Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review

The Batman/Turning Red/Belfast

Director’s Note: All of us here at the D.O.M. were thrilled to take a much-needed field trip to a nearby, charming local theater to watch something on the big screen, as intended. We recommend that you make the effort yourself, provided you don’t sacrifice your own personal safety and well-being. Right at this moment, a bit of distracting spectacle was a welcome respite.

The Batman (Warner Brothers)

It’s Year Two of Batman’s career, and he’s tacitly cooperating with the Gotham City Police Department—sorta. He’s got James Gordan’s ear, who in turn has his back, but that relationship is going to be strained, because someone is killing the most prominent politicians in Gotham and leaving cryptic clues and riddles...

Matt Reeves’ previous geek credits include Cloverfield (2008), Let Me In (2010) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). That should tell you everything you need to know about whether or not you’ll like his take on the Batman, but just in case, let me assure you of one other very important thing.

It’s a Batman movie. This may well be the longest-running superhero movie franchise around, even if we discount the 1966 TV show. As such, it shares a great many things with the other incredibly storied action franchise, James Bond, in that there is a checklist of things you can expect, such as the Batmobile reveal/chase scene, the use of the grapple in a cool and/or dramatic way, at least one thug fight where he mops the floor with a bunch of gun-toting goons, a dark and breathless conversation with whatever woman was unlucky enough to have to play a scene alongside a costume that pulls every bit of focus, and the revelation that this thing happening right now actually has its roots in the lives of Thomas and Martha and Young Bruce Wayne.

I need you to understand these aren’t spoilers, not really. They are plot points that are given away freely in the trailers. And they are showed in the trailers because Batman fans, much like James Bond fans, have a deep-seeded ownership of the franchise and feel that any deviation from the images that they have in their head is a sacrilege, the likes of which spell doom for the character, Warner Brothers, DC Comics, and Life As We Know It On Planet Earth.

You should also know every Batman fans (including myself, way back in 1989), have been batting a thousand insofar as movie opinions go. They have all been one hundred percent wrong about, well, just about everything, but most especially the casting choices. Most other reasonable people look at the trailer and say, “Oh, hey! A new Batman movie! With the Twilight guy! Honey, you love Twilight. Can we go see it?” Not Batman fans. There’s a mythical, as-yet-undiscovered unicorn out there with the exact chin necessary to stick out from under the cowl, piercing blue eyes, and the acting chops of both Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood combined, and HE’S who they want to play Batman. Not Mister Mom. Not That British Guy. Not Batfleck. Not that Other British Sparkly Vampire Guy.

Now that the movie has grossed over 600 million and everyone has grudgingly admitted that, yeah, it was good, let me tell you what I loved about this movie.

1. Paul Dano’s Riddler was terrifying. That character had the most baggage to lift into the overhead compartment, thanks to Jim Carey, and this take, this serial killer vibe, and Paul Dano’s intensity has rewritten the character, as it their rite of passage (see below).

2. Colin Ferrell as the Penguin was the most DeNiro thing I’ve seen in years, especially now that DeNiro’s gone into comedy in his dotage. Ferrell channels Goodfellas-era Bobby D and that, coupled with the make-up designs straight out of the best-selling Batman: Arkham games, made him someone I want to see come back in another movie.

3. Batman is the Darknight Detective. This is my favorite aspect of Batman in the comics, and we’ve not really seen it onscreen before. The scenes of him, walking through the police cordon, standing in the middle of the murder scene with Gordon, talking clues and evidence, is my Batman, circa every damn Batman comic book from the 1970s and 1980s, thanks to Denny O’Neill and a lot of other writers who came after him and followed his lead.

It's a shame that the trailers play more like the sizzle reel for the movie and give away a lot—a LOT—far more than they should have, but, as I said before, they have to over-prove to the entire Internet that yeah, they made a Batman movie, and not a sixth Twilight film. Dumb asses.

Thankfully, there are also a lot of small moments, bits of black humor, and some really inventive re-working of the old chestnuts on the checklist, such as the goon fight in the third act, which is one of the most cinematic, beautiful, perfect Batman fights ever. It’s both inherently cinematic and also recalls Frank Miller and Dave Mazzuchelli at their apex.

