character – Harvey Bullock – and makes him the star of an episode that makes the best use of him. He’s been at the periphery of the show, interjecting a snide remark or chomping a donut, but we get to see a little bit more of Bullock and how he ticks.

Like last week’s “Sideshow,” this episode is very much a thematic sequel to “Vendetta,” which saw Bullock framed for witness intimidation and explored his particular brand of extralegal behavior. Here, we see the consequences of Bullock’s prickly style; so numerous are the people he’s crossed that it’s literally impossible to predict which one might want to kill him. (If we hadn’t just seen Killer Croc in chains, he’d be a likely suspect.) The episode’s punchline – like the rest of the episode, adapted wholesale from Chuck Dixon’s Detective Comics #651 – nails the point about Bullock’s casual cruelty, but there remains something infectiously lovable about this crotchety cop.

When we talk about the score of Batman: The Animated Series, we usually talk about the genius opening sequence or mention how often the show invokes Danny Elfman’s theme from 1989. But the show has, even if I haven’t always acknowledged it, done really great things with its musical orchestration. From its opening moments, this episode has one of the snappiest scores in the show’s florid history. “A Bullet for Bullock” leans hard into the jazzy wails of archetypal detective stories. It’s an interesting musical approach to Bullock – who, as Alfred so aptly puts it, “looks like an unmade bed” – and it reminds one rather of the nightclub music from “Almost Got ’Im,” with Harvey R. Cohen filling in for series regular Shirley Walker on composing duties. In particular, there’s a standout moment when the main theme is remastered into a jazz-action cue that is well-suited to the moment when Bullock and Batman team up to clear a warehouse of its thugs (one of whom looks suspiciously like Lee Marvin).

We’ve seen throughout this show a slew of episodes – often among the best – devoted to Batman’s supporting cast, contextualizing what they mean to our main character and showing us what the world looks like from their vantage point. “I Am The Night” showed us what a Gotham without Gordon might look like, while way back in “P.O.V.” we saw how the police force perceived the Dark Knight. Even “The Man Who Killed Batman” ended up being as much about why The Joker personally needs a Batman as it was about the putz who thought he’d offed the Bat. Bullock’s partner Renee Montoya pops in for a few moments, and the curious friendship these two opposites have developed makes me wish that we’d gotten a Montoya-centric episode. It almost makes me wish we’d gotten a whole series about how Gotham behaves with a Batman in it. As it stands, one-and-done episodes like this one remind us how fully-realized this cartoon’s universe was, and it serves as a fine reminder of what the show can do.

Original Air Date: September 14, 1995

Writer: Michael Reaves

Director: Frank Paur

Villains: Vincent Starkey (Gregg Berger) and Nivens (Jeffrey Jones)

Next episode: “Trial,” in which Batman finds himself on the wrong end of a kangaroo court.

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

Batman: The Animated Series - "Sideshow"

“I know you feel a little funny being here, but it’s great; it really is. No one stares at you laughing, making you feel bad. You can be yourself.”

On route to a lengthy prison sentence, Killer Croc (Aron Kincaid) busts out of his chains and stages a daring escape from the railcar transporting him up the river. Croc plunges headlong into said river and drifts downstream until he encounters a clan of former circus performers – the giant Goliath (Brad Garrett), Siamese twins May and June (JoBeth Williams), Billy the “seal boy” (Whit Hertford), and their hunchbacked leader Richard (Kenneth Mars). These deformed refugees take in the escaped convict, unaware that Batman is hot on his tail.

Over the course of this review series, I’ve been surprised by episodes that were better than I remembered, and I’ve encountered episodes I’d forgotten entirely. “Sideshow,” however, is a horse of a different color, because I completely misremembered this episode. For some reason, my faulty memory told me this was an episode in which Killer Croc was reformed by a group of kindly circus performers, only for his monstrous side to reemerge when Batman attempts to apprehend him. That would have been a great story, very much of a piece with the recent reformation of the character over in the comic books, but “Sideshow” isn’t that episode at all.

