Movie Details
| Title: | The Batman | |
| Director: | Matt Reeves | |
| Year: | 2022 | |
| Genre: | Comic Book | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 04.18.22 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (4)
- Cloverfield
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
- Let Me In
- War for the Planet of the Apes
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 04.18.22 | Internet | Another Batman movie. I thought this one was pretty good. About halfway through I thought it was really great, maybe the best Batman movie to date, but then typical 2nd- and 3rd-act problems crept in for me and now I think it's just pretty good. I did like a lot about it, but let's do the nitpicks first. It seems like about half the movie is lifted from other movies. I got Saw, Seven, Zodiac, Silence of the Lambs (although the deleted scene they released online is totally Manhunter), Godfather, maybe a little King of New York, maybe a little Death Proof, not to mention all the previous Batman incarnations (including the Arkham games). It felt a lot to me like a mixtape of sorts where it's like "what if Batman was in Seven, man? What if, like, Batman solved the Zodiac case... man..." And all that stuff is pretty fun to see - it's certainly executed well - but you know... those other movies are great without batman. But I really liked the cast. I thought Colin Farrell's make-up was amazing. Pattinson's emo, catatonic, ghost-like presence is a relatively new choice... It would've been nice to see...a LITTLE movement... but the movie supported that vibe really well. The photography did a much better job I think with the impossibly shallow depth of field shots and showing off Gotham's weird architecture better than Zack Snyder's movies did. Like I said, I was completely impressed with the entire first half, which is like a normal running time in itself. But once it moves to, like, sweeping shots of the entire city being affected by stuff and it's supposed to be a huge catastrophe but the PG-13 kicks in so you're not entirely sure how many people actually die (if any) and all of a sudden people are hanging by wires and this and that and indeterminant amounts of bad guys are dealt with in a deliberately confusing way to create false endings and lame turns and Batman's armor seems to have "Plot" rating because point-blank shotgun blasts don't do much compared to random green goo... it lost me. I did like the notion of how these members of Batman's Rogue's gallery get their henchmen, and we see some remnant Joker thugs in the beginning of the movie and see how Riddler thugs form. And the car scene was pretty good (would've been better if it wasn't a thousand percent in the dark AND rain and if he didn't stall it at the beginning of the scene). I also appreciate how we didn't exactly get an origin scene. I guess partly since they changed Bruce's Mom's maiden name ("MARTHA!!!") and made their death a bit more mysterious so they couldn't show the alley behind the theater with the dropped pearls and all that, but still this one gets points for saying "it's the 45th batman movie, we know his deal." So... yeah. Pretty good. Almost great. |
