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7

A potentially great film being held hostage by its PG-13 rating and its messy, all over the places screenwriting.

By PG-13 I don't simply mean its visuals/goriness, but most importantly its dialogues, themes, and storytelling it tries to raise. Let me explain.

First, the dialogues.

The film opens with murder and Batman narrating the city's anxious mood. We get a glimpse of noir in this scene, but it soon falls flat due to a very uninteresting, plain, forgettable choice of words Batman used in his narration. Mind you, this is not a jab at Pattinson - Pattinson delivered it nicely. But there is no emotion in his line of words - there is no adjectives, there is no strong feelings about how he regards the city full of its criminals.

Here's a line from the opening scene. "Two years of night has turned me to a nocturnal animal. I must choose my targets carefully. It's a big city. I can't be everywhere. But they don't know where I am. When that light hits the sky, it's not just a call. It's a warning to them. Fear... is a tool. They think I am hiding in the shadows. Watching. Waiting to strike. I am the shadows." Okay? Cool. But sounds like something from a cartoon. What does that tell us about you, Batman?

Compare this to a similar scene uttered by Rorschach in Watchmen. "The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood. And when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. All those liberals and intellectuals, smooth talkers... Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children, and the night reeks of fornication and bad consciences." You can say that Rorschach is extremely edgy (he is), but from that line alone we can tell his hatred towards the city, and even more so: his perspective, his philosophy that guides him to conduct his life and do what he does.

Rorschach's choice of words is sometimes verbose, but he is always expletive and at times graphic, making it clear to the audience what kind of person he is. Batman in this film does not. His words are always very safe, very carefully chosen, which strikes as an odd contrast to Pattinson's tortured portrayal of Batman as someone with a seemingly pent up anger. His choice of words is very PG-13 so that the kids can understand what Batman is trying to convey.

And this is not only in the opening scene. Throughout the film, the dialogues are written very plainly forgettable. It almost feels like the characters are having those conversations just to move the plot forward. Like that one encounter between Batman and Catwoman/Selina when she broke into the house to steal the passport or when Selina asked to finish off the "rat". They flow very oddly unnatural, as if those conversations are written to make them "trailer-able" (and the scenes indeed do appear on the trailer).

Almost in all crucial plot points the writers feel the need to have the characters to describe what has happened, or to explictly say what they are feeling - like almost every Gordon's scene in crime scene, or Selina's scene when she's speaking to Batman. It feels like the writers feel that the actors' expression just can't cut it and the audience has to be spoonfed with dialogues; almost like they're writing for kids.

Second, the storytelling.

Despite being a film about vengeance-fueled Batman (I actually like that cool "I'm vengeance" line) we don't get to see him actually being in full "vengeance" mode. Still in the opening we see Batman punching some thugs around. That looks a little bit painful but then the thugs seem to be fit enough to run away and Batman let them be. Then in the middle of the film we see Batman does something similar to mafias. Same, he just knocked them down but there's nothing really overboard with that. Then eventually in the car chase scene with the Penguin, Batman seem to be on "full rage mode", but over... what? He was just talking to Penguin a moment ago. The car chase scene itself is a bit pointless if not only to show off the Batmobile. And Batman did nothing to the Penguin after, just a normal questioning, not even harsher than Bale's Batman did to Heath's Joker in The Dark Knight - not in "'batshit insane' cop" mode as Penguin put it.

Batman's actions look very much apprehensive and controlled. Nothing too outrageous. Again, at odds with Pattinson's portrayal that seem to be full of anger; he's supposed to be really angry but somehow he still does not let his anger take the best of him. The only one time he went a bit overboard that shocked other characters is when he kept punching a villain near the end of the film. But even then it's not because his anger; it's because he injected some kind of drug (I guess some adrenaline shot). A very safe way to drop a parent-friendly message that "drug is bad, it can change you" in a PG-13 film.

And all that supposed anger... we don't get to see why he is angry and where his anger is directed at. Compare this to Arthur Fleck in Joker where it is clear as sky why Arthur would behave the way the does in the film. I mean we know his parents' death troubled him, but it's barely even discussed, not even in brief moments with Alfred (except in one that supposedly "shocking" moment). So... where's your vengeance, Mr. Vengeance? And what the hell are you vengeancing on?