Instead of a tragedy about Croc’s inability to rehabilitate himself, we get a tragedy about Croc’s unwillingness to reform. Time and again, this episode demonstrates Croc’s resolute dedication to bliking the circus performers, scheming to take their money and warp them into his own personal gang of henchmen. We witness him lie, confidently but not convincingly, and we’re horrorstruck when he convinces them to imprison Batman in a cage, reversing and reinscribing the violence done to them as “freaks.” The episode goes for an incredibly dark ending when Killer Croc tells the heartbroken performers that they gave him the opportunity to be exactly what he is – a monster. It’s almost heartbreaking how Croc realizes what a golden opportunity he’s squandered, but without the requisite penitence to allow that moment to change him.

This is probably, now that I’m thinking of it, the best Killer Croc episode in the show. It’s a short putt, to be fair, but someone’s got to come out on top. In addition to the sober treatment of Killer Croc, who was something of a generic baddie in his debut episode, “Vendetta,” “Sideshow” begins with a standout first act that is largely silent, a rousing fight-turned-chase that sees Batman duel it out with Croc on top of a moving train before the pursuit moves through the forest. (Sidebar: if Croc is going to prison in Gotham, where is this train taking him? Levitz Prison is, incidentally, named for Paul Levitz, a significant writer and editor at DC Comics, but how far away is it?) Moreover, the whole sequence takes place in daylight, a difficult strategy for a Batman story, but director Boyd Kirkland accomplishes a riveting chase.

There’s something to be said for the strong voice cast on display; Kincaid gives his best performance as Croc, it’s true, but the circus performers are equally notable performers in their own right. Kenneth Mars quotes Shakespeare like a pro (a weakness of mine, I confess), and Brad Garrett shows up just ahead of his expertly cast turn on Superman: The Animated Series as the space biker Lobo. The animation on these characters is exceptional, too, acknowledging their abnormalities without reducing them to the same.

Continuity wonks will also note that Killer Croc attempts to kill Batman by – you guessed it – throwing a rock at him. It’s a quick and cute nod to “Almost Got ’Im” and a line Croc never actually said, a nice wink to how great this show has been and a rewarding treat for devotees like yours truly. “Sideshow” is ultimately a really well-made episode, perhaps not among the best, but solidly inhabiting that comfortable space of successful second-tier episodes that fill out the hefty middle range of BtAS’s bell curve of quality. As Croc episodes go, though, it’s scaly chomping gold.

Original Air Date: May 3, 1994

Writers: Michael Reaves and Brynne Stephens

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villain: Killer Croc (Aron Kincaid)

Next episode: “A Bullet for Bullock,” in which someone’s got it in for Gotham’s most reluctant team-up.

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

Batman: The Animated Series - "The Worry Men"

“Tell me, Alfred, what’s an ancient Mayan witch doctor doing on a Gotham skyscraper?”

Gotham socialite Veronica Vreeland (Marilu Henner) returns from South America and hosts a gala fundraiser to save the rainforest and celebrate her homecoming. She introduces Bruce Wayne to her latest find, a “Worry Man” – a tiny doll placed under one’s pillow to absorb stress and anxiety. In spite of Bruce’s skepticism, Alfred smuggles the doll into his master’s bed (“Every little bit helps.”), but the next morning, Bruce Wayne robs himself of $20 million. Is the worry man to blame for this unwitting heist? And what of the aforementioned witch doctor, spotted prowling near Veronica’s party?

I always feel I should put up a disclaimer for episodes that are structured as a mystery, and so if you don’t want to be spoiled on the secret of the worry men, we’ll see you next week. My big surprise was that this episode was written by Paul Dini. (I should have known it was Dini – he still finds a way to sneak in Joker and Harley!) It’s not a bad episode by any stretch, but nor is it one of Dini’s best. It’s an episode that I really didn’t remember, which is surprising, given my wearying refrain that Dini’s episodes are the best.

