Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

“ Ding dong, the god is dead.”

 I'm struggling to think of any film I've ever seen that's worse than this two and a half hours of empty, cynical, pointless drivel. The only consolation is that I have this blog and at least I get to put thid film over my knee and give it a sound spanking. I pity those who had to see this film without such an outlet.

So why so execrably awful? Well, there’s the obvious things which have often been pointed out- unlike Marvel, who carefully nurtured all the main characters in their individual films before bringing them all together in The Avengers, DC saw fit to follow the flawed but ok Man of Steel with this- a continuity-heavy crossover with a Batman we haven’t properly met, no soul and a music video sensibility of scene following scene at a bewildering pace without slowing down so we can get to know and care about the characters.

Then there’s the direction from alleged pervert Zack Snyder- technically well done, competent, but devoid of any individual style or personality. But worse than any of this is the message of the film. We expect Hotham, and the world of the Batman, to have a certain darkness, although branding people is a bit much. Yes, it’s nice to have an older, veteran, perhaps cynical Batman from the start. But Superman should be a contrast yet he’s depicted as a self-doubting throwback to less cynical times, a throwback to liberal times who is stranded in that godawful year 2016. But that’s lazy; the character of Dioetman is essentially the optimistic creation of two idealistic Jewish youngsters in the far darker days of 1938. The character of Superman has seen off much bigger bastards than Trump and Brexit and I hate the implication that morality and liberalism are outmoded values in these right wing, nativist days- and yes, those placards held by the anti-Superman protesters outside Congress are very anti-immigrant- where the simple fact is that we liberals can, and will, smash their stupid faces in. To suggest otherwise is not only to misunderstand and disrespect the character of Superman but send a very cynical political message that nothing matters and there’s no point. “No one stays good in this world”, says Superman.

So, yeah, I hate what this film is saying. But that’s not all; it’s over-complicated, confusing fanwank where all the attempts to make you sympathise with the characters fail both because of the clinical style and the fact that we’ve yet to get to know these characters- the only character here who is actually likeable is Laurence Fishburne’s delightfully quotable Perry White. Oh, and Luthor. I love Jesse Eisenberg’s witty, fast-talking Luthor, an eccentric Nietzchean, er, “superman”. But the film is full of good actors who are either woefully miscast- Jeremy Irons and, yes, Ben Affleck- or playing shallow, badly written characters. It’s a terrible script, a terrible film and a terrible basis for a cinematic universe. Even Justice League is not quite so bad as this.

Justice League (2017)

“What are your superpowers again?”

“I’m rich.”

 I'd intended to start this blog with a quip about that notorious moustache. After all, I mentioned it to Mrs Llamastrangler and she was amused to find the CGI on Henry Cavill’s upper lip so very obvious. But sadly I can’t continue along those lines as this film is an utter mess. It’s a turf, a stinker, a mind-bogglingly bad film. What went wrong?

D.C. can make good films. I enjoyed Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman. But they simply have no Kevin Fiege. There no quality control, no consistency of tone, no building up the characters in their individual films first. So we get these big epic films about iterations we don’t really know of characters who have barely been introduced to us in this version of the D.C. Universe. The pacing is atrocious and the script is lacking in sparkle. And the odd wittty line, presumably late additions by Joss Whedon after Zack Snyder was sacked, just jars with the po-faced and dull tone. This is a film about superheroes that fails to be fun. That’s quite an achievement.

Oh, some of the cast are good. Henry Cavill is well cast, and Ezra Miller is an inspired choice as an awkward young Flash. But Ben Affleck is both bad and wrong as Batman, Jeremy Irons is good but miscast as Alfred, and Ciaran Hinds gives us a generic and forgettable villain. And Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, incredibly, gets most of the best lines. And the amount of exposition just beggars belief. And don’t get me started on the sheer quantity of poor CGI.

This is, hands down, the worst superhero film I’ve ever seen.

Dead Ringers (1988)

"She's heard that it makes sex come on like Nagasaki..."

This is the fourth David Cronenberg film I've seen (and blogged) and I've yet to see any with his famous body horror. Even here, beyond a weird dream sequence and the bloody ending, body horror is quite moderate and I've yet to see anything that would be described on Rick and Morty as "a Cronenberg".

That aside, the film is superbly shot, choreographed, scored, and contains a sublime and extraordinary performance by Jeremy Irons as the twins which is so outstanding that you forget he isn't even bothering to sound Canadian. On the surface it's all brilliant. And yet...

It's a weird film; Elliott and Beverly are twin gynaecologists and Elliott, being the more confident, seduces women and lets his brother have the sloppy seconds while letting them think it's the same person, which is a bit rapey, and they both live happily under this arrangement until Bev goes and falls in love with a movie star called Claire who, as a very Cronenberg detail, has a weird mutant vagina. This leads to a slow unravelling of first one twin and then the other, neither being quite an individual.

So, yeah, weird. But it doesn't really play with any of the ideas it brings up, and for me the bloody climax doesn'y quite feel either earned or weird enough. A well-made but oddly empty film.

Henry IV, Part II (Richard Eyre, 2012)

"Presume not that I am the thing I was!"

It's been a while since I reviewed Part I, I know. The last few weeks have been somewhat unusual, though. The blog is now back to normal and you can expect Henry V fairly sharpish, probably next Saturday. I was actually going to review a film today but I really have to get these Hollow Crown adaptations watched and reviewed as I recorded them off the telly and they're taking up too much space. So, the current schedule is Shakespeare for two consecutive Saturdays, after which Saturday (or Sunday if I happen to be out Saturday) will be where I review new episodes of Doctor Who. I'll be doing a film on Bank Holiday morning. Only one other person (yes, you, Nick!) knows what it is. After the five weeks of Doctor Who then Saturdays will revert to films again, although I also plan to slot in a recording of Macbeth from BBC 4 at some point. The rest of the week will be all Buffy and Angel.