Speaking of "shocking" moment... this is about the supposed Wayne family's involvement in the city's criminal affairs that has been teased early in the film. Its revelation was very anticlimactic: the supposed motive and the way it ended up the way it is, all very childish. If the film wanted the Wayne to be a "bad person", there's a lot of bads that a billionaire can do: tax evasion, blood diamond, funding illegal arms trade, fending off unions, hell, they can even do it the way the Waynes in Joker did it: hints of sexual abuses. But no, it has to be some bloody murder again, and all for a very trivial reason of "publicity". As if the film has to make it clear to the kids: "hey this guy's bad because he killed someone!" Which COULD work if the film puts makes taking someone's life has a very serious consequence. But it just pales to the serial killing The Riddler has done.

Even more anticlimactic considering how Bruce Wayne attempted to find a resolve in this matter only takes less than a 5 minute scene! It all involves only a bit of dialogues which boils down to how Thomas Wayne has a good reason to do so. Bruce somehow is convinced with that and has a change of heart instantly, making him looks very gullible.

And of course the ending is very weak and disappointing. First, Riddler's final show directly contradicts his initial goal to expose and destroy the corrupt elites. What he did instead is making the lives of the poor more difficult, very oxymoron for someone supposed to be as smart as him.

Second, the way Batman just ended up being "vengeance brings nothing and I should save people more than hurting people" does not get enough development to have him to say that in the end. Again - where's your vengeance? And how did you come to such character development if nothing is being developed on? And let's not get to how it's a very safe take against crime and corruption that closely resembles Disney's moralistic pandering in Marvel Cinematic Universe film.

Last, the visuals.

I'm not strictly speaking about gore, though that also factors in the discussion. The film sets this up as a film about hunting down a serial killer. But the film barely shows how cruel The Riddler can be to his victims. Again, back to the opening scene: we get it, Riddler killed the guy, but it does not look painful at all as it looks Riddler just knocked him twice. The sound design is very lacking that it does not seem what The Riddler done was conducted very painfully. Riddler then threw away his murder weapon, but we barely see blood. Yet when Gordon arrived to the crime scene, he described the victim as being struck multiple times with blood all over. What?

Similarly, when Riddler forced another victim to wear a bomb in his neck. The situation got pretty tense, but when the bomb eventually blow off, we just got some very small explosion like a small barrel just exploded, not a human being! I mean I'm not saying we need a gory explosion with head chopped off like in The Boys, but it does not look like what would happen if someone's head got blown off. Similarly when another character got almost blown off by a bomb - there's no burnt scar at all.

Why the hell are they setting up those possibly gory deaths and scars if they're not going to show how severe and painful these are? At least not the result - we don't need to see blood splattered everywhere - just how painful the process is. Sound design and acting of the actors (incl. twitching, for example) would've helped a lot even we don't see the gore, like what James Franco did in The 127 Hours or Hugh Jackman in Logan. In this film there's almost no tense at all resulting from those.

I'm not saying this film is terrible.

The acting, given the limited script they had, is excellent. Pattinson did his best, so did Paul Dano (always likes him as a villain), Zoe Kravitz, and the rest. Cinematography is fantastic; the lighting, angle, everything here is very great that makes a couple of very good trailers - perhaps one could even say that the whole film trades off coherency for making the scenes "trailer-able". The music is iconic, although with an almost decent music directing. And I guess this detective Batman is a fresh breath of air.

But all that does not make the movie good as in the end it's still all over the places and very PG-13.

Especially not with the 3 hours runtime where many scenes feel like a The Walking Dead filler episode.

If you're expecting a Batman film with similar gritty, tone to The Dark Knight trilogy or Joker, this film is not for you. But if you only want a live-action cartoon like pre-Nolan Batmans or The Long Halloween detective-style film, well, I guess you can be satisfied with this one.