To be sure, there is much about “The Worry Men” that works. Though I remembered the truth about the worry men, I had entirely forgotten about the witch doctor, who presents a very compelling visual and who features prominently in several very rousing action scenes with Batman. Then there’s the episode’s climax, in which Batman faces down mammoth murderous marionettes of his greatest enemies, their rosy cheeks and goliath grins like something out of a grotesque Babes in Toyland. These are the moments when Dini’s great love of Batman really shines, and the episode does some pretty special and somewhat unique things with the character.

In isolation, “The Worry Men” is probably a very solid episode, but it stands in the shadows of two greater ones. First, Veronica Vreeland returns from “Birds of a Feather,” a truly first-rate Penguin episode which gave us a Vreeland who was as complex as she was contemptible; here, though, she’s a party girl through and through, burning through daddy’s trust fund like that other Veronica from Archie Comics. Then – I can delay the spoiler no longer – “The Worry Men” marks the first appearance of Jervis Tetch, the Mad Hatter, since “Perchance to Dream.” The plain fact is that “Perchance” is arguably the best Mad Hatter story that’s ever been told (including, I daresay, the Lewis Carroll story that inspired him), and this episode ends up being a little like trying to follow up “Heart of Ice.” (We’ll get there, though, in the penultimate episode of the series.)

What redeems the episode, aside from the animatronic ballet of death that runs Batman through a garish gauntlet (Dini’s dark humor on full display, to boot), is the self-aware nature of the episode’s paling in comparison to “Perchance.” Batman is almost disappointed to hear that the whole scheme was just about money, as if he expects better of a twisted mind like Tetch. But the Mad Hatter gloats about his impending retirement and then makes an attempt to steal Batman’s cowl (itself a kind of hat) before sending him off to a guillotine. The mania of the episode’s third act whirls with all the grandeur of Roddy McDowall’s voice – and a more perfect Hatter I could not imagine. It is not “Perchance to Dream,” though both episodes withheld the Hatter until the third act, nor do I expect you’d see it on a “Top 10 Dini Episodes” list, but it is a suitably odd feature with enough good material to lead me to question why it was that I didn’t remember much of it.

(Oh, and if you’re still wondering about that witch doctor, did you notice he’s wearing a hat?)

Original Air Date: September 16, 1993

Writer: Paul Dini

Director: Frank Paur

Villain: The Mad Hatter (Roddy McDowall)

Next episode: “Sideshow,” in which a croc runs away and joins the circus.

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

Batman: The Animated Series - "Read My Lips"

“You’ve had your share of odd opponents, sir, but this one does take the biscuit.”

A spree of successful robberies leads Batman to a new gang in Gotham. This gang, however, is led by Arnold Wesker – The Ventriloquist – and his gangster dummy Scarface (both voiced by George Dzundza). How can Batman stop a mobster who doesn’t know he’s a mobster? And who’s really in charge here?

Scarface and The Ventriloquist are relatively recent additions to the Batman canon, debuting in February 1988, but they’re pretty iconic for the simplicity of the concept – an evil ventriloquist who might be controlled by his dummy. (Sidebar: why haven’t we had a live-action Ventriloquist yet? Paging Colin Mochrie...) I know I took The Animated Series to task last week for its difficult handling of mental illness with Maxie Zeus, but with the Ventriloquist the waters are somewhat muddier, both here and in the comics, where it’s more overtly implied that Scarface is alive, carved from the gallows at Blackgate Penitentiary. This episode seems to fall on the side of mental illness, but there’s plenty of implication that the Ventriloquist is, to mix metaphors, pulling the strings. It’s that note of ambiguity that makes this episode worth revisiting.