Every new Batman movie benefits from the ones before it, and part of the zeitgeist of every new Batman project is the idea that we’re not going to make the same mistakes as the previous trilogy. Which may certainly be true, but it doesn’t prevent them from making all new ones. One of the things every project seems to include is addressing any perceived mistakes from previous films. Sometimes it manifests in the way villains were handled. Or things were too funny. Or not funny enough. Or Bruce Wayne was unlikeable. Or Batman was unlikeable. Or there wasn’t enough of one thing or the other. And so, the Riddler drifts away from Frank Gorshin and into Hannibal Lector territory. I think this is a by-product of not wanting to backslide into smirky, campy Batman.

Regardless, I like where we are with this movie. Dark? Yeah. But I’ve got lots of options if I want lighter super hero fare, including Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon series, Batman ’66 comics written by my buddy Jeff Parker, and The Lego Batman Movie are all great examples of non-trauma-inducing Caped Crusader mass media. And anyway, this is Batman, a character forged out of a kid witnessing his parents’ double murder (that we thankfully don’t have to see in this movie). I suppose you could get over that by dancing the Batusi at the What a Way to Go-Go, but my gut tells me it would go another way.

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Turning Red (Disney Plus)

Meiling is a thirteen-year old girl in the 8th grade (in Toronto, in 2002, for some reason or another) and she and her friends have it all figured out, as one does at that age. But Meiling has not counted on an ancient family curse that affects only the women, a curse that turns her into a giant red panda when she gets too excited. There’s a cure, of course, but it involves bottling up the red panda forever. Can Meiling and her friends figure out how to live with this unasked-for inconvenience?

I don’t think I need to point out what this is a metaphor for, do I? Granted, if you’d told me this was Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret meets Ginger Snaps, I don’t know that I would have gone into it with the same open mind. In fact, this wasn’t on my radar at all, presumably because I’m not a thirteen-year old girl who is into Boy Bands. But then the shitposting on the Internet started, and, I couldn’t help myself. Every single time someone suggests I boycott a book or a movie, I will run to it as fast as I can.

Apparently, some folks actually caught the not-too-subtle allegory being offered up in the movie and decided that the conversation the film could potentially engender between young girls and their mother was a bridge too far. Remember, we’re talking about a girl who turns into a giant red panda when she gets excited. And she’s everything a red panda would be in this instance. You can certainly use it to talk about menstruation if you want to, or you can just talk about how everyone changes during puberty. Or, you know, you can just watch the antics of the giant, dancing panda. The take-away from the movie is about learning to accept who you are, and those things that separate you and make you different are to be celebrated. They say that, nearly verbatim, so as to not confuse anyone. And yet, confusion abounds.

Disney doesn’t need my sympathy, but I do feel sorry for them when they earnestly try to put out an animated movie that won’t offend anyone and it blows right up in their face. Mind you...it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of Robber Barons, but I still feel like screaming at Twitter, “would you PLEASE learn to PICK your BATTLES?!”

Turning Red a Pixar movie, one that doesn’t make you cry. The animation is as charming as ever. The voice acting is spot-on. I was able to watch the whole thing, smiling and chuckling, and emerged unscarred on the other side. It’s not a deep movie. They don’t all have to be.

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Belfast (in theaters)

Buddy and his brother are part of a working-class Irish family, growing up in 1969, in the middle of The Troubles, the conflict between the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Buddy struggles to understand it, alongside his first crush, wanting to impress his older cousin, and regular visits with his grandparents. The sweet, slice-of-life story is shattered by chaotic violence and forces their family to make a choice between leaving and staying.

Kenneth Branagh is one of my favorite directors. I’ve loved him since Henry V; I think his Shakespeare projects are the new standard for doing The Bard’s Work. It’s always interesting to me when he directs something not in iambic pentameter. The results aren’t always uniformly brilliant, but he’s never let me down before. Belfast continues that winning streak, handily. It’s serious stuff, but rendered with these great little moments that endear the whole family and bring home their struggle to remain in their neighborhood amid the growing danger.

The cast is fantastic, as is the direction and the cinematography. It also just won Best Original Screenplay and was nominated for, among other things, Best Picture. Belfast not an uplifting, feel-good movie, but there are enough little triumphs and bright moments in the film to leaven the tragedy and uncertainty of those violent and turbulent times. Highly recommended.