Probably more mindblowing for an American audience that barely gets any exposure to this kind of material from its own industry. For my taste, Guadagnino plays it way too safe. I was waiting for it to push beyond the melodrama into something more wild or messed up, and I never really got that. He's constantly flexing with impressive camerawork, great editing and a fantastic score, but what is it all in service of? There's not a lot more to this than very basic melodrama. Tennis is used a metaphor for innuendo and relationships, which becomes a bit eye-rolling as the film goes along. On top of that it's not nearly as sexy as some people are suggesting, it feels like a lot of foreplay and innuendo without a real pay-off at any point. His camera doesn't shy away from nudity or sweat, and Trent Reznor's score puts in a lot of work in turning up the heat, but you want it to push beyond that at some point. For me it doesn't really develop into anything surprising and the conclusion it ultimately goes with feels kinda lame because of it. Still, it does a good job at intriguing you with the personal struggles of the three main characters, all of which are well portrayed by the actors. Zendaya is a bit hard to read at times, though it could be intentional with the character she's playing. There's enough merit to the complexity of the characters and technical aspects that kept me from being bored, but the entire time I kept thinking about how much more interesting this could be with someone like Paul Verhoeven at the helm.

6/10

As is expected from Guillermo del Toro, this is an interesting one. The universal positive here is the acting. Bradley Cooper and Rooney Mara are both excellent, as is the entire ensemble, with Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, and David Strathairn being the standouts. Cate Blanchett was perhaps the only one who I was less on board with, but I think that has more to do with the writing than with her performance.

As far as the story goes, this film is divided into two very distinct segments: (1) Stan's life with the carnival; and (2) Stan's life with Molly in the city. For me this structure resulted in what felt like a pacing issue. After moving very quickly through the first segment, with numerous time jumps keeping things progressing, things seemed to slow down in the second segment. This might have to do with the fact that the story narrows significantly. The opening segment was more slice of life; establishing the setting, the characters, and their relationships. Character driven rather than plot driven. The second segment flips this around and becomes very plot focused. I can't help but compare the two segments and unfortunately the second doesn't quite deliver on the promise of the first. Character reversals and reveals felt rushed or unearned (e.g. Cate Blanchett's final scene in particular felt very contrived) and the main conflict itself felt somewhat half baked. At the heart of the story is also the phony mentalism, which started to wear thin for me, as it doesn't exactly make for exciting cinematic material and starts to strain my suspension of disbelief. Luckily, even some of these questionable elements are largely saved by the fact that everything else about the film is so damn good, including not only the aforementioned acting, but also the stellar costumes, set design, directing, dialogue, and pretty much everything else that goes into filmmaking. And beyond that, the movie is also able to steer itself into an appropriately nightmarish ending, tying back to all of the great groundwork from the opening section. I found it quite appropriate that Willem Dafoe's tremendous monologue about recruiting geeks would be the critical building block of the final scene. Plus Tim Blake Nelson does an excellent job in his brief cameo executing the devilish plan Dafoe outlined.

As an aside, soon after finishing this film I learned that it was a remake of an apparently well reviewed 1947 film, which was in turn based on a 1946 novel. While I'm not normally one to watch two versions of the same story back to back, in this case I'm tempted to watch the original, as I'd be interested to see how this story was told back when it was more contemporary (the story takes place from the 1930s-1940s). The period piece elements of this film are so intentional and well realized that I can't help but wonder if the original would feel a bit bland in comparison, as the setting/era might be less of a focus.

[8.1/10] What must it feel like, to fail so profoundly? When we meet Obi-Wan in A New Hope, he is wizened, wily, even a touch nostalgic, with a twinkle in his eye. George Lucas hadn't fully sketched out his backstory, so the man we encountered when Alec Guiness donned the robe and laser sword bore no mark from an order destroyed and a brother lost.

But Ewan McGregor’s version of Kenobi does. He is the afterimage of Revenge of the Sith, the man who believed in something, who took on a role of incredible importance, and watched it all crumble into dust and blood on his watch. The strongest choice in the first hour of the show that bears the old wizard’s name, is to make him a broken man.

The Inquisitors lay it out for us in the first scene. The Jedi hunt themselves because they cannot help but show compassion, and their altruism leaves a trail. It’s reasonable to ask how a Jedi as prominent as Obi-Wan (who only bothered to change his first name, mind you) stayed hidden for a decade. This series presents an answer -- because he gave up all the things that marked him as a Jedi. He gave up helping. He gave up caring.