Another real gem in “Read My Lips” is the casting of George Dzundza as both Ventriloquist and Scarface, one a sniveling coward and the other a gangster straight out of central casting. Dzundza would later take the role of Perry White on Superman: The Animated Series, which is really weird to hear when you know they’re all the same guy, but kudos to Andrea Romano, who chose the voice cast for BtAS, because she found a gem. Dzundza finds a distance between the two voices, sharp enough to tell the difference but near enough to recognize it’s the same person voicing both characters. The true mark of Dzundza’s power is that I still hear his Scarface in my head when I read the comics (to be fair, I still hear a lot of the voices from BtAS in my head – another feather in Andrea Romano’s cap).

As someone who watched a lot of those films at a formative period in his life, I really appreciated the way “Read My Lips” leans heavily into the gangster tropes, from the very name of Scarface to goons like Rhino, Mugsy, and Ratso appearing to have stepped out of the background of a 1930s James Cagney film. We’ve seen the polished gangsters of Rupert Thorne’s racket, and we’ve seen Gotham taken over by a better class of criminal (hat-tip to Heath Ledger’s Joker), but Scarface’s crew is a real throwback. The retro vibe of the episode puts Batman in a place where he has to rely on his wits more than his gadgets, though there’s a memorable bit with the Batcomputer which feels oddly reminiscent of Blade Runner. On the whole, though, this episode feels like it could have been a very good installment or two in the 1940s Batman serials.

It’s surprising to me that this is the sixty-fourth episode of the series (out of 85 or 109, depending on whether you count The New Batman Adventures), because I remember Scarface having such a looming presence over the show. Either my memory was leaning on his later episodes, or “Read My Lips” is a whopper of a debut, because it’s difficult to imagine that Scarface is wholly absent from the first half of the show. Just as Scarface is probably the best of Batman’s second-tier rogues, “Read My Lips” might not be a Top Ten episode, but it’s a strong contender for #11.

Original Air Date: May 10, 1993

Writers: Alan Burnett, Michael Reaves, and Joe R. Lansdale

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villain: The Ventriloquist and Scarface (George Dzundza)

Next episode: “The Worry Men,” in which Batman goes galumphing back.

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

Hostiles (2017)

Like Roman J. Israel, Esq. before it, I had no idea what to expect from Hostiles because I hadn’t encountered any marketing for it; I conducted a minimal amount of research before seeing it and determined that it was worth a look based on the strength of its leading man (Christian Bale) and director (Scott Cooper, of the Oscar-nominated Crazy Heart). And in both cases, the element of surprise worked in the film’s favor; I genuinely didn’t know what to expect from Hostiles, and I found myself compelled by the plot and its anchoring performances.

Christian Bale stars as Captain Joseph Blocker, an Army man nearing retirement in 1892. For his last mission, Blocker is assigned by President Harrison to escort the ailing Cheyenne chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family to Montana. Despite losing several of his men in battle with Yellow Hawk, Blocker heads north, where he and his troops meet Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), whose family was recently slaughtered by a Comanche raiding party.

I think Luke Skywalker gave the best review of Hostiles near the middle of The Last Jedi when he advised, “This is not going to go the way you think.” Despite the setup of its opening shots, Hostiles does not behave like a traditional revenge western; though there are certainly elements of that subgenre, it’s far from the film’s main focus, and the film approaches that plotline from an angle that ends up serving the film’s actual center – the absurd senselessness of violence motivated only by a history of racial prejudice, and the deep scars left by that violence. It’s to the film’s credit that this lesson is never overtly didactic, instead filtered through the character of Blocker, who begins the film clinging to the certainty of his prejudice, only gradually eliding the gap between himself and Yellow Hawk.

From behind one of the most expressive mustaches since Aaron Eckhart in Sully, Bale gives a riveting performance as only Bale could, presenting all the rage and self-doubt from behind the stoniest of exteriors; his whole body shaking at times, wracked with all the emotions he’s struggling to repress, Bale does amazing things with a furrowed brow or a bowed head. His scenes with Wes Studi (who, I must say, it’s good to see again) are commanding for their silence, in which we see Blocker struggle to understand, while Yellow Hawk struggles to communicate – two men so mired in the past that they are unable to imagine a better present. The gradual development of Blocker’s character feels organic, and the film’s final “twist” (in that it’s unexpected, not that it turns out he was dead all along or something) helps us understand more about how much the character has changed over the course of the film.