So, Part II. Again, the only one of these plays I've read or seen before is Richard II, so forgive me if I react to a play that is new to me. There's a real sense of foreboding right from the start. All these parallels of different pairs of fathers and sons are soooo last play. The old Earl of Northumberland, such a presence in the last play, gets only two scenes, in one of which he suffers the bereavement of his much-loved son, and another in which he buggers off out of the play. It's interesting that the scene in which he hears of his bereavement should take place amongst such bleakly beautiful Northumberland countryside.

But this play, unlike its predecessor, is concerned with just one father and one son. Even Falstaff, this time, is no longer a father figure; he and Hal are on strained terms from the beginning, and Simon Russell Beale gives Falstaff a palpable anxiety throughout, as if he knows, deep down, that the prince will disown him. There's much more emphasis on his physical age, even to the point of a sex scene which makes it clear that his performance is not what it was. Tom Hiddleston, too, gives us a more serious prince from the beginning, with the frailty and mortality of his father weighing upon his mind.

This play is much more serious than its prequel. It's not that there isn't comedy- there are some glorious insults in the scene where Falstaff is arrested, and Robert Shallow is a brilliant comic creation. But there's an ever-present sense of decline and doom which can only be redeemed by the accession of a king freed from the original sin of being a usurper. The old king visibly declines throughout the play, and becomes much more morose and philosophical, even getting a soliloquy on his insomnia, which even kings are subject to. Like Cnut, this king knows that nature marks a limit to his power. Perhaps there's also a suggestion that his inability to sleep, and the tumult that besets his realm, are a result of his illegitimacy as a king. It's significant that he even quotes Richard.

We're reminded that Falstaff, as a knight, has certain feudal obligations in time of war as we see him recruiting peasants to take with him.  One of them, Ralph Mouldy, points out that his wife and children will have no breadwinner while he's away fighting, a reminder that these aristocratic wars have cruel consequences for those further down the scale. Another peasant is fatalistic about his possible death, a motif that recurs throughout the latter stages of the play: as Shallow points out, "Death is certain". For everyone in this play, death is very near. Shallow is conscious of his many dead acquaintances; he sees his generation beginning to pass away. The king is dying. People die in wars, "traitors" are casually and summarily executed, and there are many, many mentions of old Falstaff's mortality, which culminate in his admonishment from the new King Henry V.

This scene is the fulcrum of both plays, of course: the new king's "I know thee not, old man." His new, royal persona is so very different from the playboy prince of the recent past but then, of course, as we knew from Hal's soliloquy at the start of the previous play, the playboy prince was no less of a mask than the kingly one. Hal has to clearly separate the man and the king, having learned from his father that kingship is a burden.

Henry IV, Part I (Richard Eyre, 2012)

"Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world!"

"I do. I will."

I'd never seen or read this play before, this English graduate sheepishly admits. There are rather a lot of them, and those pesky academics are pushing to include more and more to the fortyish plays. For the record, I've seen or red fourteen including this one. That said, it's surprising, as ever, how much of this play, a lot of it concerning Falstaff, was familiar.

That gives me a bit of a challenge. When I reviewed Julius Caesar and Richard II I was discussing the production rather than the play, which I already knew. I'll endeavour to keep this review in that same spirit, but I hope you'll forgive me a small digression on my first impressions of the play.

The play continues the theme of kingship from Richard II, with Henry IV, a usurper, plagued by guilt and incipient rebellion. Fascinatingly, there are two pairs of doubles who dominate the play. The dour, guilt-ridden, dutiful, rebellion-plagued Henry is contrasted with the fun-loving, cheerfully cynical but emotionally vulnerable Falstaff, giving Prince Hal two polar opposites as "fathers". Meanwhile, Hal, a dissolute young man who contains greatness within him, and is much cannier than he looks, is contrasted against the brave, honourable but impulsive and not-too-bright Hotspur. We get a lot of foreshadowing that Hal will put away childish things when he starts, er, kinging, and that he will, indeed, on that day, banish plump Jack and banish all the world. Hotspur, in getting himself and a lot of people pointlessly killed, illustrates, I suppose, that Hal's strategy, if we can call it, of making himself seem to be a bit of a waster so he can surprise everyone, is a good idea. Although robbery is perhaps pushing it a bit far.

Underlying this is a sense that something is rotten in the state of England; Henry's speech about rebels at the climax, given his own actions, rings hollow, and it is the rebels, not him, who speak of honour. The only hope lies in the next generation.

Interesting, then, that this more rotten England gets a far grittier and more lived-in mediaeval look than did Richard II, which seemed much more on the High Middle Ages. We get constant contrasts between earthy taverns and a cold, grey, empty, joyless castle which really emphasises, in the use of setting, how this play cuts between two very different worlds, one joyless and rooted in a terrible sin, the other merry but ultimately without honour or values. For all it's japes, and its sack, and its misguided honour, this is an England that has lost its way. It's notable that the final battle is shot mainly in close shots to give a sense of confusion, chaos and claustrophobia. There's bitter snow, and fog clouding everything. The battle is won, but things are not right. This generation has failed, and the throne itself is still in question.

Jeremy Irons is superb as the recast, older, rather depressed Henry IV, who has gained only misery by seizing the throne. Simon Russell Beale, my first Falstaff, made me fall in love with the character and want to see more interpretations. But I suspect it's Tom Hiddleston, Loki himself, who will make the biggest impression over the three plays. There are broad hints of how his character will develop, and I'm looking forward to what happens with his performance. Perhaps it's the battle scene, more even than the play-acting in the tavern, that points the way. This is not Falstaff's world, but Hal belongs.