A taskmaster hassles workers who complain about their unfair wages, and Obi-Wan starts as though to speak up for the man unjustly denied, but ultimately keeps his head down. A one-time padawan comes to him for help, and Obi-Wan tells him that is time to give up and move on, only to find him strung up in the streets as a warning. None other than the Organas reach out to him, asking him to find the kidnapped daughter of Kenobi’s former apprentice, and even then, he refuses to acquiesce, telling them, simply, that it’s been a long time, and he isn’t the man he used to be.

The sense is all of this is not of a man who won’t, but feels that he can’t. This version of Kenobi doesn’t strike you as someone who doesn’t care, or who wouldn’t help if he thought it might do any good. He cuts the image of someone who believes that he is a failure, that everything he tried to accomplish fell to ruin, that given how it all went to hell, no one should trust him, or want him to do anything on their behalf. He has his duty, and his meager existence, and it’s all he can stomach.

Thank god, then, for McGregor. He gave the best performance in the Prequels (with his only major competition being Ian McDiarmid’s Palpatine), and proves again why he was the right man for the job here. Obi-Wan has very few lines in this opening episode: a warm but terse thank you, a handful of denials, and amusing conversation with a Jawa that shows some of that old twinkle. But most of the hour is spent in the spaces of what “Old Ben” doesn’t say, the actions he doesn’t take, the emotions he’d dare not vocalize.

McGregor sells the absolute pain in every moment and act of Obi-Wan’s life. His look of regret, of resignation, of quiet self-loathing and unworthiness in each moment fills the screen. In poetic fashion, he matches the presence of Mark Hamill’s Luke in The Last Jedi, a fallen monk convinced of his order’s brokenness and obsolescence. The same sense of an open wound personified pervades McGregor’s return to the role for the first time in seventeen years.

But he’s not alone. The first part of the mini-series also introduces the Third Sister, a member of the Inquisitorius who’s almost single-minded in her pursuit of Kenobi. Her harsh methods of intimidating and insistence on chasing this ghost earn her the rebukes of the Fifth Brother and even the Grand Inquisitor himself. She is the dastard here, lopping off hands, threatening people’s families, and orchestrating a kidnapping of the child of Kenobi’s old ally. She’s the one who acts to smoke him out, letting the compassion provide the trail she needs.

And that part’s all fine. The story makes sense, both as a way for a committed antagonist to track down our hero and as something to spur the self-excommunicated Kenobi to return to action. But right now her part of the story feels more like plot mechanics than anything infused with character. All we get is a brief “To get what I’m owed” explanation for her motivation, and with this first outing, Moses Ingram is just okay in the role. In brief, this is a necessary but generic villain in the early going.

Thankfully, the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries has a surprise in tow -- time spent with young Leia Organa. Vivien Lyra Blair is a revelation in the role, balancing out decades of unavailing child acting in Star Wars. Her confident, even confrontational bent calls to mind Lady Mormont of Game of Thrones. Without devolving into fanservice, the show conveys the sense in which her spunk, her defiance, her willingness to take chances that we saw in the Original Trilogy, has its roots in her childhood.

It also has its roots in her family. This is a part of the story we’ve never had much of a glimpse of before. Seeing Alderaan in all its glory is a treat, but more to the point, it’s nice to have a glimpse of the life that made Leia who she is, the people that she was fighting for. The proper, occasionally disapproving, but clearly loving mother is a bit of a cliche, but their dynamic pops on screen. Even better, the inimitable Jimmy Smits reprises the role of Bail Organa, and his encouraging, understanding, a bit mischievous himself connection to his daughter provides another pillar of who this little girl would one day become.

When she confesses her insecurity over a jerky cousin’s recrimination that she’s not a “real” Organa, and her father affirms her as an Organa in every way, it warms the heart and fills in the connection between parent and child that's only been faintly alluded to until now. Seeing it in action, understanding the recalcitrant young child with an itch for adventure, not only paves the way for Carrie Fisher’s grown-up version of the famed princess, but makes for an enjoyable and endearing character to follow in the here and now.