If there’s an aspect of the film that feels out of place, it’s Rosamund Pike, who is so radiant that it’s difficult to believe she could look that pulled together after suffering so much violence in 1892. She’s a far cry from the silliness of Haley Bennett in The Magnificent Seven, and she does get some plot moments that show her character to be underestimated by the men who spend the film trying to protect her. She’s also a nice counterpart to Blocker’s internal battle with his own prejudice, but by and large the film tends to treat her like a footnote to the main plot. Having seen what Pike can do with a meaty role like “Amazing” Amy in Gone Girl, it’s a bit of a letdown to see her utilized in such an underwhelming role, especially when the film orbits an undercooked romance plot that feels more perfunctory and inevitable than necessary. (And I think the film knows it, because that envelope is never really pushed.)

Hostiles ends up reckoning with a dark chapter in American history by attempting to imagine a rehabilitated future borne out of mutual understanding. The film tracks Blocker’s recognition that he possesses so many of the things he hates about Yellow Hawk, least of all being a basic common humanity, while Yellow Hawk struggles to make himself understood to his escorting captain and to himself. Measured when it needs to be and bursting with western-style action in several key shootouts and raids, Hostiles is a surprisingly engaging film, particularly for a moviegoer who has never been all that fond of westerns.

(Sidebar: High Noon is probably my favorite western – what’s yours?)

Hostiles is rated R for “strong violence and language.” Written and directed by Scott Cooper. Based on a manuscript by Donald E. Stewart. Starring Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, and Wes Studi.

Batman: The Animated Series - "Fire From Olympus"

“Heracles bested 12 labors before I received him. And so it shall be with you, bat demon.”

After a police informant is apparently struck by lightning on a cloudless night, Batman follows the trail of a stolen energy weapon to the man responsible for shipping the device. However, Maxie Zeus (Steve Susskind) has been suffering delusions of godhood, believing himself to be the Greek deity that is his namesake. Mistaking Batman for his brother Hades, Maxie runs Batman through a gauntlet while plotting to rule Gotham from his Olympian tower.

Maxie Zeus is a bit of a pickle. As a villain, he opens up a lot of interesting territory for Batman, dropping him into Greek mythology in the way that Wonder Woman might be more comfortable. He brings that set of arresting iconography with him, and there’s probably a very good episode to be written in which he teams up with The Riddler in a heist involving the riddle of the Sphinx. However, this episode never fully wrestles with the very clear fact that Maxie Zeus is demonstrably mentally ill, and so a good deal of this episode involves Batman patiently accommodating this deluded goofball and couching his vigilante efforts under the umbrella of “helping” Maxie Zeus.

Look, as fantastic as Batman’s rogues gallery is – it’s arguably the best in comics (Spider-Man and Flash are distant runners-up) – it’s always gotten a little flak, and rightly so, for its unilateral equivalence between mental illness and pure evil. That is, The Joker is evil because he’s crazy; Two-Face becomes evil once he can’t manage his personality disorder; and Harley Quinn is only bad because she’s crazy enough to love The Joker. I’m certain that there’s a very interesting and much less thorny version of Maxie Zeus who’s not mentally ill, who knows he’s not a demigod but relishes the metaphor and the trappings of Olympus. That way, we’d have a Batman who’s not afraid to act, who doesn’t have to dance around his foe for twenty minutes until the baddie’s own hubris gets the better of him. Batman is gentler with Maxie than with his other foes, it’s true, but I never got the sense from this episode that Batman’s desire to “help” Maxie Zeus was anything more than a strategy to acquire the help of his assistant Clio (because of course she’s named after the muse of history).