It’s a twist, because the few hints we’ve had, not just from trailers but from the franchise’s past, suggests Obi-Wan’s focus was on Luke. It’s a bold, admirable choice to turn away from the well-trodden territory of Luke’s upbringing, and connect Kenobi and Leia in a meaningful fashion, filling in more of the unknown in the process. Even in our stop on Tatooine, hearing Uncle Owen warning off Obi-Wan from Luke, given what happened to Anakin, deepens the character’s generic, “No, don’t answer the call to adventure” reaction in Episode IV, and serves as a reminder of the thing that haunts Kenobi the most.

Beyond the character dynamics and plotting, the craft here is outstanding. Despite employing familiar settings and environment, “Part I” expands the scope of Star Wars, not just in the motley collection of sand-swept men and beasts wandering the desert, but in the constraining opulence of the Alderaanian estates. New visions like an industrial effort to carve up a giant beast in the sand, or the believable movements of an alien camel bending down to let its rider alight bring this universe to life. Appropriately, director Deborah Chow channels the Alec Guinness-starring Lawrence of Arabia with wide shots of Obi-Wan traipsing through an empty, arid landscape, conveying his loneliness and isolation in his self-sworn seclusion.

The elements aren’t all perfect. True-to-form, “Part I” includes some Prequel-esque dialogue (“What happened to you?” “You don’t go far enough”) and imagery in the form of unreal-looking buildings on Alderaan. On the other hand, what McGregor cannot convey with his piercing performance alone, Natalie Holt’s score makes the difference in emotion. Her backing music captures both the heart-pumping panic in dramatic moments like a lookback at Order 66 or Leia’s escape attempt, but more importantly the languid, hollowing moments of Kenobi’s spiritual surrender, his renouncement of all that used to drive him and move him in a lifelong devotion.

The beauty of the first hour of Obi-Wan Kenobi is the way it draws the eponymous Jedi’s first steps back toward who he used to be, and who he will one day become. This is not a one-time hero who leaps at the chance to return to action and right what went wrong. It is someone haunted by his failures, who deems himself undeserving, incapable of stepping back into those shoes. This all-important opening act of Kenobi’s return does not skimp on what pains the man, the decade of regret that left him marinating in his own mistakes, his own defeats, his greatest failures until he was worn down to a nub of a person.

What spurs him back to life is not injustice or the pleas of a member of his order. It is a personal appeal from an old friend, that only he can save Bail’s daughter, the child of his former apprentice, and the girl who will one day help save the galaxy. Obi-Wan buried his sword and with it his old life. When a vestige of that old life returns, even he cannot deny the call for long. It is not the vows Kenobi once took or the duties he swore that rouse him from his hollowed-out stupor. It is, ironically, his attachments, his compassion, his need to help those who need it most that even ten years of stewing in failure cannot fully snuff out, These are the undeniable parts of Ob-Wan that are poised to revive him, heal him, and restore him back to the man he once was, and will be again.

[7.8/10] Don’t look now, but The Walking Dead is three-for-three on the season so far. And these episodes haven’t just been good. They’ve been intimate, challenging, introspective about life after the apocalypse in a way we’ve only seen in fits and starts before. As I’ve said before, I’m not naive enough to expect it to last, but I’ll take it.

“One More” has the quality of an old short story, one that, of course, gains added resonance given what we know about Gabriel and Aaron from past adventures, but which could frankly work as a standalone T.V. movie about two random survivors contemplating good and evil in the ashes of the world. It’s a refreshing approach from the show, and I hope they stick with it.

I’ll admit, I don’t care a lot about Gabriel or Aaron despite how long they’ve been with the show at this point. They’ve rarely been in focus and frankly feel more like living character sheets than actual characters. But this episode breathes some real life into them. In the early portions especially, you feel their exhaustion and desperation, as they hit site after site in the hopes of finding food to help feed their people, and instead only find images of death.