Having said that, though, in the setpieces designed to keep Batman and Maxie Zeus apart, the writers Reeves-Stevens do come up with some very clever bits. The aforementioned gauntlet, Maxie Zeus’s riff on Greek myths of the hydra and the Erymanthian boar, work very well for Batman. It almost recalls the Maze of the Minotaur from “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” (probably why my mind went to a Riddler/Maxie Zeus team-up), in that it’s as much a test of Batman’s brains as his physical body. There’s a genuine sense of peril there, especially when Maxie implies there are eleven more terrible beasties behind each door. And of course, there’s a delightful frisson in the moments when the episode allows us to see the world as our villain sees it, as when he likens Batman to Hades, lord of the underworld. (I’ve always been a fan, incidentally, of the reading that the Justice League re-present the Greek pantheon: sun god Apollo reborn as Superman, underworldly Batman/Hades, Wonder Woman as the warrior Artemis, the mercurial Flash/Hermes, etc.) The episode smartly flips the script when Maxie arrives at Arkham and finds that even the incarcerated are familiar to him; we’ll forgive the way he confuses Greek and Roman mythology when he likens Two-Face to the Roman god Janus, because the rest of the sequence is such fun.

As I’ve said all along, even a B-list episode of Batman: The Animated Series is better than anything out there – case in point, I’ll even go so far as to put "The Underdwellers" against anything Teen Titans Go! has offered. This is Maxie Zeus’s one and only appearance in the DC Animated Universe (he’s made only infrequent appearances in the comics themselves), and while I couldn’t help but feel the episode could have been stronger, that’s not to say it’s a particularly poor showing. As a child, I found this episode cemented Maxie Zeus for me as a major adversary of Batman’s, and while I’ve discovered in my adulthood that that’s not quite accurate, I do confess there are a few things in “Fire From Olympus” that align with everything I love about Batman – his improbable action, his lofty tethers to mythology, and his existence in a universe populated with the most madcap of madmen.

Original Air Date: May 24, 1993

Writers: Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Director: Dan Riba

Villain: Maxie Zeus (Steve Susskind)

Next episode: “Read My Lips,” in which a glock of wood gets his gig greak.

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

Monday at the Movies - January 22, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Remember when I thought Catwoman was the last superhero film I hadn’t seen? This week, it turns out there was another.

Steel (1997) – I’ll say this for Steel: while I don’t remember Catwoman inspiring any emotions beyond boredom and disgust, at least I had a smile on my face during Steel. Don’t get me wrong, this is an absolutely terrible film, but it crosses that threshold into watchable garbage that at least made me grin at how dumb it is. The film is nominally based on the DC Comics character Steel, who dons a metal suit after being inspired by Superman, but this iteration of Steel is more like if Iron Man were a discount Robocop with a hammer (don’t worry, Shaq doesn’t miss the opportunity to say “It’s hammer time”). Shaquille O’Neal is ludicrously cast as John Henry Irons, a military weapons genius who builds his own arsenal to protect the streets when a former soldier (Judd Nelson) goes rogue with John Henry’s designs. Shaq was clearly cast because of his great height, but neither his athletic nor acting prowesses are on display here. No fewer than four times, the film trots out a tired gag in which Shaq is supposed to be bad at free throws; perhaps worse, Shaq demonstrates tremendous difficulty with words longer than four syllables (it’s all over when he tries to say the word “capacitor”). Annabeth Gish appears in a surprisingly progressive supporting role as Sparks, a paralyzed Army vet who becomes Steel’s tech support, but then the film puts rocket launchers on her wheelchair. The action sequences are rubbish, largely because the crew couldn’t find a stuntman tall enough to stand in for Shaq, and the performances are comparably lackluster (Richard Roundtree shows up, and yes, there’s a “shaft” joke). Every once in a while, Steel is heroically stupid, which makes for an entertaining bit of relief in an otherwise mercilessly poor film.

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

Batman: The Animated Series - "His Silicon Soul"

“You cannot prevent the inevitable, Batman. H.A.R.D.A.C. is reborn, in the very image of the man who destroyed him!”

In a Gotham warehouse, a lost H.A.R.D.A.C. duplicant awakens, unaware that it is not actually Batman. The duplicant leaps into crimefighting action and retreats to Wayne Manor, where it begins to confront the truth of its robotic existence. Meanwhile, Batman becomes aware of the duplicant and seeks out Karl Rossum (William Sanderson), who has retreated from the failure of his H.A.R.D.A.C. experiment.

“His Silicon Soul” is the kind of episode that one might expect to have appeared instead in the tie-in comic The Batman Adventures (one of the better Bat-books, incidentally, in recent years). It’s a one-off sequel to an earlier episode, and that’s the kind of baton the comic book would have loved to pick up. Batman: The Animated Series has always done well building its own internal continuity, but a direct sequel like this one is a nice way for the series to revisit some of its finer hours. Recall that I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed “Heart of Steel,” and so I was all the more eager to revisit “His Silicon Soul.”

You have to get past the absurd hurdle of the episode’s basic conceit – there was another duplicant, unseen and unmentioned until now – before you can wrestle with the really interesting things in “His Silicon Soul.” It’s a bit of a thin justification for a sequel episode, since we never saw any indication that H.A.R.D.A.C. had tried or even wanted to duplicate Batman (let alone Bruce Wayne), and moreover it would seem that this duplicant is more advanced than those of “Heart of Steel,” which made very unconvincing substitutes. Here, though, we’re not dealing with mere animatronics; this duplicant truly believes itself to be the real Batman, and that premise allows the writers do some fascinating work that, for my money, entirely excuses anything that goes awry with this episode. Indeed, this case of mistaken cybernetic identity ends up getting us to the very core of Batman.

The duplicant Batman – voiced, I must say, expertly by Kevin Conroy with the aid of a slight metallic filter – finds itself caught between two seemingly contradictory sets of programming: H.A.R.D.A.C.’s decree to save Gotham by replacing it, and Batman’s steadfast refusal to kill. It’s one of the more philosophical episodes of the series, grappling with this central tenet of Batman that the series has otherwise largely left unspoken. (I recently read an interview with Conroy, in which he cited the show’s “stay alive groan,” which let audiences know that Batman hadn’t actually killed anyone.) But this is key to Batman’s notion of heroism; himself orphaned by a double homicide, Batman has vowed to find a better way, steadfastly refusing to find justice in the very act that took his parents from him. It’s deeply affecting, then, to see the duplicant realize that that’s a core of its own programming too, and to struggle against H.A.R.D.A.C.’s insistence that the real Batman be killed.

The episode is padded out with neat little moments, like Rossum’s retreat to an idyllic farm, or the duplicant Batman’s instinctive turn to Alfred when it realizes that something is amiss. How about the very fact that the duplicant Batman’s first impulse is to stop a gang of thieves? Writers Marty Isenberg and Robert Skir demonstrate that they understand the intrinsic nature of Batman by showing what happens to a blank robot when you download Batman into its mind. It fights crime. It turns to Alfred for help. It seeks out its father. And it never, ever kills. I had brushed off the “duplicant trilogy” for a long time, but I’ve come around to seeing how it ultimately accesses the foundation of Batman, tells a unique story in his world, and (if nothing else) gives us a real eyeball kick with the unforgettable image of the cyborg’s half-destroyed face – to say nothing of the fact that “His Silicon Soul” includes a moment when Batman swordfights with a cyborg wearing half his face. If moments like those are immature, I never want to grow up.

Original Air Date: November 20, 1992

Writers: Marty Isenberg & Robert N. Skir

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villain: Duplicant Batman (Kevin Conroy) and H.A.R.D.A.C. (Jeff Bennett)

Next episode: “Fire From Olympus,” in which Zeus smites Gotham with a thunderbolt.

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