There's a lot of potent symbolism in this one. The most obvious is the image of blood splattering on flowers, a contrast between the beauty of nature and the harshness of the new world that represents the weighing of benevolence and cruelty that takes place here. There’s also a number of skeletons in poses that suggest families huddling together and dying, a constant reminder of the costs of this new order to two men with daughters they’d like to see again and forge a world better than this one. There’s a sense of how or why someone could hold onto hope or faith in the face of such imagery.

“One More” makes our two protagonists here (with Gabe taking the bigger role) avatars for those different ideas. Aaron wants to believe in the potential for a better world, that there is still kindness and mercy worth cultivating in this place because it’ll be needed when things get back to something approaching normal. Gabriel, ironically, is a cynic, who doesn’t think things will ever get back to normal and who, deep down, seems to believe that lethal pragmatism and matter-of-fact determinations are the only real orders of the day.

I like the first half of the episode better than the second, because it’s just the two of them reacting to different things, good and bad, in the world, in ways that reveal that perspective. There’s some well-staged set pieces that evince their sense of exhaustion and frustration at how fruitless this mission has been, and the wear on them from having to do so much killing, even if it’s just for walkers.

But there’s also a moment of relief for them, when they stumble their way into dinner and fancy drinks. They feel more human in these moments, letting their guards down, having the chance to relax, to scoff at the materialism of the world before the fall, to nab toys for their kids and play cards and sit in comfy chairs for once.

There’s also a chance for Gabriel to give a stunning monologue about his mentor, a man of the cloth who didn’t believe in doctrine so much as he believed in being with people, speaking from the heart, connecting with them at their level to give them ease. You can hear the way Gabriel admires the man with every word he utters and feels like he falls short in following his example.

He gets a chance to try to do that in the second half, which I liked less but still appreciated. It turns out that their shelter for the night isn’t an abandoned outpost, but rather one man’s hideout. The man, named Maize (and played by Robert Patrick) is incensed that these interlopers killed his boar and drank his whiskey, and so decides to play a sick game. He forces Gabriel and Aaron to play a version of Russian Roulette where each has to decide whether to point the gun at themselves or one another.

His aim is to try to show that all that’s left are murderers and thieves, to show that when the chips are down, people will turn on one another to save themselves, the way his brother did to him. It’s a tense sequence, with some good acting from all involved. But it feels like such a contrived, theatrical scenario, which lessens its impact.

There’s some power in Gabriel and Aaron proving him wrong, not just by choosing to turn the gun on themselves even when they believe the bullet’s in the chamber, but through Gabriel seeming to live up to his mentor’s model, speaking his heart to Maize and convincing him that there’s is still light in the world, that he can join their community and find a better way. The form is semi-novel, but it’s a pitch we’ve seen our heroes make in tons of situations when confronted with amoral or brutally cynical adversaries.

What is unique, though, is that it’s all an act. When Maize lets his guard down, Gabriel clobbers him with Aaron’s arm. Gabriel had preached the word and gotten through to his attacker, and seemingly Aaron for that matter, but he didn’t believe it, or at least didn’t believe that someone who killed his own brother deserved that sort of grace. (Which, hey, if you’ve read the story of Cain and Abel, isn’t a biblically inconsistent approach, I suppose!). There’s a bitter but potent irony to that.

The capper is that they find the (twin!) brother stowed away in the building’s upper floor, clearly being imprisoned and tortured and forced to play similar games. And when they try to free him, he grabs a gun, looks at the wife and child he was forced to kill in another of those Saw-esque exercises, and kills himself, unable to live after everything he’s seen and done.

It’s dark, and I know folks complain about the grimness of the show sometimes. Hell, I have. But there’s something more personal and specific about this. It’s not just wanton death and cruelty on a wide scale. It’s meant as a testament to the shadows in the human soul, the people whose hearts have been blackened by the last ten years and may or may not be able to be redeemed. The biggest irony, of course, seems to be that in the moment, Gabriel does live up to his mentor’s legacy. He’s with Maize. He seems to persuade the wicked that it doesn’t have to be that way. Only to show that he buys into the very dogma that he was trying to talk his captor out of. It’s dark, but it’s a sort of personal darkness that is harder to take while also feeling more visceral and piercing than more blood and guts.